Hey, I appreciate you.

Not just because you're so patient when it's been over a month since I've reached out, or you're so patient when I fill up your inbox multiple times in a week.

I appreciate that you are reading at all. It helps me feel seen, and appreciated in return. And today that matters more than most.

Today is Trans Day of Visibility.

In the last few years, each time this day comes to pass is increasingly difficult. A reminder that we've got two days. Trans Day of Remembrance, when we honor and remember our dead, and Trans Day of Visibility, when we assert that we exist and ask people to stop hurting, killing, and cleansing us from the worlds they wish to create, and criminalizing our existence.

In the last year, many countries previously deemed relatively safe for trans people have become much more unsafe. And the already unsafe have only increase their oppressive agenda. We are increasingly legislated out of existence within the framework of the law. I don't care for the law, it's only always been a codification of violence of those who wield authority over those they wish to dominate. There's not an ounce of care, empathy, or understanding within the framework of the rule of law. Cold violence.

We can codify laws against things we find immoral, maybe killing someone, say? I'm curious how many of you are holding back on killing someone just because the law holds you back. Maybe you don't need a law to stop you. In any event, the law doesn't stop those who wield the law from killing as they wish, nor from making carveouts as they please.

Democracy should be nothing more than a joke to anyone in a marginalized population. Not just because three wolves and two sheep vote on what's for dinner, but because the implication of democracy is that the minority must by it's very nature, conform to the whim of the majority. The responsibility for the violence of law being spread across more people simply makes it less dangerous than dictatorship in a sense, if only because it's slower and less decisive. As we all know, however, it's still atrocity when it's carried out by many as when it's carried out by one. And the democracy under which I live is responsible for endless atrocity.

Regardless, even under dictatorship, the same democratic power structure exists. Power and violence are power and violence, no matter the social and bureaucratic structure. The voting booth is nothing compared to the collective decisions that people make every single day to stay complicit with the structure of power people find themselves within. Maybe you cast a vote, maybe you don't. Voting is the least powerful of all political acts, anyway, you just believe differently because you've been told that this is what politics is. It's not. Politics is people, what they do, how they live, and it's about power. You vote for the world that you wish to create every single time that you decide to stay complicit with the law, and every time you decide to break it, or to subvert it.

I think Hannah Arendt would say that power is what exists between people. Authority is what occurs in the absence of power, and that's why it takes violence to uphold it, and to rein in that power that exists between people. Because authority holds no power unless you submit to it, if you give it your power, even if only in exchange to escape their wrath.

Every single time you choose complicity, you make a choice to uphold the status quo. Every single time. That's your vote for the system, not the piece of paper in the ballot box. Every time you choose to respect the law, to respect the authority it holds.

You might make a plea in reply to this idea, a plea that there are consequences for breaking the law, but if that's your argument, then your privilege hides the fact that there are consequences for your vote in the ballot box, as well, they just don't happen to really affect you the same as they do other people. Marginalized people know the violence they are all but guaranteed to suffer if the ballot box is filled with more of one color ballot than another. Do you?

In the US, where I live, it's getting more and more difficult for people like me to exist. Everywhere in the world, really. On a day like Trans Day of Visibility, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me and all of my siblings to be visible, because that means putting our crime on display: the crime of existing.

I can't keep track lately, and even if I could, it's so overwhelming. I was on a road trip last week and I needed to make a plan not to stop in one of the states because it would be illegal for me to use the restroom. I've lost track of the number of states, but it's increasing. In Idaho it's not just a felony, but it can now potentially carry a life sentence in prison. For using the bathroom. So many laws. In some, it would be illegal for me to drive a vehicle because my license says 'F' and that's considered fraud in those states.

Most trans people have maps that we refer to when traveling that are updated frequently with the latest risks across the country. A very prominent one used to be updated yearly, then switched to quarterly because things were changing so quickly. Now, though, things are changing in real time, all the time, and none of it is getting better.

In other states it might be the clothes I wear. I think in Tennessee I can now wear a dress in an over 21 bar or a strip club, but I couldn't legally wear nail polish on a walk through the park. You might say that this is absurd, that the cops wouldn't waste their time arresting you for nail polish and the law doesn't say that explicitly and even if it did, you would win in court.

The law is vague. It's vague on purpose. It's vague because they can and they will arrest you for it if, when, and how they please, or for whatever gender infraction they can put on you. Because they're not policing dresses and nail polish, they're policing our existence. Something they've long done, they still do, and will continue to do in the future.

Besides, courts don't historically side with trans people, anyway, and the Supreme Court treats us with outright animus. And even if they did side with us, it doesn't quite matter when even spending any time in a jail cell at all is a statistically probable chance that you will be sexually assaulted. That's the reality for trans feminine people, especially, and even moreso for trans people of color. Even if you win, you lose, and devastatingly so.

Even so, the point isn't to have more of us in prison, anyway. The point is to have us stop existing in public, or, more to the point, it's to have us stop existing. Entirely. It's to make us afraid to wear nail polish in the park, or to wear a dress to go shopping or to work, and to make us afraid to use the restroom. It's to make us too afraid to exist, because of the consequences of breaking the law. That our existence is a crime.

The whole purpose of these laws is to make us less visible, and unfortunately, it works. It's scary to be visible. And yet, there are consequences for being invisible.

As much as I would love you all to become anarchists as I am, that's your own journey to follow, but at the very least, I want you to recognize not only the harm that your system causes us, all people, I need you to recognize the responsibility you hold in upholding the systems of oppression, not just on the day of the ballot box, but every day before and after, in every decision you make to be complicit.

MLK Jr. was not the only one to say that a person has a responsibility to break an unjust law, but he said it. I say there's no such thing as a just law. Rule of law has nothing to do with justice, and justice, whatever that word means, doesn't require law to uphold it, and the law upholds injustice far more than it perpetuates any sense of justice.

Which is all to say, just stop.

As for me, if my existence is criminalized, I may as well just be a criminal.

But for you, if nothing else, just stop. Stop obeying. I'm not just saying stop obeying in advance, I'm saying stop obeying.

When it comes to it,

break the law.

MLK Jr. told you to. So did Malcom X. So did Rage Against the Machine. So did Gandhi and Tolstoy and Thoreau and Jesus Huckleberry Christ. But you don't need them to tell you, because they're not your authorities. You don't need to do it because I said so, either.

You need to do it because you can either choose to do what is lawful, or you can choose to do what's right, but you can't always choose both.

This can be applied to so much that is happening in our time, so please don't leave these words just for today or just for us, but today I'm speaking about us, so I highlight them in this context.

In a year like this, it may seem like we are more visible than we have been in living memory, considering what a target we have become, and in some ways this is true. At the same time, we're not quite as visible as it seems. For all the talk about trans people, you're not actually seeing us. You're not hearing from us. You're hearing other people talk about us. You're witnessing lies about us. But you're not actually seeing us, you're seeing spectres that are made to scare you, and that's not just limited to the regime. The liberals aren't giving us a voice, they're talking about us, they're positing and debating the 'Trans Question', same as the 'Jewish Question' and the 'Negro Question' you ever saw before. They're simply negotiating with the conservatives about how many of our rights they can take away and how many of us they can afford to sacrifice to appease their gods in order to win votes. Just as they did then.

But you aren't actually seeing us anywhere, you're not hearing our voices, and you're not getting an actual concept of who we are as human beings. We're not actually visible. If we were, it would be a lot more difficult to believe the lies that people tell about us.

How often are you seeing actual trans voices represented? How often are you centering trans voices in all of this? How often are you seeking and listening to trans voices? Thank you for listening to me now, but also, I'm only one voice. I can't and won't speak for all of us.

Moreover, saying that we need to be less visible right now to protect ourselves really puts the blame on us for our own oppression. It's telling us that if we had stayed quiet and put our heads down and refused to assert ourselves that would have kept us from harm.

Honey, no. That's the same point they're making. It's just lipstick on a pig. You're not just telling us to stop being visible, you're telling us to stop existing. You're telling us just as much as they are to stop wearing nail polish in the park.

Like so many of us, I spent a lifetime with my head down, hiding myself from others. That nearly killed me so many times, and I was miserable.

Because it's not about a dress and it's not about nail polish. My nail polish is currently chipped to hell and I'm wearing leggings and a sweatshirt. It's not about those things.

As most of us can tell you, it's about who we are. It's about the way I stand, about the way I speak, the way I hold my limp-ass wrists. It's about the colors that bring me joy and the stories that make me cry. It's about the friends I hold dear and the shape of the shadow I cast in the moonlight.

There is not a way to live authentically without telegraphing who we are. There is not a way to live without the pain. I wore clothes from the men's department and cut my hair short and lowered my voice and kept my limp wrists contained and didn't put my hand on my hip or cry or hold the wrong kind of empathy or whatever the fuck. I followed the rules because I was punished when I didn't. Severely. By society as a whole and by individuals themselves. And you know what? They still knew I wasn't one of them. They didn't always know I was trans (some people did), but they knew I wasn't one of them.

They punish us even when we follow all their rules. And they know it. You know it, too.

No. Keeping your head down is not an option.

It's not our fault for being too visible. Is your gender or your humanity too visible?

It's their fault for being oppressors, and I'm not going to take responsibility for the harm they inflict on me, and you shouldn't be making excuses for them either.

Be quiet so the monsters don't get you is no way to live.

This is why so many of us choose death over detransition. I certainly choose death over detransition. I already made that choice years ago.

I'd prefer it be their death first, though. So it goes, ring the words of Vonnegut in my mind. Ironic, I think.

As far as I know, there are only two ways to increase your chances to make it through everything when you're part of a targeted group. You keep your head down and hope for the best, but as I just illustrated, that doesn't really work, at least not for us, and most other marginalized groups I can think of. Besides, it represents a lack of solidarity with your peers. The other is to be so loud that people would take notice if you go missing. So loud that people can't ignore you. So loud that no one could claim that they didn't notice you. Anything in between puts you at greater risk.

None of the options are great, and they're all so fucking exhausting.

So, as much as it sucks to reflect on the reasons for a a day like today, it's important to understand why any of this matters.

Today isn't a day of celebrating trans people, though there's nothing wrong with that. Today is a day to remind ourselves how important it is that we be loud. That we be visible.

So that we can be visible tomorrow, too. And so our siblings can be visible the day after.

So we can just exist.

no ends, only means