I never could figure out what I wanted to say about gender and sports. It’s been a topic at the top of my academic passions since before I was even out of the closet, but almost every time I try to write something the thoughts I have are so abstract that there’s no good way to say them. Where do you even begin to talk about the misogyny, transphobia, dog whistles, and distractions that all go into the mainstream talking points about trans athletes in sports over an issue that on every pro level has only ever been theoretical?

And yet, despite trans athletes being basically non-existent, trans women in sports remains an evergreen issue for the right wing propaganda machine. Among others, Angel City’s Elizabeth Eddy is one of the latest athlete to try to salvage what’s left of her career by coming out as transphobic a la JK Rowling with one game left on her contract. In a New York Post op-ed, she criticizes the NWSL’s lack of a clear policy on gender eligibility, suggesting that the league require that players have been born with ovaries or adopt SRY gene testing, controversial practices that would have effects spanning far beyond banning trans athletes.

There are so few trans athletes in sports that making it the “issue” in women’s sports that people waste time on is almost always just used as a dog whistle to start curtailing the rights of trans people in other areas of life whether it be use of public facilities, documentation, or access to care. Eddy’s rant in the Post takes issue with an issue that does not exist. No trans woman has ever competed in the NWSL, and the only two transgender players in NWSL history were both either non-binary or trans masculine. There’s an avenue for dialogue about what trans inclusion policy should look like, but when the talking points are that ‘trans women aren’t women’ and ‘there are scores of men waiting to dress up to dominate women’s sports,’ it’s impossible to have any productive conversation.

Who the policy would endanger is stars like Orlando’s Barbara Banda, Kansas City’s Tabitha Chawinga, or even Eddy’s own teammate (at the time of her op-ed) Prisca Chilufya. All three are cisgender African-born players who have faced targeted harassment and scrutiny for allegedly being intersex and not conforming to the typical standards of western femininity. Chromosome testing, as Eddy suggests the NWSL adopt, already has a deeply problematic history rooted in Nazi officials hurling claims that men were “pretending” to be women for athletic prowess. Before being reinstituted over trans hysteria this year, World Athletics (previously known as the International Amateur Athletic Association) abandoned its original chromosome testing regiment entirely in 1999 for being too cruel and too frequently upending lives of athletes unaware they carried an intersex gene after identifying as cis women all of their lives.

Perhaps the biggest problems with the conservative movement’s attempt to use the question “What is a woman?” as a “gotcha” question for queer individuals and their allies is that they themselves can’t define what a woman is that doesn’t exclude at least some cis women or admit to a wider range of sex and gender than their own binary belief. Trans athletes already exist in such few numbers that gender exclusion policies in practice are two-fold instruments: first, to make it easier to tear down trans rights in arenas outside of sports, and second to perpetuate racism and patriarchy to discriminate against cis athletes like Banda and Chawinga, or track athlete Caster Semenya, who may fail to meet the narrowest conservative definitions of womanhood.

The other half of the debate on trans athletes, and perhaps the crux of what I want to get at, is that the effects of medical transition are maybe the biggest misunderstanding a cis audience typically has of the trans experience. While I was competing in cross country and track during college pre-HRT, I was careful how I defended trans women in sports and doubted whether it would ever feel “fair” to compare myself to other women (I still enter races as non-binary primarily to avoid becoming too much of a controversial news headline). I’m offering only an anecdotal account, but the first year especially, any attempt to run on a consistent basis felt like one step forward and three steps back and I dealt with frustration as my “easy” pace in college became not-so-easy. Now, for the first time in my life, I go on runs with my friends who are in similar shape feeling like we are exerting a similar effort. For the first time in my life, I can work out with other women without holding back. Occasionally, I’ll run with one of my former (cis man) teammates and it feels like he’s running circles around me even though I’ve been the one actually running more consistently.

While I was a pretty average runner for Division 1, my 5k PR of 14:20 was a considerable jump ahead of what the women’s collegiate record was of 14:52 (Jane Hedengren of BYU recently pushed this mark further down to 14:44). Right now I couldn’t fathom getting within two maybe three minutes of that, even if I fully jumped back into the level of training I was doing in college. Granted with sub-optimal training and on somewhat of a slow course, in June I struggled to run 19:40, and I lost to a friend who had been running similar mileage and was a D3 All-American in the women’s 800m in college by about 20 seconds. A couple months earlier I finished the Cherry Blossom 10 miler over a minute behind my (cis woman) college teammate. They were results that, all things considered, made sense.

Despite the claims straight from the 1930s that men are pretending to be women to win at sports, no one is arguing that there shouldn’t be some sort of requirement for trans women to medically transition before competing as a woman in higher levels of sports. Before the current political climate pushed athletics organizations worldwide to blanket ban trans athletes altogether, the guideline for the NCAA and IOC was generally a set amount of time HRT and maintaining a sufficiently low level of testosterone, recognizably a standard that while perhaps reasonable enough for the circumstances, would have benefited from a bigger body of research.

Trans athletes want more scientific research on the physical effects of HRT; research that is now even more unlikely to be conducted with funding cuts to the NIH and any study that “promotes gender ideology.“ The body of research that does exist, however, is rather consistent in finding that feminizing HRT has a significant effect on bone density, muscle mass, and aerobic capacity, with a few studies even suggesting that trans women might be at a slight disadvantage in certain high endurance sports. No cis man is going to go through potentially years of medical and social transition to claim superiority at sports just to discover they now struggle to open a pickle jar. For that matter, if right-wing propagandists were confident that the body of research would vindicate their viewpoint they’d welcome more comprehensive research (as is so often the fatal flaw of right-wing propagandists).

Take Lia Thomas, perhaps the highest profile and most controversial example of trans athlete participation in a women’s sport to date. Critics are quick to point out that she “only” was ranked in 554th in the 200 Free in 2018-2019 in the men’s division and that her times in her senior year were only around 6% slower than her freshman year, compared to the typical 10% difference between elite women and elite men. This ignores that the 554th figure was cherry picked data and she was also 65th in the 500m Freestyle (the event she won at NCAAs) and 32nd in the 1650 freestyle, but even more importantly it gives no benefit of the doubt the level of improvement of an 18 or 19 year-old underclassmen would be compared to their 22 or 23 year-old super-senior year selves in college. If not for being trans, Lia’s improvement in her performance would have been impressive, but not necessarily that surprising. In 2019, Thomas was a 3x runner-up at Ivy League Championships, each time losing only to senior Brennan Novak from Harvard, who himself finished a respectable 8th that year at NCAAs in the 500 free. In all likelihood, by the time she was a fifth year senior in 2022, she was bound to be nationally relevant no matter what division she competed in, but because of covid and her transition, we didn’t get to see the middle of her NCAA career or the work that she was still putting in to be the best swimmer that she could be.

I wasn’t ready at the time, but sometimes I think about the world that I started HRT earlier and finished out my own collegiate career competing as a woman. It would have been more controversial. I’m not sure if I would have ended up experiencing more or less athletic related anxiety. But ultimately I think I would have made a few all-league teams and snagged a couple podium finishes… because that’s roughly what already happened. Sure, I would have been one of the better runners in the Patriot League, but only because I was already one of the better runners in the Patriot League competing in the men’s division. I don’t think my career would have been all that different. I certainly wouldn’t have magically turned into a national caliber athlete overnight. If you want to be an elite athlete as a trans girl on HRT, you better have been an elite athlete before transition too.

You’re probably never going to be able to prove or disprove that trans women competing with cis women is “fair,” at least not while there are as few elite trans athletes as there are. After all, sports are inherently not fair. If being trans is an advantage at all (and I am anecdotally very skeptical), is it more of an advantage than say being born tall or with a certain body type or even just born with good hand-eye coordination? Whether it’s bone density, lung capacity, height or any number of factors conservatives may point to argue for keeping trans athletes out of sport, none of these factors exist on a binary. Lia Thomas is six feet tall. So is Katie Ledecky, Gretchen Walsh, Missy Franklin, and a slew of other notable American swimmers.

While Elizabeth Eddy’s op-ed is disheartening, the response in the NWSL community is a reason for hope. In the week after, Angel FC’s team captain Sarah responded with a strong statement in a press conference blasting the remarks as “transphobic and racist” and expressing that her teammates “are hurt and they are harmed by the article.” Similarly, Meg Linehan, The Athletic’s women’s soccer lead, released an op-ed in response criticizing the NWSL’s lack of a gender inclusion policy not because they should bar trans athletes from (theoretically) competing, but because it fails to protect Black, queer, and gender non-conforming players from targeted harassment. Being a fan of sports now a days means wading through homophobic and transphobic backlash if a team so much as hosts a Pride Night, but among NWSL circles, where any random game from Orlando to New York will always feel like a Pride Night, there is little toleration for these bad faith attacks. Not when there’s bigger problems facing women’s sports– like changing the salary cap rules so Trinity Rodman and other big stars can get paid their worth and not leave the league for Europe (Go Spirit!), or the WNBA’s own on-going lock out to fight for fairer compensation.

Meanwhile, outside the professional and NCAA levels, the Supreme Court is hearing two separate cases tomorrow concerning whether states can unilaterally ban trans athletes from competing in high school sports. The fact that we’re talking about high school sports at all as a major political issue with everything else going on in the country feels like an affront to whatever is left of meaningful discourse. We’re talking about kids. Kids who are not taking away your daughter’s college scholarship because they aren’t competing on the next level period. Kids who sometimes are taking away your daughter’s state title… because of not being allowed to compete in the boys’ division. The need to protect trans high school athletes is very real. The limelight the topic is being given is a distraction.

Trans athletes are a subject that demands nuance, but the administration knows that by painting the issue as black and white they’ll be able to chip away at the afforded civil liberties for any and all marginalized groups. There’s no argument to be had about trans athletes if the only rebuttal is calling every trans woman a man and refusing to see her as even a person. There’s no argument to be had when the right doesn’t care about women’s sports to begin with.

Sports are for everyone. Trans athletes deserve the chance to compete and have their accomplishments celebrated, cis athletes deserve to not have their accomplishments questioned and doubted because of narrow and regressive definitions of womanhood, and trans fans deserve to see themselves represented on an elite (and amateur) level. Most of all, we all deserve a government who does not use a problem that doesn’t exist as a strategy to take away civil liberties and distract from even greater evils. We all deserve better. I hope one day we’ll get there.

It’s a dark time to be trans in America. While expected, yesterday’s Skrmetti decision was devastating and disgraceful, and it will have heartbreaking consequences for trans youth across the country. I try to avoid being more alarmist than necessary, but there is a legitimate concern that the precedent set will be used to justify additional bans on youth or even adult care going forward.

Somehow, some way, an administration that is deeply unpopular on almost every issue manages to stay above water on its unconscionable policies on trans people– with at least a little help from Democrats’ own spineless stance. A majority believes that being trans is not innate but a matter of nurture over nature, and a similar majority believes that changing your gender is morally wrong.

I can’t stress how ridiculous these claims are. Being trans is as innate as any part of my identity. But at the end of the day, so what if it’s not? I didn’t choose this, but also so what if I did?

I don’t deserve the right to transition because it’s innate or my mental health is at risk if I don’t or because I have dysphoria about my body or any of the other most common reasons for starting gender-affirming care. I deserve the right to transition because I am a person with bodily autonomy who is capable of making informed decisions about what I do with my body. Decisions about my body that have no impact on how anyone else chooses to live or what they choose to do with their own body.

Honestly, I don’t really care why I am trans. I care that I am happier, healthier, and an all-around fuller person because I transitioned. I care that the science says that the regret rate for transitioning is next to zero, and for those who do detransition it’s almost always as a result of peer pressure or a lack of a support system. I care that any perceived risk is between me and my doctor and no one else.

I grapple with whether it is evil, fear, or negligence driving the anti-trans movement. It’s ironic and sad that we as a society saw all the harm and danger for women created by cis men and decided to scapegoat trans women as the real predators instead of the people actually responsible for making spaces unsafe. I think that patriarchy is so ingrained in society that those who benefit from it could never imagine someone surrendering their male privilege or on the other end claiming it when they were not born with it. Maybe more than anything the anti-trans movement is a testament to conformity and a masterclass in propaganda. Trans people aren’t the problem. You shouldn’t care about people simply living their lives in the matter they feel is most authentic.

You should care about the state of trans rights in this country. Not just because I’m trans or you know someone close to you who is trans, but because the freedom to transition and live freely and authentically with appropriate informed consent is a critical line of defense in the protection of self-autonomy for everyone.

Trans rights are

Women’s rights are

Immigrant rights are

Black rights are

Disabled rights are

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

We’re all in this together. It doesn’t matter why I’m trans or what “made” me trans, I simply am. I don’t care and neither should you. What matters is that we all have the autonomy and right to exist, and that’s a core value that goes far and beyond the matter of trans rights. We owe each other that solidarity.

Friday, March 14th in most ways was mundane. I woke up, had breakfast, and went to work for what ended up being a rather long and annoying day. After, I got drinks with Clare, stayed out until a respectable-for-these-days 10:30, and went home, though only after failing to order McDonalds because it had already closed for the night. The woes of living in almost-Maryland.

It could have been any Friday, but when I woke up I was still legally my birth name, and by the time I went to bed I was forever and henceforth Ramona.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect leading up to my trial. A trial. The word made it sound so intimidating. It felt inevitable that I had done something wrong and I’d have to try again, especially after my first attempt to notify my bank that I was attempting to change my name got lost in the mail, and I had to express re-ship my court notice to make sure it got delivered before the trial date.

When I got into the virtual hearing room, 9:00 am sharp, there were about 30 different people logged in for various cases that seemed to all be related to name changes. Notably, most people there were cis. Not that I looked particularly closely or would necessarily even have known, but I might’ve been the only trans person having a hearing that day.

My case was called second, and I internally let out a small sigh of relief because I did not take time off of work.While I had cleared it with my manager that I might be slightly delayed, I was worried I was going to be there a while when I saw the number of other people in the room. The woman called before me, an immigrant adopting a westernized name, ended up having to request for an extension because she failed to contact a couple of her creditors she listed on her application, only adding to my own jitters.

I appreciate the irony that perhaps the last time I’ll ever have to respond to my birth name was to be sworn in so I could be legally known as Ramona. Maybe irony is the wrong word, but there is definitely some symbolism. It’s a feeling I’ve also felt picking up my HRT from the pharmacy, like a form of dark twisted humor that forces you to acknowledge the past so that you can live authentically in the present.

Somewhere along the line of all of the unpacking of myself I’ve done in the last four years I realized that I rather strongly disliked my birth name. I hold myself back from using the word hate, I don’t think that’s true. But, the more time passes since I used that name regularly, the more it just feels foreign. Once upon a time, when I started using Row (short for Ramona), I told myself and my loved ones that it wasn’t so much the name as the connotation, but that illusion pretty quickly eroded if it ever even made sense at all. Soon, I looked up and realized that I was censoring it even with people who knew it, and sometimes even when I was just thinking or talking out loud to myself.

I hate the word dysphoria. I don’t like using it to describe my experience, nor do I always think it’s the best word to describe my experience. But my birth name makes me dysphoric maybe more than anything else about me. I grapple with how I didn’t always feel alienation from it. Maybe, I think, I never fully got the connotation of that name with my gender until later on. Being trans for a long time was something I only vaguely understood at best, and especially didn’t think it could ever apply to me. Sometimes things have a way of making more sense as you age, like my deep-seated aversion to nicknames for the first 21 years of my life, or the vegetable that took years for me to give a chance because it sounded a little too similar to my birth name. I made a fragile peace with boyhood, but I never made peace with the prospect of being a man. Mostly, this was chalked up with the disbelief that we would all grow up and grow old one day, but I think as I entered college, or maybe even late high school, something clicked that something would have to change before that happened.

I feel bad about how strongly my birth name makes me want to recoil sometimes. It’s cool to get to name yourself, don’t get me wrong, but there is a part of me that feels guilty for discarding something that my parents probably thought long and hard about, and an alias that I lived with for 21 years. It feels like driving a hard wall between me and my pre-transition self, a feeling that I’m sure is hardly unique. I think about continuity and permanence a lot. There’s not much and an ever decreasing amount of things that permeate that barrier, especially post-collegiate running and post-name change. Sometimes I feel like the Ship of Theseus. If I rebuilt everything about me am I still the same person?

In just enough time to see the partial death of my former self flash before my eyes, probably no more than five minutes in front of the judge, my birth name was my legal name no longer. I held it together until I logged off, but then for the five minutes after I sobbed in euphoria like I had never cried before. Ramona Theodosia. I pinched myself standing alone in the middle of my studio apartment just to make sure that this was real before sending out updates to friends and family that everything had gone smoothly.

It’s surreal going from one of the most rawly emotional moments of your life to clocking in for work not even an hour later, but I don’t think any other way would have captured the gravity of the moment. Because there will never be another moment in my life quite like March 14th at about 9:30 am, but I didn’t start being Ramona when a judge gave me permission. Ramona is a person I’ve been becoming all my life, she’s always been there whether I knew it or not. Legal formalities be damned, I was already Ramona. Not much actually changed.

Still, it’s a cause for celebration like every milestone that came before it. My calendar is filling up with anniversaries. September 5th, May 10th, June 19th, April 14th. Each is a moment in becoming, and I’d like to think that I cherish each of them equally. In truth, if I had kept more meticulous journals, I probably could find some milestone to celebrate about my journey just about any day of the year. The thing is I bet a lot of cis people could too. Being a completely different person from your childhood isn’t a uniquely trans experience. Not even changing your first name or gender-affirming care are uniquely trans experiences. And despite that, none of us are the Ship of Theseus. We’re the ocean beneath it, always churning, always changing. You could trace the continuity of the ocean continuing to exist and pretty much having always existed, but every day, every hour, and every second the currents change, the waves ebb and flow, the reefs and the ecosystems below transform. You can never swim in the same body of water twice, and you’ll never be the same person you were the day before. Ironically, I think that gives us both continuity and permanence. I will never be the kid I was at three, but I can draw a sometimes complicated path on how that kid transformed into me. We’re both Ramona, no matter what name we go by. I take some solace in that.

So after a few drinks and plenty of contemplation, I went to bed happy and at peace, a little transformed, and a little the same. The next day, I’ll transform all over again. Goodnight Ramona, I’ll see you in the morning, in my dreams, and in every moment after.

EDIT: We love a hater’s Super Bowl. From the Chiefs getting slaughtered, to Kendrick saying the revolution will be televised, this Super Bowl made it easy to momentarily forget anything I discussed here.

Not that long ago, in a simpler world like many things these days, the NFL faced somewhat of an existential crisis. Not just were youth participation numbers down amid more and more research showing the grave and irreversible effects of brain injuries, the crown jewel, the Super Bowl, saw nearly seven straight years of viewership decline from 2015 to 2021, save for a small rebound between the 2019 to 2020 iterations. Not unlike the way we hoped conservative politics to be going post-2020, the cultural power and allure of football was dwindling.

Fast forward through Taylor Swift, performative activism in end zones, and days on end debate of what is or is not roughing the passer, the NFL is back and better than ever. Viewership and profits have reached record-highs in each of the last two seasons, and suddenly football’s not in the hot seat.

As “End Racism” is removed from the end zones, and as the President’s attendance threatens to give him a cloud of legitimacy, I can’t help but sit here feeling like maybe we got a little duped.

I’m guilty of the game, of course. I followed along this year closer than I have in years. I participated in a fantasy league for the first time. If I am writing with any coherent argument, I am part of the problem.

And I love sports. I enjoy watching football. But the problem with men’s sports, and I’d argue especially the NFL, is that if you are queer, if you are a woman, if you are a person of color, if you are poor, or just otherwise a cultural other in any shape or form, you are always telling yourself the little lie that professional men’s sports are meant for you.

The little lie that rainbow logos and pride nights means that the space is inclusive and welcoming,

The little lie that the glitz and glam of Taylor Swift, or token female reporters and front office staff means you're welcome in the boys’ club,

The little lie that despite the end zones and the backgrounds of a majority of the players, the white billionaire owners will ever not be the ones pulling the strings.

I am about to sound even less fun, but the NFL is a tool of the patriarchy. Maybe it should cause pause that the country’s most popular sport is one that only men play.

In truth, I am not here to rain on anyone’s parade. Political purity is futile and an endless spiral, and if watching football today brings some sense of distraction or normalcy to an otherwise very shitty month, so be it. Maybe I’m just a little bit bitter, I’m not even sure I’m claiming I won’t end up watching too. It’s a spectacle, after all. It’s hard to look away.

But, alas, with two unlikeable teams, and Taylor’s boyfriend and Patrick giving soundbites that use the word ‘honor’ in the same sentence as the name of the U.S. President, the curtain feels pulled back.

It’s the ever persistent reminder that you’re not really in the club. Maybe you haven’t noticed it in a while, but it’ll always come back to catch up with you.

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I Saw The TV Glow follows Owen as he moves through life with the sinking notion that “time isn’t right.” He and his only friend Maddy bond through their shared affinity for their favorite television show The Pink Opaque which follows teens Isabel and Tara as they use their psychic connection to fight the evil Mr. Melancholy, the “big bad” with the power to alter the perception of time and reality. Owen watches the show in secret because it’s past his bedtime. “Isn’t that a show for girls?” his father asks in his only speaking line of the entire movie.

The movie has been met with mixed reviews from non-queer audiences, many who seem to just not get it. For genderqueer communities it’s trans media made by trans people for trans people and with the way it gets talked about it might as well be close to gospel. On the cusp of a frightening step towards fascism, I’ve been thinking about the people who just don’t seem to get it. Time and reality have been warped so that we think the last time was normal, so that we think this is normal. This is not normal. There is still time.

Owen and Maddy feel inexplicably connected to the show, as if it’s almost a part of them. As the years pass, the show is abruptly cancelled with Isabel and Tara trapped underground, suffocating after being force fed what Mr. Melancholy refers to as luna juice. “The best part is, you won’t even know you’re dying,” his ominous warning booms. The Pink Opaque gets cancelled just as Maddy runs away from home.

Mr. Melancholy looms large. We've been suffocating for far longer than the current administration. We’ve buried the AIDs epidemic, created a police state, and declared corporations people. We’ve always lived with a cruel, and unforgivable past, but for a while it seemed like humanity was improving. It’s a hard truth that for perhaps the first time in any of our lifetimes we’ve been faced with a decade of backsliding and existential threats. There is still time.

Years pass for Owen in what feels like seconds when Maddy, presumed dead, unexpectedly reappears. They corner Owen in the bar and convince him to hold off on contacting the police or their family. “I’ve been there,” they reveal. “I’ve been inside the show.” Maddy claims to be Tara from The Pink Opaque and starts to refer to Owen as “Isabel.”

After being tasked by Maddy to rewatch the series finale, Owen appears to realize that she is not in her reality, and that she is actually someone “beautiful and strong” on the other side of the television screen. Her father finds her with her head stuck inside her television set and pulls her out. But when Maddy tells Owen that in order to wake up back in their own reality they must bury themselves alive, Owen panics and runs away, never to see Maddy again. She instead buries her identity deep down inside herself.

More years pass and Owen rewatches The Pink Opaque on a streaming platform only to find it’s not quite as she remembers. It seems childish now and water-downed. She feels uneasy. More years pass and her asthma gets worse. A warning, or a message of hope is written in chalk on the street: There is still time.

Is everything about the election of Donald Trump as you remember it? We made it out okay, didn’t we? We’ve watered it all down. We’ve caved and we’re burnt out. Somewhere along the way it seems that we lost sight that somewhere deep down we’re beautiful and strong. Our country (or at least its people) has the potential to be beautiful and strong.

We know what we must do to reawaken, but it’s scary. It’s defiant. Sometimes it’s hard to not see the struggle as nothing more than suicidal and hopeless. Until we wake up, we are not okay. Immigrants are not okay, queer and trans people are not okay, women are not okay, people of color are not okay. The last time wasn’t okay either. Not everyone made it out okay the last time. And not everyone will this time. Time. There is still time.

Working at a children’s entertainment center, Owen has a panic attack while working a birthday party. The world freezes around her and she screams out that she is dying as she stumbles into the bathroom where she cuts open her chest revealing glowing TV static confirming the truth that she had known all along. As she stumbles out of the bathroom, she apologizes for the inconvenience to the patrons of the entertainment center who pay her no heed. The film abruptly ends.

Not everyone agrees on the message at the end of I Saw The TV Glow. Some see the ending as devastatingly tragic. Owen spends so much time convincing herself that this is normal and that she is okay that she spends her life living a lie and both metaphorically and physically suffocates while trapped under the ground.

I choose to believe the more hopeful interpretation. That she’s finally accepted herself for who she is and there is still time to do something about it. We have no other choice but to view the conclusion optimistically.

It’s often frustrating how many people don’t seem to get or care how serious the circumstances are of the new era that started today. Maybe it’s burnout, maybe it’s burying what we all know deep down, maybe it’s just propaganda, but the capitulation to the new administration’s definition of normal is bleak. It feels like we are collectively suffocating under the influence of luna juice at the hands of Mr. Melancholy, and I am begging us to wake up. I am begging us to realize who we can be. I am begging for class consciousness. There is still time.

I think we all have a Mr. Melancholy in our life that we have to deal with to become our truest selves. We owe it to ourselves and we owe it to each other. No one is going to be a perfect activist and no one can or should focus on what the administration is doing 24/7 for their own self care. But we all have the obligation to do something. We have the obligation to do anything. As bleak as everything feels, I have my joy, and I have my hope.

And with that hope, there is still time.

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Some aspirations for a world that is becoming scarier.

1. Be authentic. This was the hardest step once, but at some point you lost count of the days and started waltzing out of your apartment in dresses and a full face of makeup without a second thought like it was nothing. It is nothing. Bask in it. Never stop being yourself. You may not feel like it, but you’re a natural rebel. Joy is the greatest form of resistance.

2. Be obnoxious. You’ve fought hard for this, tell anyone who will listen. Wear your values on your sleeve and look cute doing it. Let them know you’re here whether they like it or not. Use a public restroom. Show up at the protest. Wave a flag. Heck, do more than social media activism but repost another Instagram story if you must. Create something, anything. You are the positive representation. You are the Pink Opaque. You have the right to the space you occupy.

3. Be unapologetic. Apologize only for your mistakes. You are strong, and you are capable. Own it. Believe it.

4. Protect your peace. Pick your battles, live to fight another day. You are an advocate, but you don’t always need to be. Being you is enough. Find the places you can exist. Stay there as long as you need. Lean on your support system. Don’t waste your time on people who don’t matter.

5. Protect your community. Donate your time, resources, energy, if you are able (see resolution #3). Avoid the businesses, people, and places that actively attack you or your friends. You’ve made it because you had a community of care. Be a part of that community of care.

Love your community and love yourself, happy New Year.

Transgender rights have become one of the top scapegoats for the swift defeat of Democrats at the ballot box last month. There seems to be a temptation among the party elite to suggest that if only Democrats caved to the draconian demands to erase trans Americans from public life things would be different. So much so that this week 81 Democrats in the House were willing to vote in favor of a defense bill that includes language that will ban gender-affirming care for trans kids with military parents from being covered by military healthcare plans.

There are plenty of problems with this stance, first and foremost that abandoning a minority group because it doesn’t poll well is deeply unethical and perhaps outright evil from the get-go. It’s also a slippery slope. Trans rights, queer rights, and abortion are all already deeply interconnected issues, rooted by the principle of bodily autonomy and a right to have medical decisions be only between yourself and your doctor. Unsung in the fight for trans liberation is that bathroom bans, sex testing, and other forms of transphobic paranoia end up affecting cis women, and especially cis women of color, almost as much as actual trans people.

Also frustrating: Democrats did not run on trans politics. They did not make promises to stop bans of gender-affirming care for trans kids or to protect trans athletes. They only did the bare minimum by not actively demonizing trans Americans. So how is that position still too radical?

It’s not radical enough. Trans politics are good politics.

There is no reason that support for equal transgender rights and healthcare should not be a winning issue. Look back to only 2016 when there was national uproar at North Carolina’s trans bathroom ban in what ended up being a harbinger of the current wave of anti-trans legislation. PayPal pulled out of an expanded headquarters in North Carolina, and everyone from the NCAA and Bruce Springsteen pulled out of planned events in the state. Republicans lost the state governorship later that year and the bill was rolled back shortly after in 2017.

As Donald Trump became normalized and Republicans found a winning faulty argument in going after trans women out of sports, Democrats (and corporate America, but who is surprised) floundered and responded by… well, not responding.1

Trans people are not evil, and cis people are not innately transphobic. Like all people, most trans people are kind, well-intentioned, and just want to live their lives. It’s no surprise then that over two-thirds of cis people who personally know at least one trans person are sympathetic to transgender individuals and their causes. But only one-third of people know a trans person, and that portion is often heavily concentrated in big cities and blue states. Of the two-thirds of Americans that don’t know a trans person, only a third express the same sympathy to trans individuals.

During the election cycle, I gave Harris a pass for the lack of rebuttal because I was scared of a result that ended up coming to fruition. While I don’t think it would have made much of a difference in the Presidential election, I think in hindsight that attitude spread out over the last four years have helped far-right media construct a narrative that increasingly demonizes trans people and buoys efforts for anti-trans legislation. Without an antithesis to conservative talking points, the trans community is left unprotected and prone to attacks.

For the two-thirds of Americans who don’t know a trans person, of course these conservative attacks are working. Republicans are able to use trans rights as a specter over the right-leaning electorate. Trans people going about their lives have absolutely zero impact on their own lives, and yet the unfamiliarity of the trans struggle to them means that trans individuals are able to be blamed for the country’s problems anyway. As much as I would love to believe I am a free-thinker, if I was cis, straight, and lived in Wisconsin I’d probably fall into the same trap.

Harris’ team has cited poor focus group testing on trans rights as one of the reasons for leaving the issue uncontested during the campaign. I counter that Democrats have walked themselves into a catch-22. They aren’t vocal about trans rights because it's a weak issue, and it’s a weak issue because they don’t talk about trans rights.

While I’m sympathetic that Democrats have to maintain a coalition that is much more diverse and nuanced in both identity and opinion than the base of the opposition, Democrats have become afraid to stand for anything. It’s not only on trans rights. On immigration too, Democrats have shown a willingness to capitulate on morality if their position is unpopular.

During the campaign, the Democrats rightfully spent a lot of time on what is at stake for Democracy and civil society. The election was a dire scenario. The doomsday scenario is that they continue to standby post-election while the rights and protections of trans people and other at-risk groups are gutted.

At this point, fiercely defending civil rights can only benefit Democrats. The Republican Party is throwing fastballs straight down the middle. With little faith, but a prayer for Democracy and my community, I hope they start swinging.

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It was pure coincidence that I was off work Wednesday, the day United States v. Skrmetti was being argued in the Supreme Court whilst a rally in defense of trans rights took place outside. I dutifully set my alarm for eight in the morning, but I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted to go. I have tried my best to keep politics at an arm’s length out of the sheer stress of 2020 and subsequently having to begin to navigate my identity in the age of Dylan Mulvaney, Lia Thomas, and an increasing wave of trans hate across the country. Part of me (incorrectly) worried that turnout would be sparse, and I tend to feel rather pessimistic about the ability of rallies to affect much meaningful change. Despite this, and despite the cold, I found myself in what ended up being a sizable crowd in what felt like almost a sort of pilgrimage or rite.

Praying to the Gods probably couldn’t hurt. When the opinion is released in June, the decision of Skrmetti will determine Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors in what is set to be one of the first landmark cases for trans rights. It could have profound implications for the ability of trans people to receive healthcare nationwide. But for now, it’s not Skremetti that matters, but the community that assembled outside, daring to find their joy.

I have never in my life been surrounded by as many trans people as were present at the rally, with the possible predictable exception of a Cavetown concert I went to in July. A chance to assemble as a community like that is rare. For many, especially those who live outside big cities like DC and New York, the trans community exists primarily on internet forums and social media. Despite our lion’s share of press coverage lately, we are a tiny segment of the population. It can be hard to intentionally seek out and bond with other trans people. Even having gone to a liberal school in DC (the queerest city in the country for the record), I only know a smattering of other trans and nonbinary individuals personally. You can certainly wish it was in less dire circumstances, but such a gathering of community is special and far too often far between.

And so I felt nothing but profound appreciation to stand in the middle of a crowd on the steps of the Supreme Court surrounded by trans men, women, and nonbinary people of all ages, from all over the country, and in a range of phases in their transitions all standing together in defiant joy. Speaker after speaker- a 70-year-old chaplain from Virginia, a 12-year-old girl, Eliot freaking Page- the conclusion was the same:

I love being trans, and that’s not something they can take away from me.

Chase Strangio, one of the lead attorneys in the Skrmetti case and the first openly trans attorney to argue in front of the Supreme Court, emerged after oral arguments had wrapped up for the day and the rally was drawing to a close. The crowd erupted in appreciation, and for the first time since November 5th, I felt a collective capacity for hope. Things will be ok. Maybe not this year. Maybe not this decade. But while some people in the crowd don’t remember a time before Obergefell, others have been fighting since the days of Stonewall. The trans community perseveres. Things will be ok.

It’s easy to feel despair at the path that lies ahead, but that would be giving in. The fact is that the last six months have been some of the most authentic and happiest months of my life. I’m not giving that up on account of the political journey that lies ahead. I defiantly choose joy because I too love being trans, and that’s not something they can take away from me. I choose my community, and I choose me. Maybe that’s enough.

We’ll see where this project goes. Whatever Row’s Your Boat, as the name suggests, is intended to be open-ended in content and material, but I in light of recent events I have particularly a lot I want to say about identity and culture. Thank you for coming along. <3

-Row

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