It’s Worth It 3/15/25

I think as a trans person, it's important to recognize that there are kind of two different levels that we're operating on politically. We've got our local politics and we've got our national politics and unfortunately, on the national level, especially now, there are a lot of people who are just bigots and they believe that people who are not cis-gendered white males do not deserve rights. 

Lansing is one of the safest places for us and that's not going to change. I wouldn't be judgmental of a trans person who was scared to go to the bathroom in a red county or something like that, but I would encourage people to continue being your true self. Like fuck these people, seriously. Just keep using the right bathroom, keep using the right pronouns, don't go running and hide because there's some bigots out in the world that need to be squashed. We need to show them that we're here to stay and that their opinion doesn't matter. 

It's worth it. When you look at transgender people, there's a higher risk of death and most of it's at your own hands. As bad as it can be with some of the people in your life, living your truth and finding a found family that supports you will make you so much better off. I left pretty much all of my family behind when I transitioned. I thought, you know, maybe there was some level of acceptance there, but finding out with some of the current events and some of the political things that they supported just kind of proved that I was wrong and they didn't actually accept me. They were just pretending.

Surrounding yourself with people who aren't that way and who do truly accept you for who you are will make your life better. There's a lot of loving and accepting people in Lansing. You can go through old town and just see all the shops full of trans memorabilia, gay memorabilia, queer people. They're all over. East Lansing isn't any different. You get towards MSU, all the college folks are really supportive of it. So, we're in a good spot for it. It's just the rest of the world or the rest of the United States maybe might not so much be.

One thing I did see that was very concerning is one of our Republican Michigan House representatives, Rep. Josh Schriver, did propose retrying the case that made gay marriage legal. In 2022, they did repeal Roe v. Wade so they've set a precedent for cases going back to the court and being retried so I think that it's a very likely reality that this case will eventually be re-heard by the Supreme Court. 

I would encourage you to call him and remind him that there's a distinct separation of church and state in our United States Constitution and that things driven by religion shouldn't be impacting our government and it's very clear that this is being driven by religion. I've met some very beautiful people who believe in religion and I think that it works for some, but I think largely it's being used to spread evil propaganda right now. 

And in America, the land of the free, the Right constantly speaks about how there should be less government, so why are we making things that are harmless illegal? There's no reason to do that. It's just about control and it's about trying to force everyone to follow their faith.

We absolutely need to be showing raging support for not letting that happen in any way that we can. They want us to be scared and uncertain and not united. It's important to recognize that while there's a lot of people in America right now that are advocating for evil, that likely those people are still a large minority, they just happen to be very loud and we need to get them to shut up and go back into their hidey-holes. Unfortunately, they've been given a platform. So, we need to remove that platform

I think largely we're seeing a lot of movements to try to remove rights from minorities. We've seen the White House's stance on trans people and the attempts to erase them through an executive order. I've always been one who believes that political differences can be true differences, but when we're looking at the rights of our fellow human beings, that's not a political thing anymore. 

I would encourage anyone in our queer community to think about what the worst case scenario could be for them and be prepared to protect themselves if they feel comfortable doing so. To summarize, thinking about yourself and your own personal safety in this kind of situation is going to be your foremost important thing, finding other people that you can network with in the community that have a similar mindset either to stay here or to leave if things do really become bad. At the end of the day, we're all hoping our congress people and everyone come through and do what they're supposed to do.