I know there are a lot of people terrified of a Trump presidency for a lot of reasons, but some of the most vibrant horror I’m seeing is coming from young queer people. These people were in middle school or grade school when Obama was first elected, when Glee came on with its revolutionary act of portraying a blatantly Disney-saccharine gay love story. RuPaul and Ellen are huge tv stars, Sulu owns Facebook. RENT is a musical theatre standby performed in high schools. Marriage equality and bathrooms have been their biggest fights. So this? Looks like the apocalypse.
It’s not. Within my lifetime, a president laughed at hundreds of thousands of people dying of AIDS. Within my lifetime, that was a death sentence, not a footnote on a Grindr profile. Within my lifetime, “transsexuals” only existed as cruel punchlines. The only trans guy I had even heard of at 19 was from a movie about him being murdered. Ellen was a pariah who had lost her show for coming out. Being gay was career suicide if you were anything but a hairdresser. It was automatic dishonorable discharge from the military.
This is not saying Trump couldn’t undo a lot of that. But not all of it. And even if, EVEN IF he did? Queer people survived. Flourished. Got to where it is now. And where it is now includes a younger generation who will not go back, and in another 20 years, will be the CEOs, the senators, the governors, the president.
If you don’t give up.
Don’t you fucking dare give up.
i’m scared and angry and tired because yeah, i marched in the 80′s, when people threw rocks and bottles at the pride parade, and i thought we were fucking DONE with that.
but don’t for one second think i won’t fight again if they make me. don’t for one second think i won’t fight to my last breath.
trump voters are an extinction burst. the last diaper baby tantrum of straight whites who are terrified that the loss of their privilege means they’ll be treated the way they’ve always treated others. if we hang on through this, if we keep fighting, we will prevail.
so quit planning your fucking suicide, kidlets. let uncle jesse show you how we do it when we’re fighting against The Man under threat of death, not sending anon hate to shippers. you think you can’t do it, but i did it when i was your age, thinking all the while that russia was gonna nuke us any second, and i’m still here.
don’t get me wrong, babies, i wish you didn’t have to see this. i’d protect you from it if i could. i tried to protect you from it. but assholes persist. so i’m taking the old sword down from over the mantel, and i’m gonna show you how to take a swing.