Eyes are on transgender Americans. At home, this means danger. This means unemployment. This means an expulsion from public life. What is worse is that - while the threats come from the center of power - our former friends and allies have become to the ones to execute the injustice.
Do not be mistaken. When we next rise - and we shall - we will remember well your names and faces. There will be some - perhaps many - who will insist they had no choice. Or even, that they did what they could. But we shall remember. If you ever receive our forgiveness, it will not come with our forgetfulness.
Abroad, conversions about us churn like capsaicin through the global stomach. Canada considers return to the US for transgender Americans to constitute a "Credible Threat" to our lives. This is a step towards trans people from the USA receiving Refugee status in other countries. Meanwhile, other nations list the US on a Human Rights Watch, warning the world against visiting.
In Universities, the expulsion of academics of color and trans academics rings resonantly with other eras of political policing. In my classes, I taught students about how LGBT University instructors like myself would be targeted for removal and potential arrest. In an already terrible job market, transgender women and people who work in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion find that we seem to be practically unhireable.
This is why Tenure was prized for marginalized and politically targeted populations. The systematic limitation and elimination of Tenure Track lines has left transgender Americans without protections for ourselves and our work. Trans America is being deplatformed in Academia. Anxious administrators try to reassure us that when the time is safe (for them), they will rehire some of us. But the message in the meantime is clear: Transgender Academics and Scholarship must fear not only our enemies but also friends who would rather see (or, perhaps, ignore) our suffering than risk a fraction of their own privilege.
Do not mistake. This has moved beyond a culture war. It is (as it has been) an economic war, a legal war, a war of guns and physical intimidation, and a war of extermination and exclusion. We are Wartime Trannys. This is what History feels like. So I ask, in this time of War, when will our Allies act?
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