They/Them, You/Me

There’s a particularly odious Trump ad playing around here that concentrates on Kamala Harris’s past remarks about ensuring that everybody gets the healthcare they need, including trans people. The ad ends with the tagline “Kamala Harris is for they/them. Donald Trump is for you.”

Consider the framing of that message. When people like me talk about fascistic language, this is exactly what we mean. The tag creates two sets of Americans: “they/them” and “you.” Who is “they/them”? We are meant to understand that it’s all those “freaks” on your television. They are alien, other. And one of the presidential candidates prefers them to “regular” people like you and me. Not only does she want to give “they/them” YOUR hard-earned money, Harris wants “they/them” to compete in women’s sports. Dare I say, to swim with your children??? Now, change the “they/them” to any marginalized group of your choice.

Here’s the ad:

It’s a nasty little piece of work. As I have said before, I don’t care whether you call it “fascistic” or “authoritarian” or “hate-mongering” or “scapegoating.” I don’t care what name we apply to attacking other Americans for the crime of free expression. What I care about is that this is, apparently, acceptable political discourse. It’s disgusting and we’ve seen the consequences. Whichever group that is currently being attacked – Haitian immigrants, Latino immigrants, Muslims, trans people, whomever – will see increased threats and levels of violence against them. In the case of trans people, these additional threats are on top of what is already a difficult path to follow.

I didn’t love the new documentary Will & Harper for reasons that have nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I liked a good deal of it. If you don’t know the film, it’s a cross-country road trip featuring Will Ferrell and one of his besties, Harper Steele, who began transitioning during the pandemic. The most memorable scene for me takes place in Pekin, Illinois (ancestral homeland of one my besties, Kerri Kenney-Silver). At a bar there, a fellow trans woman talks about the pain of growing up believing yourself to be in the wrong body.

It's a familiar explanation, but hearing this woman talk about it made me consider it as a reality for the first time. My maleness is so intrinsic to my being that I honestly can’t imagine separating myself from it. But what if I kept my brain and put it inside a female body? If every part of me remained me except in a female body, I think I might go crazy.

In fact, I have some tiny experience with this. Because I started my career doing sketch comedy with nine other dudes and the aforementioned bestie, there were many times when I had to go in drag. I found even the simple act of wearing female clothing to be supremely disquieting. And you guys know me – I’m about as girly as a heterosexual cis dude can be – and yet even I recognized the “wrongness” of dressing as a woman. It felt so unnatural. When I imagine just that – just the act of being encouraged (and sometimes forced) to wear clothing every day of my life that feels plain wrong – I feel like it brings me a tiny step closer to understanding what it must feel like to be trans.

Pile on top of that the culture’s rejection of robust gender expression and the millions of little ways we push children to conform to the identity that “matches” our genitals, and I can begin to understand the despair so many transpeople, in particular, trans youth, experience. Then, to be cast as a threat by one of the two presidential candidates, it must be so disheartening. In fact, I know it is.

I received this note from one of my readers. The piece is a response to the essay I wrote about Tony Hinchcliffe’s Madison Square Garden set, which you can read here. I asked if I could reprint the note in its entirety, but didn’t receive a reply, so I’ll just quote a little bit, and you can read the full message on the piece about Tony:

I am a trans woman. I am 65. All my life in this society has been a constant drum beat of how bad a person I am for being who and what I am.

How wrong, perverse, sick, ridiculous, insane, dangerous I am. A laughing stock to the extent that some cis guy who looked like I did...like my body did through no agency or desire of my own...merely aping the movements of a woman was a subject of hilarity and disapproval. Let alone actually donning clothing or such or God forbid, actually telling someone you're not sure "boy" or "man" fits you and girl or woman makes a ton more sense. That shit gets shut down pretty quick.

Every conversation with a joke about effeminate men. Every comedy routine. Every movie with a serial killer. Through the years. Everywhere. Silence of the Lambs winning an Oscar. Ace Ventura. On and on…

The steady rain of tiny rocks. Pebbles. Today we call them micro-aggressions. Any one of them you could shrug off. We do. All the time. But every day, multiple times a day for years and decades...falling on your shoulders and pressing you down until each new one is a struggle to lift yourself off the ground under that mountain of pebbles to crawl forward another inch. Again.

That’s who we want to demonize? That’s who we want to blame for our problems? Somebody doing nothing more to trying to live their life as authentically as they can? Somebody who isn’t hurting anybody or causing problems for anybody or doing anything other than trying to figure themselves out? Doesn’t that describe 90% of us? It’s hard down here on Planet Earth. It’s hard for everybody. So why make it harder for our fellow countrymen?

We know why. Because fear sells. Scapegoating sells. Deny, deny, deny. Blame, blame, blame. There are profound problems in this nation and this world. Deep, structural problems that won’t be solved by pointing the finger at a miniscule percent of our population. But it will make some people feel better. The same way racism makes some people feel better. But it doesn’t fix anything. It doesn’t even pretend to fix anything. What it does is distract.

Are there issues of accommodation around transwomen in elite women’s sports? I suppose there might be, but this is an infinitesimally small problem in the scheme of what we’re dealing with as a people. Just like all of the legitimate problems in our nation should not be laid at the feet of the people at the bottom of the problem, but the people who (often, but not always) created the situation at the top. At the very least, we should be asking our elected officials to not make problems worse by scapegoating the people affected by the bad policies they created.

I just want to end by saying they/them is you/me. It’s all of us. We’re all struggling in our ways, some visible and some not. But MAGA blame almost always runs in the direction of the visible: skin color, the way you dress, the people you love, the way you look. I would ask them, “Is that who you are?” Are you the person who needs to diminish others to elevate yourself? Is that really who you are? And to those at whom the fingers are pointed, I would ask the same question. Is that who you are? Is the entirety of you the way you dress or who you love? Or is the richness of you more complex and more beautiful than they would have you believe when they reduce you to parts? Of course not. So, whoever and whatever you are, just know that millions of Americans still celebrate you and still believe in you/me.