Overview

I didn’t sleep last night. Not really. Not for any meaningful definition of “sleep”.

I’d like to talk about why. I want to give Cisgender people a glimpse into what it’s like to be trans right now, and I’d like my transgender siblings to know they’re not alone.

Before I do though, I need to make sure we all understand the current context.

The Current Context

The word “genocide” was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe… Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime. - The United Nations

The United Nations - of which the USA is a member - has recognized genocide as a crime since 1946. When you say “genocide” to most people, I think they get images of war, or concentration camps: what the Nazis, and the Khmer Rouge did, and what Israel is doing. But genocide isn’t just about bullets and gas chambers. It’s about eliminating a people.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines it as follows:

Article II

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group¹, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The United States is actively perpetrating genocide against transgender people. The government is removing our rights, our freedoms, our health care, and our safety. People are being rallied with hate-speech and lies that target us. Violence against us is on the rise. Trans kids were already at high risk of suicide, but now… I don’t want to know what the numbers are.

Last year a city in Texas began offering a $10,000 bounty on trans people who dare to use a bathroom that conforms to their gender identity. In some states people can’t get driver’s licenses that reflect their gender even if they’ve gone through Gender Reassignment Surgery. In the US, your driver’s license is the primary form of ID that you have to show for even simple things like buying alcohol, or entering a nightclub.

Every time a trans person is forced to reveal their birth gender, or name, they expose themselves to violence, rape, and murder.

The shadow over everything

In eleven days I’ll be getting Gender Conforming Surgery (GCS)². It’s something I’ve been dreaming of for over thirty years. My thoughts should be filled with concerns about the surgery, the severe recovery, or how much I’m looking forward to the results. But the reality is, I’m not thinking about that. Every now and then I think about how I’ll finally feel “complete”, and about the huge weight that will be lifted. But those are just small thoughts that peek through the shadow of genocide, and my country’s descent into fascism.

This has manifested two ways for me. The first is fear, and anxiety that something will happen between now and my surgical date to prevent it from happening. It feels like I’ve been holding my breath underwater for too long. The surface is in sight, but my lungs are burning and I’m afraid I won’t make it.

The other is fear about everything else and the fact that I can’t deal with that right now. Right now all my energy is going towards holding myself together and trying to make it to the surface. But… I can see the world crumbling around me as I rise, and I know that I will be physically fucked when I emerge.

If all goes well, I’ll be cleared to resume a normal - low-impact - life in three months. For two weeks I’ll be exhausted, wracked with pain, unable to care for myself, and unable to move much. It is, in many ways, a real, physical rebirth, with all the attendant vulnerability. I should be concerned about this, and I am on some level, but more than that is the fear I’ll need to run, but not be able to. The fear that even after I’m recovered I’ll be forced to leave the wife, and home I love.

My father was a British Jew. He hid in basements while Nazi’s rained bombs down on London. I don’t know how many family I lost in Nazi camps. I don’t want to know, but I will place a stone, and shed my tears in their memory. I will remember that my queer ancestors were placed in cattle-cars just like my Jewish ones. I will remember that when the US rallied its people against the forces of fascism in World War II, we erected concentration camps of our own, and filled them with innocent citizens whose only crime was having Japanese ancestors. More recently we’ve thrown people who cross our borders into cages, stolen their babies, and sold them to white people³.

We created our concentration camps was when we were fighting fascism. Now, the US is racing headlong towards a fascist state, and trying replace our fragile democracy with demagogue dictator. The Jews aren’t the primary scapegoat this time. It’s my siblings and me.

So that, my friends, is why I didn’t sleep last night.