“How do queer and trans people survive the current apocalypse? The truth is, we will do it the way we always have. The truth is also that we will lose people along the way, as we sadly always have. Yet the knowledge of how to be with unbearable tragedy while continuing to celebrate the fact of our existence and possibility of hope is something that is deeply woven into the strands of our cultural memory.”
-Kai Cheng Thom, How to Survive the Apocalypse (Again)
Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. Again. His vision for America — a bastion of white supremacy, intolerant to difference, embodying bigotry and hatred — has shown itself to be, once again, the country’s most popular and strongly embraced vision. Voters delighted in his authoritarianism, his worship of dictators, his disgust towards trans people and immigrants and people of color and women. Voters endorsed his plan for mass deportation, for tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, for giving immunity to police officers, for stripping reproductive rights from those who require them, for putting our public health in the hands of an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist. Voters said “yes” to a man who has pledged to refuse refugees with a version of the “Muslim ban” that also seeks to weed out people from “terror-infested areas like the Gaza strip.” They aligned themselves with the same president preferred by Vladimir Putin, Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu. Once again, we saw Black people organizing and voting overwhelmingly in support of the better candidate and we saw that candidate lose. Across the internet, so many Black women are mourning not only this ongoing effort but also, again, an eminently qualified, forward-thinking, Black woman losing to an disgusting and completely unqualified white man.
It is a disgraceful day in America.
I keep coming back to this: of course the U.S. elected a serial rapist who says rapey, misogynistic, racist things all the time again. His supporters are not just okay with that, they are validated by that. It is relatable. The majority of white cis men in this country, with their own personal history of rapey language or behavior, can relate to Trump’s experiences.It is validating for them to see a man who’s done similar things win the White House, be celebrated, be popular. It is validating for them to see someone so racist and so impulsive and so self-centered assume power because they, too, are selfish and impulsive and say racist and misogynistic and transphobic things all the time and they too don’t want to ‘get shit’ for it. They too want to be pardoned for their own, untried crimes, and the women who love them want that, too. He was not elected despite all that, he was elected because of all that.
“America’s values have always included exceptionalism, exploitation, domination, theft, and violence,” wrote writer and activist Raquel Willis on X. “Trump, too, is America. Quite possibly the most America. And we must accept that.”
“Living in the South gives you a strange sense of the country, the deeper rot beneath the surface,” writes Danté Stewart. “The parasitic nature of our choices. The destruction that damns us. And the rot is this; we live in a country of bullies — American bullies. Bullies who can only feel powerful when someone is less than them, who can only feel free when another person is bound.”
Where the fuck do we go from here? How did we get here, again? And how can we take care of each other? I love what Thom writes about surviving the apocalypse because it acknowledges that for most of our history, as a queer community, we have existed in stark opposition to the state. The idea of a presidential candidate supporting LGBTQ+ rights was a pipe dream even for most of my lifetime, the most activists could hope for was convincing this or that administration to do more about people dying en masse due to the HIV/AIDS crisis.
There will be a lot of anger, including righteous, important and productive anger at the Democratic Party in general. But it’ll also be tempting to turn on each other. It’s easy to jump first towards those that are closest to us because those are the only targets in a shooting range. To direct anger at people who couldn’t convince their Fox News brainwashed siblings to vote for Harris. To direct anger this or that celebrity for not saying what we wanted them to say. To direct anger at people who voted third party because of Harris’s endorsement of the genocide in Gaza.
Regardless of our personal feelings about any of those things, how can we still show up for each other, now? Because we all will need each other, now. By “we all” I mean people who believe in equality and kindness and want this country to move forward and not backwards. People who think everybody deserves health care and food and a safe place to live. That’s a big group and it encompasses a wide variety of perspectives that won’t always or ever align with each other, but we have a lot to learn from each other.
We also need to be clear-eyed that the current world, the one we’re all living in right now under the Biden administration, is already falling short for so many marginalized people and they are exhausted. Trump’s plans are worse for everyone, on every level — for the economy, for human rights, for international relations, for healthcare. Trump’s plans put all of us in danger, but the degree of that danger varies. Those of us with more privilege have to step up for those with less.
A few other things happened last night in the realm of LGBTQ+ rights. Missouri became the first state since the fall of Roe v Wade to overturn a near-total abortion ban, and abortion rights advocates also saw victories in Arizona, Nevada, Montana, Colorado, New York and Maryland.
California voters approved Proposition 3, which repealed Proposition 8, guaranteeing the right for same-sex and interracial couples to marry. Colorado voters passed Amendment J, which repealed a ban on same-sex marriage. These are important measures, decisions worth celebrating. The majority of Hawaiians voted in favor of the Remove Legislature Authority to Limit Marriage to Opposite-Sex Couples Amendment.
I do hear a lot of cis queer people talking about friends and family who voted for Trump as voting against their marriage rights as gay people. Listen, Trump has gay donors who want to keep their marriages and their children. I absolutely could be wrong, but I don’t think repealing same-sex marriage will be a top priority. That said, I’d definitely recommend preparing yourself personally for that possibility.
However, his administration does hope to eliminate and reject anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people as quickly as possible. Most of all, they are planning to make life as unlivable as possible for trans people, particularly trans youth. They are planning to do that immediately.
Republicans bet big on transphobia this election cycle and they won. Their anti-trans messaging succeeded not just with other Republicans but with moderates and Democrats as well. Right-wingers are teaming up with TERFs, with the “get the T out of LGBT” groups. Support trans individuals and artists and creatives and businesses and social justice organizations. Dispel misinformation about trans people with your family and your neighbors. Not just the Trump voters — all of them.
Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. Hold each other accountable for the ways we have hurt each other. Forgive each other. As Thom writes, “Our greatest power to resist oppression and death comes from our connections with one another, our ability to create community structures through which we can give and receive care, make art, share pleasure and raise our collective voices.”