I've not said much in my own words about Rowling's mask-slip and instead opted to retweet others. I recently realised I'm, suddenly, an old tran who's just...so fucking tired. Tired of the struggle, tired of the bad faith arguments, tired of the lies. Tired of doing it all again.
When I first came out in late 2008 I started blogging up a storm about trans rights, as if every post were one great step on the broad road to justice. Of course that was naive, but it's exhausting to see the same bigoted arguments I fought then recur with such vigour.
At some point I just... stopped writing those posts, becoming very strict about when and where I wrote about trans politics. It became necessary for the sake of my own mental health to stop acting as if I could persuade people determined to hate.
And yet I felt (and still feel) like that silence becomes a kind of complicity in the face of evil.
But when you're fighting such bottomless bad faith that makes arguments (e.g. "sex is real") against claims no one is actually making, as the basis for denying rights and public space to a whole class of people, at what point do you say enough is enough?
In the end, as others in my mentions are already affirming, what has kept me going (even through the fights I sit out, like this one) is the knowledge that our arguments aren't really for the bigots. They're for our children, for the eggs, for everyone on the fence.
They're for our people and for everyone ready to love them. And, in the end, that has to be enough.
