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victoria-scott
@victoria-scott

//longform writing about my frustration with... everything

I think I live in a Skinner box for queers. It is called the United States, and the induced condition is paranoia, and the reward is everyone telling me that I’m so brave. …

I have had the most beautiful experiences of my life since I transitioned. I sit in the bathtub and look at the body that hormones and God have given me and I cry. I have climbed mountains and seen beauty on an Earth I scarcely believe I am allowed to explore. I have improved as a photographer in no small part because every little facet of the world enamors me anew at age 27, like I’m a child seeing it for the first time. Everything is magical. I love wholly and without remorse.

This week, I am having difficulty sleeping, showering, listening to music, or getting groceries. I am having difficulty breathing every time the house settles. I am having difficulty living. I can’t fucking live like this.

Every minute I’m in the shower with the water running, or belting out Mitski as I cook, is a minute I can’t hear a car go by, or stop at my house. Every time I go out among strangers, there are too many people to judge all of their intent; was that look animosity towards me, or is my skirt just weird? Every second I lie in bed, I wonder if people will continue to tolerate me for another day, or year, or decade. My heart is constantly in my throat. It’s paranoia, or it’s PTSD, or it’s clinical anxiety, but whatever it is, it’s just realistic enough to not hand-wave it away.

Three weeks ago, on the day meant to commemorate my community’s endless losses to the violence of a world that eternally hates us, five more people were gunned down for being queer. The entire ecosystem of right-wing personalities who make their income on stoking fear of LGBT people took a victory lap. The shooter’s lawyers said he is nonbinary for no apparent reason beyond trolling the dead. The entire event had a different air than the Pulse club shooting years ago, where thoughts and prayers were still offered to the 49 dead queers; this time, the mask came off. Our rhetorical enemies—the self-proclaimed theocratic fascists and stochastic terrorists—are on the same page, at long last. Queers—especially trans people—are a threat, and our eradication should be celebrated.

I struggled with this.

This week, I was followed home and threatened. It wasn’t for being trans, unlike the last several times I’ve been followed and threatened—instead, it was just some lunatic convinced a sleepy town of 3,000 people had a massive crime wave, and that lining up a photograph in the middle of the street was me casing an antique shop—but all I can think since he left, hand under his dash on something in his shitty Dodge Caravan the whole time he yelled at me, is oh my God, did he clock me. Frankly, he looked like the type too stupid to accurately do so, but simultaneously he also looked the type to kill me if he did. I live in rural Idaho. I may only have a few months here before my public existence is illegal here. The moderate candidate in our gubernatorial election has already passed sweeping anti-trans legislation. I am not wanted here.

I am struggling with this, too.

It wasn’t even all that long ago I was in this same place, either. I started the year out just like this; you can only be noticed with so much malice before you start to internalize the danger, and I was noticed with a lot of malice back when I lived in Reno, NV. Slurs and getting followed and mocked and never feeling quite safe and things of that nature; throw in watching the barely-thwarted Coeur D'Alene Pride parade attack by an organized militia unfolding on CNN in a rural diner while a group of men stared daggers at me for my entire meal, and I finally couldn’t do it anymore. Over the span of six months of being peppered with harassment and close calls and ever-hotter-rhetoric, I went from an adventurer to a shut-in. Mid-2021 I was living in a van, driving through the West—stopping in every tiny town’s tiny restaurants I could find by day, and sleeping under the stars alone by night, unafraid of almost everything—and by mid-2022, I was unable to leave my house for coffee without having a panic attack. I was petrified.

I sought therapy, and I was able to leave the house again with professional help, but I didn’t make significant progress on my fears until the harassment stopped for a bit. There was, through a combination of dumb luck and the grace period of dulled rhetoric after Pride passed but before the midterms were too near, a short span where I had some breathing room. I stopped getting harassed for a bit, and the headlines weren’t quite as full of firebombs and shattered windows.

And my mental health rebounded accordingly. I started road-tripping again. I was willing to enter crowds anew, meet new people, and enjoy new hobbies. I let myself walk down the street for a coffee again. I made art that I found meaningful, instead of feeling paralyzed. I was a better partner, I was more present, and I enjoyed living so much more. It was a feeling I hadn’t enjoyed in years, and I missed it so much.

And now here I am again, scared to go outside, trying desperately to dodge the electric shocks of the society I live in. Every time I go to a bar or a restaurant or a grocery store, all the glares full of malice that never went away bore through me once more. As the temperature climbs, it gets harder to convince myself I’m wrong about the glares, and the comments, and the people following me home.

I think perhaps it's PTSD of some form. Every bad experience from my road trip, from Reno, from my move - they've all come back in such sharp relief in the past few weeks. The problem is, trying to move past it is like trying to recover from living in a war zone while the bombs are still going off in your front yard.

After all, the richest man in the world is encouraging this. I jettisoned the main avenue I had to a career because he bought my main social website and turned it into a hub of anti-trans "activists". The largest "news" TV network in America is encouraging this. My mother thinks drag queens are "groomers" because of them. The paper of record has been "asking questions" for as long as we've been objects of interest instead of scorn.

And yet, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice, I am assured. It will get better.

But if this is winning, I will assuredly never survive losing. This electoral bullshit, this rhetorical head-butting, it exists in a world that I don’t live in—I can’t go outside without fucking anxiety medication, solely because of what I have had to continually live through. I know I could have healed, and I could have lived a normal life. I saw glimpses in the gaps between being scared for my life. I saw what happened when the trauma paused It was so beautiful and I was so happy, and now I'm inside and trembling again.

I am so tired of cis society’s seemingly unflinching belief that the queer rights movement is winning because of some toothless EO's from Biden. I am supposed to believe all of this is some sort of temporary roadblock on my path to a cis vision of queer liberation, where I can have a job at Lockheed Martin, right alongside every cis person who sold their soul, too. The dead bodies at Q Club and the fact I won’t feel safe at home for years to come—these are acceptable losses on the way to this liberation.

I’ll figure out how to get through whatever comes, I hope. But for the love of Christ stop telling me to be thankful for where we are unless you’re living through this shit in the trenches with me and my friends; unless you’re helping me get over the panic attacks when I turn on the shower.


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in reply to @victoria-scott's post:

Also please dont judge me too harshly, im admittedly an idiot trying to interpret a situation secondhand against polling data and general anecdotal evidence, and im VERY bad at expressing my thoughts, and am often misunderstood as a result

I fully agree, its not as simple as "winning" when people are dying, this isnt a war, there isnt an army people signed up to fight for, casualties dont have to be inevitable, but people frame it like its wartime i think to justify said deaths

But then again, im on the outside, i have only a cursory idea of the situation, i know public policy is swinging more towards acceptance population-wise but that violence is increasing... Im not trying to justify anything just offer my thinking on this, i cant seem to find my wording to not sound like an ignorant asshole :/

I will be honest; if you can't find the words, not everything needs a comment. This post is a broken trans woman trying desperately to claw meaning out of a week where she can't sleep in pure terror. It does not need a rebuttal. If I wanted one, I would have published it for money, because I am a professional writer. I just needed to get it out of my head, because I am in pain.

It was not meant to be a rebuttal, more of a theory and attempt of clarification of my thoughts on the matter, i am not disagreeing with you, but even still im sorry, i dont mean to upset or bother.

I will try to be more mindful in the future, i admit i leap before i look sometimes.

I'm sorry, but this is a bad reply - ableism, explaining OP's own situation to her, feigned helplessness, and ending on centering of yourself. I don't want you to feel bad - I've made similar mistakes myself in the past, I know you're coming from a place of sincerity - but you did act in an insensitive way and cross a few lines here.

Instead of hand-wringing, why not do a web search for "how to help trans people?" Or find the nearest trans/queer group in your area and message them?

i really wish i could send you a hug 😭 this echoes a lot of what i've felt in the last year+. i've had so many beautiful moments of my life in private and in the mirror and in social situations with queer friends, and like. all that shit comes crumbling down as soon as there's a pair of cis eyes on me. i had that today with a good outfit that felt like absolute shit at a hobby shop because i felt like they still clocked me despite that. and like, i'm in a fairly progressive (lol) city!!!

I dunno, it's so fucked. In my personal life I think things have been beautiful and then every day on the national level, the horrors are unending. I know everyone says it but it really did not used to be like this??? ? it's so fucked, I just want a nice life and I wish I could go out without feeling like i'm on the countdown clock to becoming a fucking number. i feel you, i hate it, i'm sorry. all i have done is repeat "i cannot let this break me" like a mantra for this whole year, and even then i've had to allow breaks. i wish i knew what else to do 😢

all of my elders tell me it really didn't used to be like this. the bad old days fucking sucked too but they were different, it wasn't like we were the main enemy of a third of the populace, and no one knows what to do anymore. I definitely feel like I'm on the countdown clock too. I just wish I could stop breaking all the time until it's finally over, lol

I feel this. Thanks for writing it. I can say I feel about as safe now as I did twenty years ago (in Reno then and not in Reno now, too). It's frustrating, because being trans could be pretty great, if it weren't for all the hate.

I’m so sorry that twenty damn years and we’re stuck in the same place. I love being trans so much; I love my body, I love my relationships, I love how much I love being a woman - and yet it’s constantly such a source of fear it’s a struggle. It’s not fair to any of us.

I hate that if your mental health gets bad enough in this country it also is a cop that often shows up and given how far right most cops are makes it even scarier and the fact they have a gun. Yet still the liberals or farther right at my local lgbt center wouldn't take a stand towards abolition and I really lost my temper.

that was what I kept thinking about when I got followed, too! I was like "damn I bet the rural Idaho sheriff will be good to me" lmfao. but yeah it's the only option here. I chose not to call the police and I figured if I got shot someone would probably hear it and call an ambulance at least, although I almost had a nurse try to kill me in the ER earlier this year because I am trans, lol

Things have gotten worse over the course of 2022 thanks to right wing shitheads. I've gotten more harassment than my first year out. Twitter just kept delivering transphobia to me no matter what, to the point I quit too. I run a support group for the local trans community and constantly wonder if some asshole hopped up on Matt Walsh and Fox News is gonna decide they have to do something to us. I live in Michigan and while it's one of the better places to live if you're trans, but doesn't stop someone from having their mind boiled by anti-trans propaganda. We'll get through it somehow though I guess.

Nevada was theoretically one of the better places to be trans, and I got harassed ceaselessly there - I doubt there's even really a "good" place except for maybe Cap Hill/Oakland/etc, super super queer areas that no one can afford anymore anyway

I'm so sorry that the world is so hostile towards us and I've been feeling the exact same way. The paranoia is choking when I decide to actually go out in public in an outfit that makes me feel comfortable in my own skin. The alternative is being so thoroughly detached from my body and any attempt at referring to me that I feel like a ghost. That's only gotten worse as the year has gone on and it makes me despise the reactionary dipshits that are specifically praying for me and my friends to be murdered.

I hear this. It's so frightening how ramped up it has got over the last few years. I wonder how much of it was fuelled by a lot of the kind of people whose social circles were mostly work were suddenly trapped at home and online and stewing and being led towards scapegoats. It's exhausting and I ache for the mood to disappate

i live somewhere better, but not good (there was a massive 'white lives matter' banner draped across the hill the city is built around a month or so ago).

and just standing there at a kiosk, the day after it had happened. the world is normal to everyone else (no pandemic, no climate collapse, no rising fascism, nothing), and i just had to spend all that day and the following days trying not to break down because everything is so incredibly 'unnormal'.

like it's so hard to know what to do, it makes me feel useless. like i'm in a tunnel with a light at the end and the tunnel is shaking and collapsing and i don't know if i'm getting out.

thank you.

I've felt like I've been going crazy in how little this is talked about anywhere outside my corner of the internet. I'm in the UK and over here it's lead by the likes of JK Rowling and the newspapers that back up her every word. it feels omnipresent

thanks for writing this. it's so much better to just hear venting than it is to hear reassurances that I just have trouble believing