frodo-on-zoloft

[frodo-on-zoloft]

J's story.

The fact that transgender care is lifesaving is not an exaggeration.

Growing up, in middle school, I had a friend - let's call him J. Today, J is a male, but back then, he was a girl, albeit an unusually presenting girl. J adamantly refused to wear a bra, claiming it was uncomfortable and restricting. J also refused to grow his hair much longer than a buzz cut, and again, he claimed that having long hair was uncomfortable. J was a semi-frequent visitor at our house, and even my mom, who had never had any nuanced understanding of sex and gender, had once observed that J "seems disgusted by being a woman."

Little did she know was that she was absolutely right -- in fact, her words were an understatement.

Once high school came around, I moved away and attended a different school, so J and I lost touch, but we connected for a time when I was in college.

And that's when J told me a number of things he had never shared before. By then, J was J, and had transitioned, and was living by himself, having left his conservative Orthodox Jewish family. He also shared that at the age of 12, he had had a suicide attempt -- shortly before he met me and before he moved to our school -- and that at some point in his later teens, he had faced diabetes type I and homelessness.

Now, J did not share precisely why he had attempted suicide, and why he had become homeless, but it was easy to read between the lines.

Puberty often starts at age 11 or 12, and by 13, when we met, J was developed enough to have worn a bra -- except he refused to do so. J had always presented as "disgusted" by his gender. J was probably experiencing intense dysphoria that led to a suicide attempt at a very young age. (In fact, some of J's other teenage behaviors make sense in retrospect, if you factored in gender dysphoria. J was known to walk a lot, sometimes for hours every day, and to eat very little -- but he never voiced a desire to lose weight. However, it is well known that exhausting one's body can stop a person's menses -- so perhaps this was what J was trying to accomplish).

But I digress. In his later teens, J became homeless. Now, why did this happen? I am willing to bet that once J transitioned, his Orthodox Jewish family did not take it kindly to it, and even if they hadn't expressly kicked him out, I can imagine that their home was no longer welcoming or a safe place to be.

Now, the good news is, J survived it all, and felt stronger and more secure in his identity in the end, but did it really have to come at such a price? Did he really need to nearly die, and self-harm for years, and become homeless in order to live? Could transgender care, or at least the recognition of transgender status, have made his path less fraught and less dangerous?

[frodo-on-zoloft]

I've been following the news this week, and the thing I find most appalling is the comments section in every article, replete with sentiments to the tune of, "well, I don't like his methods, but I agree, immigration should be lawful and orderly, and it's about time we put an end to a bloated and inefficient government apparatus, etc, etc..."

Even the statistics back it up - his approval ratings are not in the toilet, quite the contrary.

Which leads me to think of the following poem in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is based on a speech by German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, who was originally on the side of the Nazis, but then changed his mind:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Because, seriously, people. Regimes do not start out totalitarian or repressive; they become that way because of the indifference and complacency of the general public. Worse yet, they become that way because the public is willing to justify the government's actions, and buy the promises of stability and "greatness" that the regimes are selling.

It's already starting.

You can see that exact same thing here, now, today.

"I am not an undocumented immigrant, and I believe that immigration should be lawful and orderly. So maybe all those people really do need to get deported. It's only fair."

"I am not transgender or nonbinary, or in fact LGBTQ at all. In fact, the transgender people? That's only 1% of the population. Why should we remake society for their convenience?"

"End Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion? Well, maybe there's some sense to it. The qualified people will get ahead regardless of their minority status. Maybe those initiatives are unnecessary."

(By the way, there are some of the more charitable, hate-free justifications I could come up with, to represent the thinking of people who maybe don't actually disdain anyone, but are simply detached and willfully ignorant.)

But look. People.

Today, they might not be coming for you, but do you really think that you won't someday, somehow become a target? And do you expect this administration to be any kinder to you than it's been to the transgender people, the undocumented immigrants, and the civil servants suspected of "disloyalty" and "wokism?"

One of the many roles of government is to protect the vulnerable groups who already face explicit and implicit discrimination each and every day. Any government that doesn't do that is suspect, and the people have the right to demand better. If we sit on our hands and do nothing, we have every chance of becoming the frog in the proverbial pot, where the temperature goes up one degree at a time, and the frog gets cooked because it doesn't notice the change until it's too late.

[frodo-on-zoloft]

I can't. Ugh. Every time I try to write The Golden Hall I'm like... "It's gonna be taken away, it's gonna be taken away by these awful politicians in Washington who think the way to keep kids safe online is to keep them from seeing anything that has to do with suicide."

Ok, I'm sorry, but f-ck that. Writing about suicidal characters is not what makes kids suicidal.

What makes kids suicidal is that social media creates a 24 hour panopticon of an idealized version of other people's lives, and that makes people feel like their own lives are inferior and not worth living.

The other thing that makes people suicidal is that social media enables rumors to spread like wildfire. If in the pre-internet era you had to talk to people to spread a damaging rumor about someone you did not like, now all you need to do is click a button.

I'm sorry, but I'm tired of uninformed boomers trying to direct what they have no idea about.

[frodo-on-zoloft]

Ok, this is probably the last post I'll make about politics for a while. It's not good for me to be focused on this, and it's not good for any of my followers. If I decide to make future political posts, I'll make use of my sideblog, @frodo-on-zoloft. (So if you want to see such content from me, you may follow that blog).

I am deeply ashamed that a potential impact on fandom is what it took for me to wake up to the reality of American politics. Not that I didn't do my part to vote, donate to causes I care about, and speak about those issues, but when you think you'll be directly affected, it hits home in a very different way.

In reality, it's not about the fandom. I mean, it is, but it isn't. I realize that when it comes to Maslow's Hierarchy, there are far more pressing, fundamental needs that are under threat.

But holy shit, if it affects even a hobby and a space you think is for entertainment only, and that you never thought would be of interest to the powers that be because it's clearly fiction... you know it's bad. You know you're living in the darkest timeline. I only hope we can will survive the next four years in one piece.

However, I will leave you with one last thought.

As Mr. Nisilë literally just reminded me, if you really think about it, the Soviet Union fell for many reasons, but one of them was a desire for aesthetics, art, and consumer goods. People, as a whole, are simple creatures. They wanted blue jeans, they wanted Beatles Music and Hollywood Movies. They wanted free flows of information. They wanted what they couldn't have, and what the mainstream, totalitarian government had to offer was not satisfying, and oftentimes inferior.

Things can be banned, and they might seem like trivial, banal, frivolous things at first. But I wouldn't underestimate the importance of such things in mobilizing people.