Newsletter #9: I Drank 3 Beers Before I Remembered I Had a Newsletter to Write
This came in hot but I’m just sending it off
In my defense, I had three beers last night before remembering I had a newsletter to write.
These are supposed to be personal essays….
…and I’m not sure I have it for you this week. I’m at my sister’s house, typing on their dining room table, having moved the empty boxes of pizza out of the way. I half planned to tell you something about family, about Thanksgiving (my favorite holiday), and probably work in something about being queer and what “family” means to people who often can’t rely on their families of origin to love and accept them the way their queer families of choice can.
But I just… can’t. I’m stuck in Colorado Springs. I’m with the parents who lost their trans son, with the Denver community who relied on their trans mom. Club Q was my family, the victims are a family loss.
It’s something the straight people in my life don’t understand. I don’t want to sell them out like this, but if I’d lost a biological cousin, they’d know to call, to ask me how I was. No one called. No one asked, except for my queer twitter friends in the UK. They knew things my family didn’t, about how much it hurts our hearts to be attacked, and how an attack on Club Q is an attack on all of us.
Now, today, there’s a lot of nonsense about whether the shooter was nonbinary. As if that somehow would cleanse the hatred, purify the right wing hate machine that inexorably led to this senseless and evil event. The right wing wants you confused about the shooter’s identity, and it’s quite likely that the shooter wants that too. It happens every time. When trans people try to assert our basic humanity the right wing pivots to some stupid theoretical argument that doesn’t matter at all. What is a woman: Who the FUCK cares what your dictionary says. You’re killing us. Is the shooter lying about being nonbinary to get out of hate crime charges? Who CARES? He’s a murderer. He killed five people and would have killed more.
This bullshit hair-splitting is killing us. It’s hollow. It’s divorced from any real meaning, any real importance. What’s important are our lives, our dignity, our worth as human beings. But they don’t see that. They just want to play word games and debate the true meaning of gender, as if anyone gives a crap.
I’m tired of it. I’m tired of all of it. I don’t have an essay for you all today, except for whatever this turned into. If you’re queer, hold tight to each other, whatever happens we’ll get through this on our own. If you’re not? I don’t know how to tell you that it doesn’t matter what a woman “really” is or whether the Colorado Springs killer is nonbinary in a way you’ll understand, if you don’t understand. Just… trust me on this. It’s not important, we don’t have to debate it before we protect trans lives. We can just skip all that and protect trans lives.
ICYMI
All my posts this week have been about the shooting in Colorado Springs, in part because that’s by far the biggest news, but also because it’s a holiday week so I’ve pulled back to one post a day.
Next Week
Next week we’ll be back to normal. A full schedule of posts, a proper newsletter, eyes forward, mind sharp. There’s a time to mourn and a time to get back to the work. I’ll be back at it by this weekend, covering the far right bastards responsible for a climate of terror in my community, hoping my bit of sunlight will help to disinfect their rot.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope most of my members are with your families today, not even thinking of anything contained in this email, but if you are reading, then thank YOU most of all.
Evan
