I've been feeling an immense grief for the children and staff that died during the Nasvhille shooting. The collective knowledge of all these shootings I think has finally broken me emotionally in respect to them. For a while, I was able to separate myself emotionally from it, but being trans myself, that wasn't possible this time around, and it is hitting me very hard. I'm so angry at the shooter, and I feel such sorrow for the families who have to carry on without their children, their wives, their husbands ,their fathers, their mothers. I can't even comprehend what I would do if I lost my parents, or my nephew, or anyone in my family, and the fact that this is happening so often, that the leading cause of death for children in the US are firearms is terrifying and beyond tragic.
It hurts even more than it would knowing that the shooter was trans, and people are using that fact to push for violence against me and my trans friends. Hearing far-right political pundits calling me violent and evil, and putting blame for the shooting on me makes me want to collapse and never get up again. I can't stop thinking about how much pain the families are going through, all the while I'm hearing shouting voices telling me its my fault for just existing. Do not be mistaken, there is a genocide happening against trans people across the western world, and we are seeing the very same things that preceded the holocaust against Jewish people during WW2. Vilifying a group, passing legislation that restricts the freedoms of that group, declaring that the group must be eradicated--all of these things happened a hundred years ago as perpetrated against Jewish people in Europe, and is happening now to trans people. If we do not stop these legislative and political machinations soon, it will be too late. I am not advocating for violence, we must not commit violence, and I condemn it. What I am advocating for is empathy. Consider that the republican politician wants you to deny life-saving health care to a very small population of people who, statistically commit less violence on average, have more violence committed against them, and by-in-large simply want to exist without interfering with anyone else. There has been a repeated expression of hatred against trans people like myself by the GOP for years now, and its now boiled over into genocidal rhetoric. At CPAC, one individual even declared that transgenderism must be eradicated. Replace the word transgenderism with Judaism, and you see why this is so terrifying. It could very easily be a direct quote by members of the Nazi party to spark violence against Jewish people before the holocaust, and is now being directed at me and people like me.
Please, for the love of God, find it in your heart to be empathetic and feel love for your fellow humans. We are all just trying to survive and get by. I do not want to harm you, I do not want to force you to live in any way different than you currently live. I just want to live my life in peace. Please respect that.
I say all of this because I have to, not because I want to. I want to have time to grieve, I want to have time to process the tragedy that has occurred in Nashville. I don't know what to do, and I don't know how to process all these lives of all these children taken from us. Please remember the victims and their families. Please be empathetic and loving to those families. They are having the worst experience a human being can go through, we must not let them go through it alone. We must support them and love them as they would support and love the children that were taken from them. There's a grief that can't be spoken, and we must understand that. Be kind, and love. Above all, do fall into nihilism, as tempting as it may be. Have hope that things will be better one day, if we lose that hope, then we lose the ability to fight against hatred and murder. Its very difficult for me to hold onto hope, I feel an immense desire to give up. But I know that none of us can, not while there are children who must be protected, and lives that can be saved. Something has to be done to stop these shootings, and if we give up hope that we can make positive change, then that hope is truly lost.
Be safe out there, I love you.
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