I swear to god, if I have to hear one more time how the Left played too many identity politics by talking about transgender rights, I might have to…

…I don’t know, eat more chocolate, have a glass of wine, have a good cry, scream into my pillow, call a friend.

Depends on which self-loving coping mechanism I decide I need today to deal with all the ways people try to reframe why standing up for my existence is a political distraction, an agenda, propaganda, bad policy for winning elections, inconvenient for other people’s discomfort.

Oh, I’m sorry you are uncomfortable. I’ll just exist a little less today to help you feel better. Actually, no, I won’t. Hate to break it to you, but us transgender people aren’t going away…ever…..like ever, ever.

How many times have the people throughout our history, who tried to mask their deep-seated bigotry by turning human rights into a political disagreement or an identity politic, ended up being proven wrong, again and again and again. Whether it be defending native genocide, slavery, racism, sexism, child sweat shops, homophobia, etc. etc., these people end up being on the wrong side of history every time.

Honestly, it’s getting so old. Get over it already.

Buuuut….here we go some more.

Because it is always the same dangerous song and dance, it is just dressed up again in different topics, the lives and bodies of another group of people are chosen to be the sacrificial victims. Once society decides it has had enough of one toxic justification for marginalizing and abusing others, the toxic people scramble to find their next topic to transform with the same othering fear.

If the Left lost the election to Trump because of playing too much ‘identity politics’, then the problem lies with all the people who actually bought into the idea that we were a politic to begin with.

Yes, there are people out there who will virtue signal or use transgender people as a convenient excuse to move their own selfish agendas forward. People that do this are a distraction and they are not what this is really about. There are disingenuous people within any topic we could discuss.

If you are one of those who got tired of hearing so much about pronouns, and bathroom rights, and hormones, and trans women in sports, then I hate to break it to you: you weren’t listening properly. You weren’t hearing the cries for help from your marginalized fellow human beings who are desperately trying to figure out how the hell to be heard and treated as actual human beings from a majority that doesn’t listen. If you provide all kinds of helpful things to someone you know, but you also keep slapping them in the face on a daily basis…guess what? They are going to obsess about being slapped in the face. They are going to talk about how much they are slapped and they aren’t going to devote time to talking about all the other good things that have happened in your interactions. Why should they? Your abuse negates all else. Once you treat someone that way, you lose the privilege to negotiate about which of you gets to choose where to go for dinner that night.

But in this analogy, so often, people smack others in the face and then they complain that you aren’t being a good team player because you won’t let them have their turn to pick what’s for dinner. Your abuse negates your privilege of having a mutually rewarding interaction.

Fighting against any human right is abuse. The abuse must stop first. Period. There is no ignoring it while we negotiate on the finer points of politics.

We talk about these things ad nauseum because the blind majority is forcing us to, just to fight for a chance to not be eradicated from existence.

Those of us who are the real deal (the vast, vast majority), aren’t trying to play identity politics. We don’t have some abstract ideological agenda we need to push. We are just trying to exist safely and respectfully in the same way as those who have the privilege to do so without having to speak up for it.

We may be the marginalized. We may be the 1% (probably even the 0.5%). But we are not weak. We will not be silent. We are going to keep loudly bugging you to stop taking our human rights in the name of politics and fear…because more than your average person, we have had to learn to love ourselves no matter the cost.

Choosing to transition in this current culture necessitates a high degree of self-love. We are not going to stop loving ourselves and each other.

We know how to love ourselves in the face of all odds. The world would be a much better place if they learned to listen to us. Because all of the hatred and the bigotry is just a centuries-long attempt to run from your own deeply conditioned shame, fear, and guilt. As I have seen a million times in my work as a therapist, the tough bully is the most insecure kid on the playground.

Guess what? Most of us humans who find the courage to live as our authentic selves have to face our inner shame and fears. It is called shadow work, or facing yourself, or healing yourself…so many different ways to describe the process of truly owning your whole self and doing something about it, with responsibility for self and love for self.

Because you deserve it. We all deserve it. We all need it.