Just Keep Singing

Love is an action

Trans and nonbinary love: Manny, Lev and I singing our hearts out on a gay cruise in New York in 2021

Over the last few weeks I’ve started writing this newsletter and then deleted it almost a dozen times. Each time I think I know what we’re up against, but then something new happens, and I have to start again. I know you don’t need me to tell you that for the last month trans people have been enduring a full-scale assault on their ability to exist, either legally or medically, but given the overwhelm we’re all feeling, I’ll try to summarize the executive orders that are specifically aimed at trans people here:

1) on January 20th an executive order was issued stating that there are now only two legally recognized genders, and that they are immutable and assigned at birth, 2) on January 27th an EO was issued proposing a ban on trans people serving in the military, 3) on January 28th an EO was issued proposing a national ban on gender-affirming care for minors, 4) on January 29th an EO was issued proposing a ban on “gender ideology” from being taught or discussed in schools, and 5) and on February 5th an EO was issued proposing to bar trans people from playing sports at any level.

I say ‘propose’ because many of these orders may not be legally enforceable, and are already being fought in the courts by organizations such as the ACLU (please donate to them if you haven’t already) so hope is not yet dead. Having said that, it’s a pretty rough time to be trans, or to be the parent of a trans kid.

After each executive order I received a flurry of emails from concerned friends. I can’t believe this is happening! Are you okay? And finally, Are you going to move back home?

I was slightly taken aback by their surprise—hadn’t they also seen this coming? Project 2025 anyone?—until I remembered that the information that gets passed around the trans community often doesn’t filter into the outside world. Now it was clearly getting through. Each executive order escalated the use of the kind of dehumanizing rhetoric that has been historically used to justify the erasure of a minority, which was horrifying but also in a strange way almost a relief: the gloves were finally off, and the pretense that the attack on trans people wasn’t rooted in violent transphobia has finally been dropped.

The last few years have sometimes felt like one of those dreams where you try to run but can’t move, or try to scream for help but can’t make a sound. While all over the media in both the UK and the US journalists engaged in endless debates with Gender Critical Feminists, Christian Nationalists and far-right Republicans about which spaces we should be excluded from, we in the trans community knew the people promoting our exclusion didn’t care about safety in prisons or fairness in women’s sports. They were simply using the time-honored justification of “protecting women and children” as an excuse to remove us from public life. It was never about who should have access to which locker room, it was about a deep fear and hatred of trans people that could only be assuaged by getting rid of us completely. We knew this. Now everyone else does, too.

I debated the question about moving back home for a couple of days. I was born and raised in England and moved to the East coast of America in my early forties, a few years before I transitioned, so I hold dual citizenship. When the first executive order came through I thought I’d start this essay with a follow up to my previous post: I wanted to thank the Passport Angels for processing my gender change application so quickly, because otherwise I’d now be without an American passport, and I have to fly to England for the UK launch of Frighten the Horses in a few weeks. I was looking forward to seeing the handful of trans people I know in the country, and hearing their personal experiences about how transphobia manifests over there, and it would have been a bummer to have had to cancel.

I had originally planned to compare the two countries by examining the differences between the Gender Critical Feminists over there and the Republican Party over here, in an attempt to decide which country is safer to live in, but obviously this is now a redundant exercise. The UK may have banned gender-affirming care for minors, but the US is attempting to ban everything for everyone. As we speak Montana is trying to pass a bill that would make it impossible for doctors to prescribe gender-affirming care for adults, and if they succeed, they potentially open a door to the forcible detransition of every trans person in the country.

And yet… I still don’t want to “go home.” England was where I was born, but America is where I found my people, and I have no intention of deserting them just because I can. There has been a lot written about how we face—and survive—the onslaught, but the one theme that everyone keeps coming back to is community. My children, my friends, my chosen family, everyone I love, is here in this country. I could leave to live in a safer place, but I’d also be leaving behind everyone I care about, all the relationships I’ve built. Creating queer community doesn’t just involve making queer friends, it means showing up for each other during the hard times as well as the good, and I would rather be digging in here with the people I love, than exiling myself from the very people who’ll help get me through all this with my sanity intact.

If you don’t have a solid community around you already, it’s not too late to start forming one now. Think small, start local. Show up for your friends, lean on them and ask them for help when necessary. Find a support meeting, join a mutual aid group, work on finding ways to weather the storm together. Love is an action, not a feeling, and while we all have physical and logistical constraints, finding one small action you can take will help you feel a little less impotent and alone. For me it’s writing and storytelling: being a full-time, solo-parent makes it difficult for me to get out into the streets, so instead I’m writing a barrage of letters to the people in positions of power. I don’t know how much difference I’m making, but at least I’m doing something.

I asked a trusted friend recently what other actions I could be taking (I think I actually wailed, “What am I supposed to do?” which is a sentiment I’m sure many of you share) and she answered, “Live according to your values.” This seemed like such a startling good piece of advice it stopped me in my tracks. Whether our inclinations lead us towards organizing, protesting, writing, caring or creating art, we can all continue to honor our own internal value systems, irrespective of what’s going on around us. And by doing so we can make a difference, we can make this country a slightly more bearable place for each other to live in, and we can help fight off despair.

Please look after yourselves, and each other too,

Love, Oliver

I’d like to keep these posts free for everyone, but if you’d like to support my work as a writer, please consider upgrading to a paid membership, or buy a copy of my memoir, FRIGHTEN THE HORSES—an Oprah Daily Best Book of Fall—which is out now with Roxane Gay Books. A valuable alternative narrative to the loss and pain that queer history has too often insisted on — New York Times; Humorous and heartwarming — LA Review of Books; It’s the voice that makes this memoir stand out. This is a writer who can capture any moment with a dazzling, insightful, at times musical phrase — Oprah Daily; This book is sharp as razors, but it also pulses with a passionate, desperate, human urgency for truth and liberation — Elizabeth Gilbert; The finest literary telling of the experience of gender transition that I’ve ever read — Kate Bornstein.