girlonahalfshill

I haven’t been writing very much since getting back to California, but something’s been increasingly bothering me and for whatever (extremely) limited say I have at present, I need to share them now.

I’ll admit that I tend to prefer facts and figures to anecdotes. While I realize the power of personal experience, I see simplified narratives vaunted over facts on a regular basis to obscure a larger picture – and I don’t want to contribute to it. That being said, the following is all about how one woman changed my life – for the better.

Last year, my older child who was 21-years-old at the time, let me know that she was trans. I greeted the news with tentative support and tried to mask my concerns and even skepticism. I can be honest: it scared me. It was something I didn’t necessarily foresee and didn’t understand. It felt like a product of a particular moment and trend. I was concerned about my daughter making permanent decisions that would affect her body, her long-term health and safety, in order to resonate with her generation.

I took these concerns with me when I decided to temporarily move out-of-state. I thought about whether I needed to stay close by in order to support her through her transition, but I eventually decided that voicing my support and leaving her to step into her independence was a way of trusting her. At least, that’s what I told myself.

One of the first friends I happened to make when I arrived in the Midwest was a woman named Liara. At the time, she was a crisis counselor for the Trevor Project. She was also trans, having begun hormone therapy four years before I met her. From our first visit, we resonated with one another and became fast friends. She was thoughtful and fanciful and complicated. We got into heated debates about politics and societal norms, but we also broke bread together, went on hikes and shared our triumphs and heartbreaks.

And, she became a very safe person for me to express my concerns to about my daughter, the ones I was afraid to share for fear of not seeming supportive. She was able to address those with, not just her own experiences, but the tragedy, challenges and acceptance she’d found within her community and work at the Trevor Project, with other transpeople and within her personal journey. She opened up to me about the relief she’d felt in finally being able to resolve the discrepancy she’d known existed within herself since her teenage years, but also the fear she had in the world and the hate she’d seen directed at her.

Through these discussions, my fears subsided. The surface support I’d offered my daughter deepened into something real and, while my fears weren’t gone, they shifted from concerns about her health and whether it would be a phase, to concerns about her safety amidst an ideological clash that’s focused on her newfound demographic as a flashpoint – in many cases, for political gain.

I will also say that, in “red” Iowa, I found a tremendous number of people who didn’t raise an eyebrow when I shared that my daughter was trans. I found people who believed in supporting their kids and families, regardless of their choices. Who agreed that you’ve got to love your kids no matter what and who stood behind acceptance as a primary virtue.

I moved back to California in February and Liara and I stayed in touch. We talked about her visiting me here and discussed the possibility of my bringing my daughter to meet her when she played a DJ event at Pride in NYC in the summer. We had plans and hopes that our paths would cross again and talked regularly.

Then, in June of this year, she died tragically and violently. The details aren’t relevant here. While I don’t believe her death was the result of a hate crime, I hate that it happened. I hate that her beautiful soul isn’t among us anymore and that I won’t get more walks and animated talks with my very dear friend. And while I’m careful not to whittle her down – she was complex and I appreciated her for that, there is a new thing that’s happened for me in the months since she’s been gone: the demonization of transpeople (not new in and of itself) – something I previously understood – it’s a topic many of us, even those who’ve liked to think of ourselves as relatively progressive, I think, find is outside of our comfort zone… I can’t hear those arguments without mourning my friend. Not only her death, but also the fears she lived with – and fears for my daughter.

Let me be clear: I’m triggered by the word “triggered.” I think that being thin skinned and overly sensitive is its own issue. Despite having a trans-daughter who I embrace and want to see thrive, I still haven’t adopted the practice of announcing my pronouns because I believe that it often does more harm than good. I believe that our society isn’t necessarily antithetical to change, but that it does need to be allowed to do so at a pace that people can bear.

And, at the same time, I’m grieved that those changes didn’t arrive soon enough for my friend to enjoy safety and security in her own skin. I now fear that acclimation will be too slow for my daughter to avoid harm.

When I hear that the Trump campaign is hammering swing states with fear mongering about trans-athletes… I fully admit that the challenge of what to do about trans-women in competitive sports is a clusterf*!%. It presses against a lot of nerves and we in the US care a LOT about our sports. I don’t have an easy answer. I’m not saying that we won’t have to grapple with the complicated question of how to handle sports. But I also think it’s a terrible distraction and the use of a tiny fraction of a tiny minority to denigrate and demonize that minority in the eyes of people who don’t know them. For a lot of people who’ll never get to meet a Liara.

Mind you, this is a demographic that the Harris campaign isn’t even claiming and embracing. It’s not like the Harris campaign has been outwardly pro-trans-rights. But that’s enough for us. It’s enough that they’re the party that isn’t trying to tell ugly falsehoods about the imminent dangers of navigating this latest tangle of biology being less binary than we’d like it to be, medical science being more advanced than we’re ready for it to be and our societal norms being what they are – within a democratic republic that’s quarreling over its fundamental character.

It’s enough for me that the Harris campaign is willing to abide by the legally mandated levels of support for trans-rights. It’s enough for me that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, although they haven’t hugged the trans community, aren’t demonizing them either. In fact, it’s one of the issues they really haven’t touched at all, despite the amount that it’s being used and leveraged by their opponents for fear of confirming fear. I’m sure, out of fears that they’ll “prove” themselves as the “radical liberals” they’re accused of being. Still, they’re my choice, by a landslide – not only because of this, but for so many other reasons.

That being said, I’m deeply troubled about the toxins that are being pumped into the bloodstream of our social media “feeds.” I’m concerned about the way they’ll continue to deepen mischaracterizations and fears about an already vulnerable part of the population.