After These Messages...
...we'll be right back!
I’ve gone back to school to finish undergrad at CUNY Hunter and was also elected in November as one of two NYC-DSA Research & Data Committee co-chairs. That means putting in a lot of legwork both in future planning and for our endorsed candidates this cycle— Alexa Avilés in Sunset Park, Tiffany Cabán in Astoria, and of course: the dreadnought mayoral candidacy of Zohran Mamdani. It’s incredibly fulfilling, basically a dream gig for me, but also as you can imagine takes up most of my time and increasingly more with the winds in our sails. I have many, many thoughts, as you can imagine.
I have an unspoken policy of not writing about active campaigns I am involved with, I see fit to make explicit. It’s not really about any sort of ethical dilemma about my ability to give objective analysis, plenty of people actively support a candidate and do so, but more a function of effectiveness. To me, a moment where I am writing about it here is a moment I could be putting directly into our campaigns, so when I try to it tends to sputter out quite quickly.
Except for the occasional vague take on Twitter or BlueSky and public releases like the donor map, my deep analysis specific to the mayoral race will be embargoed until the summer. For the public analysis I do provide, it is important to note I only speak for myself. While several articles are in the works, including data analysis of COVID-era migration on the decisiveness of last year’s NY-19 race and a more narrative and thorough piece on Hudson Valley gentrification, consider this a note that content will be sparse for a while, especially for those on paid subscriptions.
A final note on the current moment. I haven’t been personally involved with national politics since the Bernie campaign in 2020 given basically all notable change comes about through the judiciary or by executive fiat, neither of which are particularly influenceable. But obviously, as a transgender woman, I am not in a position to tune it out.
Ten years ago, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide. The world didn’t end. People realized it did not affect their lives negatively for gay people to be treated fairly under the law. And so the reactionary right began shopping around for another wedge cultural issue and found it in transgender rights. Early attempts backfired horribly, as they were rightly seen as pure animus. Now, thanks to a toothless interregnum helmed by a senile egotist soaked in blood, jarringly, yet predictably, we have it in the White House. They cannot contain their glee.
In 2017, the military ban was justified on the cost of medical procedures and a necessity of further study, today it is justified on transgender people being fundamentally delusional liars and therefore “conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life.” They huddled little girls in the East Room for a photo-op as he signed an executive order banning little kids from playing on their school’s sports teams because they are trans. They have erased all federal references to transgender people, and when forced to restore some by court orders have put a despicable disclaimer at the beginning. They tried to outright criminalize medical care for vulnerable children against the wishes of their parents and doctors. And against federal court orders, they have moved transgender women in federal prison to men’s facilities, where they have been denied further treatment and subjected to state-sanctioned rape.
One of the many problems of contemporary liberalism has been that the argument made on my behalf was one of deference. I don’t really need people to respect my identity because it’s polite, I need the law to protect my ability to access the healthcare that allows me to get out of bed every morning and ensure I don’t get thrown in men’s prison for using the bathroom in the wrong state. When you let reactionaries control the field of “just asking questions” with no pushback or arguments beyond “don’t be a prick,” the blade of public opinion cuts one way. Being polite is not always in vogue and never eclipses economic concerns.
Forgive me if I do not have much time for “compromise” on these fronts, the reaction of a thankfully small minority of ambitious establishment Democrats. There is a concerted effort to criminalize my existence, anything but full-throated opposition is complicity, and what was behind that veneer of “just asking questions” in the late 2010s is laid bare and unrestrained in front of us today. Besides the dehumanizing and conspiratorial language and government policy, it is especially striking just how much of the vitriol is directed specifically at transgender children, to a degree that I struggle to draw historic parallels to. As with gay rights, wedge issues are eventually exhausted, but how many will be irreparably harmed and killed by policymakers before then?
I spent many years of my life trying to be anything but transgender, knowing that I would not be accepted and cognizant of the budding scheme in conservative circles to demonize us to as large a chunk of American society as possible. When I did come out, much of what I feared came true in my personal life, and the Overton window of public policy is in a terrifying place. Despite all of that, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. So as much as I would prefer to speak and write on other issues instead, that’s a Hobson’s choice. For a taste, I have a speech transcript here, and I am quoted on a press release here.
In lieu of quiet wallowing or sending me weird, conciliatory emails as if someone I love has died, the best thing to do at this moment is donating to Lambda Legal and/or the ACLU, and making note of who does, and does not capitulate in a souless attempt to further their personal ambitions. Political life needs a longer and more detailed memory.