In another post, I said, “The angry, radical punk clinging to survival inside me wrote a very different version of this post. But the person who strives for freedom through forgiveness won’t let them post it.”

I do strive for freedom through forgiveness, but it’s also true that I’m a punk. All of us punks were punks before Legs McNeil named us, and we’re still punks in a world that only knows punk as a passe clothing or music genre.

Maybe striving for freedom through forgiveness is the most punk thing I’ve ever tried to do. Someone once said that punks were just hippies with haircuts, and they weren’t wrong (I see you, Joe Strummer).

The more anti-trans nonsense that floods into my field of vision every day, the more the latent punk in me rises to the surface and thinks, “You think you can eliminate me? Good luck. Go ahead and try!”

So I lean less toward hand-wringing and more toward bomb building (not literally—lighten up FBI) (that is, if the FBI still exists by the time I click the “Publish” button). Each attack intended to weaken me only pushes me more toward being on the offensive.

I mean, I feel like I’m on the offensive, but I’m not carrying signs (or building bombs) because I don’t believe that protest is effective. Or I should say, I’ve seen proof, over and over in my life, that protest isn’t effective.

Instead, I’ve come to believe that the stubborn, continued presence of any group that fascists or racists are actively trying to eliminate is the only thing that causes change. Being here. Not going away. Forcing you, by our refusal to exit gracefully, to deal with us and come to know us. And ultimately, hopefully, come to know our common interests, which are limitless.

In another post around here somewhere, I talked about how positive the world looked for trans folks when I (finally) decided to come out and begin to transition and how the kids who don’t give a fuck what you think about them or their gender greatly inspired me.

It would be accurate to say that things have changed as far as there being a positive or supportive place anywhere in the world for trans people. But I’m still inspired by the kids and their response to the chaos the world is relaxing into. They remain defiant, and their defiance—I’ll say it again—inspires me.

There is no hope if you believe the world is only what we see in front of us today: the chaotic MAGAMUSK cash grab, profound stupidity around every corner, and duplicitous, hypocritical politicians (I see you, Gavin Newsom). There’s never been any hope in a world ruled by politicians or corporations.

Hope is a kid sticking a daisy into the barrel of a soldier’s rifle. Hope is a generation saying they have no interest in the status quo and no intention of acknowledging it or feeding it.

But, you know, I’ve lived through generational revolt, too, and watched it fail all around me as the hippies became investment bankers. But the trans kids and we, the general trans menace, are different. We can’t become the gender binary’s version of investment bankers. We can’t change our transness because we didn’t change into it in the first place. No one becomes trans; we just are.

We sure can’t run away. Run to where? You can take away our passports, hormones, colorful flags, general insouciance, and savoir-faire and send us to “summer camps” surrounded by barbed wire and Nazis, but we’re still going to be trans. And we’re still going to be so irrepressibly fabulous that you feel like used up topsoil in comparison. Sorry for the spoiler.

And I know that some of you rigid, buttoned-up freaks dream of freedom (I see you, JD Vance). Your freak flags may be buried deep in your basements or family mausoleums, but they’re there. You’re scared. I get it. You don’t want to stand opposite the brownshirts because they have the guns and laws and popularity and stuff.

What they don’t have is vision or compassion or love. Seeing those things in us tickles their jealousy—and their anger—because they know that deep down, they are incapable of vision or compassion or love. So, they wage a war on love. But in the end their war on love will fail because that’s just how the universe works.

In the short run, it may feel safe to stand on the side of hate and all its perceived power. But everything and everyone the haters hate are still here; love is still here, and it will always be here. So, if any part of you wants to be on the right side of history (and the universe), it’s not too late to change your stance.

Love is revolutionary. Viva la revolución!

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN