As I write this, we are a little over a week before the midterm elections, and as you read it, all of you already know how it turned out.
So forgive me if what I have to say will already seem dated, but without the gift of clairvoyance, I find myself frozen in fear of what might be.
My logical mind knows that it is a trauma response, and that it goes back much further than just the last few years of hell the trans community has had to suffer through in this state, as well as under the current federal administration. That doesn’t make it any less real or debilitating. All the signs currently look good for a swing of the pendulum back to the left, however we have been fooled before.
As George W. Bush once said, “Fool me once, shame on… shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” I miss the days when we believed he would turn out to be the dumbest president of our lifetime.
Speaking of “believe,” it reminds me of another quote. This time from that otherwise chicken-soup-for-the soul show “Ted Lasso” that goes “It’s the hope that kills you.” It appeals to me because I am a natural pessimist and I have little faith in the willingness of the public to vote with compassion for the trans community, even with current polls predicting a “blue tsunami.”
By all rights we should be halfway through the first term of our second ever female president, instead of the second term of an increasingly dementia-ridden demagogue leading a party intent on using trans people to destroy our democracy, and to enrich themselves and their oligarch donors. Demonizing trans people helped derail the candidacy of that erstwhile second female president, and the same playbook is being used again.
So I sit here at my computer forcing my uncooperative fingers to type as I try to inoculate myself against hope by expecting the worst. Did I mention it has been a hard time for trans people?
What certainly didn’t help my mental health was looking back at one of my columns from just before the elections in 2024. Back then I wrote, “I am a livewire of anxiety mixed with existential dread because, unlike 2016, this time we know what is coming thanks to Project 2025 and its apocalyptic solution to what it calls the ‘toxic normalization of transgenderism’ in society.” Perhaps I am a little clairvoyant after all, or maybe it is down to my preternatural pattern recognition skills gifted to me by CPTSD.
Thanks mom and dad for the emotional abandonment that heightened my ability to sense impending danger. I only wish it had also come with the gift of generational wealth to help me move back to one of those expensive “safe” blue states or out of the country entirely. And before any of you have hurt feelings on behalf of my parents, I don’t speak to my mom and she would probably think it’s a sin to read my column in Watermark anyway. My dad passed on 16 years ago. There is little chance of me being disinvited from family holiday celebrations I haven’t been invited to in years.
Of course the truth is no psychic abilities were needed to figure out how things were going to go after 2024. One simply had to read Project 2025, but more importantly, believe that it was a real plan Republicans actually intended to implement. I can’t tell you the number of times my white cisgender friends from both sides of the aisle told me everything was going to be ok. Easy to say when you believe nothing will change for you under either a Harris or Trump presidency.
Now those same people are griping about the higher costs of everything. I hope they can forgive my schadenfreude as I drive by gas stations in my EV, thankful that I don’t have to pay over $4 a gallon to fill my car.
As I read their protestations on social media, I can’t help but think to myself, “Welcome to the fight now that it affects you. Pull up a chair. I have been here a while.” People really ought to listen to me when I tell them something is going to happen.
Unfortunately, being smart with money hasn’t protected me from the real world anti-trans realizations of Project 2025, so this next election will be a turning point for me. I have long said it would determine my next steps.
Namely, whether I try to move to a safer area of the world, or stick it out here in the political backwater that is Florida. The thing is, I like it here. I am part of a community that loves and supports me. That steps up to fill in for my lack of family during the holidays. I don’t just own a house here, I have made a home.
Thankfully, there is legitimate cause for hope. Republican operatives are reporting that their desperate anti-trans ads around the country are not finding traction. They are actually backfiring as conservative parents are alarmed that their kids are learning that being transgender is an option. That and people are too angry about rising costs to worry about the theoretical dangers of trans people.
Early voting numbers are also encouraging and seem to be confirming, god help us, the polls that are showing a massive swing to the left. However, should history repeat itself, don’t be surprised if my next column is a goodbye that I filed from a beach in Ibiza.
Melody Maia Monet has her own trans lesbian themed YouTube channel at YouTube.com/MelodyMaia.
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