It Is Good That Trans People Exist

They are a blessing, not a problem.

Yesterday the Supreme Court declared that trans people don’t have any rights that the government is obliged to respect.

Many others are parsing the legal ramifications and the exact consequences for trans people in red states and across the nation. I don’t really have the heart or expertise for that.

So instead, I just wanted to say: it is good that trans people exist. Trans people make the world a better place.

We are all better off in a world where people can become who they are, even if who they become surprises their parents, friends, teachers, employers, and political representatives. We are better off in a world where human flourishing takes many forms, and where people are allowed to find the form and shape and life that fits them. We are all better off when we recognize that other people’s expectations and assumptions and rigid categories don’t define us, and that only we can define ourselves.

Trans people are not a regrettable tragedy or a lamentable but sometimes unavaoidable worst case outcome, as Jesse Singal and the New York Times and a range of dead eyed pundits in mainstream media circles would have you believe. They are not a godless abomination, as the rabid homophobes on the right want you to believe either.

Trans people are awesome. Parents of trans kids are lucky to have children who are brave enough to be themselves despite the often brutal weight of tradition and an active fascist hate campaign trying to shut them up and push them back in the closet. Friends and colleagues of trans people are lucky too, and for the same reasons. The country and human beings in general benefit when diversity and human flourishing take many forms, when gender expression and sexuality and bodies are not brutally policed, when everyone has space to explore who they are and who they might want to be.

Fascists hate trans people because they hate diversity, they hate possibility, they hate joy, and they hate human flourishing. Fascists want to put everyone in a box—or I should say a cell—and shoot anyone in the head who dares to edge out of it. The Christofascist Supreme Court majority in their KKK robes rub their hands gleefully at the thought of all the people they can hurt and police as they genuflect to the justice of the burning cross. Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas would gladly join the gestapo if they didn’t get paid more to hurt people more effectively by sitting on their asses and stewing in hate.

The Supreme Court has a lot of power; fascists have a lot of power. They can in fact harm people. They can harm trans people; they can harm their families; they can harm everyone who benefits from trans people living and flourishing, which is everyone.

What they can’t do is make trans people disappear. Trans people have always existed and they will always exist. It’s up to everyone to make a world in which they can flourish, not least because that’s the only world in which we all can flourish. The United States is doing a shit job of creating that world right at the moment. We have to all work to do better, because, if we want people to have the ability to choose their own lives, we have no other choice.