The President is campaigning to Make America Hate Again wherever and however he can
This is not about toilets. It’s not about safety. It’s not even about politics. The President of the United States is dealing out oppression from a pack of full of jokers, his wild cards simultaneously operating as extremely harmful, yet also the highest trump.
There is no reason to rescind protections for trans kids. Not one. Why should a kid feel afraid to go to school? Supposedly this is about the fear of sexual assault, but let’s remember – this is a man who has boasted openly about “grabbing women by the pussy”. Trump is inventing fictional predators to deflect from the reality that the most dangerous one is him, at the cost of people’s lives.
As noted by Dazed writer Shon Faye, this debate being framed around toilets – places where we shit and piss – “is a kind of subjugation, keeps us talking about the basic and the crude”. The Trump administration is obsessed with “othering” and controlling a narrative that labels anybody who isn’t white, cisgender and Christian as lowlife, dangerous freaks – whether it’s Mexicans as rapists, people from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen as terrorists, or trans people as bathroom-snooping predators, a community that he vowed to support but in fact wants to oppress.
Trump was ridiculed for saying at that press conference “there has never been a presidency that’s done so much in such a short period of time”, but actually it’s probably the truest thing he’s said since his campaign (which appears ongoing) began. And that’s what’s so dangerous. Yes, the travel ban may have been overturned but the rhetoric was rammed home – we fucking hate you. He may never build that wall, but the message is clear - we fucking hate you. Sadly, it appears that his rescission of protections for trans kids will come to pass, with that same message – we fucking hate you, we decide who you are, what you do, where you go and the consequences are yours to bear.
This is a hostile era. Even if you’re reading this and your freedom is not immediately under threat, someone else’s is. Fight for them.