The Shape of Fear
It's probably funnier when I say it out loud. Voiceover recommended.
It’s 2am and I need to be honest with you - my mind is full of awful ways I might die at the hand of state actors or their supporters. My anxiety-ridden nervous system is absolutely running away with my active imagination. I see my body being brutalized in new and inventive ways over and over again. It is quite difficult to focus. I’m sure the state actors and their supporters would be very happy to hear this.
On the outside, loved ones reassure me that none of those things are going to happen. Well, most of my loved ones. My mom told me I should be ready to flee. My grandmother told me I should keep my head down and not say anything that the [redacted] would come after me for.
I digest this advice, notice how it aligns with my intrusive thoughts, and then realize the specifics of my intrusive thoughts were bestowed on me by the family who raised me. I actually love that for me. :)
M, on the other hand, says this is very white people advice, but they aren’t sure why they feel like that. I, their white boyfriend, am inclined to agree: white people love prepping and keeping their heads down.
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A friend recently told me about a realization they had about their family: that maybe their family doesn’t have the power to hurt them, no matter how transphobic they may have been or continue to be. I would like to think that about state actors and their supporters. Maybe they don’t have the power to hurt me, even if they are torturing me to death. Even if they are making me legally illegible and sending me into a panic.
But I mean, how legally legible could I really be in the first place? Isn’t my whole thing about breaking free of boxes and labels and immersing myself in the bodily ecstasy of this short and wonderful existence?
I actually find it quite empowering to imagine laughing evilly and maniacally in the middle of a torture scene, blood oozing from my mouth, my eyes boring into the eyes of whoever just ripped my teeth out of my skull. My endorphins would be going crazy and I would barely feel any of it, besides the wild thrill of them being powerless against me. They would for sure be cursed forever after that. And then they’d fucking kill me.
I am really a pro at sexualizing my fear. Your state-sanctioned torture can’t touch my soul the way my soul is touched when my loved ones torture me.
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I want to tell you about my fear because it feels relieving. Like, if I just externalize this stuff, then I can see how silly it is and I can go back to enjoying my life that is full of love and consensual torture. I can focus on what I can do in my community like every piece of thought-aligned online advice is telling me. You can tell me I won’t be tortured to death by state actors or their supporters and it’ll make me feel better.
Or, maybe someone from [redacted] will find me and start to torture me to death, but in a way I’m kind of into. Maybe it’ll be like Hellraiser and I’ll look really sexy with my skin flayed in crazy ways. Or, maybe they’ll secretly have a crush on me! And then my powerful diplomacy skills will convince them to set me free and turn on all of their beliefs, so we can move on and laugh at that one time they thought I wasn’t a full person so torturing me is Godly and righteous. Or something.
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I am mourning the fact I can’t be completely open and honest with my biological family about my fear. But then I go watch movies with my friends and we make each other laugh. My brain forgets to tell me that people are GPSing my location so they can come take me to a second location.
I am also aware that there is historical precedent for my fear. It isn’t just my biological family affirming what I’m afraid of, but the actual history of people like me. It is a generational fear. It is everyone, everyone, evoking the history of the holocaust and WWII as if there aren’t other fascist dictators we can also be looking at. The collective imagination is immediately worst case scenario and I need ya’ll to fucking relax. Because I need to relax.
So, listen, we aren’t going to let it get to the point where state actors or their supporters will be torturing me to death. I know this because you wouldn’t let that happen. My neighborhood wouldn’t let that happen. And my loved ones sure as hell won’t let that happen.
Let us not allow it to get much worse than this, guys. Because this is pretty bad. And state actors are currently kidnapping people and sticking them on planes to take them out of the US. State actors are already trapping their political enemies in solitary confinement, torturing them, or extrajudicially killing them. In fact, state actors are happily building pretend cities so they can practice new fun tricks on us later!
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I’ll end with some thought-provoking questions to help you reflect on the shape of your own fear:
What are you going to allow state actors or their supporters to do to your neighbors?
What are you going to allow them to do to you?
And, more importantly, how can we put an end to the state-sanctioned collective abuse we are currently living?
Maybe laughing maniacally and looking them in the eyes, blood dripping from our mouths, all at the same time, will shift the timeline in our favor.