Being a target for hate…

This won’t exactly qualify as a rant, but hey, I did just say I needed to do something besides reviews all the time, right? Right. So today I was having a pretty good Sunday. I slept in, got a little housework done, walked the dog and cat, had a lovely lunch, and even got in a bit of time on the exercise bike to help cut down my increasingly jiggly ass. I’m less than six days from my 40th birthday, and in spite of a shit start to this year, I still feel like I have a lot to be grateful for, chief among them is my husband surviving his bout with this infection.

But in the middle of my day, a long-time friend sent me an article on Facebook in which a romance writer declared that if she found a trans woman in her gym locker room and still carried a gun, she’d kill them. Not if this person was threatening her, mind you. Simply being in the locker room and being “visibly trans” is enough to warrant a death by a firing squad of one.

I told this friend I kinda wished I hadn’t known that, and she said it was best to know my enemies. I replied back that with a list as large as I had, it was hard to keep track of who just hates me, and who really wants me dead.

And you know what? It’s something I can’t think on too much because it’s damned depressing. This isn’t like people who hate me because of something I wrote in a book, or something I said online. That’s easier to process, the idea that I offended someone and now they don’t like me anymore. I get that, and while it bums me out a little, I can handle being hated for my opinions. But this is a hate that stems from my very existence being offensive to someone else. How very abstract and unsettling, you know? Here’s this group of a few million people who would like to see people like me killed because we don’t conform to their expectations.

Lately, it’s become cool to promote hate of trans folks because “you don’t want a man in your bathrooms with your children.” But this line of thinking completely ignores the fact that there are female-to-male transsexuals, and by making this law, some people are actually making sure there are in fact men going to the women’s restrooms. To these people, trans people are only deluded men mutilating themselves to gain access to women’s spaces for some nefarious deeds. Like, I’m not going to the restroom to pee. I’m going in there to scope out some potential victims. And this is just stupid. When I go to the restroom, I don’t even look at anyone else in there except to make sure I don’t run into them on my beeline path to a stall. I’ve never stopped off at the counter and asked, “So, come here often?” Usually, the only thing I’m thinking is, “OKAY BLADDER, I HEAR YOU AND I WILL OBEY, SO STOP HURTING ME.” (And this reminds me that I really shouldn’t try to hold onto pee until it becomes painful.)

I’ll tell you something else. Despite my tendencies to write about sex in quite a few of my books, sexually, I’m a boring flavor of vanilla. Yeah, okay, I’m bi and attracted more to personalities than I am to looks. The kinkiest I usually go is oral sex and maybe sometimes a little anal sex. I don’t do role play in costumes, and the idea of bondage makes me queasy. I had a girlfriend ask me to tie her up, and I freaked out over it. We had to compromise and have her hold a rope around her own wrists, biting down on the rope to keep it tight because just holding it for her turned me off. I don’t like whips and chains or paddles and ropes. I’ve never thought about dressing in latex for a pre-sex warm-up. I have no desire to be sexually humiliated by a dom, nor do I have any desire to be a dom commanding my subs around. I’m bland as a glass of 2% skim milk.

But there’s people out there who think I’m some sexual deviant simply because of my choice to transition. It’s not enough for them to disapprove of my choice. They want me dead because of who I am. And who I am is a happily transitioned person who leads a pretty boring married life. But to these people, I’m somehow corrupting society by simply existing, and the world would be better off if I was dead. That’s hate I don’t understand. It has nothing to do with anything I have done to them, or anything I’ve said or wrote. The theory of my happiness with myself is enough to warrant a death sentence.

I’m crazy, folks. I don’t mean “ha-ha, I’m a wacky person who might do anything.” I mean I hear voices, and I sometimes talk out loud in response to those voices. I’ve been comfortably crazy for a while, meaning I know when something the voices said is a Very Bad Idea, and I’m able to say, “No, that is a Very Bad Idea, and I won’t do it.” I believe my craziness is the result of multiple head injuries sustained in childhood, and as I know it’s there and I can respond to these voices with a somewhat rational rejection, I don’t feel I need pills to rein my crazy in. I do on occasion lose my cool, resulting in hurt feelings and alienated friends, and that sucks, yes. But that’s the limit of my crazy. I don’t wish death upon people I don’t agree with. I sometimes check up on the blogs of people who hate me, and when bad shit happens to them, I wish I was on better terms with them to send a message and tell them I’m sorry for their troubles. Maybe send them a few bucks if I have it, because that’s all I can do. Except I can’t anymore because they hate me, and they would reject my help. But I can’t change that, so I won’t dwell on it. They may hate me, but I’m not returning the favor.

Again, I’m crazy. Certifiably, hearing voices crazy. So what do I call these people, who in most respects are perfectly sane and rational about most topics? What do I call people who at the mere mention of someone like me suddenly become angry and fearful? I can’t call them crazy because this isn’t the result of a brain chemical imbalance. It’s the result of a socially ingrained belief that some people are not really worthy of self-determination. It’s the widespread idea that anyone drifting outside of socially defined gender roles needs to be culled lest it somehow imperil the so-called fabric of society. It’s not insanity. It’s something more insidious, a mindset that even the most rational person can hold.

I’m tempted to say “Well I’d call those people assholes,” but the thing is, if this one topic never came up at all, I might find them to be pleasant company. Being an asshole is making a choice to be abrasive to lots of people for no reason. This is something completely different. In many ways, it’s worse than being an asshole. The asshole, I can at least understand, you know?

At the end of the day, I can’t process it, so I often just try to think about other things. If I woke up and acknowledged the fact that millions of people who don’t even know me would like to see me dead, I might not even make it off the couch. It’s simply too much hatred for me to process.

So I don’t. I write my stories, and I play with my dog and cat. I play video games and read books that help me look away from the sharp and hateful edges of my reality. I thank God for my husband, and for my relatively quiet and happy life. I spend time talking to people who share similar hobbies and interests, and we talk about stuff that keeps us happy productive little cogs.

But sometimes reality intrudes, and then I’m reminded of this simple truth that some people hate me. Oh, they don’t hate me directly. They hate the idea of me, the idea of a happily transitioned person who doesn’t conform to their constricting definitions of gender. And because they hate me so bad, they propose laws to make me a criminal for doing something we all do, take a leak in the restroom of my choice. They spend their time fear mongering about what I’m really plotting now that I’m “behind enemy lines.” And yes, they think actively about killing me and others like me even though our life choices have nothing to do with them and will never interfere with their lives in any meaningful way.

What do I call hate like that? How do I quantify it, and other similar forms of hate? Prejudice feels too mild a word. Calling it a phobia seems a bit much, but it does seem to be a reaction based on fear and ignorance. I don’t have a proper label for it, and I can’t think too much on the idea without becoming depressed.

So for lack of a better term, I choose to call these people misguided. I think they are taught by elders and peers to hate what they don’t understand. Maybe there is the chance that one day, they will see that they have been led astray. I truly hope that they learn how wrong they are before they act on this hate and ruin their own lives by committing an act of violence against someone else. Because I have attacked someone before, and I can say from personal experience, that weight never leaves your soul. There is always the reminder that in a moment of anger, you did something you can never take back. I know how that feels, and I wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemies. So I pray that one day these misguided people learn to think different, before it’s too late and they do something they’ll regret forever.