Life Through a Queer Lens
Welcome to the Life Through a Queer Lens Podcast, where anyone with an open mind and heart can learn about the LGBTQIA+ Community from the people within it! We're your hosts, Jenene (she/her, they/them) and Kit (they/them).
Life Through a Queer Lens
EP59: Post-Election Reflections: Finding Hope in Uncertain Times
In this episode, we navigate the challenges of maintaining relationships with loved ones holding opposing political views, exploring how fear-driven narratives hinder societal progress. We discuss resilience, the power of human connection, and the role of white allies in fostering unity within the queer community. Reflecting on personal struggles and societal change, we honor trailblazers like Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, emphasizing inclusivity, solidarity, and hope for a better future.
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We are moving toward a more conscious human species sort of existence. You know how the dark is attracted to the light, and the light can't emerge unless it's really truly dark enough. Maybe it's not bad enough yet for us to really emerge from this. When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world and interacting with each other in a certain realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened, an individual life form or an entire species will either die, become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap. That's where we are right now. It's coming, that light is coming.
Speaker 2:I don't know about y'all, but nothing has felt real since November 5th.
Speaker 1:give or take, like everything feels super surreal and I've been feeling extra sensitive and like how the fuck did we end up here again and this happened again? It's just, I don't know. I try not to beat myself up with thinking about what could we have done differently and what is this teaching us about moving forward, but it's just, it's dense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely think it's important to think what do we do moving forward? I'm seeing a lot of these older guys, these older white men on quote unquote the left of the aisle, which, at this point, I don't think any of it actually exists. You know what I mean. It's all just slowly descending into fascism. The Overton window has been pushing right since the early 2000s. Yeah, still trending that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a couple of senators have basically been playing the blame game of blaming trans people, been playing the blame game of blaming trans people, blaming acceptance of trans people, blaming palestinians, blaming the palestinian cause, blaming first off. If, if you want to bring that energy into this space, get the fuck out. Like we're not blaming people who are already experiencing enough. You know what I mean. Like there we are not going to continue to punch down because the person we wanted to win. That's not going to get us anywhere. That's what they want us to do. They want us to turn on each other and blame each other and fight with each other, rather than building community based upon commonalities and similarities and coming together with those commonalities and similarities and then learning from each other's differences yeah, right, yeah, they want us really scared.
Speaker 2:Not only divisive, but scared no, absolutely like I said, nothing has felt real. I have not been doing very well, I've been trying, but holy shit yeah that's valid.
Speaker 1:A lot of people have not been doing very well yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:I. I've been saying like I I don't want them to see how deeply this has affected, like that whole idea of liberal tears. Even though I'm not a liberal, I'm a leftist go fuck yourself. And also, people aren't liberal, people are progressive, policies are liberal. Words have meanings. Words matter and the meanings behind them matter shocker thank you for that differentiation.
Speaker 1:That is super important to note yeah, no yeah, definitions meanings. They mean something.
Speaker 2:They're there for a reason like these words aren't just gibberish. They have definitions and meanings and oh my god and they're not. They're not interchangeable I keep telling my mom satire is dead, irony is dead.
Speaker 1:The basic white man is captain morgan posing over their corpses basically yep, that's the one thing that is living on is corporate greed yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:so that whole idea of doing my best to keep the quote-unquote parts of terror and sadness and all those feelings close to the chest, Because that's what they want. They've spent the past what? Eight years saying that I'm not giving them the satisfaction. Go fuck yourself. All you will get is my rage. The only thing I will give you is my teeth bared and my middle finger. Go fuck yourself. You are not getting my fear. You are not getting my sadness. All you will get is rage.
Speaker 1:And more resistance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's at that point genuinely. That's kind of where I'm at personally and yeah, again, like nothing feels real. Nothing feels real. I keep having these really weird moments because I have issues with psychosis and issues with paranoia and stuff like that. I've spoken about that before on the podcast, but it shouldn't be funny. But it's one of those. If you don't laugh, you'll cry.
Speaker 2:Every once in a while I'll sit there, I'll be working on my book, I'll be doing whatever, and it'll be when the cats are out, like they are now, and usually when the cats are out, I am also out there and I do my best to have my headphones on and have something playing, because my grandmother is very frequently watching fox news and she's who I live with and that has made a lot of things. It's what it is. But you know, I'll just be sitting there like disassociating violently, just feeling the terror kind of like roll through and like just sitting with it for a bit, because I feel like that's something that I genuinely haven't really been able to do yet is like really sit with the feelings, and all of a sudden I'll hear her be like oh, what are you scared at the tv? It slips my mind because I have paranoia and psychosis.
Speaker 1:I'm sitting there like like you think it's directed at you specifically.
Speaker 2:I mean it kind of is it's like there's like half a second. There's like half a second where that like totally, you know, like because because at this point I'm unmedicated but I have worked through my paranoia and things like that to the point where I can take a step back and recognize, like this is an irrational thought. I need to put this thought away. And as long as that thought isn't given extra credence by the people around me, like if I say I'm hallucinating something and motherfuckers around me start looking at the thing, that don't do that, don't. If I say I see something over there and you know it's not, don't go looking in that direction. That just that just solidifies that that maybe there is. Just don't ignore it. Just other way. You know what I mean if someone else gives it a credence, then it's like oh, oh, but I'm able at this point to step back and rationalize myself out of it. But there is half a second every time it happens where my heart jumps into my asshole. I'm just like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to orient yourself.
Speaker 2:Every time I have to have that inner monologue of this is an irrational thought. This is just the paranoia this is I'm like, bro, I'm fucking exhausted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my god, I can't imagine it is what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely been one of those. Like I said, it's funny if you don't laugh. If you don't laugh, you cry. It's definitely. I see the humor in it. I understand, but that's definitely been one of the most like ah things about all of this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and also it's got to be really hard to take in and rationalize the fact that somebody that you're related to, who is supposed to love you, is acting in ways that don't feel very loving. And then in your environment you're trying to process everything that's happening in the world. Your house is supposed to be a safe space, but then when you're home it's not really. It doesn't really feel safe and sacred and it disrupts your nervous system. It makes you dysregulated and just like not know it's real. I can't imagine that being very easy at all yeah, I don't know, I I'm.
Speaker 2:I have a few family members who I have been in recent years attempting to rebuild the bridge with, who I have recognized definitely voted against me, if you will, in this most recent election cycle, and I have recognized that cutting people off for peace was never an option. That's not an option. Peace was never a guarantee. No one is guaranteed peace in their life, safety. That's why you cut people off. You cut people off for safety. These people are not a danger to me, they're just troublesome to my peace and I I have forgiven a lot more. I have forgiven a lot more. You know what I mean. Like I have forgiven a lot, and I firmly believe that in order to truly build community like we all on the internet like to sit there and talk about doing to truly do that, you're gonna have to talk to people you don't like.
Speaker 1:Shocker, you're going to have to figure out how to have really difficult conversations with pretty shitty people and find common ground.
Speaker 2:If you really want this, if you want this, that's what it's going to take. You can't just go cutting people off. You have to find the commonality because I promise you, if they see you as a person, it's going to be a lot easier. Yeah, but they have to see you as a person first and it's hard and we shouldn't have to put in that work and I get that, just like black people especially should not have to put in that work, which is why we should step up as white queers and actually put in that work. We have to be building community. We have to be bridging the gap. We have to be seeing each other as people, because we are people. Guys, yeah, if you cut, them off.
Speaker 1:You don't have a starting place. Yeah, to start having a conversation, or to start opening up people's eyes in ways or about things that they've never thought of before.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:They're not going to change overnight.
Speaker 2:Right, and I'm not saying place your safety in unsafe hands. There's a difference, like I think. A good example is my one family member, who I have spoken about here before, so I'm not going to get into exact specifics as to who this is, but this is someone who has saved my life. Truly, if it was not for this person being in my life throughout my entire life, I would not be here. Period when I would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, terrified because I had the worst fucking night terrors after my father died.
Speaker 2:She would take me in the car and we would just go, we would just go on a drive. She took me to Serendipity in New York City little cafe. If it was not for her, I would not be here. Plain and simply, period, no ifs ands or buts about it. And I know for a fact that my safety is in good hands, in her hands, even if, even if she has made a really decision that I wish she didn't make, and I am still trying to figure out how to have that discussion with her about, like, how you know, like this is harmful, it is, yeah, and how much this is specifically deeply hurt me, yeah, you know and I wonder too, what's the motivation for voting for trump?
Speaker 1:you know, I mean, there's so many people in my field that vote red and I'm not sure why. And at first I was like, oh, is it because of the mandates? Because there was a narrative at one point that Trump was against mandating COVID vaccines in certain states, and then also for healthcare providers, which we are. We're chiropractors and our philosophy is that we are separate and distinct and we don't believe in drugs in our profession and I don't care if somebody else has a different viewpoint because I meet them where they are, but for us it's part of our philosophy. So to be mandated to doing something that you know. We're fighting for rights for women, for abortion rights for trans people, for Black Americans, etc. And we're also fighting for bodily autonomy and we're also fighting for bodily autonomy.
Speaker 2:That's exactly what it is. That's exactly what it is Because a lot of there is a extremely strong intersect between almost everything is a right-wing pipeline. That's the first thing to keep in mind. The first thing, the most important thing to remember, is almost every single sphere specifically, especially on the internet, can and is in some way shape or form a right-wing pipeline. Makeup, content creators, video game influencers, podcasters again book people almost every single sphere can and is in some way a right-wing pipeline. The belief around vaccines is one of the first. That's one of the OG right-wing pipelines.
Speaker 2:The crunchy to right-wing pipeline. That is the right-wing pipeline is being all natural and very pro-Eastern medicine but not really learning Eastern history and Eastern culture and the way Westerners have brutalized Eastern culture and not breaking that apart and dissecting that and sitting in that discomfort. That's how it becomes a right-wing pipeline. That's it. That's the right-wing pipeline. That's like the first one that everyone thinks of when they think of right-wing pipeline is the crunchy to right-wing. It's really unfortunate, but that's the one. That's like the MLM to right-wing pipeline. Almost everything is a right-wing pipeline and unfortunately, the crunchy one is where it all started. That's like now you can see, like trad wife to right wing pipeline and trad wife came from crunchy culture which, like it all, it's all a fucking web.
Speaker 1:Right. So that was the original narrative, and then later on comes out that, you know, trump is the one who initiated all the mandates in the first place. So you have all these people in the health professions like voting for trump because they still they believe that original narrative he was president when it happened and it was one of those things where like he didn't.
Speaker 2:No one specific person in government made that happen that was like a bunch of different health branches and that's the whole thing with, like, the overturning of chevron. That's why the overturning of chevron was and is so bad. It's because now, rather than going to the actual experts in these fields, who have dedicated their lives to knowing way more than any of us could know about any of this stuff, rather than turning to them, we're turning to judges and people who can be paid off and people who are being paid off and who are being chosen and handpicked specifically to do things specifically.
Speaker 1:Because they're part of their monopoly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's why you're now seeing cases of listeria in every meat listeria in cheese, metal in sausage the Impossible brand.
Speaker 1:Everything's being recalled right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, personally, because I'm vegetarian for health reasons, I can't eat meat. Vegetarian for health reasons, I can't eat meat. For the audience, I can't eat meat because it makes me violently ill at this point. So I use a lot of Impossible products. I've found them to be the most autism-friendly for me personally at this point and they're the easiest to make in the environment that I live in. So I use a lot of Impossible products. The Impossible sausage their whole line of sausage was just recalled from like eight different states because there was a metal in it. That's what the overturning of Chevron causes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they want us sick. A lot of neurotoxins too now showing up in, not just the energy drink fads but, like you said, food and just lack of governance of food.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when I say we're cooked, I'm being facetious. We're not actually cooked. Do not give in to defeatism. That's again what they want. Like I said, I grew up sitting there. Yeah, you stare. Good, they want you scared. Don't be Be angry. Give them your teeth. They want your scared. Don't be, Be angry. Give them your teeth. They want your tears. Give them your teeth and a middle finger.
Speaker 1:I'm so fucking serious our community and they just vote because they're like oh, I heard X, y and Z and they're not educated. But I think those people that really aren't passionate about that side, there's definitely room to have a conversation that can evolve into something real, that can have an impact. That's one of the starting places I think we can start. Think about the people in our orbits and our families and our circle of friends that may have voted against us but aren't strong in their convictions for why they voted for Trump. There's so many people that I've had conversations with just recently that have asked me you know I want to be sensitive about you and we know you're in the queer community and so on and so forth. But you know why is the queer community so upset? Because you know they're. They're starting to recognize that.
Speaker 1:I don't know where they've been the last several years, you know but they're starting to recognize like this is really damaging, but they don't really understand the depths of why.
Speaker 2:No right. You know, it's like my boyfriend came by the other day and I was like you just need to like hold me, yeah, yep, exactly I can relate to that yeah it's.
Speaker 1:It's not great right now things lots of lots of holding space yeah, yeah, november is already weird for me in general.
Speaker 2:It was around like mid-October was when I had my trans awakening, if you will. It was October of 2014. And that was the first Halloween that I went in a guy's costume as a guy. I've dressed up as a guy for Halloween so many times before. Don't get me wrong, halloween wasn't your awakening for me, but that was the first time that I did it with a different name and with different pronouns, even outside of costume, and I was a male, harley Quinn, and then this year I was the Cheshire Cat, mixed with Harley Quinn. So it was kind of like a callback circle. Yeah, and it's been a decade. It was 2014. It is now 2024. I have been out for a decade and November was when that same person who first saw me as the real me would first abuse me. It was right around now, again a decade ago.
Speaker 2:And there's a film called the people's Joker on prime. It's something that they discuss a lot, the whole idea of how fucked up and just shitting it is when the first person who sees you for you is also just a shit bag, like, like how I, just how much that just hurts. There's this whole part where the main character has this monologue where she's like yeah, you're a damaged piece of shit and I'm a damaged piece of shit and you just so happen to be the first person who saw me as the real me and we just have to live with this. This is just just what we're left with, and it hit me like a truck.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:And they used it to do terrible fucking things Because they were a damaged, shitty person who refused to look into themselves. I also just have a lot of feelings around this time of year in general and, man, I was so hopeful, I was trying to be realistic. I was definitely the most realistic amongst the people around me With my mom. Love you, mom she's you know she's a little misoptimism. I love her so much. She was so and like really hot. You know, like I, I really, I really thought that there was a chance. It was like for a second I forgot like, oh shit, no, we have a lot of work to do and there is so much racism and so much sexism and so much misogyny and so much like there's. There is a lot that is just built into this society and I always knew that. But I don't know. I I had hoped that we had grown since 2016.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And, and I think we have, I think we have, I think a lot of people.
Speaker 1:We're definitely having more conversations. I don't know.
Speaker 2:I want to think we have. Yeah, I want to think the majority of people are good, because economists are always wrong. You know what I mean. Yeah, always wrong. You know what I mean. Every time there's a disaster or an economic downturn, economists think that things are going to go so much worse than they actually do, because people always step up and help each other. The first signs, archaeologically speaking, of human civilization being a thing existing in general was a healed femur bone on a dead skeleton, or on a dead skeleton, as if that's not the fucking moron on the face of the earth.
Speaker 1:I love oxymorons. That's great, holy shit.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you know, that was it. That was the thing I have to believe that we are good, because there are too many signs that we are good and not all of those are coincidences. Like mr rogers said, look for the helpers, because they're there, like they are. I promise they're there, like they are. I promise they're all around you and they are even within the people that you didn't think they would be with it.
Speaker 2:Like again this family member that I keep talking about. You know like she is a helper. She would give you the shirt off your back, it does not matter who you are, and everyone who knows her would tell you that she has friends that she's had since she was like six, because she's just that good of a friend that they just keep being around. I don't know anyone who keeps friends as long as this woman keeps friends, because she's just fucking awesome. I refuse to believe that there is more bad than good, because I have seen the good within these people that are being painted as a monolith of bad, and I think it's a lot more of being confused and scared and unsure how to turn to your community because of how deeply our communities have been gutted over the past decades. Like we don't have third spaces. We just don't. And when I say third spaces, I mean third spaces for everyone, and that's including the 11 year old running around screaming about skippity toilet and the 55-year-old with a bad knee who's talking about his train collection. Third spaces are for everyone, even the people who annoy you. Like I have to believe there is a. We will make it out of this. There is another side. There is more good than bad.
Speaker 2:These people are not the monolith that mainstream media wants us to believe. They are. Not everyone is out to get you, like the little magic box in our pocket wants us to think they are, because this also just wants us to stay in the house and keep scrolling Like it's okay to be scared, it's okay to cry, it's okay to feel, it's okay. I know I'm saying like show them rage, but no, if you need to feel, feel, hun, we're going to be okay, we're going to make it through this, but you have to believe, you know yeah and you have to. You have to believe, you know yeah and you have to. There's too many reasons not to. Once is an incident, twice is a coincidence, three times makes a pattern, and there is way more than three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, generally speaking, we are moving toward a more conscious Earth or human species sort of existence, you know, and I feel like like one of the things that I was thinking about is, you know, how the dark is attracted to the light, and the light can't emerge unless it's really truly dark enough. And one of the things that I came to in my own thinking about and trying to make sense of everything that's happened is maybe it's not bad enough yet for us to really emerge from this. I'm actually reading this book right now. It's do you ever hear of Eckhart Tolle? I have some author here's this book.
Speaker 1:It's called the new earth and I'm a couple chapters in, but he talks about when, when faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world and interacting with each other in a certain realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, that an individual life form or an entire species will either die, become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.
Speaker 1:And that spoke to me so like it. I got full body chills and it pierced me right through the heart chakra because I'm like that's where we are Right now we're here, it's like a younger energy, and right now it's like we are under a regime of like an older form of humanity, and I feel like what we are craving right now is that evolutionary leap and that's the only way I can look at it Like it just had to get a little darker. A few more people need to die off before we can emerge Right. So it's like keep doing the work, keep trucking forward, keep advocating, keep teaching, keep having conversations. Keep trucking forward, keep advocating, keep teaching, keep having conversations. Keep yourself safe, because, at the end of the day, we need to survive through all this as well by keeping ourselves safe, but also to continue to keep advocating. But don't lose sight of that evolutionary leap, because it's coming. That light is coming.
Speaker 2:That's fair. I want to believe that even those that stand in the way can still be met with. You know, totally, I don't know.
Speaker 1:They need to evolve. The ones that can't evolve, can't and won't, and they will die.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because they can't be part of the solution. And then there's other people that are in a place that they will be open to the queer community and that cannot be ignored. Yeah, like exactly there are.
Speaker 2:I I hate to say it, but especially gen x, gays and lesbians have, in a lot of instances, just turned their backs on on trans and queer people. No, I get it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I have friends that are like why do we have to? When I was coming out, it was just gay and lesbian. Why can't we just keep things simple?
Speaker 2:Even though it wasn't, yeah, even though it never was and Marsha P Johnson was alive in the 60s guy. Yeah, hello, she would still be alive today, if not for having been murdered, most likely unless the AIDS HIV virus that she had been infected with prior to her murder, unless that had gotten bad enough, but we would. We never got the chance to know, like she could still. You know what I mean. She wasn't that old.
Speaker 1:Right, she could still be out pioneering.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe yeah, in her 70s.
Speaker 1:That's young, that's super young. I can't remember the year she was born. It's hard to remember all the details about all of the people who are trailblazers. You know you want to pay homage to all of them, but then it's like you know just the details 1945. Okay, 45.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she was born right around this, I think, like a couple of years after my grandmother.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, she'd be in, like her late 70s, early 80s. At this point 74, she'd be 79.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yes, that's still young, especially for somebody like that, who's you know a trail. And sylvia rivera was energy. Yeah, sylvia rivera was 11 years younger than her, so if not for having gotten I believe it was cirrhosis of the liver from alcoholism, she would also very much still be alive. Yeah, 60, like, yeah, guys super cool, yeah, wow, yeah. No, it's humans in general. We as a species, are, are, we're not even a western society, because the global south, the global east, they've already like, like, we're the oppressors there. You know what I mean. They don't need to learn, you know what I'm saying. So I would say, specifically, the Western world is slowly seems to be becoming more conscious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're slowly emerging.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but slowly emerging. It hasn't, it has not reached that, that ceiling of power. If you will, and I don't know man, I just, I just think we need to tear down capitalism with our bare fucking hands.
Speaker 1:That definitely no.
Speaker 2:no, man, I think we just, I think we just need to take this entire system and just crush it. You know, like kinetic sand. That's what I want to do with capitalism. I want to, just yeah, take this entire system and just crush it, you know, like kinetic sand. That's what I want to do with capitalism. I want to just, I don't know.
Speaker 1:It'll crumble. It'll crumble in the same way the Soviet Union crumbled, I think, at some point.
Speaker 2:Like I said, when it gets to that, oh yeah, there's this whole thing where every major civilization has either completely collapsed. There's this whole thing where every major civilization has either completely collapsed or experienced upheaval that has changed it cataclysmically from the inside out every 250 years.
Speaker 1:I didn't realize that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Wow, so uh hopefully capitalism won't take 250 years. I mean, listen, it might only be like two more is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:What I'm saying is I hope so, yeah.
Speaker 2:Listen something about bread and circuses.
Speaker 1:We can only hope Right.
Speaker 2:Real Something, something tower of babble, bread and circuses. Y'all catch my drift, y'all understand exactly, I get it stay safe, stay queer. I love you all. Watch each other's backs. Don't leave your friend to the wolves because you want to keep yourself safe yeah, stick together, stay safe, stay queer.
Speaker 1:We love you. Thank you for supporting us. Until next time, thank you.