Choosing Queer Family for the Holidays
I have spent the previous thirty-eight years attending family holiday celebrations in Ohio; at first with enthusiasm, then with a creeping sense of dread. One of the many downsides of C-PTSD is that you have it for Reasons, and those reasons don't disappear once you understand them. A little-discussed consequence of healing is knowing how much work it takes to re-heal yourself after revisiting the historical sites of your own destruction. This week, Ohio ramped up its legislative efforts to drive trans people out of the state, so I don't exactly feel welcome anyway. My heart is heavy for a thousand reasons, and I don't have the strength to haul it back for another trip through the combine, so I'm staying put.
This is the first year I am spending away from my family, but I am far from the only queer or trans person in this city who is skipping their annual family dinner. Estrangement is the simplest knife for the Gordian knot of being trans among cis people in 2023, and many of us are too tired for any other implement. When you talk to cis people about the trans people they used to know, they will often allude to a particular conversation or confrontation as the imagined catalyst for their falling out. In their minds, the person they used to know has been replaced by a snarling, paranoid stranger.
And over what, exactly? Yes, there have been Nazis marching on libraries and talking about murdering queer and trans people on the news, but the economy is fine. Yes, there are increasing numbers of Christofascist right-wing politicians also calling for people like us to be eradicated, but the economy is fine. Yes, trans and queer people are processing the fact that the people who claim to love them won’t even choose them over a salty-ass chicken sandwich or a wizard book that actually sucks. But the economy is fine.
Meanwhile: queer and trans people still make jokes about how we'll have to get out of the country before the next election, but we also know we aren't laughing at those jokes anymore. Not when we have to Google the states we drive through when we travel to make sure we aren't risking arrest by using the bathroom. When we bring these things to cis people, we are told to stop being dramatic or shamed for not allowing room for equal debate. There are cis people in this world who act like it's ruder to point out that somebody wants to kill you than it is to make a death threat.
(Because transphobes are always just joking, right? Another person like me got beat up by the comedians, but it was for a laugh. They don't mean it, except when they do, and then they might stab you to find out what your screams sound like. I’ve had plenty of cis people tell me I’m overreacting to someone fantasizing about my death. They don’t realize that I don’t have the privilege of waiting to see if it’s an idle fantasy or a premeditation of a hate crime. A cis person can be wrong about their transphobic friends a thousand times, and nothing will ever happen to them. I only have to be wrong once.)
In the absence of our families, trans and queer people learn how to take care of each other. We empty our loose change jars into our chosen family’s GoFundMes and open our own pockets when it's time to pass the dollar bill back. We buy each other’s arts and crafts and tarot readings so we can have the little treats that keep us from jumping into traffic. We make dinners for each other in our apartment kitchens and hold each other on back porches as we process the ways the world tosses us aside. We pick up the pleas for love our siblings scatter to the winds and pour what we can back into them. We fuck to create tenderness, to see our bodies desired, to exorcise our demons, and love ourselves without shame. We take each other's teeth and heavy hands and split ourselves open against each other so we can be put back together. We are picked up by each other after so many other people let us down.
If you're missing a queer or trans person at your holiday table this year, I encourage you to consider why they don't feel safe or welcome there. Believing in unconditional love and blood-tied togetherness on the holidays is oddly similar to believing in Santa: I’m not supposed to rock the boat by telling you what is or isn’t real, but I can’t forget the things I know. Trans and queer people do not currently have the privilege of pretending like you do. Your huffy fragility is an indulgence we don't have time for right now.
Do not pretend you have the power to save us, because you do not. Do not pretend you understand what we’re experiencing, because you cannot. Accept that certain kinds of trust need to be earned back, and work towards that goal if you want us in your lives so badly.
And if you can’t take us exactly as we are, in our complicated beauty, in our transgressive actions, in the terror of our lives on the edge of the apocalypse: let us go. Mourn the space at your table as we mourn the space you left in our lives when we realized you weren’t coming with us. Choosing your family is a part of queer life, but it’s also a survival skill. If you want to be chosen, love queer and trans people as we love each other, loudly and without apology. If you cannot do that, you do not deserve us.