How to survive the next four years?
How to survive the next four years?
As a autistic trans person who has little to no ability to mask and the current "administration" we have in America. What is things I can do to survive it knowing that most places for community around me are not disability or autism friendly. At least not towards me.
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Be the support you needed to make it as far as you did. Don't underestimate the power of your voice in a community, especially a newer one.
America will jerk back in 2 and 4 years, don't worry about that, it's the system working as intended.
This is pretty terrible advice. We have absolutely no way of knowing that America will "jerk back in 2 and 4 years." The future is unwritten, full stop. It may be much better than we imagine. However, we ignore warnings and threats to or survival at our peril.
Currently, trans people in the U.S. are under attack by our government. Hundreds of anti-trans bills have been submitted and passed by state governments in the past few years, including bills that carry large fines or jail sentences either for bathroom use or for "cross-dressing" in public.
Florida has a law on the books that would make it "fraud" for me to show my California ID, which shows my legal gender on it. The penalty for fraud is a prison sentence that I would serve in men's prison, where trans women are routinely brutalized by both guards and inmates (look up "z coding" if you have the stomach for it).
That is where we stood before Trump took office and the tide shows no sign of turning. Indeed, we now have every major media outlet and social media network normalizing anti-trans rhetoric, leaving us with absolutely no reason to believe that things are going to change for the better any time soon. Hell, with the current EO, it's unclear whether my passport will be revoked if I try to leave.
Repressive regimes don't overthrow democracy and open camps all in one day. It's a slow, tired slog of tiny trespasses, each accompanied by a chorus of onlookers telling the targets that they're overreacting and that nothing truly bad can ever happen. It has happened time and time and time again throughout history. We have every reason to believe that it will happen again (and again and again...) in the future.
I don't know where everything will lie in the U.S. in a year, in 5 years, in 10 years. Neither do you or anyone else who claims they do. But I know this: there are mass graves throughput the world full of people who thought it could never happen to them and there are millions of onlookers who did nothing except be certain it could never get that bad.
I'd split the comment. The first phrase about being supportive of others is great advice, because you will build strength in your group and community by doing so, as well as developing inner strength as a leader.
The second part is complete guessing, and is a weak guess, as you point out.
Dread and despair leads to optimism and overconfidence, it's cycled back and forth for the last 30 years. It'll keep going that way because that's how the oligarchs keep their illfound gains. I daresay it's been going longer than that but I've only had first hand account (that I was politically aware of) for the last 30 years.