Vote!

Trigger warning: mentions of gun violence/shooting, transphobia, sexual assault.

I don't claim the title "activist" for myself. I don't call myself an ally. You can call me what you want to, you can call yourself what you want to, but I know that I am still complicit in the systems that are marginalizing me and others.

I voted early. I had my absentee ballot mailed to my apartment at school, and I mailed it back the day after I received it. Good job me. Everyone who goes into politics mistakenly believes that they can change the system from within. I think we have to throw the whole government out.

This is not to say that voting is bad and that we shouldn't do it, just that it can't be the only thing we do. I say this knowing that I am a hypocrite because I have not done anything else in the wake of Kavanaugh's appointment as a Supreme Court justice, in the wake of the current US administration dehumanizing trans people, in the wake of Jewish people being shot in their own place of worship. I have been paralyzed by horror. I don't know how much more I can take.

Is it about me? No. Yes. I don't know. It's not only about me. I wish I had the energy to do more, to protest, to shout until my voice is gone and give my life so that others' might be better. I don't have that energy. It's difficult not to blame myself; it's easy to see myself as selfish because I'm trying so hard to survive that I'm not giving everything I have to others. I can't pour from an empty jug. I have to heal myself, at least partly, before I can help others.

Even if the Democratic party were to regain both the House and the Senate, this country would still be mired in the endless, pointless quest for compromise. We don't need compromise. Compromise ends lives. Compromise breeds complacency which allows us to think that we're more progressive than we actually are. Compromise is what makes people say we aren't racist when, really, we've shoved our racism so far down inside that when asked to confront it we retreat into cries of "but I'm a good person!" "I have black friends!" "I don't discriminate against people of color!"

(Being racist does not mean you're a bad person, and being a good person does not disqualify you from being racist. Also, "good" and "bad" in this context are highly subjective and fairly useless terms.)

I lean on and parrot the words of people of color and of other queer people who are better educated in intersectional feminism than I am. I justify this by saying I am amplifying their voices. Where does amplification become speaking over and silencing? How do I take responsibility for making sure I don't cross that line?

I don't have these answers yet. I'll be learning and unlearning for the rest of my life. I will make mistakes; I acknowledge that while doing my best to minimize the harm caused by said mistakes. I am overwhelmed. Today I cried in front of my cello teacher as I told him that I don't know if playing this wonderful, magical instrument is worth the stress I am under this week. I am hurting myself emotionally because I can't handle disappointing him, even though he's really just a proxy for my disappointment in myself. Today I watched my classmates pat themselves on the back for having voted and I thought, congratulations, you did the bare minimum. And I directed my sarcasm at them so that I wouldn't have to face the reality of my actions.

Vote, don't vote, just don't vote thinking you're the next Rosa Parks.