Fuck.

Tomorrow, I will try to forgive and accept the outcome of the election, but today I will rage.

I know what I wrote a couple of weeks ago about finding peace between people who have voted differently from you.  I want to believe that we can and will do that. We have to survive as a country, and on a smaller scale as family, as neighbors, as friends, as co-workers. 

But what I need to say right now to everyone who either voted third-party, or didn’t vote at all in this election is: FUCK YOU. Never mind Trump voters whose reasoning I can’t comprehend.

Yes, I am talking to you “independents,” to people who voted for RFK Jr, and one-issue, and Champagne liberals who cast your vote for a Green party candidate when everything we hold dear is on the line. If you don’t like where this is going, I would advise you stop reading now.

Yes, your generally good-natured, newly queer and trans friend/peer/whatever says go fuck yourself, archetypal third-party voters. Your apathy and rejection of the reality of America’s two-party system is the worst kind of privilege.

You can say it was because you rejected Harris’ stance on Gaza. You can say you don’t like how expensive eggs are. Maybe you just don’t like Harris’ vibe. But let’s be totally honest when we think about the alternative. Do you like Trump’s vibe? Do you imagine that he will do better? 

Why would you not use your voice to vote for someone who might at least be malleable to your point of view? Someone who would not tear down democracy brick by brick? Someone who would not strip women and trans people of the right to make medical decisions about their own bodies? Someone who does not use their moment in the spotlight to spout conspiracy theories or racist untruths? 

Maybe you don’t think a Trump presidency will affect you much. Maybe you’re straight and cis-gendered. Maybe you’re coupled with a decent salary. You already have children and don’t want to have more. You live in a blue state or a blue district.

Sure, all these things may buffer you from the worst effects of a Trump administration. But what about your friends, your family, and generations from now who will be stuck with a conservative Supreme Court? Oh yeah, remember them? I bet you forgot about those guys. To be honest, I did too until just now. Fuck. 

Maybe you say that your vote for Harris wouldn’t have made a difference because the Electoral College is rigged. Well if we take a look at the results, Wisconsin, for example, was won by Trump by 32k votes. There were over 40k voters who voted 3rd party and who knows how many abstained. While it’s impossible to know if their votes would have counted towards Harris, it certainly would have made an impact.

I think in part why this frustrates me so much, is I know first-hand what it is to give your voice away, to shrink from taking a stand about what matters, to move towards privilege and away from hard conversations. I distanced myself from my authentic queer, trans self for most of my life because it was safer, and easier to complain than actually do something that mattered. Had I come out sooner, who knows the immeasurable effects it might have had on my life, and my community.

For those who didn’t vote for whatever reason, or who decided to vote for 3rd party, what could your vote and your activism - your voice - have done had you voted within the bounds of our two-party system?  Or what if you had taken your interest in third-party candidates to the other 3 years and 11 months between elections to get the Electoral College removed?

Your support for something like that- as well as your vote for a candidate that could have won, who would have at least entertained a different opinion than her own on the war in Gaza, and who would have fought for the rights of women and queer people, would have made a difference beyond what any of us could have imagined. Instead, your silence and ineffectual vote robbed you of your chance to take a real stand on the future of the country.

Your vote or non-vote is yours to carry with you now, just like my years of closeting is mine to hold. I hope to those voters that they can sit with their experience of the next four years and not have that same kind of self-loathing and regret about their choices and inaction as I did, and do. 

But I also want you to go through the Trump presidency and consider how things could have been different, more peaceful and loving, perhaps, if you had made different decisions. And to recognize how nothing is perfect, but there are ways to make change within the broken system, even if it’s harder.

thibault__thibault

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Tomorrow I’m sure I will have a rage hangover from my Instagram post today and this email. But today it feels right to take a stand, and also call myself out for not doing so sooner.

Tomorrow it will be time for all of us to rebuild and re-evaluate.  Tomorrow I will try to forgive and accept. But today, fuck this shit.

If you have read this far, thank you.  If you want to share your thoughts with me, I welcome them.