Alive: Existence as an Act of Resistance
Words by Abigail McArthur-Self
Graphics by Anjoli Trinidad
I was in high school when I first truly understood that I was queer, and I faced the decision most of us do: if and how to come out. I was making this decision a few years after the 2016 election – used to unprecedented queer acceptance that I’d been raised outside of, while witnessing pushback and turmoil I wasn’t experienced enough to understand, and wondering if we really would lose our rights.
Please don’t misunderstand – we’ve never fully had them, I don’t mean to imply otherwise, but I’m too young to know what it was like to be totally without. I am too young to have lived through AIDs crisis or to remember the early aughts transition towards increasing acceptance.
So, I made my choice and came out. Then, like every other queer person, I learned that coming out never really stops. It’s in everyday choices like signing off my emails, introducing myself to people, and mentioning my partner. Lately, they’ve gotten harder to make. It’s so tempting, just once, to put “Ms.” on the automated form that sends my feedback to my representative, to select “female” on that next job application, to drop my pronouns from my accounts and let the assumptions based on my name go uncorrected.
Why not? It feels less safe every day. Maybe I’d be better off, more hirable, more appealing, less a target for smug conservatives on the internet. Maybe if I stopped acknowledging I was autistic, if I was a Jew by choice just a little less proudly, if I kept quieter, if I.
If I.
If I.
I cannot fathom what the people realising now – in this America – that they are queer feel like, but I feel the urge to hide.
I feel like a time is coming when it might be the only safe option, like we’re getting closer to a dire situation. I think a lot of younger folks from marginalised communities have wondered:
If it were us back then, when it was worse, what would we do?
Would we be loud? Would we fight back? Would we hide? Would we flee?
(Who would make it?)
I’m not here to judge anyone’s choices. If the worst comes, we’ll need to give it our all. Our communities and our people are going to live on through the ones who do make it, however they make it. When people want you gone, surviving is an act of resistance. Every part of ourselves we can bring into the future is a victory in the face of everything we stand to lose.
Not everyone has the option to hide. Some people are married with kids, some people don’t pass, some people’s disabilities aren’t invisible, some people don’t have the documentation they need.
There is so much vulnerability in being visible as an individual, but there’s strength in being visible as a community. We cannot let people forget we are here or pretend we never existed. We cannot disappear, as if complying with the wishes of the alt-right will keep us safe from them.
Those of us who have some level of privilege – financial stability, citizenship, whiteness, whatever it may be – should evaluate where we can step forward because neo-facists will come after all of us, but they’re coming after the most disenfranchised first. They’re coming after the people they think won’t be missed. If that’s not you, consider moving to the front, holding the line, and showing them they’re wrong.
Right now, one of the dangers we’re seeing is anticipatory compliance – companies, states, cities, and people changing their policies and publicity to distance themselves from queer people, immigrants, non-Christians, and people of colour preemptively. Hiding is one thing. Companies following profit, people throwing those more vulnerable than themselves into danger first?
That’s not self-preservation. That is capitulation, and the more we capitulate now, the more the puppet masters of Project 2025 can pretend that they didn’t have to force us to.
There are limits to what we can do. We can join protests. We can call representatives. We can speak out. We can donate time, resources, or money if we have it. We can also keep existing – and not just existing: living visibly and openly as ourselves. We are part of The People. Trump and Elon want to pretend they have a mandate; we can remind the world that they do not. We have communities and cultures and needs and rights. The more we keep loudly living our lives in addition to our overt acts of political resistance, the harder it’ll be to remove us. Or – God forbid – to erase us entirely.
