Sleeping With The Past, part 1: Confessions of a Recovering Sith Lady
And you may ask yourself, "My God, What Have I Done?"
(Content warning: Republican politicians being Republican politicians. Given just how sick and depraved that is anymore, that’s a pretty serious content warning. Also, this one is a little more personal, in ways that people might not like. I understand if this means an unsubscribe. However, it’s also something I felt I needed to tell.)
One of the most challenging parts of being a trans person is coming to terms with the past.
This can take multiple forms, one of which - the regret of time - I will almost certainly cover in a later essay. One of the most common forms of this is the conversation with our past self; this is fairly standard among trans content creators, I’ve started writing my own version, and I will no doubt post my version at some point. But for now, what I want to go over deals with something a little different in terms of regret.
It is the “My God, I really was a clueless asshole, wasn’t I?” form of regret.
Us trans people… before we transition, and even partly into transition… we’ll do stupid things, believe stupid things. We are still the products of the society that created us, after all - and transitioning has a habit of showing us just how much of those lessons society taught us were absolute bullshit. That takes a lot of time; that takes effort, it takes some pain, and it takes an honesty some of us aren’t capable of.
Having been in the community for awhile now, I’ve felt I needed to put this out there. If you know who I am, you need to know who I was. I call myself a “Recovering Sith Lady” for several reasons… and while the title may be a tad hyperbolic, there is some truth to it.
I was not a good person. I tried to be… but I had a lot to learn.
So… let’s set the background in terms of philosophy and belief. Born into an old-fashioned Catholic family in the midwestern US; this instilled a rather typical social-conservative Catholic mindset, in particular with regard to abortion. Spent most of my growing-up years in a suburb of Dallas, which gave a couple of saving graces with some problems attached. The religious mindset of the area was heavily Protestant, in particular Evangelical Protestant, which affected the politics of the area; it was so pervasive there were still Blue Laws in the area! So, being a good Catholic child in an area where a good chunk of the populace thought I was going to Hell and where a disturbing number of people thought the Bible should take precedence over science, I got infected with a nice skepticism that would come into play later. (To give an idea, I bought a copy of Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species”, and took it with me around school to read in my spare time. One day, it mysteriously disappeared...) That said, both areas were really, REALLY racially homogeneous. I was fed pretty generously at the spigot of propaganda known as conservative talk radio - this was before Fox News became a thing, though once that font started spewing, I started drinking from there, too. And you can guess how anything like LGBTQ+ rights would be treated.
Yeah… a lot of fear and self-loathing going on in suburban Dallas.
The first signs of trouble made themselves known in my early teens; by the time I was through college, the egg had finally cracked. But, to be honest, it really didn’t affect my beliefs much. One unknowing friend back then referred to me as “straight, but not narrow”; that said, I really was kind of narrow. I was still a devout Catholic, I still believed abortion was wrong but there was nothing I could do about it, I was generally a libertarian asshole who opposed government involvement in, well… just about anything that didn’t involve killing people. I genuinely believed I was going to die because I couldn’t medically transition, not realizing that a nation that doesn’t supply medical care for its people is generally failing at that whole “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” thing.
And things generally stayed there for several decades, even several years into my transition. I mean, jeezus, I voted for that overgrown Cheeto - twice! I fancied myself a Log Cabin Republican, and looked for ways to support the middle ground, that area where hopefully compromise could be reached.
That said, within the span of six months - specifically, the first six months of 2022 - things changed pretty radically. I think that an analysis of what happened, what pushed me to change, is worth exploring, worth looking into.
So… January 2022. At the end of my rope. Things with… everything, really… had gone downhill. My transition was stalled, work was hell (and events at work were actually interfering with my transition), I couldn’t see a way to go on… I was suicidal. While this was definitely not a good thing, it did provide one advantage: I was open to ideas - any ideas that would keep me alive. Which brings me to the first - and perhaps most important - thing on this list.
Community
I couldn’t do this alone. I’d tried that, and it was killing me. So… I sought out community. This took the form of two places at the time: the local trans and gender-nonconforming group, and a particular Discord server run by a favorite author. (More on that author and her books later.). For the timeline: This would have been in late January; while I don’t have a firm date for the local trans group, I joined the Discord server on January 22.
So… suddenly I’m interacting with people as me. Learning about others like me, people who I might not have interacted with before. Experiencing their triumphs and tragedies. Sharing experiences and thoughts and debates.
What sort of effect would this have on a person? To understand this, I think I need to show two pictures.
Suppose you hung around the first group all the time. It’s very likely that you would have a worldview affected strongly by only the perceived needs of that group. It is the opposite of diverse.
There’s a reason we refer to these things as “echo chambers”.
Now, suppose life causes you to interact more with the second group. You start to exchange thoughts and ideas, hopes and dreams with these people, start to hear their voices, understand their needs. Suddenly you start to realize that the positions held by that first group are doing genuine damage to the second. The ethically neutral or ethically good positions you thought you held perhaps aren’t as clear-cut as you thought. And, moreover, you discover that the group you were a part of deliberately held information back from you, encouraged you not to look too deeply into the details of the situation.
The groups I was involved in still had issues and were still far from perfect - there are issues of racism even within the queer community, and intersectionalism is still a challenge that has not been adequately addressed - but it was a damn sight more diverse than what I was in. And I was learning from them - seeing experiences different from my own, taking in perspectives different from what I had known. Since this time, my involvement with the trans community has increased significantly, encompassing far more than I ever dreamed.
Sometimes the most important election we can have is the one in our own heart. And the state of me suddenly went from a solid red state to a state in play.
An Act of Censorship
The second thing that opened my eyes to what was going on was an act of censorship.
As mentioned, one of the communities I belonged to was a Discord server for fans of a book series - the Nemesis series, by April Daniels. The books in the series are YA (young adult) superhero novels about a transgender superhero named Dreadnought.
These books… I wish I’d had books like this available when I was a teenager. There were no positive trans role models that I knew of when I was young; almost all I knew of trans people then was what Jerry Springer showed. If I had read this as a teenager, to read a story about an all-too-human trans girl who tries to do the right thing and becomes the hero I didn’t know I needed? I almost certainly would have transitioned before adulthood.
Which is why I was unpleasantly surprised to learn that Daniels’ books, along with roughly 800 other books, had been targeted the previous fall to be banned in Texas school libraries.
So… what was it that caused such an extreme reaction? It had a transgender main character, who also happens to be a lesbian, and several other queer characters.
That’s it.
That by itself was enough for these people to call for censorship.
Here’s a hint, for those playing at home: Those that would deny information to others are generally not on the side of the angels. The reason why this is so devastating to LGBTQ+ people (and to people of color, as Critical Race Theory books were also heavily targeted) is that it denies our groups information to make ethical and moral decisions for ourselves.
In effect, to keep us from making decisions about ourselves and our lives that politicians might disagree with, information is denied us. Thing is, it is very hard to deny information forever - especially information based on fact, based in truth. As such, this information denied almost inevitably becomes information delayed. A person of color knows of systemic racism, in fact does not need to read a book to know systemic racism exists; denying CRT books just temporarily denies them the details. Similarly, a trans person is still trans; they simply discern this later, after hormones have wrecked more damage on their lives, or they never have a chance to discern this, ending their existences rather than continue living with the depression and anxiety caused by gender incongruence and dysphoria.
Now, the people who argue for this censorship argue that the information in these books is inaccurate somehow - that systemic racism doesn’t exist, that being trans is not valid - or that these students are not yet ready for this information. Unfortunately, the basis for this position is itself not based in fact, but in belief - and, quite likely, in blatant dishonesty. Both systemic racism and being trans have been well-documented in the historical record and in current research, and gender-affirming care for youth is also well-documented and approved by just about every major medical and psychiatric organization.
In summary, in making this decision to censor, these people were not making a decision based on ethics, but politics. The detrimental effects of such censoring is also well-documented in the historical record, as any queer person in the UK who lived through Section 28 can attest.
Like I said: those that would deny information to others, especially information they need, are generally not on the side of the angels.
A Bit of Philosophy
All of these events left me willing to listen. And to quote the Tao Te Ching, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
Sometime around April 22, a couple of days after I publicly came out, I discovered Philosophy Tube.
Philosophy Tube is a Youtube channel started by Abigail Thorn in 2013; the UK had tripled tuition rates, so she initially started by summarizing the lessons she’d gotten in her classes, to effectively give away her education to the public. The videos Thorn produces have developed from just a random person talking in front of a camera to genuine theatrical spectacle; Thorn herself has developed as well, having graduated with her philosophy degree, gone to acting school and graduated from there, and currently has a successful career as an actress and playwright. (Thorn is also trans; her coming out video from 2021 is a must-see.)
One of the more courageous things she’s done with her channel is keep her old videos available. Anyone trans who has ever recorded anything has a dilemma: what to do with the deadname material, the material recorded before transition? (I still have this dilemma, with class instruction videos I’d recorded years ago.). Given that “her brother” was the performer in all of the videos of her first eight years or so, there would have been a temptation to remove these videos from consideration. Yet, she didn’t - and I’m glad she didn’t, because of what those earlier videos did.
Those videos, as mentioned, were a philosophy education - including political philosophy. I needed many of my once-cherished beliefs dismantled in logical argument. I learned of the many heroes (and villains) in modern philosophy, names like Sartre, Arendt, Schmitt, Heidegger, de Beauvoir, Lorde, Fanon, and Butler. I learned why originalism was fatally flawed as a legal theory (and had shitty origins, too), discovered why Trump’s strategy in 2016 was so effective (if ethically monstrous), and learned how bad actors will take advantage of the necessity of doubt in science to discard established science for personal bigotries, biases, and agendas. (I will leave links to some of Thorn’s “greatest hits” down in the comments.)
And, perhaps more than anything, I needed this belief in a “default” destroyed. Free markets are simply one system of many; it is not some “neutral” or “fair” method of governing the distribution of goods in society. (For a business professor, this revelation was particularly self-damning.) Originalism is one (deeply flawed) method of interpreting the Constitution or law in general; it is certainly not a “default” or “neutral” method.
Where all of this led… I learned to take nothing as default. There is no default governmental system, there is no default economic system, there is no default gender, there is no default race, there is no default sexuality, there is no default anything. So much of conservative thought is built on these defaults; to have these wrecked was a revelation. These assumed defaults are simply one of many, and we need to make decisions about them on grounds far more ethical than what we have now.
I am one of many. But so are they. So are you, for that matter.
Seeing The Next Move
So for this, I need to be honest here. Yes, I was pro-life - in the old-fashioned Catholic sense. This meant no abortion except for particular exceptions, no death penalty, no euthanasia, etc. So when the Dobbs decision leaked in early May, I should have been happy, right? Abortion decisions moved back to the states, right?
Not so fast, for a couple of reasons.
The first relates to political strategy. I understood what Roe v. Wade was to Republicans, in particular religious conservatives. It was the bait, it was the subject matter that would bring those conservatives back to the polls. I always thought Republicans couldn’t afford to repeal Roe, because first it would mean energizing the Democrat base (not to mention pissing off a LOT of women), while having the opposite effect for their own voting bloc. In essence, by repealing Roe, the Republicans were like the dog that had caught the car.
So… if you have energized a particular voting base for decades with one particular subject, and your voting base finally gets the result they want there, what is that party to do? Get something else, another topic to energize the voting base on. And I knew exactly what that topic would be.
It’s a creepy moment when you realize you’re about to be targeted by an entire political party - especially a political party you’d once supported.
Yeah, yeah… something something leopards something something people’s faces…
The other was an understanding of history. As a high school student in the Southern U.S., I’d been taught with the mythology that the American Civil War was fought over “States’ Rights”, and not slavery. As a college student, thankfully, I had a wonderful professor who set the record straight: the South supported States’ Rights as long as it was a states’ right to legalize slavery. If “States’ Rights” interfered with slavery in any way, Southerners would be vehemently opposed. (Case in point: the Fugitive Slave Law - which severely undermined states’ rights in the North, but was overwhelmingly supported by slaveholding states.)
This was history repeating itself. By making abortion a States’ Rights issue, I could see the conflagration to come.
What I’d learned since simply reinforced the wrongness of Dobbs. In conservative circles, we’re not taught about the need for abortion as a medical procedure. (Much like the medical necessity of gender transition. I’m sensing a pattern here…) Of course, Republicans started pushing for a nationwide ban. I didn’t expect the violations of patient privacy, or the legal shenanigans that Republicans would go to in order to implement, enforce, and keep abortion bans, though. I also didn’t expect Republicans to demonstrate through action just how little they actually supported the lives of others. A true pro-life person would increase funding for healthcare, would enable and increase funding for childcare and education, and include payment of school lunches for children; those same politicians that advocated for “the lives of the unborn” showed zero qualms about letting the mothers of those children die from health complications, or letting those same children starve.
In summary, even in the most charitable of interpretations, Republicans won very poorly. And in their “victory”, they demonstrated just how little they respected the lives they supposedly protected.
Driven Out
Unfortunately, the leopard that was finding my face tasty wasn’t done quite yet.
It was June 19. It was also the last day I would present as male. I had a feeling about this going into the day, but I didn’t realize that one other line would be crossed as well.
It was a Sunday morning, I was waiting in a drive-thru line at a coffee place in rural Iowa, and I had my phone out looking at the news. And I saw news that… I’m not sure if it shocked me, but it disappointed me.
The Texas State Republican Convention had denied the Log Cabin Republicans the right to a booth at the convention. Effectively, they were kicked out of the convention.
This was, as I said, disappointing. There’s always this hope for centrists of standing in the middle, of having the luxury of not having to pick a side. That moment let me know, without a shadow of a doubt, that such a middle ground no longer existed.
It also signaled a sea change within the Republican Party. Up until that point, the Republicans had at least paid lip service to inclusion and diversity. There was actually room in the Republican Party for different types of conservatives, whether libertarians or war-hawks (excuse me, defense-hawks) or economic conservatives or Christian Conservatives. By casting the LCR out, the Republican Party in Texas was making a statement.
They didn’t care anymore. They didn’t care about inclusion; they didn’t care about a coalition. They were just going to have their narrow-minded beliefs, and would not tolerate any dissent.
Middle ground can only exist in a situation where people can come together as equals - and the Republicans were deliberately refusing that. There was no middle ground, no room for people like me in their world. Any sort of neutrality was impossible.
So who was welcome in their world? Consider the following. One year later, alarmed at the increasing connections between its members and openly white-supremacist figures and groups, members of the executive committee of the Texas Republican Party called for a vote barring its members associating with people or groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial.”
The vote failed. Moreover, some members tried to have any record of the vote stricken, and started going after the people who put the proposal forward. With that move, Texas Republican leadership demonstrated that Neo-Nazis are more welcome than LGBTQ+ people in their world.
Let that sink in for a moment.
Aftermath
So… where does all of this lead?
First, it has been genuinely painful watching the Republican Party over the last couple of years, as they descend into an echo chamber of their own making. It’s like watching an old person sinking into dementia, as a sharp intellect dulls into delusion and irrational anger and rage. The reason why the “weird” moniker has stuck is because Republican policies are weird - descending into this creepy incel fever dream of misogyny and racism and sexism and anti-queerness and anti-democracy.
Seriously, Look At How Weird These People Are.
Second, change is possible. People can change their beliefs for the better. Part of why I wanted to write this essay is to illustrate some of the conditions under which that can happen. That said, it also isn’t easy; it takes getting into a situation where a person realizes they need to change, and also willing to pay the price to change.
I compare it to taking a bribe from the mob. The moment you take the bribe, they have you hooked, and the cost will be significant to get out. The deeper in you go, the greater the price to escape. With political belief, the cost is guilt; once you get out, you understand just how you messed up, and how wrong you were.
Once upon a time, I was proud to be a Republican, and ashamed to be trans.
Now, I’m proud to be trans, and ashamed I was a Republican.
This Recovering Sith Lady has a lot to atone for.
So… some of Philosophy Tube’s Greatest Hits. Before I start, keep in mind that a “Greatest Hits” package for Philosophy Tube could contain all sorts of different things; this is just what I chose that I felt particularly relevant and/or poignant. These aren’t necessarily the absolute best that Philosophy Tube has done, but ones that I felt made a particular impact.
The Early Years.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHz_-CgvAw0 . Rene Descartes; 2013. Where Philosophy Tube started, talking about how “I Think, Therefore I Am” came to be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BcsKdvERZA. Trump & the Problem with Politics. Posted in November 2016, this was a slap in the face. Thorn talks about how Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-Muslim and anti-trans rhetoric has changed the game of politics in the US, and how this rhetoric echoes Carl Schmitt’s political theories… and where those theories end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlLgvSduugI What was Liberalism? #1; 2017 - The first of a series of posts on what liberalism - in a European sense - is. One of those posts that shows just how liberalism (and in later posts, capitalism) isn’t a “default” ideology, but just one of many.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHADWHsjGUk 2017. A eulogy to her philosophy teacher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgwS_FMZ3nQ The Philosophy of Antifa; 2017. Antifa has gotten some negative press over the years; this paints the goals and reasoning in a much different light.
A Change Is Gonna Come…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AuFvboGKrQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQNw2FBdpyE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeGEv0YVLtw
These videos, made in 2018 and 2019, are Thorn exploring her own trauma. Not for the faint of heart, but incredibly powerful. These videos also explain why the style of Thorn’s videos changed so radically in such a short time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCxqdhZkxCo Transphobia: An Analysis; 2018. An analysis of transphobia, and the tricks transphobes use to try to justify their bigotry, and to keep the arguments going long after points have been settled.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2W7P3wGBI8 Why does Britain Still Have A Queen?; 2018. Trust me; you will never see the British monarchy the same way again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAFbpWVO-ow Antisemitism: An Analysis; 2020. This video analyzes the irrationality and structure of antisemitic views and arguments. For one, quite potent; for another, its lessons have parallels for other forms of bigotry - such as racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNhj_s8flUk Amy Coney Barrett; 2020. In analyzing Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Justice, Originalism as a method of interpreting legal text is examined.
A New Girl In Town
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AITRzvm0Xtg Identity: A Trans Coming Out Story; 2021. Abigail Thorn’s Coming Out Video. This will generate a visceral reaction out of any trans person - because it comes from the heart. The stories of trans people are never the same, but there are a few bars that sound similar, and those bars will resonate. (When the actor playing Thorn says “I can’t live another 60 years like this”, I stopped - because I’d said the same thing, almost word-for-word except for the number, around my 40th birthday.) A must-see for any trans person, or anyone trying to understand a trans person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATITdJg7bWI Ignorance and Censorship; 2021. Understanding why censoring information is so damaging and so wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_SYW1ElDb8 The Hidden Rules of Modern Society; 2022. A discussion of social contract theory, and where exactly people like me (or other marginalized groups) fit into that. It’s a wake-up call to anyone seeking a middle ground.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eWIshUzr8 I Emailed My Doctor 133 Times: The Crisis In The British Healthcare System; 2022. Hooboy. Thorn absolutely eviscerates the state of trans healthcare, in particular the UK’s NHS. That it has somehow become worse than this in the years since this was made is absolutely horrifying.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVilpxowsUQ I Read The Most Misunderstood Philosopher In The World; 2024. An analysis of Judith Butler’s work. After this, I went out and got a copy of “Who’s Afraid of Gender?” It’s a painful watch and read for any trans person - because it goes into the tactics and interconnectedness of the bigots arrayed against us. I think my Catholic faith finally died for good on reading Butler’s work. (There’s also Thorn’s conversation with her past self, which is a must-see.)