An LGBTQ+ Pride-month Post - I Confess

THAT WHEN I saw the great journalist and prophetic witness against fascism,  Masha Gessen was clearly  transitioning,  my immediate reaction was that it was unfortunate because it would be used by the fascists to discredit Gessen and a voice that has been strong and to actively discredit ideas that we need.   

Sensing, immediately that there was something wrong with that reaction I soon realized that it was a part of exactly what her prophesy and testimony and mine were opposing.  Masha Guessen gets to decide her life, not my sense of utility or even helpfulness to the cause.  My reaction was one that instrumentalized a Person, a life that didn't belong to me but belongs to Gessen.   There is no way that it was just or egalitarian or democratic,  though it is certainly how most of us think about other People.  It was a serious violation of doing to others what I'd have done to me. 

I have to admit that I don't understand what leads Transpeople to some of the decisions they make, especially around the somewhat dangerous practice of taking hormones or the somewhat less risky submission to what may be legally considered elective surgery.   Of course, from their point of view it may not be nearly as elective as it would be for me or some right-wing, cis-gendered straight Person.   No one else is qualified to make that determination,  It's their life, their mind, THEIR BODY, their future.  It's not only none of my business,  my ideas about that are entirely unimportant and irrelevant from any legitimate consideration in the matter.  

Either we take the "T" in LGBTQ+ for everything it includes or we are hypocrites.   When you hear someone whining about it, objecting to someone deciding to answer to "pronouns" other than him or her, he or she, what they're doing is akin to the fascists who have nationalized Womens' bodies, who want to control the sex lives of People other than themselves,  to define the identities of People of Color and others to suit themselves and their lazy objectification and instrumentalization of other People,  it is to practice a fascist view of the lives of others in ways the fascist would never accept for themselves,  it is to do to others what we would never want done to us.   The Golden Rule is the foundation of legitimate government and a decent society, no matter how inconvenient it is to us or to others.   The problem with fascists is that they don't want others to do to them as they want to do because they don't want to do that to other People.    For the Golden Rule to work, it has to be reciprocal.   We don't have control of the other side of it but we'd better practice our part of it if we want any chance of it working, at all.