Preface: This thread is less about asking for reasons to stay/go, and more of an attempt to not feel alone.

We have the means and opportunity to leave the United States in the near future. As much as we don’t want to upturn our lives, we also want to live free.

Reasons to go:

  • We are not confident that the current political order will do anything but make life worse for trans people
  • We are not confident that any political order in the next few elections would try and help trans people
  • Living in the USA with documents that don’t match gender identity is a red line for us
  • It’s clear that the USA has been like this for some time. It just happens to be our turn

Reasons to stay:

  • We live in a safe area of a “safe for now” state (Counter-counter: for now)
  • We recently settled down here, thinking it would be for the rest of our lives (Counter-counter: It’s “just” material stuff)
  • We have queer friends whom we’d be leaving behind
  • Why should we disappear from our homeland without a fight? (Counter-counter: What kind of fight do we have the physical/mental energy to put up?)
  • The places to which we can escape could just as easily turn against us

Has anyone else been wrestling with this? Most of our queer friends do not have the means to consider flight like we do. Additionally, our non-queer friends who would have the means don’t see the same danger signs that we do. It just doesn’t seem like we have anyone to talk to about this.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    14 小时前

    Well, you’d be amazed how many people are asking this question. Maybe you wouldn’t, now that I rethink it.

    But I’m going to tell got what I’ve told friends, modified for a stranger.

    If you have a good support network in your location, you have to factor in the fact that nowhere has fully shifted public acceptance of trans people yet. There’s places it isn’t as bad for sure, but even the best places have their flaws.

    So it makes more sense to stay somewhere you’re familiar with, with people around you that can and will protect you as much as anyone can be protected.

    If you aren’t close enough to someone willing to kill or die to protect you, that you can get to them for help if the worst case scenario happens, then you have to move closer, flee to whatever slightly better place you can, or be prepared to fight for yourself and your community.

    You gotta plan for the worst case scenario, and hope it isn’t that bad. That’s how you stay alive.

    But there’s also the truth that the more people flee, the less support is left for those that can’t. There’s a strong argument to be made that if you have the resources to flee, you could apply them to building a safety net as best you can in your location.

    Nobody can decide what’s right in this kind of situation except you. Whatever choice you make, as long as it doesn’t involve harming others to get to whatever situation you need, you make that choice.

    I can’t offer you what I’ve offered my people, a place to hide in extremis, a decently stocked safe house with someone willing to fight for you, no matter what that means. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find that in others, or that you can’t build it for yourself and your community.

    If you decide to stay. If you look at this and see the worst case as a realistic possibility, but decide not to leave, you get armed, you get trained, you get ready. You stand ready.

    You, both as an individual, and “you” as in the trans community; you’re not alone in this. There are people out here willing to fight for you and with you, at any scale that fight takes. There are people preparing for the worst that will help you, and plenty that will help at less severe scenarios than the worst. Some of us cis and/or hetero folks out here do see the danger signs, are horrified at how bad it might get. We see you. We love you, and we will do our best.