GENDER OUTLAWS TAKE CONTROL
Tuesday 7th of November was a night of decisive victories for the US Democrats, winning a series of smaller elections across the country in what feels like the final turning of the tide in the utter shitstorm that has been the past year or so.
Most notably, transgender woman and Democratic candidate Danica Roem won a decisive victory against Republican Bob Marshall AKA the asshole who first introduced the “Bathroom Bill” AKA a man who referred to HIMSELF as the states “Chief Homophobe”. I mean WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK.
For those of you who don’t know, the “Bathroom Bill” was a transphobic piece of shit bill that meant that transgender individuals had to use the bathroom that corresponded with the sex on their birth certificate. Apparently, Marshall assumed all transgender people were perverts, what an asshole right? Well the state of Virginia decided to send him a big “FUCK YOU”.
As we end this year’s Transgender Awareness Week it does us good to think of this victory and use it to inspire further change.
Ms. Roem was not the only victor of the night, Andrea Jenkins, a transgender woman of color, won her city council seat in Minneapolis. It’s almost as if people are starting to realize that being transgender doesn’t make you abnormal, you are equally as capable of running for government.
I mean the one teeny inspiring thing I can gather from the fucking Cheeto man being President of the United States is that you really can be anything if you set your mind to it. If that racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, despicable human being can be “leader of the free world” then anyone can.
But returning to more positive thoughts, it wasn’t only transgender people who were victorious. Ravinder Bhalla was elected mayor, the first Sikh mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey, despite facing a horrifically racist campaign that called him a terrorist. Wilmot Collins, who fled the Liberian civil war in 1989, was elected Montana’s first black mayor defeating his opponent Jim Smith who was an anti-refugee alt-right supporting fucknut. Hala Alaya and Elizabeth Guzman are two Latina women who are the first such to be elected to Virginia’s general assembly, and they are joined by Kathy Tran an Asian-American woman.
Maybe the tides are turning, maybe this is just a blip, but either way it was a night to celebrate because guess what – the world isn’t completely shit and it’s small elections where change like this can start.
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Illustration by Ronan Porter