Jealous of coronavirus, radical trans activists seek attention from Buzzfeed

While the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic ravages our communities, health care infrastructure, and economies, undoubtedly the most pressing question on anyone’s mind is just “how trans and nonbinary people are coping right now.” Never fear, BuzzFeed has your concerns covered.

Reaching out to the trans and nonbinary community, BuzzFeed found that the lives of these individuals had been upended, due to the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, the normal problems of life have been exacerbated by the need for quarantine and self-isolation.

The overburdened health care system has ruled out non-essential surgeries and doctors visits, housing is precarious as job losses near the 7 million mark, and these same problems that are affecting the broader population are affecting this community as well.

A 31 year old Floridian named Kela was quoted as saying “It's ironic because I've been experiencing prejudice due to my gender and cognitive disabilities for years, but this is the first time I'm actually going to get government assistance.”

They went on to say “It's amazing to me how much help has been available that the government has withheld from people like me because we weren't valuable enough until everyone else also experienced hardship. So where everyone I know is freaking out I'm kind of feeling more like, ‘Welcome to the party.’”

This just goes to show that no matter what your gender expression or sexual identity, you can be callous and unfeeling to the broader population, and too focused on your own penchant for oppression.

BuzzFeed reports that because non-essential surgeries are discontinued at hospitals worldwide, those who were anticipating undergoing top surgery, also known as a double mastectomy, are concerned that this surgery may be permanently delayed. People who have obtained binders, to suppress the visual appearance of their female breasts, are not wearing them because they diminish respiratory function, and they don’t want people to think they have COVID-19 simply because they can’t breathe properly.

Other individuals are concerned that the timing of the pandemic will screw up their legal name change paperwork, or make it more difficult to socially transition. Just as with every other conceivable support apparatus, those that serve trans and nonbinary individuals have gone online.

The online support systems have come to take the place of in-person meetings for drug and alcohol recovery, domestic abuse victims and survivors, sewing clubs (stitch n’ bitch anyone?), educational tools, and near every other form of social interaction.

Leonard, a clinician interviewed by BuzzFeed said “Especially as a black nonbinary individual, I have seen people who have dealt with so much marginalization as it is, that there’s that resilience factor of ‘I’ve already gone through so much, I’m gonna continue to push my way through this.’”

“I’m really careful with that word, ‘resilience,’” Leonard said, “because it almost puts the spin out there that if you don’t make it then you weren’t resilient, and I’m really careful about that because there have been people who have tried their damndest and didn’t make it.”

What may lack resiliency, however, is this movement to keep us all divided by chosen and perceived identity factors. When it feels like spiders are weaving webs in your lungs and you’re in desperate need of a ventilator, the only thing that matters is your humanity—not gender expression, not hair color or dress size, not even your name.

If anything, what the BuzzFeed article shows us is that there’s way less difference between all of us that the identity politics craze had us believe. With extensive death, rampant spread of illness, government confusion, media misinformation, and individuals taking the responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities into their own hands, we are more than our identities.

Regardless of Kela’s admonition for the rest of humanity to join her pity party, this is exactly the kind of division we need to steer clear of. We are more than our given names, more than our chosen names, more than how we wish to appear to others and even more than that ideal version of ourselves we keep in our heads and try to configure our bodies to match. We are this human tribe, this hive, this interconnected species, and we are in danger.