It is 2026, I’m over the idiocy and I’ve got some shit to get off my chest.

Cisgender is an adjective. It describes someone whose gender aligns with what they were assigned at birth. It is not an insult. It is not oppression. It is not difficult to understand.

Ignorance at this point is willful.

The language exists. The history exists. Trans people have documented our lives, built resources, written books, testified in courtrooms, and turned our pain into free education for people who still refuse to read a paragraph.

I am tired of teaching adults how not to be dangerous.

I spend much of my life advocating for queer people and other marginalized communities. That work has drained me and given me purpose all at once.

My partner once called me the most extroverted person they had ever met. Now I calculate whether strangers are safe before I leave home. I have watched myself turn inward. I have never been this afraid of other people.

Maybe my spark did not disappear.

Maybe it became a blaze.

That does not mean everyone deserves access to its warmth.

In my personal relationships, it is not my responsibility to educate someone into becoming a safe friend, partner, or ally. Especially another queer person. You have access to our work. You have access to lived experience. You have access to the truth.

At some point, refusing to learn stops being confusion and becomes character.

The same applies to what you purchase.

Buying Harry Potter merchandise, playing the games, and visiting the parks are not politically neutral acts. Money is participation. Nostalgia does not absolve anyone of responsibility.

You cannot claim solidarity with trans people while financing someone who uses her wealth and influence against us. Support queer writers and artists instead. Support people creating worlds without using the money to make ours smaller.

Meanwhile, this country is being run by a convicted felon found civilly liable for sexual abuse. A man who rambles through grievances and recycled lies, falls asleep during public appearances, and performs strength through volume because there is nothing beneath the performance worth following.

Narcissism beneath confidence.

Cowardice beneath bravado.

Emptiness beneath righteousness.

His administration is using federal power to erase trans people from identification, education, healthcare, employment, and public life.

Then they call us dangerous.

Predators. Extremists. Abominations.

The projection is glaring.

The people stripping rights from trans children call themselves protectors. The people worshipping a convicted felon and sexual abuser call themselves defenders of morality. The people using government power to erase minorities call themselves victims.

They are the abominations they keep searching for in everyone else.

They hide malice beneath patriotism and cruelty beneath scripture. They speak about family while making homes unsafe. They speak about children while targeting the children already most vulnerable. They speak about freedom while deciding which bodies the government will recognize.

This is not a difference of opinion.

It is power being used deliberately against people they believe are small enough to defeat.

They know their decisions harm people. Their supporters know too. They see the policies, hear the testimony, watch the consequences, and decide that cruelty is worth the price of belonging.

That is not ignorance.

It is choice.

I will continue advocating for my community and every marginalized person targeted by this machinery. But advocacy does not require surrendering my boundaries.

I do not owe unsafe people my patience.

I do not owe willfully ignorant people my labor.

I do not owe anyone the chance to practice their humanity on me.

My softness is not gone.

It learned discernment.

My spark became a blaze because this moment required fire.

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By Gemma Flora Ortwerth

Read more of my work in Mourning and Mayhem: Discomfort Guaranteed, available on Amazon:

Mourning and Mayhem: Discomfort Guaranteed⁠