surprise, i am in a different time zone! so this is coming to you live at dinner time in PST. stay on your toes dear readers, eat your vegetables or something.
I am thinking about authoritarianism and violence today, I don’t think I have to say why, and I was reminded of an interview that Alok did a while ago about their comedy. my friend who’s floor I am actually sprawled on right now, a fellow transgender, sent me the podcast and I remember feeling so exhilarated listening to it on the bus.
Alok shared about how they cultivated compassion for people who buy in to fascist ideology:
“….what if we were to understand white supremacy as fear of death? yes it’s fear of Black people, it’s fear of indigenous people but it all ultimately stems from this idea of i need to have power to protect me from my own death. if you remove that buffer and you say true power is embrace of death, these systems have no purchase on us. the reason that ideologies of oppression and fascism take control of our imagination is because they offer us a brief respite from having to contend with our mortality. because ideologies don’t let us down like people do….so that’s why i have so much grace for people who submit to authoritarian’s jaws because it makes a lot of sense. to have to really contend with the fact that all of this is ephemeral that every single material object could once disintegrate is so profoundly destabilizing…..”
In turn, they described transness and queerness as a willingness to confront death. They reflected:
“we had to kill the cis-hetero version of ourselves, a people pleasing version of ourselves that we were on autopilot in order to be accepted to the world. we don’t be honest about that enough that there was a death that had to occur and then outside of that death a life that came from it. so queer people actually embody that grief ritual that’s possible for the entire world and that’s why we’re targeted because we show people you don’t have to stay in stagnancy that’s actually death, not this the replenishment”
if trans/queer people know anything it’s how to look at what society is serving and say ‘uh yeah none for me, thanks’; it’s how to change on purpose, it’s how to not bow to formidable and trenchant cultural pressure.
it’s rather tragic and kind of cruel to be taught to fear the only thing that is inevitable about life (death), to watch fear be used as a manipulation tactic.
may acceptance of death tug us to revere life more fully, may it give us the permission we need to let go of the versions of ourselves and of paradigms that are smothering us.
orders up!
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