The year is 2041. You live in the part of Miami that isn’t underwater, in a 150 square foot apartment, the best you could land with your credit score. There is a meth lab next door, but the air quality is still noticeably better than outside. On the bright side, last week your boss held an office meeting to address the misgendering of someone who uses a neopronoun they came up with themself.
You were photographed at a protest 15 years ago so your identity has been flagged in the integrated DHS/IDF/Amazon database, meaning you aren’t allowed to hold any jobs outside of “UberEats driver” and “OnlyFans foot model.” One time you were really high at the gas station and stole a bag of chips without realizing it, and within five minutes the cops arrested you and shot your dog. But consider the following: a trans woman won the Olympic Gold Medal in kickboxing and everyone was totally fine with it.
Pornhub bought the rights to Palantir facial recognition data and now your ex won’t stop posting deep fakes of you two fucking on X. People actually call it X now. You got Covid-27 last week and the hospital bill cost as much as your grandma’s house. But, if you can afford health insurance, you can get estrogen prescribed overnight, tits installed the next day, and a pussy by next week.
Everything has changed, and nothing. The furor of the 2020s reactionary movement went nowhere, the woke won, transphobia is over. You have basked in the victory for a while, but you begin to suspect that a sleight of hand has taken place. It all feels wrong. Why is everyone you know still miserable? Why are there still at least three Gofundmes going on in your friend group at all times? Somewhere along the way, some invisible hand swapped out revolutionary queer politics for HR manager fluff.
It started small, with the development of the queer market. As gay people gradually emerged from the margins of society, companies began scrambling over themselves to cash in. Pride was bought out; Raytheon began turning their logo rainbow each May. Movies, shows, music, literature, became gayer. Boutique brands run by white women began churning out shit like “nonbinary underwear”. Pharma got it on it too, changing its thoughts on transexuality so fast that it gave everyone whiplash. Wanting to medically transition went from “you’re some sort of weird pervert” to “jk, that’s been a real thing all along”. And in those shifts we began to forget what institutions were our enemies.
In order to fight for our right to access hormones, we began to cite clinical psychiatry, and cling to it as a thing that can make us real.
Cops at pride pissed us off but we still went, bought merch, talking shit the entire time, and eventually we stopped noticing them.
You were raised on a diet of movies in which trans women were either predators or punchlines, and trans men were not portrayed at all. When you first saw yourself portrayed on TV with respect, you were wary, but eventually you decided it was essential, therapeutic. You laughed when this representation made conservatives froth at the mouth, you argued with them, and you found yourself defending the media companies that before had shown you nothing but cruelty.
These processes were accelerated by the realization that this was all you were ever going to get. It felt so good to fight for social changes, changes that were possible. Where the battlelines felt fresh. The trans suicide rate continued to climb. Why? Because they never gave you shit.
Now, there is nothing left.
The gulfs between queer sub-communities grew larger, and they all drifted further from the truth. Cis lesbians all became TERFs, trans women all became trans medicalists, trans men misogynist, and cis gay guys don’t give enough of a shit to have opinions on things. “Non binary” now refers to a specific way of dressing and people have forgotten that it once had something to do with gender.
Instead of queer being a continuation of feminism, a development in liberation, it became a subculture. Then, it split into several bite-sized subcultures, was eaten by the monoculture, and shat out mundane. It went the way of punk and hippy. It became a choice in consumption, and so it was permissible, because consuming is the one right you really have. The right to hand over your money. Whoopee.
…
Walking down the street, a homeless person calls you a faggot, gesturing at your outfit furiously. He says that “freaks like you” are the reason the world went to shit. You are surprised, and then ashamed, to feel a surge of excitement.
No one has gotten mad at you for your gender presentation in over a decade. That hate, as horrible and dehumanizing as it was, made your personal choices feel subversive, even revolutionary. You spin around, ready to yell at your oppressor, but an Anti-Vagrancy Drone has beaten you to it. All that remains of the man is a scorch mark on the sidewalk.
Going over the encounter in your head that night, you wonder if he was right.
Happy Pride Month!