On June 18th, the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold an anti-trans law in Tennessee that bans the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors.
Trans kids face dire threats from Republicans seeking to legislate them out of existence
A widespread culture of transphobia denies them basic respect and dignity. Democrats have stood by and watched as trans youth and adults are denied access to life-saving healthcare. Trans people are targeted by vigilantes, raped and murdered by abusive men, forced to migrate to seek healthcare, banished from their families. They often end up homeless, sex-trafficked, or dead. Seeing no place for themselves in a society intent on their destruction, trans people suffer astronomical rates of suicide and self-harm. With the Supreme Court upholding bans on gender-affirming care for trans kids, the anti-trans rampage continues with no end in sight.
Thankfully, the LGBT elites have responded decisively – not with any meaningful resistance, but with commercialized pride parades that mask the sobering reality that trans people are under attack. The glamorous spectacle of pride celebrates conspicuous consumption and props up non-profits, corporations, universities and liberal politicians as the saviors of queer people, all under the comforting watch of police cruisers decked out in rainbow colors. Queer attendees can march, shop around, and hook up, offering a brief, comforting respite from the reality of increasingly vicious and open homophobic and transphobic attacks.
Pride parades are a distortion of the legacy of the ’69 Stonewall riots
After a violent police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a bar where queer and transgender people could gather and be themselves, Stonewall rebels fought back against the police, storming the national political stage and ushering in a decades-long fight for gay rights. Bargoers and onlookers at Stonewall realized that for them to feel safe, they had to fight—and fight they did. In the ’80s and ’90s, queers organized against a ruling class that had abandoned them to die in the thousands to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Groups like AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) rebelled against reactionary churches and politicians that shamed gays and refused medical care to AIDS patients. They loudly and outrageously proclaimed their place in society through spectacles like kiss-ins and die-ins. They were beaten, arrested, and killed for their heroic resistance. The struggle brought queers into public life, challenged patriarchal culture, and resulted in life-saving treatments for HIV/AIDS, a massive increase in access to sexual healthcare, and protections from discrimination.
In recent decades, however, the struggle for gay rights has been taken over by Democrat politicians and non-profits that channel queer rage to further their careers, and corporations that rep Pride to boost sales. Pride has become a reactionary exercise in collective ignorance of the war against us raging on outside the parade barriers. Leftist protests attempting to revitalize the spirit of Stonewall always end up being the same lame tame marches around downtown that fail to challenge the ruling class and confront the enemy. With reactionaries besieging “safe spaces” and threatening our lives, queers have forgotten how to bash back.
Queer and trans youth feel in their bones that they have no future within this system
Queer youth today are given the grim choices of assimilation to the patriarchy, conspicuous consumption, social media addiction, life in the closet, or suicide and self-harm. How many more of your people are you gonna let die before you get up and do something about it?
To win a real future for trans youth, we need to come together and create an organized movement of mass, militant resistance against the patriarchy, rooted among the people facing the worst of these attacks.
Nex Benedict was a nonbinary child from Oklahoma who died on February 8 2024 at age 13 after being viciously bullied by their classmates for a year. A day after they were beaten in the girls’ restroom, they were found dead due to a suspected overdose.
If you’re sick of your rage getting pinkwashed into yet another algorithmic advertisement, join Dare to Struggle as we hit the streets beyond pride month to go to the people and agitate against the oppression of queers.
Dare to Struggle 