Two months ago we celebrated our first anniversary of having moved to Germany. We didn't do anything particularly exciting, to be honest. Maybe went and got some dinner, wandered the city a little, played some games.
It might not sound like much, but really, that's kind of the point. We're not nearly as stressed. We're not (currently) subject to a genocide in this country, there isn't a growing din of fascists sharpening their knives just outside our door. Can't even remember the last time we heard a gunshot from the kitchen window.
Sometimes when I write things like this, I imagine that there's at least one reader out there somewhere rolling their eyes over the use of terms like "genocide" in relation to trans people like us. And sure, there's many who don't take us seriously. That was my morning today, in fact. Every great once in a while I succumb to the morbid curiosity of keeping tabs on our ongoing genocide by simply punching the word "trans" into whatever search engine is at hand. Reddit, twitter, mastodon (ha ha just kidding, masto doesn't have search), or whatever else.
Without fail I find thousands upon thousands of comments and writeups patiently explaining to me, a trans person, why there actually isn't a genocide yet, despite all the signs.
In the US, trans kids are being taken away from their parents for being trans. Some states are passing laws to illegalize trans healthcare even for adults. We're painted as "groomers", "pedophiles", and any other number of horrible thigns, simply for existing in this world.
Trans people didn't invent purity balls. We didn't enshrine cis marriage as the only legitimate marriage in law. We don't demand genital inspections for 8 year olds. We certainly aren't aggressively demanding to know exactly how fertile your pre-pubescent children are, as if that mattered.
Despite all this, we're told again and again that, simply put: there is no genocide against trans people. There is no systemic rounding up of our people, there aren't any death camps yet, and the government isn't killing anyone. You see, trans people just "want to be victims". We just "don't care" about the children. The problem isn't that an entire population of people are being targeted and realize they are being targeted and act as though they are being targeted, its actuall just mass hysteria. After all, it is very possible that an entire class of people who can only be identified by their genotype not matching their phenotype are wrong, right? The fact that its trans people and only trans people ringing the bells about genocide against trans people simply proves that there is no genocide, because if there was, then people not subject to this "genocide" would agree that there is one.
It is too late for your apologies. It is too late to come to us now and say "I'm sorry, I didn't realize when you all were in a panic about genocide that there actually may have been a genocide going on".
It is too late for such niceties. Your apologies ring hollow, now.
We just want to live. Germany offers us this choice. Here, we can simply live.
As humans.