Wearing Bigotry On One’s Sleeve

I was at Costco yesterday, getting some prescriptions for my wife and a box of dog biscuits. Ahead of me in line was a guy wearing a black t-shirt bearing the slogan, I identify as a threat. My pronouns are try/me.

I couldn’t help but wonder who this person was trying to impress. Certainly not me. Surely even such as this man has a preferred mode of address; he might want to be addressed as Mr. "${LAST_NAME}" by most people, and only be addressed as "${FIRST_NAME}" by friends and family. He might even have a pet name that only his spouse or lover may use.

That this person cannot see that having preferred pronouns is just an extension of the preferred modes of address he surely possesses is a failure of thought and imagination on his part, and need not be my concern.

I might also ask who this guy’s trying to intimidate, but I possess sufficient wit and imagination to answer that for myself. He wants transgender, nonbinary, and other gender non-conforming people to know that they are not welcome in his presence. All he has done, however, is make himself unwelcome in my presence.

Then again, this person might be one of the millions of “lonely” men that have become a crisis in the US. They work shitty jobs, if they work at all, and probably live shittier lives. They’ve been ripe for a right-wing populist demagogue for years, and the country’s political elites did nothing. I’m not sure they even saw it coming; if they had, then the Democratic Party might have gotten their shit together and run a better campaign with better, more progressive candidates.

But the Democrats failed this country, as usual, and now these men seem to have used their vote for Trump as revenge on a society that has “left them behind.” The Republican Party will not help them, either, but will merely exploit them as they’ve been doing since Richard Nixon was President — but good luck getting these people to understand; they’re too thoroughly indoctrinated into Trump’s personality cult.

It’s hard not to think that perhaps such people deserve to be left behind — that all any of them deserve is be consigned to shallow, unmarked graves — but that sort of cruelty is a sentiment with which I am all too comfortable, so I try nowadays to resist it. It doesn’t help, it won’t make things better for anybody, and there were people who would have seen my corpse left in a dumpster so I know what it’s like.

Nor does the impulse to find this man’s mother, wife, sisters, or daughters and send them messages like, Your body. Trump’s choice. Forever. I would not want my wife to ever receive such messages. That would make me no better than Internet brownshirts like Nick Fuentes.

I’m generally content to live and let live when it comes to people who are different from me as long as such difference are no threat to my life, liberty, and property. Transgender and nonbinary people never hurt me, for example, and addressing them by their preferred pronouns costs me little enough, so I don’t mind doing so. I don’t live in terror of the possibility that the man in the bathroom stall next to mine might have a pussy. I likewise do not fear the possibility that the woman in the stall next to my wife’s might have a cock — and neither does my wife.

While I could get uptight about this guy’s t-shirt, the plain truth is that he’s doing me a favor by wearing his bigotry on his sleve. By openly displaying his prejudices and his contempt for people who aren’t just like him, he makes it easier for other people to steer clear of him.

I might be afraid of people like this guy, and the harm they can do, but I’ve been afraid before. I know that courage is not the absence of fear, but the defiance of fear. If I had to fight him, I would. He might hurt me, or even kill me, but I’d damn well make him bleed for it first. However, I have standing instructions from my wife: Don’t play the hero. You’re already my hero, so come home safe.

After all, when faced with the sort of person who wears a t-shirt that explicitly says I identify as a threat, the smart thing to do is just beat it.

It was with Catherine’s concerns in mind that I kept my cool when he presumed to join me at a table while I was eating my lunch. Apparently my earrings — steel hoops with a blue finish — that offended him. Or maybe it was my black nail polish, which I wear not as a means of gender expression or sexuality, but just because it’s rock ’n roll. But as I finished my hot dog, he glared at me and said, So, faggot, what are your pronouns.

I merely smiled and said, First, that’s no way to flirt. Second, my pronouns are none of/your business. Then I tossed my trash and walked away. But first, I had a word with an employee suggesting that they keep an eye on that guy. Turns out they already had security on the job.

Nevertheless, I was shaking a bit once I had gotten back inside my car. I had made a point of locking all of the doors and ensuring that all of the windows were rolled up despite it being a pleasantly cool autumn day. I simply did not feel safe until I had.

And when I had let the fear pass over me until only I remained, anger and hatred followed, for why should I be afraid? I’m not the one openly expressing bigotry. I’m not the one who compensates for insecurity by trying to intimidate others. It is petty tyrants like this man with the t-shirt, and the greater tyrants he no doubt supports, who should know fear.

However, I am not the man to strike fear into their hearts. Not on my own. I suspect that I won’t feel safe out in public again for the next four years, because though I will never cease to regard this sort of intolerance as un-American, this is America now. This is what free speech means, now: it means that people feel they have license to emblazon upon their chests their bigotry for the whole world to see, or broadcast it on parasocial media. And, in principle, I’m fine with that. I want my enemies to declare themselves. I want to see these assholes coming. I can neither oppose nor avoid the enemy if I do not know the enemy.

Nevertheless, despite being a man, and despite the defiance burning bright within me, I remain afraid. I am not a tough guy, nor am I a particularly brave man. I would rather have not been involved at all. I can’t help but think that I had somehow provoked that guy merely by meeting his gaze for a moment.

However, if he hadn’t seized upon me, he might instead have found somebody even less prepared to defy him than me. Perhaps by drawing his ire I might have protected somebody less able to withstand it. I hope that was the case, that my experience had that semblance of a higher purpose.

Of course, I know better than to ask questions like why me? I already know why. It’s because I’m there, and because despite wanting to be left alone I can’t bring myself to be a mere bystander. If somebody tries to bully me, I’ll defy them, even now as a middle-aged man whose student days are long behind me. If I see somebody else being bullied in front of me, I can’t in good conscience turn a blind eye.

Never mind that no good deed goes unpunished.
Never mind that getting involved might get me killed.
Never mind that nobody will ever speak up for me.
Never mind that self-sacrifice was never my style

I’m no hero. Not in real life, anyway. Nor am I anybody’s idea of a good man, but there are things you just don’t tolerate, especially when they’re happening in front of you. To do so is to let your own humanity be debased. I don’t set out to pick fights, but when the battle chooses me I’ll make a stand.

My pride demands it. My conscience demands it. It’s ultimately in my best interest. What kind of hypocrite writes about heroes in novels, but remains unwilling to act on his ideals in the real world?

Besides, if I don’t, who will? I’ve certainly read Martin Niemöller’s poem often enough to know that if I don’t speak up, there might not be anybody else to do so.

First they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me

I’m not transgender.
I’m not queer enough to really count.
I’m not a woman.
I’m not a feminist.
I’m not Black.
I’m not a Muslim or a Jew.
I’m not an immigrant, a migrant, or a refugee.

What I am is an alien in my own nation, exiled from an America that might only have existed in my imagination. Surely I should feel safe as somebody easily mistaken for a neurotypical, straight, cisgender, white, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon Christian man — and yet I don’t, because I know what the richest among us think of people like me: when it comes to the poor, no lives matter. Whether I like it or not, this battle already chose me.

I know better than to think I can get away with turning my back on this sort of open bigotry; as an individual person I’m a minority of one and as vulnerable to the depredations of tyrants as anybody else. Nor do I ever want to look into a mirror and find a “Good German” staring back at me. That’s the sort of a moral burden that nobody with a conscience can easily bear, and it would make shaving rather more difficult even if this looming national nightmare should someday end.

One Holocaust was one too many. I don’t ever want to become complicit in a second. “Never again,” must apply to everybody, dammit.

No fucking exceptions.
Not even for people who piss me off.
Not even for the ignorant shitfountain who prompted this rant.

Writing all of this has not eased my heart. Now I want a a Kevlar vest bearing the slogan, I identify as an American. My pronouns are FUCK/NAZIS. And a helmet emblazoned with the slogan, Fuck Trump. Just in case some of these fashsymp wastes of ammo can actually shoot well enough to nail a head shot.

Does this wish for armor make me intolerant? So be it. Tolerance is not a moral precept, as Yonatan Zunger once wrote. It is a peace treaty, not a suicide pact. None of us are under any moral obligation to tolerate the intolerant. If right-wingers want to break the treaty, we’re within our rights to break them.