Content warning: violent bigotry
I've written about how I have had significant shifts since transitioning. So, now that I've transitioned, what is my number one fear in life? It's stochastic terrorism, and it's not close. Let me define that term for you. Stochastic Terrorism is when a person or group is so publicly demonized that one or more instances of violence against that person or group becomes statistically predictable. However, there is a random element to this violence where the time, place, location, and in many cases who ends up being the direct victims, are not individually predictable. This allows the actions of those demonizing the person or group enough plausible deniability that they would not be found guilty of a crime.
Here's a practical example. Earlier this year, Nex Benedict was murdered as a result of stochastic terrorism (if you're not familiar with Next Benedict, you can read about what happened to him* by clicking this link). Here are some of the factors that led to this.
Transgender people have been centered in outrage campaigns from the right, with a massive uptick happening beginning in 2021
In 2022, Nex had a teacher in his* school, Tyler Wynn, that went out of his way to support LGBTQ+ students. That teacher became the target of a campaign from the hate group LibsOfTikTok. The teacher began getting an unrelenting degree of harassment and threats including being called a groomer and child predator and stepped away from teaching. This removed the strongest faculty ally voice in the school and sent a clear message to teachers and staff that they will be targeted next if they support LGBTQ+ students.
In 2023 the State of Oklahoma passed a bathroom law in schools that required students to use the restroom that corresponds to the sex they were assigned at birth without regard to their gender identity. This is despite zero violent attacks related to gender identity previously recorded in restrooms in schools in the state.
Chyna Rycheck, the founder of LibsofTikTok, is appointed to an advisory position in the state of Oklahoma despite being the originator of stochastic terrorism time and time again. She was literally rewarded as the perpetrator of anti-LGBTQ+ hate campaigns with a state position.
(*note: different pronouns were reported for Nex Benedict after his death, but Nex's closest friends used he/him pronouns for him, so this article is using those pronouns exclusively)
So Nex Benedict was required to use the girl's restroom despite being transmasculine. The right makes these accusations that we need bathroom laws so that men are not in the women's restroom. But that's exactly what this right wing law forced to happen as Nex Benedict was forced to go into the women's room by state law at school. Nex, in retaliation for earlier harassment, threw water at three girls. They responded by jumping him and beating him until he lost consciousness. Despite losing consciousness, the school would not call an ambulance for him. His parent needed to drive him to the hospital later. The police bodycam footage of the interview with Nex at the hospital was painful to watch as he was being repeatedly misgendered. The next day, Nex Benedict died. The coroner officially ruled the death as a suicide. The ruling was dubious at best. Nex died from being attacked and beaten unconscious no matter if it was technically from the physical injuries or if it was because it was unfathomable for him to be forced back into using the girl's restroom the next time he was at school. By ruling the murder to be a suicide, it ensured that the students who carried out the end results of this stochastic terrorism were not charged with a crime and thus sends a signal to the next perpetrators of transgender violence that they may also get away with perpetuating stochastic terrorism.
Nex's death absolutely broke me. Transgender people of color are so often the targets of violence - more than any other demographic in the country (with Black trans women being the most targeted). While no one knew that Nex, himself, would be targeted for this incidence of stochastic terrorism, all these factors lined up in Oklahoma making the death of someone like Nex inevitable. Flames are fanned about how dangerous trans people are when the reality is that it’s trans lives that are being taken at ridiculously high rates and bathroom violence goes overwhelmingly against trans people (followed closely by non-trans people who get accused of being trans). There is a massive amount of blood on the hands of government officials in Oklahoma. It's for reasons like this that the trans community points out that there is a genocide currently taking place toward us.
This is my biggest fear. I'm transgender and I'm a potential target of violence just for existing. Additionally, by living my life vocally, that amplifies my chances to be a potential target for stochastic terrorism. It's no wonder why so many trans folks go stealth and try to blend in with the false narrative of a gender binary after transitioning, as so many are rightfully concerned about their safety. I especially feel for my nonbinary siblings though, as many of them really can't do anything to have a way to get gendered correctly as they go about their day. The barrage of misgendering has to be exhausting for them. Do they correct people when they are misgendered? Every time? Do they just not push back when they are misgendered? Is it some blend of the two? Do they choose to remain silent in a moment to not compromise their safety? How often do they state their pronouns in a conversation only to have someone use an incorrect pronoun for them seconds later without apologizing? Is someone really so obtuse that they've never realized that they use the word they in a singular way every day? Is this going to be yet another time where someone poses like they are asking an innocuous question to push someone to doing the mental labor for them only to then pull their mask off and unleash bigoted bullshit? I know how much a misgendering takes the wind out of my sails and exhausts me. Knowing nonbinary folks who face misgendering on a daily basis precisely because their identity falls completely outside of the binary is so challenging and they so often have no path to navigate that.
When I precisely describe my identity, I describe myself as a nonbinary transgender woman. I also know that if you're not in the queer community, that is a lot to take in and process. It was a lot for me to process too! I'm really fortunate that when my identity gets shortened, I can describe it as transfeminine or, more succinctly, as a trans woman and that I feel really seen and validated in all of these ways. For me, my femininity is the headline and the genderless, nonbinary component of myself is the subtext (and it's still healing from fifty years of taking the brunt of attempting to contort itself to the world's expectations). It is validating when people treat me as any other woman, even though there is also a nonbinary component to who I am. My pronouns are she/they, but I'm completely validated when someone exclusively uses she/her pronouns in conversation with and when referring to me.
With all of that said, I absolutely do a component of blending in when I ensure that I'm presenting femininely in public. In August I drove from my in-laws in the north woods of Wisconsin back to Chicagoland. I had a travel day and I wanted the focus to be on comfort for the car ride. I wore a comfortable ankle length wrap dress. But I also spent some time on my makeup before leaving. While I love makeup and I am usually happy to wear it, on that day I wore it exclusively for safety. I wanted to ensure people saw me as female when I was far from home and in another state with only one of my teenage kids with me. I didn't have my hair styling tools there, so my hair was thrown back into a pony tail, and that's really all the leeway I think I had. I'm 5'11" and that already makes it a challenge for me to blend in in public. For my safety, I intentionally want to send signal after signal to the general public so that I am seen as female. I don't really care about passing (that is, presenting such a convincing image of a woman that no one would even suspect that I'm transgender) as I'm not going to give my power away to other people's perceptions like that. I don't care if people think I'm trans when I interact with them for a significant period of time. I just don't want my being trans to be something that someone sees in the first few seconds they interact with me. That can cause folks to make their mind up about me before they've actually interacted with me.
I need to be vocal about who I am. I didn't spend fifty years playing the role of Andy Dufrense from Shawshank Redemption, imprisoned even though I didn’t commit a crime, who crawled through a long expanse of shit for freedom only to allow today's queer teens to have to deal with the same imprisonment and shit that I did.
But in order to be vocal, I have to keep safety in mind and I do have to have some boundaries established to help me not be the next victim. Those boundaries have to be top of mind at all times or I might endanger my safety for the rest of my life. I don't publish my last name or my deadname on here because doing so would endanger those boundaries and be a safety risk. I fought to ensure that I haven't created any public records that list both my legal name and my deadname together. I continually hear of trans people being targeted for who they are, and this means I need to stay vigilant. I have a friend that's involved with a nonprofit in the trans community. This nonprofit had to cancel a fundraising event for safety considerations due to targeted harassment and overt statements threatening violence against them. Heck, earlier this year I felt that my involvement at an event raised safety risks for that event and I unfortunately needed to participate in my own erasure to keep myself and everyone else safe. Violence against the trans community is so common that every November 20th is Transgender Day of Remembrance, which remembers trans lives lost to violence, especially in the last twelve months.
This is one of the biggest drains on my energy. I know that I need to be vocal, and being an example of a trans person living publicly can do so much for others. Yet, I have to be very careful to ensure I'm not so vocal that I become a target. Frankly, over time, it's likely that I will become a target because I'm not just going to curl up into a ball and pretend to not exist to make others more comfortable. But this approach requires that I remain vigilant in everything I do, because not thinking about how I could be the victim of stochastic terrorism just one time could be the difference between being here tomorrow or not being here. As long as my existence causes a visceral reaction in some people, I'll stay prepared. How long can I go without slipping and putting my life in danger?