"You are the revolution"
Trans Day of Visibility 2026
Last spring, Lily Alexandre released one of the best video essays I’ve ever seen, titled “Trans Day of Vanishing.”1 She describes it as her wrestling with the question we don’t dare to ask: is it time for trans people to disappear? Should we go underground? Live lives of stealth, if we are able? Is this needed for us to survive? I cannot recommend watching it enough, especially if you are cisgender. I don’t know if anyone else has quite captured the feelings of the trans community as well.
This moment is hard. Just this morning, the Supreme Court struck down bans on conversion therapy, allowing a new generation of LGBTQIA+ people to be pulled into “therapy” meant to somehow make someone not gay, or not transgender. No matter that this type of “treatment” has been shown to be not just ineffective, but actively dangerous. It increases rates of mental illness, self-harm, and suicide. And I say again - it does not and cannot work2. Of course, the same people who want to enable conversion therapy are those who think my mere existence in the world amounts to “grooming” kids to be trans or gay. They use that framing to demand that stories of queer people be banned from libraries, that pride flags be banned from classrooms, and that LGBTQIA+ people just generally be banned from public life entirely.
And it’s that last sentence that makes today so important. I simply refuse to stop being seen. As Lily Alexandre says in her video, there is one group of people for whom Trans Day of Visibility has been an unquestionable success: us. I understood my transness by seeing other trans people and recognizing my feelings in their stories. I understood that transition was possible by seeing the transitions of those who have gone before. And I knew that I had every right to be myself by witnessing those of past generations who fought even harder to be themselves. I simply could not have been myself if it weren’t for those who were bravely visible before me.
Beyond that, my favorite survey of the last year showed that when someone knows a trans person, they are far more likely to support trans rights3. Those who don’t know us treat us like an abstraction, a concept to be debated. But if you know me? It’s a lot harder to be scared of me or disgusted by my life. You see my joy, the love I try to give to the world, and just the general normalcy of my life.4 You see that I’m not that different from you, and the attacks on me and other trans people become absurd.
The final reason I refuse to be invisible is one of defiance. A friend of mine told me last year, “you are the revolution.” Trans people call into question so many things about our society, in all of the best ways. And I’ll be damned if those who would demonize me get to win simply because I stop fighting. I won’t do it. In the words of Neo from The Matrix5, “I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible.”
The cost of this visibility is high. I worry about being targeted for harassment or even violence, though my life of relative privilege gives me some buffer from that. Trans women of color continue to face far more threat as they move through the world. I’m aware of the stares, of the silent judgment as I move through life. I spend time and energy educating others on questions I simply should not have to answer, but I do anyways. And I do all of this while I continue to go through the difficult process of transition, and just life for anyone in 2026.
To my dear trans community: I see you, and I know much of what it’s cost you to be yourself, though each of you has unique struggles. You continue to inspire me every day, and there’s no community I’d rather be a part of. Thank you for your courage and your hope and your love as you continue to insist on not just surviving, but living6.
So today, I simply refuse to drop into the shadows. I won’t make others comfortable by staying out of sight. I will exist, publicly, so that those who would try to vanish me at least have to look me in the eye while they do it. But they will eventually fail. Someday, trans people will be broadly accepted. We’ll all get to be ourselves, and the bigotry of this era will be seen as a product of an antiquated time7.
While I do that, my existence continues to act as a sign of possibility for anyone out there who sees themselves in my life, and thinks, “you’re like me!”
Originally titled, “Notes on Vanishing”, which was actually a title I preferred.
As my friend Billie Hoard says, this is actually a good thing, because queerness is good, actually.
Apologies, I’m writing this quickly so don’t have my usual sources. I’ll try to add it later.
I’m writing this while in the waiting room at the oil change place.
A movie that is well understood these days as allegorical for a transgender life.
Hat tip to Nimona and Wall-E for this phrasing.
It should be seen as a mark of shame, but I know it’s more likely that anti-trans people will simply be seen as a “product of their time.”