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Award-winning author Gabriel Mac reads essays from his newsletter, The Faggot-Witch Whenever. Sign up, tip, and engage at fwwhenever.com.
I really wanted to start this recording by putting this microphone in front of Sasha's face while she was sleeping because she snores. And when she falls asleep next to me and I'm awake doing something, I will like put my phone by her little face and record it. And I really wanted to treat you guys to that. But when I got up to get my shit together she instead broke into a box of chocolate chip cookies and started eating one. Girl after my own heart.
Gabriel Mac:Anyway, I voted. That's both a statement of fact, and the name of this piece, I voted. Then I cried.
Gabriel Mac:Last night, I voted.
Gabriel Mac:It's nice to live in a liberal place where in some places on the ballot I had to choose between two liberals, Though I also had to vote no on a ballot initiative bankrolled by a fucking hedge fund manager that would force schoolgirls who want to play sports to have their genitals examined documented by physicians as a prerequisite to participation annually. That sentence it's the stuff of my 80s childhood nightmares. Lately, I've been watching Alaskan political ads. For some reason, that's where my Paramount plus account thinks I live and they're bold there about anti transness. I've seen ads calling trans healthcare nonsense and ads saying that trans rights are ridiculous.
Gabriel Mac:There's an ad where a man repeatedly calls trans girls who play sports men. I wonder if you can fathom this outside the rhetorical, the theoretical, having your ballot and your television tell you over and over that you're not a person. Proposition enter your name here. Your ballot would read, Initiative to take away healthcare from your name. Vote yes if you agree that Your Name shouldn't be allowed to have health care.
Gabriel Mac:Measure you again. This legislation would require you to have your anus inspected and affirmed by a doctor once a year before being allowed to participate in society. I cried later that night. It snuck up on me. I'm a cool man, not at all naive about the world, and I was listening to cool, bass heavy music and drinking a hard kombucha while I marked my ballot.
Gabriel Mac:Does half the population of this state think trans people aren't people? I did think, slightly panicked, as I encountered Washington Initiative six thirty eight. Its supporters raised almost $10,000,000 Its opponents, a fifth of that. I know actual children well who would be affected by it. One of them has a dry, clever sense of humor and confidently informed me when she was 10 years old that her working rate was $6 an hour if I needed labor.
Gabriel Mac:God forbid she develops an interest in soccer. I cried again this morning. Not the part rageful, part sorrowful tears of indignity I cried last night, but a more defeated kind. I canceled my plans to go outside thinking, reasonably but pitifully, Why would I go into this terrible world? That is, Washington Initiative six thirty eight worked.
Gabriel Mac:Even if it doesn't pass, it crippled me. Today, the hundreds of people I would have passed saw one less trans person. The several I would have talked to at the deli counter or CVS checkout interacted with one less genderqueer in their day, in their life. And most important, I had my ability to do that boldly and proudly, so hard fought, stripped.