MonkeyDoesPride

Feel awkward about people maybe thinking you’re queer but still want to clearly signal “queers are okay with me”? SURE. LOVE IT. HERE’S YOUR WEIRD FLAG.

Don’t fucking at me about allies right now, they are ALSO actually getting fucking killed over us. Take your puri-gay shitty tent somewhere else mine is great with people’s cishet friends and relatives showing up to have our backs.

twenty-five (!) years later I came out as a trans man.

now. the important thing to know about my ex-husband is that he loves nothing more than 1) horrible puns, preferably bilingual ones; 2) terrible dad jokes; and 3) committing to the bit until the end of time. he absolutely lives for Shenanigans and Japery. i do not know how his long-suffering wife puts up with him, but they've been married for more than 20 years so presumably she manages.

so, to break the news to my ex, i texted him. the exchange went something like this:

me: "great news, i'm a trans guy now"

him: "oh, congrats!"

me: "thank you. now for the better news: I insist you refer to me henceforth only as your ex-husband. do you accept this challenge?"

and my cis, straight-as-an-arrow, lives-in-the-midwest, married-to-a-minister ex-husband was like

Today, many scientists acknowledge the troubling attitudes that have long plagued research projects in Indigenous communities [...] But some Indigenous groups feel that despite such well-intentioned initiatives, their inclusion in research is only a token gesture to satisfy a funding agency.

Has everyone just believed this whole time that I bring it up for optics?

Everyone nods, "of course he mentions Indigenous people," because they believe it would simply look bad for me if I didn't.

In fact Indigenous knowledge is a constant topic of conversation and point of reference when I discuss my work as a scientist who uses Western science because my work is useless without it.

I work with endangered species which are endangered solely due to continual colonial violence against people and the land. I can follow the Western scientific method all I want and publish 100 papers on how to fix salmon populations—and get nowhere without Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty.

Indigenous knowledge is not an afterthought to reference as back up to Western science. Believe it or not, we can and should lead any number of scientific projects with Indigenous knowledge.

Racism is highly baked into so many aspects of science. It is important to always stop and remember that the view you hold about how something should be done is not universal. Different people quite literally experience the world around them differently than others because that is how their cultures function. They are not inferior because of this.

Do not use other peoples right to exist as a way to make yourself look better. Especially people who have fought against erasure for so long.

Because the United States wasn’t just a country to my family. It was a promise.

My father deserted the Nazis and became a prisoner of war. After escaping that nightmare, he picked up drumsticks and juggling pins and went to work for American clubs across Europe—not out of convenience, but out of belief. Belief in a country that stood for something better. My mother and her family became the most successful entertainment act in the USO clubs. She didn’t just perform—she became a star. By 1955, she was on American television, in dinner clubs, on concert hall stages, and she didn’t stop until 1987, when she closed her US career with a triumphant concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

America gave us a home. And we gave America everything we had.

In 1989, we bought a vacation home in none other than Sundance—yes, the Sundance, Robert Redford’s resort. We stayed for 22 years. Then we moved to Rancho Mirage for another five. We lived in some of the most beautiful places on Earth, not as tourists, but as people who had earned the right to call them home.

From World War II until 2016, the United States was good to us. And we loved it back—deeply, fiercely, with every performance, every tax payment, every sunrise over the mountains we chose to live beneath.

Then Trump was elected.

The day after, we sold everything. And we have never returned.

Let that sink in: after 54 years of paying US taxes, after decades of entertaining American audiences, after living the so-called American Dream in the most stunning corners of your country—we left overnight. Not because we stopped loving America. Because America stopped being what we loved.

I dreamed of spending the third chapter of my life in some lost, beautiful place in New Mexico, Wyoming, or Arizona. I even considered going back to Utah. The Four Corners—that sacred, silent, red-soil meeting point of worlds—was my dream.

That dream is shattered. Not by an earthquake or a recession, but by Trump and the history of the last ten years. By the rise of cruelty disguised as strength. By the surrender of common sense. By a government that feels less like a democracy and more like a takeover.

So yes, I don’t just see this as a political failure. I take it personally.

You might say I don’t have the right—because I left, because I’m not currently on US soil, because my blood isn’t American. But thinking again: my family paid taxes in the USA for 54 years. We entertained your troops, your families, your television audiences. We bought homes, we paid our bills, we lived by your rules and believed in your ideals. We have every right to feel betrayed by the current US government.

This is why I will always be vocal about what happens in the USA. Not out of spite—out of grief. You didn’t just ruin a political system. You broke my dreams. You broke my heart.

I will deal with it. I have dealt with worse. But I am not going to be silent. Not ever.

Because some betrayals demand a voice. And this one? It has my family’s name written all over it.

Why do I take Trump’s government taking over the USA personally? Because the United States was never just a country to my family. It was a promise.

My father deserted the Nazis and became a prisoner of war. After he escaped that nightmare, he picked up drumsticks and juggling pins and went to work for American clubs across Europe—not out of convenience, but out of belief. Belief in a country that stood for something better. My mother and her family became the most successful entertainment act in the USO clubs. She didn’t just perform—she became a star. By 1955, she was on American television, in dinner clubs, on concert hall stages. And she didn’t stop until 1987, when she closed her U.S. career with a triumphant concert at the Hollywood Bowl.

America gave us a home. And we gave America everything we had.

In 1989, we bought a vacation home in none other than Sundance—yes, that Sundance, Robert Redford’s resort. We stayed for twenty-two years. Then we moved to Rancho Mirage for another five. We lived in some of the most beautiful places on Earth, not as tourists, but as people who had earned the right to call them home.

From World War II until 2016, the United States was good to us. And we loved it back—deeply, fiercely, with every performance, every tax payment, every sunrise over the mountains we chose to live beneath.

Then Trump was elected.

The day after, we sold everything. And we have never returned.

Let that sink in: after fifty-four years of paying U.S. taxes, after decades of entertaining American audiences, after living the so-called American Dream in the most stunning corners of your country—we left overnight. Not because we stopped loving America. Because America stopped being what we loved.

I dreamed of spending the third chapter of my life in some lost, beautiful place in New Mexico, Wyoming, or Arizona. I even considered going back to Utah. The Four Corners—that sacred, silent, red-soil meeting point of worlds—was my dream.

That dream is shattered. Not by an earthquake or a recession, but by Trump and the history of the last ten years. By the rise of cruelty disguised as strength. By the surrender of common sense. By a government that feels less like a democracy and more like a takeover.

So yes, I don’t just see this as a political failure. I take it personally.

You might say I don’t have the right—because I left, because I’m not currently on U.S. soil, because my blood isn’t American. But think again: my family paid taxes in the USA for fifty-four years. We entertained your troops, your families, your television audiences. We bought homes, we paid our bills, we lived by your rules and believed in your ideals. We have every right to feel betrayed by the current U.S. government.

This is why I will always be vocal about what happens in the USA. Not out of spite—out of grief. You didn’t just ruin a political system. You broke my dreams. You broke my heart.

I will deal with it. I have dealt with worse. But I am not going to be silent. Not ever.

Because some betrayals demand a voice. And this one? It has my family’s name written all over it.

But the biggest thing by far is the constant comments on how we aren't trying hard enough. How the fact that we are trying our very best to not become what Trump and his cronies stand for is too slow and means we're all lazy and not trying. Especially during the ICE crackdown in Minnesota.

From my perspective, I made a post talking about the phenomenon here (which I'm aware exists elsewhere), then someone comes along and says 'Don't visit the US then!' and I'm left looking at it like 'C'mon, I was talking about England.' It didn't feel good because it changes it from being about my country to being about the US, which is really irritating (a common experience on the internet for non-US folk).

If you'd said, idk, 'God, yeah, they do the same thing in Florida! Idk why, they're gonna get heatstroke, but no they're out there like MUST MOW LAWN TO HOA REQUIRED LENGTH while being cooked like a lobster' I wouldn't have batted an eye at it. It would have been a shared 'why are people like this?' moment instead of a 'feels like my post has been derailed' moment.