キツネ じゃな い乙女な メギツネ

"Trans rights are human rights! Y'all means all are here to fight!"

The chant rose from the LGBTQIA+ Society booth; the semiannual Human Rights Festival was in full swing, food trucks lining the street outside the campus center, live music blaring from a stage at the far end, every activist group on campus with a table. Even them.

The old defectors from the LGBTQIA+ Society actually got approval from the Sociology department to set up a booth for the notoriously transphobic LGB Alliance.

 "Trans rights are human rights! Y'all means all are here to fight!"

Victor Victoria, the Society president, had authorized a counter protest to be held for as long as the LGB Alliance could stand it, drowning out any conversation they might make, and they sure as hell didn’t have the numbers that we did, so we thought it would work. I watched with Kieran as the ten designated counters, led by vice president Xander, marched in a circle around the other booth.

There were four lesbians and one gay man, all of whom we’d had run-ins like this with before; two women were shouting back at our protest in futility, another recording was us with her phone, the gay man was talking to passersby despite the protest, and then there was Marina.

"Trans rights are human rights! Y'all means all are here to fight!"

While everyone else looked panicked, the brazenly tall Black woman looked calm. Marina sipped from a water bottle and watched the unfolding scene with the detached interest of a scientist observing an experiment.

Suddenly, I could see Xander start to lose their cool; one of the woman yelling back was getting in their face, and when she snatched their sign - Protect Trans KIds - out of their hands, the other protestors broke formation, and two of them immediately jumped to the TERF, pushing her to the ground.

“What the fuck, we said not to touch them!

Victor Victoria exclaimed this behind me, and then the scene exploded in chaos: the formation was scattered, most of them trying to pull their friends off of the TERF on the ground, others taking the opportunity to disrupt their visual setup, scattering fliers into the air as the noise commotion of everyone else at the festival grew, their attention and footsteps drawing near -

Until a container shattered on the LGB Alliance table. Roaches exploded out in a black, skittering wave, screams erupted, the heavy foot traffic skittered back. 

I and my irrational fear of insects got stuck between fight and flight, just stood there stuck as there are the crowd around me fled, until I locked eyes with her.

Marina was the only one of them who hadn’t fled. She too stood perfectly still, but unlike me, she looked completely unfazed. A roach crawled up her arm and she flicked it off with ease.

We locked eyes for a cold, horrible moment.

I got suddenly, violently nauseous, and then I could run.

Two days later, the Dean's office was too small for all of us. I sat in a hard plastic chair, my hands folded in my lap, Xander tense beside me, their jaw set. The LGBTQIA+ Society faculty advisor, Dr. Yang, was listening to the Sociology department head, Dr. Patterson, explain the situation in the calm, measured tones of someone who didn’t actually care.

I’m there as a member of the four person Society government board, along with Victor Victoria, Xander, and Kerian, and I’m trying hard as I can not to look at Marina, there representing her nameless club of transphobic defectors, apparently now happily in bed with the LGB Alliance.

"The LGB Alliance was given permission to set up their booth," Dr. Patterson was saying, "as a special interest group for the rights of a historically oppressed minority. They followed all the proper procedures and we were unaware that their association dissociates itself from the transgender community, as we figured was a special interest group the way, you know, trans only groups are allowed to assemble on their own.  We can't penalize them for exercising their right to free speech."

"They were promoting hate speech," Xander argued, "they were telling people that trans people are predators."

“We were telling people that you tell homosexuals they have to be bisexual to be woke,” Marina said, “but hit dogs holler.”

Victor Victoria had to stop Xander from arguing further, and Marina started getting told that unless she saw someone specific release the roaches, “nothing further can be done,”

Which is when she poined at me, and said,

"It was her."

“Fuck no.” Jeremi was livid on the other line. I was too busy crying like a hyena because I thought I was going to be suspended. “I’m not about to let some TERF tell another fucking lie and ruin your life like this.”

“I don’t even know who did it, I didn’t see anything, it’s not like I can even blame someone else, I’m just - “

Fucked. I really thought I was, for an hour, but it took an hour for Xander and Victor Victoria to have their private presidential talk, after which Xander confessed to the roaches crime.

“But…did they actually do it?”

“They’re saying they did.” Victor Victoria sighed. “Right motivation, wrong tactic, wrong place, wrong time...”

Xander was suspended instead of me, but I’ll never forget how disgusted Marina looked for that brief moment, the way she so confidently called me her.

Today, when Marina sees my mother and my tia enter the room, she brightens immediately, acts like I don’t exist.

“Hi, I’m Marina,” she shakes their hands, “I’ll be living with Ceremony.”

Mama, none the wiser, is just as bright. “Oh, hi! I’m Josefina, this is my sister Tina. You’re so tall, wow!”

“How tall are you, mija?” asks tia.

“6 foot even.”

“You play basketball, volleyball?”

“Oh, no, no sports for me, I’m about as coordinated as a fish on a bicycle.”

“Maybe a model, then,” swoons mama.

“Modeling is a predatory industry that promotes anorexia.” Her brilliant grin offsets how grim that just was. “Let me help you with those boxes.”

“No, no, we’re fine - “

“Please, I insist.”

Watching the TERF handle my boxes of clothes and closet racks is not pleasant, but she’s strong enough to hoist the boxes easily from where we stand at the door to the other side of the room. She’s answering tia’s questions about her major when my mother nudges me in my side, eyebrows raised.

“She’s pretty, right?”

Oh, mama, still trying to set me up. She doesn’t approve of Jeremi.

“No, Ma.” I can’t explain to her what a TERF is in enough time. “No.”

When Mama and tia leave to the car to get more boxes, I try to follow them out and help, not wanting to be left alone with her yet, but they insist that I stay and get organized, “rest and nest.”

The side of the room where I’m to nest is nice enough; senior dorms are airy and roomy unlike the cells of early years, apartment style with private bathrooms and mini kitchen area. I’m checking out the closet space when I hear the other bed creak across the room; in the mirror on the door, I can see Marina curling up with an open book: the most recent in J.K. Rowling’s crime series. Really?

"Ceremony."

She draws it out like it's not English, then makes eye contact through the mirror.

"What, did you choose that? To rebel against Mommy and Daddy and their tuition?"

I won’t let her get to me, so I don’t turn around, instead opening my nearby box of hangers.

"It's my legal name. My father chose it. He was a shaman. He's dead."

She pauses. Then, "Never met a Latina with a name like Ballonlea."

"I don't know where it's from. But don't you think it's a little hypocritical that radical feminists like you get to change your names, but we don't? Miss XYZ?"

I turn around for her reaction. She laughs; brash and genuine, transforming her whole face, then gone in an instant.

"My dad is an evangelical cult leader whose death I'll probably celebrate, Mom's dead. I didn't want the association."

She says it like she's commenting on the weather.

"You know I didn't do that thing last semester."

She knows exactly what I'm talking about, but she laughs again, closing her book like she's finally paying attention.

"That thing? You mean releasing roaches on the LGB Alliance booth? Animal abuse to own the terves?"

"None of the roaches died, and it wasn't me."

"Whatever. At least someone went down for it."

"Yeah, that someone had a really promising future as a queer educator and was a key organizer in our Society and I bet you're glad that their future is ruined over one mistake."

"That someone was a man in a wig. He. His."

At that moment, mama and tia return, speaking Spanish and none the wiser to the tension in the room, filling it temporarily with their warmth.

Marina is back on the prowl, ignoring you. “Are you sure I can’t help you with anything else?”

“No, no,” says mama, “you’re so sweet.”

As if.

Tia is nosy and immediately gets enveloped in a conversation by asking too many questions, as usual, about the works of Frida Kahlo, who Marina just happened to do a thesis on last year. I must look some type of way as they talk as I’m distributing hangers to the closet, because mama comes and nudges me in my side again.

“You okay?”

“I’m good.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “I just know her already.”

“Oh.” She does the same. “In a good way?”

“No.”

“What’s her problem?”

“She’s transphobic.”

“Oh. Well, doesn’t the school know that? Should they be allowing that, y’know, for your safety?”

“I already tried doing something about it, but they said if I move and I lose my spot, I’d have to get on the waiting list.”

“Where would you live while on the waiting list?”

“Exactly.”

Home is in all the way in Bakersfield, California; mama and tia don’t even really have the money to be moving me in in person across the country every year, but they’ve scrounged to make it work every time. 

“I’m sorry,” mama murmurs. “If she doesn’t believe in who you are, that’s her loss. Just keep your distance, mind your business, only speak if it’s for business. Focus on studying and your friends and all the things you have going for you.”

I kiss her cheek. “Thanks, mama.”

Gratefully, the TERF has nothing to say to me for the rest of the day, silently switching between her J.K. Rowling and a massive art history book. I unpacked about half of what I needed to, feeling lazy after spending an hour setting up my accessories tray, knowing it was more important to take a break for dinner and get a good night’s rest for my 8 a.m. lecture.

I’m in bed post shower texting Jeremi, lights off on my side, when the TERF finally moves for the first time in hours – and I don’t want to be paying attention to what she does, but it’s hard, because I’m so used to living with people I’m comfortable with - last year I shared a suite with six other members of the Society, and the year before I was with my best friend at the time -

> Lol anyway Imma come get you this weekend, Jeremi’s saying. He’s in Charlotte a few hours south. Get you out of that sorry ass living situation for a few days

< im soooooo thankful they said yes

< even tho I cant sleep in your room with you

> You can just sneak in after they asleep 😉

< no!! i dont wanna get caught and then not be allowed back

> Mm yeah I guess you would get caught you and that mouth when I’m in it lol

< lol 😳 hey ive gotten better about that

> Yeah yeah uh huh

> Ive missed you so much

> I can’t wait 

It’s been three months since we’ve seen each other and about two since I’ve gotten laid – yes, we’re poly – and it’s that time in my nightly routine where it helps to drift off to sleep if I’ve sexted with Jeremi, you know, to completion. But here I am like a sucker, stuck in a room with a stranger whose schedule I don’t know yet instead of a friend I could just be real with. I guess I could do what I want in the fancy bathroom, but he’s kinda right about the mouth.

The TERF is getting out of bed, in my periphery, and - oh, okay.

I thought TERFs were weird about nudity. Not with each other, in their exclusionary MichFest covens or whatever, but in front of a trans person; doesn’t she think we’re all predators? She doesn’t wear a bra - that’s not shocking - but I guess I’m shocked that she’s comfortable enough with my presence to just strip? I’m not doing the same in front of her, I got changed in the bathroom earlier, not giving her any ammunition on my body to make fun of.

I’m also not really looking, because it does not matter that objectively this woman is long and sleek enough that she could certainly be a model, tia; as a Fashion major, I know a sample size when I see it, I know what the cisnormative beauty industry wants as someone behind the camera. She’s not so thin that she looks ill, she has ample breasts, she -

Does not matter.

The last time I got laid was back in Bakersfield, where the pickings on the apps like Taimi were slim, because everyone in LA knows you don’t stop in Bakersfield. They were a great time, an Afro Caribbean junior at UCLA, but only in town for that weekend. Other than that, it wasn’t that I didn’t try; I got a few more matches that lead to dead conversations, I went out in West Hollywood, danced and made out with a person who declined my number because “I have a boyfriend.”

It was more that I’m starting to think about something my tia said. They’re great about me being trans, but telling them that Jeremi and I are poly was a mistake. Mama asked him furiously “why I wasn’t enough for him” the next time she saw him, and now frequently refers to him as “the cheater” just because I’d never been in a poly relationship before him.

Tia was more nuanced, as it goes; when I got home from my date in Bakersfield this summer, she asked me if I was getting tested every time I “stepped out on my man.”

“It’s not stepping out, tia. It’s allowed.”

“I know, I’m not so Catholic, I know swingers.”

“Yes, I get tested, so does Jeremi.”

“He shows you? You see the papers?”

“Not anymore, but I trust him.”

“Never trust a man.”

“He’s not like other men.”

Tia opens her mouth to say something, then pauses.

“He seems like he’s got something to prove,” she finally says. “I know, I don’t know him like you do, but from what I do know, the time I spent - he seems like he’s got an axe to grind with the world.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is the sleeping around thing - is it a contest?”

“A contest? No, we’re not, like, keeping score.”

“Sex is wonderful, mija, but it’s not everything. It’s not - it’s a way to connect deeply and irrevocably with another person, it’s a way to connect with yourself, but your generation - “ she tsks. “Obsessed. It’s okay, what you’re doing, as long as you’re safe, I just don’t want you to lose sight of yourself. Your self esteem. It does something to you, every time you’re with someone.”

It does something to you, every time you’re with someone.

Does it?

Growing up without a major religion in my little family, only sometimes feeling the specters of Catholicism echoed from my mama and her relatives’ upbringing, I wasn’t one of those 90s kids who grew up romanticizing wanting to get married. I was young when I realized I was queer; when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said “Lady Gaga’s fashion designer,” imagining myself alone in a mansion full of clothes, with Cher Horowitz’s futuristic closet. 

In the LGBTQIA+ Society, we’ve always been sex positive first. When I joined when I was 18, I met the multitude from people in sextet polycules to people who wanted nothing to do with anyone, and I learned that sex is often gatekept by cisnormative society to control people, that sex is a social language just like any other.

It does something to you, every time you’re with someone.

Your generation. Obsessed.

What my family says matters a lot to me, even if I don’t know if I agree. I try to take to heart their advice, even when they just think they’re right. 

He seems like he’s got something to prove -

His existence, maybe? That his past doesn’t determine his future?

- an axe to grind with the world - 

The world that elected Donald Trump, who’d rather all us queers and browns disappear than live another day in “his” country? Why wouldn’t he have an axe? 

Why not live every day as freely as possible while we have it? That’s what being polyamorous means to me, not limiting ourselves to structures from the past that the people who hate us worship. 

i cant wait to see you toooooooo

My new friend looked around at the sparse playground - most of the other kids were down field at the pool, but I didn’t want my unruly hair to get all chlorine dried on top of things - and then motioned for me to follow underneath the jungle gym.

Maybe the kids on the other side of the yard could’ve seen us, but you know how it is at that age. One track mind.

“What are we doing under here?” I asked.

“I’mma prove it.”

Opened up the gym shorts waistband, motioned for me to look inside.

“You are a girl! How’d you get your voice to sound like that?”

“I dunno, it just does.”

Still, I remember the confusion: in front of me, cute “boy” who I was supposed to be having something like a crush on, even though I still couldn’t do it for real like other girls, and yet, blissfully, cute “girl” at the same time.

“Do you just go around showing everyone your - you know - when they get confused?”

“Hell no.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t say that.”

“Sorry. It’s just, they were being mean to you back there and I wanted you to feel better.”

“Well, thank you. What’s your name?”

“...I don’t like my name.”

“I don’t like mine either.”

“Wanna just call each other whatever we want?”

“Okay.”

My name is Marina XYZ, and yes, that is my legal name. 

I chose XYZ because it’s nonsense. I had all the feminist reason in the world to change it on principle, whether or not I got along with my sperm donor, for even my mother’s maiden name is not hers, but more to the point, why does what’s in a name matter so much at all? Why change it to something symbolic or poetic or pretentious when it could just be nothing? Legal names are just placeholders, mirages our parents projected onto us.  

Marina was my mother’s name, but I didn’t change that, even if I resent the notion that naming your child after yourself means the child will become an anagram of you, simply because of utility; I’ve gotten used to Marina this long, it would be cringe and annoying to get used to anything else.

So, you must be wondering: if I think a name is just a placeholder, why the issue with trans name changes? Aren’t I being hypocritical?

No, despite the rumors, I don’t have an issue with trans name changes. I just think it’s funny how predictable they can be, how many TIFs are changing theirs to impractical shit like Apollo and Lamp meanwhile TIMothy wants to be called some shit like Lollipop.

No, despite the rumors, I’m not transphobic. Not a single one of the gender clowns inspires fear in me. 

“Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society’s definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference—those of us who are poor, who are lesbians, who are Black, who are older—know that survival is not an academic skill. It is learning how to take our differences and make them strengths. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. And this fact is only threatening to those women who still define the master’s house as their only source of support.”

Audre Lorde. Gender “identity” is a master’s tool invented in the twentieth century at most by white sexologists like John Money, to control women and men and make us easier to funnel into heterocapitalist nuclear family death cells. Don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger; plenty of women older and wiser than me saw the writing on the wall when it came to acting like sexism was over when it wasn’t.

But enough about my life as a scorned witch: despite popular beliefs about “TERFs,” I do have things going on that aren’t trying to defend my right to exist as a homosexual woman who has never and will never touch a dick. I’m also a member of the UNC Black Student Union, so divorced from the LGBTQIA+ Society that they don’t even know I’m a “TERF,” a sometimes organizer for the city of Chapel Hill’s women’s roller derby league, and a volunteer at every no kill cat shelter I can find in my area. If I wasn’t homeless when I wasn’t off campus, I’d have 13 cats.

Today I’m headed to my mentor’s garden to harvest wisteria for my first major piece of the semester - I’m majoring in Fine Art, goddess help me, Painting in which I use plants as a medium - where I’ve also lived during the summers between school for the last three years now. Elena Petrova was a graduate of the Painting program before me, a brilliant Russian American immigrant whose works are raw portrayals of female survivors of war, and is one of my only friends.

But I don’t mind, not having a lot of friends. For one thing, I’m autistic, on paper, so I need a lot of alone time to feel normal, and for another, I’m a radical feminist, which sort of permanently kills your enjoyment of most pop culture and makes it hard to connect with those who care, which feels like everyone my age.

Elena's cottage is tucked at the end of a gravel road on the outskirts of Chapel Hill, surrounded by gardens that explode with color in every season. She bought the property with the help of her sister and they turned it into a sanctuary, wisteria vines draped over the pergola, roses climbing the trellises, the air smelling of jasmine and petrichor.

I love this place, summers spent here working in the garden helping Elena with her projects, learning how to press and preserve flowers; it’s the closest thing to home I’ve felt in a long time. 

Elena is in the garden when I arrive, her hands deep in soil, her red hair pulled back. She’s twenty six, only four years older than me, but carries herself like someone who's lived several lifetimes. 

“Sister, you look stressed already,” she said in greeting, kissing both cheeks.

“I am. I thought I was never gonna get off the waiting list for a dorm, and now I’m stuck with a pink haired troon.”

“Oh? What shit luck, it’s not even like there are that many of them.”

“Yeah, at least she’s harmless, one of these nonbinaries who cakes her face in products and insists she’s straight because her girlfriend’s on T.”

“At least she’s not a het or bihet.”

“Goddess forbid.”

"Come this way. The wisteria is looking perfect."

I follow her deeper into the garden, from the front yard around to the east side where my muse wraps around arches. She starts talking about her latest project and apps to grad school, and it’s not that I’m not actually interested, really, but today, I’m only half listening; I keep getting caught up in the way the sunlight catches her cheekbones, the way her eyes glisten like poolwater and shit.

I've had ill advised feelings for Elena for years. It started when I was nineteen, a lonely sophomore who’d just recently been ostracized for being a “TERF,” and Elena had been a senior then, already ostracized as a lesbian artist, already untouchable. She'd never even joined the LGBTQIA+ Society in the first place, only took note of me when they threw me out and promptly took me under her wing. She was passionate about our major and she answered those damning questions I’d always had about the value of men, gave me books upon theories to delve into, gave me a place to stay when I had nowhere else to go. 

Ill advised because she’s my mentor and sees me as her student, has not a speck of romantic attraction back to me.

I tune back in as she’s lamenting how much it costs just to apply to graduate school, and then she’s asking about me again.

“So, how will you make it work with the roommate? She doesn’t think you breathe fire and summon Satan, does she?”

“Probably. She was in the Society when I was in it and it looks like now she’s part of the government board, so. I didn’t know her back then, but now…”

“Now what?”

“Remember the roaches incident last year? Via Xander the ‘nonbinary lesbian’?”

“Of course.”

“I thought it was her. I told the Dean it was her, in fact.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t know it was Xander, I didn’t know who it was. I was just being told that once again, nothing was going to be done about their cruelty and sexual harassment, so I went off a hunch and just blamed somebody.”

“No wonder she doesn’t like you.”

“She was just standing there staring at me looking guilty while everyone else was freaking out and running. Wouldn’t you have thought that was weird?”

“I guess so.”

“So how am I going to make it work? Act like she’s invisible, mostly.”

“You know that’s impossible. You’ll have to talk sometimes.”

“For what? I’m autistic as hell, do not doubt my superhuman ability to exist in silence.”

“What if you tried to peak her?”

“Me? The last thing I am is a motherfucking evangelist, no matter the cause. Nonbinary women wanna get off the high horse and realize they’re just like the rest of us, they can do it themselves.”

Elena just smiled to herself, in that way I know.

“What?” I prompted.

“You say you’re not an evangelist but it was your idea to get the LGB Alliance on campus last year, was it not?”

“Yeah, but - “

“You say you’re not an evangelist but it was you who stood up in front of the Winter Showcase and recited the SCUM Manifesto from memory, was it not?”

“That was a talent show, memorizing words is a talent.”

“You say you’re not an evangelist but it is you who runs the anti LGBTQIA+ Society for you and just four other people every single week, no? Sorry sis, it’s giving Jesus and the disciples.”

“If Jesus was a Black woman, America wouldn’t be a Christian theocracy and there’d be, like, billions less Christians in general.”

“Maybe you’ll be such an exemplary person and feminist that Ms. Pink Hair will have no choice but to drop the dye and delusional girlfriend.”

I scoff. “Have you met me?”

The walk back to campus is hot and sticky, the kind of Carolina day that made you forget fall was supposed to be coming. I stop at one of the art department studios to drop off the wisteria vines, then head back to the dorm, my mind still half in Elena's garden.

The room is mostly quiet when I open the door, save for the hum-click of that massive sewing machine Ceremony carries around, taking up her entire desk. She’s been on it all day that she hasn’t been in class; glances up when I come in, her expression shifting from focused to guarded.

I settle into my side of the room, about to dig into the rest of my Cormoran Strike novel before homework, when I hear the sewing machine stop, and then, 

“So. We have a class together.”

I stare at her back; her very elaborate, I might add, back, all kinds of twists and beads in her hair, far too much fringe on that blouse.

“What? How?”

"Senior Capstone: Civic Engagement. Thompson. Twelve students. Me and you."

"You're kidding."

She’s looking at me now; she’s got these massive brown puppy dog eyes that might make me feel something for her if she wasn’t so, you know, self absorbed.

"I wish I was. Wednesdays and Fridays, 2 to 4."

I pull out my phone, checking my schedule. There it is, same class, same time.

“Well, it’s not like we’ll have to sit next to each other or some shit,” I say, “so just act like I’m not there, and I’ll do the same.”

Ceremony turns around, fixing for the machine, then changes her mind, back to me.

“Do you think that’s really gonna work? Just ignore each other all year?”

“Yeah, I don’t see why not.”

“I don’t see why I should have to live with a bigot, and I don’t think there should just be transphobes in this world.”

I laugh at her, can’t help it. “‘Transphobe.’ That would require me to be afraid of you, and I’m not. I’m pissed that you and your friends ruined my community in the wake of marriage equality. I’m angry, not afraid.”

“‘Ruined your community?’ Trans women have always been a part of the community, and so have trans - “

“Categorically untrue, we all knew what a homosexual was until about ten or fifteen years ago - “ 

“And so have trans men, and besides, we’re not even talking about the same community, you’re talking about some unreal elite society where only gays and lesbians have any rights, you’re talking about exclusionist, divisive events like MichFest which - “

“MichFest was only ‘divisive’ because of men like Dana Rivers who just had to kill women and children over it.”

That gets her to stop. She chews on her lip.

“Don’t know who Dana Rivers is?” I continue.

“No.”

“Might wanna look him up before you fix your mouth to talk any more shit about MichFest. You weren’t there.”

“Were you?”

“Not the point.”

I don’t expect her to look him up, because I already know how it goes: everything “TERFs” say is a lie meant to make conservatives want to set them on fire, no nuance, block to stay safe and do zero reflection. The sewing machine resumes, so I think I’m right, until almost a whole hour passes - she’s clicking around on her phone for a while, then:

“She shouldn’t have killed those women and their son.”

Progress, you would think. And yet,

“Have you ever heard of a case like this featuring two cis women?” I stoop to her level, using her language for a moment. “A cis lesbian gets rejected for a threesome so she murders the other lesbians and their kid in cold blood? But how many cases have you heard where a man does the same or similar?”

“Maybe they don’t do it for that reason, but…yes, women do murder. Men and women.”

Dense.

“It’s just absurd to me, that the pronouns of the murderer matter more to you than the lives of - “

“I’m sorry, did I say that? I can have sympathy for the dead and respect pronouns with the same stone.”

The second I feel my blood pressure ratchet, I’m out, mentally; no idea where I just was in my Cormoran Strike novel anymore, but I’ll find it. 

In my experience sympathy for the dead doesn’t come with giving their killers a single moment of fucking grace, for a second, but then, I’m biased.