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Shoved back in the closet
In the long forgotten days of 2024 I wrote a piece exploring coming out and the desire to abandon closets because the world was a safer space for LGBTQI+ people. Oh how naive I was, or rather, how willing I was to ignore every red flag we all could see coming on the horizon. Trump’s executive orders and state level anti-trans legislation has been pared with renewed calls to walk back gay marriage and women’s voting rights, which the rest of the world has keenly picked up on. Rather than the closet being an anachronistic concept I am increasingly feeling that it may be the only safe space left for trans people should the current trajectory continue.
One of the problems with comparing historic periods in that texture and analysis often get left out during the comparisons, such as comparing the National Socialist’s 54 day dismantling of Germany democracy and the Trump regime’s speed run attempting to do the same. Germany institutionally had centralised all levers of power in Berlin and Prussia, with the outlying states having little to no ability to resist centralised control. Added to this was the widespread desire to overcome the intractable split between radical communists and radical fascists, with industrialist money used to tip the balance in favour of the fascists. This sounds familiar, except in Germany the entire apparatus of the State was turned on all shades of left within days of the fascists coming to power. In the US Trump’s diktats have foundered in the courts, with the rule of law the only bulwark against autocracy, which unlike Germany has deep historic roots of stopping absolute tyranny from creeping in at the edges.
Trans people were warning about the current regime the moment Trump won the election in 2016. It was clear back then that all forms of queer and women’s rights were under threat, especially if Trump was able to surround himself with sycophants willing to carry out his edicts. Trump 1.0 suffered from a lack of cronyism, with enough people in the room to stop the worst excesses and COVID-19 putting pay to the externalisation of the regime. 2025 does mirror Germany in one key way in that Trump has planted loyalists in all key department who are willing to fight tooth and claw to stay there. Hitler’s greatest feat was convincing the world and the German people his regime was stable and could deliver, when in reality it was feral…
