It’s Been A Rough Few Years for the Pandemic Trans
An unprecedented number of trans people came out during lockdown. Then the GOP declared war on us all.
On my last normal day, I gave a reading in Manhattan. I had taken a train down into the city, and I was on a line-up with a few people, comedians and TV writers and authors. I remember hanging around backstage, before the show started, making nervous jokes and passing around an enormous pump bottle of hand sanitizer. It was lucky the venue had it, someone said, because stores were running out. The other performers lived in the city, so they were afraid of the virus already. I lived in the country, so I wasn’t aware of what I had to fear.
Is it supposed to get really bad, then? I asked, and the other performers grimaced apologetically. I reached for the sanitizer one more time.
Then it got really bad. You no doubt remember that part. Yet that’s not the point of my story. This is: My last normal day was also my last public appearance as a cis person. After a few months of lockdown, at least half of the people I followed on social media came out as transgender. By June of 2020, I had come out, too.
Who now recalls the pandemic transitioners? Yet we existed; we were a thing, a cohort, a moment. There were thinkpieces…
