Air Conditioning

Fear.

Conversations forced by my parents hand, even though I tell them over and over that I don't want to talk about politics.

"I do like talking about my political opinions, just not to people who I know will never change. You should feel the same way about talking to me about it."

"I don't want you to change, I just want you to understand."

What a fucking joke.

You know, my father is fucking insane,

He's convinced that school is lying to our faces and that anything I learn there is a lie.

He tried to convince me it was the south that wanted to abolish slavery during the civil war.

I said "why would they want that. Give me one reason why the south would have wanted that."

His response? "It's too deep for you to understand, I won't get into it."

What a fucking joke.

I told my dad that I wasn't going to vote for a man who is going to take away my rights.

His response?

"Trump wouldn't take away your rights, he just wouldn't want children to know that they could be like you."

That's literally not true and also insanity twisted, because trying to take knowledge away from the public is never a good idea.

I tried to explain to him about the offshoring of labor and how tarrifs can contribute to the problem (because my dad only cares about how Trump is going to 'lower gas prices and fix inflation using tarrifs') and he instead starts going on a tangent about how all non American products are made shittily (false) and that the tarrifs are going to 'fix it'. What he doesn't seem to get is that tarrifs just make the companies being taxed charge the American people more to make up for it, and that even with them charging more their products will still be less expensive than those produced in America due to how expensive our labor is.

Of course, he doesn't believe what I say.

My rights are being taken away every day, especially in this state, and with Trump in office..

It might become life-threatening just to be myself.

They won't stop at limiting gender affirming care for minors. They won't stop at taking away women's right to abortion, even in the case of medical complication. In Texas, they're already cataloging a list of every person who has changed their gender marker on their driver's license, and they have proceeded to have actual, serious discussions considering the systematic undoing of what those people went through the legal process to change. They have a list of every person in Texas that's changed their gender marker, and every person that's tried and failed to do so.

What are they going to do with that list?

We're going backwards.

Soon, they will be trying to call being transgender a mental illness again. Soon, they'll be taking away hormone therapy for anything besides what's "medically necessary" and invalidating what is psychologically necessary.

Soon, they will be using the list of all the transgender people in our state for God knows what.

And so now, with him elected as our president, I will begin to keep all of my opinions to myself, I will refuse to debate, and once I pass I won't come out to anyone.

That is if I can even get to that point before they take away my ability to do so.

I fear for the women, children, and all LGBTQ+ people in this country.

Myself included.