Kai Cheng Thom - I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World

I HOPE
WE CHOOSE
LOVE

I HOPE
WE CHOOSE
LOVE

A
TRANS GIRLS
NOTES FROM THE
END OF THE WORLD

KAI CHENG THOM

I HOPE WE CHOOSE LOVE

Copyright 2019 by Kai Cheng Thom

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada, and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program), for its publishing activities.

Arsenal Pulp Press acknowledges the xwmkwym (Musqueam), Swxw7mesh (Squamish), and slilwta (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, speakers of Hulquminum/Halqemylem/hnqminm and custodians of the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories where our office is located. We pay respect to their histories, traditions, and continuous living cultures and commit to accountability, respectful relations, and friendship.

The Chinese Transsexuals Guide to Cheongsam was first published as How Wearing the Cheongsam Helped Me Find My Chinese Trans Womanhood in Xtra, October 10, 2017.

Dear, Dear Life was first published as Pursuing Happiness as a Trans Woman of Color by BuzzFeed, October 10, 2015.

Genie, Youre Free: Robin Williams, Mental Health, and the Stories We Tell about Suicide was first published in Young(ist), September 29, 2014.

How Neoliberalism is Stealing Trans Liberation was first published as Trans Visibility Does Not Equal Trans Liberation in them magazine, March 31, 2018.

Melting the Ice around #MeToo Stories in the Queer Community was first published in Xtra, February 26, 2019.

Rediscovering Identity at My Grandfathers Funeral: An Ethnic Trans Story was first published as My Mothers Daughter, My Fathers Son in Xtra, December 12, 2017.

Cover and text design by Oliver McPartlin

Edited by Shirarose Wilensky

Proofread by Jaiden Dembo

Printed and bound in Canada

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Title: I hope we choose love : a trans girls notes from the end of the world / Kai Cheng Thom.

Names: Thom, Kai Cheng, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190124989 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190124997 | ISBN 9781551527758 (softcover) | ISBN 9781551527765 (HTML)

Subjects: LCSH: Thom, Kai Cheng. | LCSH: LovePhilosophy. | LCSH: Forgiveness. | LCSH: Conduct of life. | CSH: Canadian essays (English)21st century.

Classification: LCC PS8639.H559 I36 2019 | DDC C814/.6dc23

Contents

To all the queers who broke my heart
And to all the queers who mended it

Introduction

With Love, From The End Of The World

As I write this book in the spring of 2019, it has become something of a truism among my community of queer people of colour that the end of the world is nigh. A wave of right-wing and openly fascist governments have been elected to power across the world. Wealth and power are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a brazenly corrupt few. Climate change and mass extinction are ravaging the earth, largely unacknowledged by those with the political power to do anything about it.

As for those communities of queer people, racialized people, disabled people marginalized people that have been taking back their power? The social justice activists that raised me to believe in the possibility of a revolution that would change and save the world? Sometimes it seems like the most painful cuts of all come from within my own community: Call-out culture. Lateral violence. Puritanical politics. Intimate partner abuse. Public shaming. We know so much about trauma but so little about how to heal it. What would community know about saving us from the apocalypse?

In 2016, I turned twenty-five years old and published my first novel, which was quickly followed by a poetry collection and then a childrens book, all to relative success. I became queer famous that year. This was also the year that broke my heart, which has kept right on breaking ever since. This was the year that Trump was elected, that millions of people were displaced in the Syrian refugee crisis, and that forty-nine peoplemost of them queer and brownwere shot to death in a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. In the intervening years, more disasters and atrocities have followed.

My twenty-fifth year of life was also the year that I experienced several devastating personal crises that resulted in the loss of some dear friends and chosen family members, as well as psychological trauma from which I have not recovered. For all its edgy pretensions, social justice culture had not prepared me for the havoc that abuse, mental illness, and the immense pressure of living as a publicly known trans woman of colour in the social media era could wreak upon my soul.

Not only was I in pain, but my pain was publicly known, scrutinized, gossiped over. People, mostly queer and racialized people, whom I didnt know sent me emails and Facebook messages that were thousands of words long, asking for intimacy and attention and occasionally threatening me when I didnt acquiesce. Journalists asked me for interviews about my private lifemy sex life, my family, my mental health; no topic seemed to be off limits. I was stalked, in real life and online. I became terrified and paranoid. I stopped trusting people and this thing we call community. I stopped trusting myself.

All around me, the people I loved were also in crisispsychological, financial, medical, interpersonal. When you live in a community of queers, anarchists, and activists, crisis is the baseline and stability an outlier. Among trans women, a life expectancy of thirty-five is the norm.

I lost my faith in community. I lost hopein social justice, in revolution, in the world.

When we lose faith in the things that matter, it is easy to turn to anger. Anger helps us survive when survival seems impossible. I have been very angry throughout my life, and I still am in some ways. I need to be, to live. Yet anger, and its siblings rage and vengeance, have also been poisonous influences in my communities. Ive seen people do awful things to one another in the name of anger and revenge, and it never seems to help anyone in the end.

So in the midst of despair, I have come to believe that lovethe feeling of love, the politics of love, the ethics and ideology and embodiment of loveis the only good option in this time of the apocalypse. What else do we have?

I mean love that is kind but also honest. Love that is courageous and relentless and willing to break the rules and smash the system. Love that cares about people more than ideas, that prizes each and every one of us as essential and indispensable. I mean love that is compassionate and accountable. I mean love that confirms and reaffirms us as complex and fallible yet lovable anyway, love that affirms us as human.

I want to live in love and believe in love. If I have to die, I want to die in love. This whole world might be coming to its end, or it might be in the midst of an enormous and terrifying change that leads to something better. Either way, I want to go through it in love with the people I love.