I know that this is a Trans support site, I know that places like this are important for people who are Trans to be able to come together and discuss issues relating to our community. Having said that, I have to stop and wonder sometimes, with everything that is going on in the world around us, do we ever stop to ask ourselves if the incessant need for society at large to label things is in some way directly related to the stories that are unfolding around us?
Today my phone has been inundated with alerts from the various news outlets and apps that I follow, from the Huffington Post to Fox News, we are yet again learning that another senseless loss of life has occurred in America as a result of Guns. Gun deaths in our country, weather one at a time, or multiple fatalities, are becoming not just a daily occurrence, but almost an hourly occurrence. We sit and watch and shake our heads as innocents, and by standards are killed without any regard. We say to ourselves that countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, are in horrible shape, that everyday there is another suicide bomber, another car explosion. Yet do we ever stop and realize that we are no safer here in America? While I have no statistics to provide, I would hazard to say that you are just as likely to leave your home and be killed by a maniac here in America, as you are in any middle eastern country.
We are no longer a collective group, we are a bunch of small groups fighting each other, Black vs White, Gay vs Straight, Immigrant vs Natural born, etc etc. We have no common focus anymore, nothing that draws us together. I wonder if this need to define who we are, is detrimental to our basic need to have universal community.
When we will stop our irrational behavior and say, NO MORE GUNS! NO MORE VIOLENCE! NO MORE HATRED!! there are many difficult issues facing this nation, and the world. But the more secluded we become, the farther we move away from the dream of peace for all.
We were told as children that all we had to do was dream, work hard, and follow the law, and we would succeed in life. We are now adults and we know that this was a false promise. Inequality is everywhere, there are solutions, we must fix this now, before there is nothing left to leave our children but urban war zones.
Kat.