YOU'VE GOT THIS. (How Will You Spend Inaguration Day?)

We here at Gender Defiant prefer to think of it as Martin Luther King Day.

Tina Carson:

I have no plans for MLK day yet, other than grading student papers. However, the night before—i.e. the night before this inauguration—I am hosting a mock-funeral for Democracy. I’ve invited friends and their families to my house; everyone is bringing their go-to affordable dishes and sharing recipes ahead of the increased costs we’ll be facing due to tariffs.

Noa asked if I’ll be wearing black. No. Athleisure is where it’s at. I’ll be wearing a very funky track suit I like to think would make any Republican recoil.

I need to be with my people now. I need to talk and drink with people I love. I need to experience joy and connection with individuals who share my dismay at the naked cruelty of the MAGA gang.

My family visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. last month. Witnessing that history, I felt how deeply it resonates with this moment. During Trump’s next four years. I will keep an eye on legislation that affects my child and other trans and gender expansive people, but I am determined not to lose sight of what is happening to other groups in the crosshairs of this administration. I refuse to maintain the reactive, defensive position the MAGA folks want us to, but I will keep aware because our fates are interconnected.

Deep breaths.

Noa Rabinow:

You caught me in a quiet minute. I feel calm. I’m just a mom in a trans family without the luxury to wait and see ‘what is Trump really going to do.’ A practical mom like the ones in my line. My great great grandmothers in Russia and Latvia must have listened to radio broadcasts of the inaugurations of authoritarians in their day, in the 20th century, in the 19th century. They would have made dark jokes to each other, or if you asked, they would have said ‘what did you expect.’ If I said to them about Trump, ‘we got the president we deserve,’ I can picture them nodding.

Last time Trump put his hand (ugh) on the bible, I drank a lot. For months. Years. It was part of a mourning that everyone I know participated in. A long wake. Now I don’t drink, but I am also not craving numbness. During the inauguration I’ll actually be on shift in my healthcare job. I am relieved for that coincidence, to do small real things in real time with real people instead of dipping into the symbolic. But my thoughts are with my daughter Izzy and how she might be feeling on January 20, 2025. She’ll be with her friends. We’ll text.

Heather Jones:

Ahead of the GOP effort to turn our country into a fascist state, I have become a member of one of its most hated demographics—women, and especially transgender women. I have also begun writing for this newsletter, which makes public my association with this (trans) demographic and my advocacy for it. This newsletter’s name, Gender Defiant, is how I feel. In other words, I am preparing to spend the next four years waving a flag at the oppressors that says ‘Hey, why don’t y’all go fuck yourselves.’

I don’t know if my home security system can withstand an armed militia, so I might be preparing to seal my fate. Hope not, but I’m pretty cynical. Especially as it also seems that the disasters of climate change are catching up with and may overwhelm our social conflicts. Or that our social conflicts are part of the climate catastrophe—tremors of the coming mass hysteria.

So, I guess I’m preparing to not participate in the coming mass hysteria.

I like this thing I read once about the Iroquois, how they would share their provisions, even “the little which remains to them without waiting to be asked, although they expose themselves thereby to the same dangers of perishing as those whom they help.” I’m not a prepper, so don’t come to my house for beans, but I’ll share the little which remains to me of sanity, respect for democracy, and hope for the perseverance of our species. Civilization has died out many times on this planet. Perhaps we’ll get through this with our knowledge base intact, and then, instead of perishing, we could continue.

Melody Roth:

I will spend inauguration day in my happy place, our cabin in the mountains, disconnected from the media, after spending January 18th at the Peoples March. I have been thinking a lot about President Carter's death as the inauguration approaches. I imagine Carter was ready to meet Jesus and to see Rosalynn again. I’m certain he did not want to see this inauguration. The idea of it had to turn his stomach as it does mine. Considering the impact of Carter’s post-presidential life, even my MAGA relatives don’t deny that he was a good Christian who truly worked for the betterment of humanity. (I doubt they acknowledge that he left the Southern Baptist Convention in 2000 because of its rigid views and distorted biblical teachings on women’s roles and LGBTQ people.)

As we see the flag fly at half-mast for President Carter, we cannot help but compare him with Trump. The US flag has been flown at half-mast for 30 days after the death of every president since the protocol was established in 1954, but Trump doesn’t want it at half-mast during his inauguration.

President Carter’s memory will be the bright spot in my day.