Re: I Am Not Sorry Lindsey Graham is Dead
(Image attribution: Matt Brown via wikimedia)
I Am Not Sorry Lindsey Graham is Dead by Magdalene Visaggio landed pretty hard for me. Visaggio talks about her experiences training for Catholic priesthood, her loss of faith, and how anti-trans abuse taught her how to hate. Visaggio contrasts her younger, idealized faith with how she responds to Lindsey Graham's death today. People like Graham taught her how to hate.
She describes some of the values she had before experiencing abuse as a trans woman:
Love was, always, my guiding star. Love pointed me to Christ and love demanded I never deny anyone their humanity, not even the worst of us. Leo Tolstoy, in his extraordinary pacifist-anarchist The Kingdom of God is Within You, said that God is infinite good, and we are all infinitely far from infinite good, so what matters isn’t where we are but which direction we’re heading in, and that our calling is to strive to move toward rather than away.
Then contrasts that with how exposure to hate changed her:
That’s the bit, the fact of my hate, that makes me flinch, burns my own gullet. That’s the dark little piece of me I can’t pretend doesn’t exist. Men like Lindsey Graham have taught me how to hate, and I’m worried it can’t be unlearned. Ten years after I transitioned, I am a better person in countless ways – but in this, the most important one, I am worse. Ten years of abuse at the hands of bigots and opportunists, ten years of eliminationism, ten years of my own father’s endorsement of these people; all of that has taught me to hate, to hate fiercely. To wish ill. To dream of the moment I can say, at last, these fuckers are dead, and it is better this way. Do you understand? They didn’t just make me worse. They made me like them.
There are a lot of differences between my story and Visaggio's. My Methodist background didn't stick, and I learned both to hate and self-hate as a teen. I've been a religious pacifist since young adulthood across multiple traditions. To the extent that I am religious, it's guided by a belief in the liberation of all living things.
A large part of it is trauma recovery. My family has four generations of abuse, hurt people hurting each other. I experienced additional anti-gay abuse as a child before I even understood what gay meant. I see a parallel between the cycles of suffering described by dharmic philosophy and the cycles of abuse I experienced. And I decided that on one thing, this thing, this very small thing, that cycle ends with me. Other people have the souls to be soldiers and protectors, I don't.
But sometimes that's so fucking hard to live. I don't have joy that Graham is dead. I'm just feeling tired. I've outlived many of the people who made my life hell: Reagan, Robertson, Phelps, a different Graham. But there's always more.
I don't mourn the wicked, but I do mourn that they taught me hate and cynicism, and I mourn my faith in the liberation of all living things. I can logically justify why I need nonviolence, in the same way that I need recovery. (The two are related.) But my heart's not in it this year. And with my ethics eroded, I fear falling back into the cycle with my friends, colleagues, loved ones, and internet strangers.
Viaggio says "I am not sorry, but I am afraid." So am I. Not for people like Graham, because fuck them. But for myself and the people who care for me.