Leaving the countryside and leaving the South, the Midwest, etc -- that used to be the expected route toward any kind of lesser-oppressive life for queer people of all stripes. I did it without even thinking about it, back when my life was literally criminalized because I chose military service to, primarily, climb out of poverty and pay for a university education.

You know what's weird about that? (Rhetorical question. I know you know.)

People come to EXPECT that you'll leave and judge you if you stay. As if you don't have the innate human right to stay and thrive. "What are you complaining about. You know the culture here. It's your fault for not being quiet and respectable, for not respecting your neighbors. Not saying your neighbors are right, but what are doing here? Go! Fly free!"

Cough.

As if we WANT to leave home, family, friends, community. As if we WANT to choose life in the big city because we prefer big-city life.

I mean, some of us do. But most of us leave because we feel forced out! It's a choice between bad and worse!

Then, when we return, like I returned later in life ...

Stranger in a strange land, much?

Ha!

No community much?

The scariest thing about your story, though, is that things are getting worse, not getting better or even staying the same. Trans people are being demonized on all sides -- by the Right, because the Right literally hates trans people. By the Left, because trans equality feels politically inconvenient to them right now. Can't we queer inconveniences get out of the way for them?

"Be quiet!" says the Left. "Don't you understand that now isn't the time for your weirdness? Trust us! We gotchoo!"

But they don't.

Look how fast some people whom we queer folks thought were friends turned on us, apparently indifferent to the very real success of "divide and conquer."

From my perch in the deeply conservative rural heartland, that's scary as fuck.

Can city folk in more left-leaning areas really appreciate that? Maybe some of them, but apparently not large majorities.

Then there are Democratic Party loyalists who just obviously don't care. Because, I guess, to them, being a Democrat feels like an actual identity rather than a mere political affiliation.

I don't understand that. At all.