âDouble dysphoria.â
Thatâs all I could think as I walked out of the post office today after the clerk âmaâamââd and âmerry Christmasââd me in quick successionâtoo quick, especially with a long line of customers behind me, to come up with a remotely coherent, incisive yet kind retort.
So I scurried out of the post office, doubly grouchy at this time of yearâthe âseasonâ when the dominance of xtian hegemony rings as loud and clear as Salvation Army bells; when itâs somehow socially acceptable to assume that everyone celebrates xmas and jesus and bio-families and capitalist excess.
Never mind that âmerryâ or the equivalently exasperating âhappyâ Christmas greetings, mouthed routinely in place of âhave a good day,â feel so utterly tasteless against the repast of genocide and authoritarianism being served up this year. That should surely be bad enough. (It is!)
But on the more micro level of meâa âthey,â a godless Jewish anarchistâit sticks in the craw. Every micro interaction in the course of my day feels like being jabbed by pine needlesâeach a reminder of 530+ years of the christofascist theft of calendars and rituals, communities and languages, foods and cultures, genders and lifeways. Anything and everything at odds with a landscape of white male Santa Clauses supposedly gifting us the world while we passively slumberâbut only if weâre good at fitting into the supremacy of cheerful obedience and conformity.
Usually Iâm âmerelyâ enraged during December, wishing the Grinch would change their mind and #AbolishXmas after all. Maybe itâs because Iâm in a part of this imperiled world where people find it âpoliteâ (in that shutdown, rote sort of WASPy way) to presume and add 1-of-2 genders to every sentence (âyes, sirâ or âthank you, missâ), but this âseasonâ Iâm equally eager to #AbolishGender. And itâs hitting me how xtian hegemony at xmas is wrapped up neatly with a binary bow in ho(ho)mophobia and transphobia.
So Iâm feeling doubly dysphoric toward the âholidaysâ that arenât mine, grumpy about being labeled âxtianâ and âfemaleâ when Iâm neither, doubly filled with wrath at this homogeneously oppressive social order that must be abolished.
(Photo: cheerful stickers seen last autumn in the queerly beautiful space of @roomofonesownbooks đđ€)