Dear [relative],

Every couple of weeks I pull up your Facebook page and scroll through your recent updates. I see post after post of mis- and disinformation about so many things, including Russia’s war of agression against Ukraine, hateful screeds about various minority groups (especially trans people and the undocumented), and glee at the magnitude and velocity of the destruction of the federal government at the hands of this administration.

I think about your grandkids—especially your granddaughters. How the rapist you voted for has placed an anti-vaxxer conspiracy theorist in charge of public health, and how this will impact their well-being in these critical, formative years. How you voted to strip them of their rights to bodily autonomy.

I think about how you voted for them to grow up in an America whose light has dimmed, whose leader cozies up to the world’s worst dicators and autocrats, whose relationships with her allies have been ruptured. I think about the perhaps irreparable harm Trump and his bootlicking, breathtakingly incompetent cronies have done to America’s standing in the world. To the safety of the world.

I think about me—your trans [relation]. I think about all the ways this country and the world are less safe for me now. I think about how you voted for that. About how you celebrate each new injustice and indignity as it crosses your news feed.

I think of how these anti-trans measures aren’t theoretical for you—trans people aren’t just some hard-to-imagine bogeymen you read about on the Internet. You know me. I wonder if you think of me as you post each rant IN ALL CAPS about the threat trans people pose to America. Does my happiness, does my mere existence, really threaten you so?

I think of what ifs: what if I had transitioned when I was younger? Would that have made a difference—if knowing a trans person for longer, if you had more time to see that we’re just people trying to get by like the rest of you, would that have helped?

I think about your father, who fought in the Pacific to put and end to fascism. I think about his long career at the VA, of the gutting of that vital institution by DOGE vultures, of the brave veterans who will no longer be provided medically necessary care there, and of the veterans like your dad who worked at the VA but who have been let go due to this administration’s budget cuts. Your dad would be so ashamed, so heartbroken, that you wanted this, that you chose this, that you celebrate this, that you revel in this.

I think about how sad it is that you’ve bought hook, line, and sinker into all the bullshit they’re slinging. How thoroughly you’ve been hoodwinked by power-hungry hatemongers. And how the cost will be borne by you, your family, your friends, your state, your country, and the whole world, for many years to come.

I am trying to hate the sin, love the sinner, but it’s hard. I hope you’ll forgive me if I seem less than excited to see you when we next meet. I will endeavor to be civil, but I won’t promise to be. I don’t make promises I’m not sure I’m capable of keeping.

Love,