Your words are a gift and a summoning each and every time. I’m so thankful for you, and for this new format where you’re able to express yourself so much more fully than in a grid post.
You're being faced with heartbreaking choices that no one should have to make. As someone who adopted a dog when another family needed to make a different horrible decision, I know it's never easy but you made a decision you know is best. No one has the right to judge your choices.
It's conditional allyship: allies as long as you stay in your lane, don't ask too much, and never ever show anger or upset. We're supposed to be grateful, as if it should not be a given that we should be accepted, fully, including going out of our lanes, asking too much and showing anger and upset. We should be grateful, and anything beyond that is punished by taking away allyship.
Because you're right, people like Jennifer are accepting of the IDEA of transgender people, but they're not actually invested in what it means to have to live with that in a world that is like it is now, especially with things escalating in the US the way they are.
What WOULD have been the solution here, Jennifer? Make a big dog stay inside a small trailer for the next years, days on end? For the trans people involved to stay and be findable for everyone who hates them? What solution would you have preferred? It's pretty obvious you're choosing the imagined slight against an animal over the absolute reality of the horrors against transgender people.
As so often I can not imagine the laziness in thinking this way. I understand the mechanism (reptile instincts, we-them thinking), but I do not understand the ease with which people accept it happening in themselves without making an effort to take themselves to task for it.
We-them thinking is a very old instinct which absolutely makes ZERO sense in today's world. None. There are enough resources for everyone, as long as we're willing to share. As long as we're able to see that other people are just as different as we ourselves are. The ingroup is just as diverse as the outgroup, only in different, more known ways. And it is a very stupid reason to have in and outgroups: the fact that you're simply familiar with one set of differences and not the other and that therefore the other is OTHER and not right and should be kept away at the very least or non existing maybe better.
It's so insane. And so incredibly sad.
I've not been aware of me being trans for very long, a little over 2 months, but I know this kind of betrayal from the ingroup, because I am bi. Lesbian women are often more hateful and painful than people from the outgroup, because you'd think that they'd understand how it feels to be excluded on basis of your orientation, but here they are, joyfully excluding you and being proud of it, calling themselves gold star lesbians, as if having sex with men is somehow BAD, when it's just simply not your preference, not something you chose not to do because you're above it. Small side road lol, sorry.
I am sorry you, as such a public figure, have to endure that ON TOP of losing your dogs. As if that is not leaving you heartbroken already. I am so sorry.
I hope you will find some peace and quiet on the road, and lots of beautiful places, and above all lots of beautiful people who are not conditional allies but real ones.
Xilo and you are kind, gentle people. I will carry this anger for you. I mean this with a full chest of disrespect in their general direction. Jennifer can fuck all the way off.
You are a treasure. I had to find a home for a mix Akita when my husband and I were to move from the US to Sweden back in the 90s. I found out that after a long flight from CA to Stockholm, our dog would have to be in quarantine for 3 months without us being able to visit. It was also extremely expensive. I worried about what this would do to our dog, who was also a wonderful dog, but required a lot of exercise and was a handful. We decided to find him a home and not take him with us. He ended up on a potato farm in Idaho where he had an amazing life. It is still gut wrenching for me all these years later and I have never been able to have a dog since then. You are both extremely intelligent, beautiful humans who are navigating horrific times and doing the best you can for yourselves and your pets. All my love to you both!
oh, my heart hurts for you. i'm sorry you faced cruelty from others in response to a decision that was already heartbreaking for you guys. anyone who's loved a dog and been loved by one can understand. your recognition of balto's needs and your inability to provide that under current circumstances is a testament to your mindfulness and deep love for balto and his overall well being. many dog owners have no concept of specific breed needs and the additional individual dog needs (based on their past) because they don't take the time to educate themselves and understand and so they never consider the bigger picture. you understood balto's needs. so fuck the haters. i'm so sorry for your goodbye and the grief you both have felt. you did a deeply loving thing in spite of the inevitable hurt it would cause you. that IS profound love in action...🐾❤️🩹🐾
You don’t need my permission, or anyone else’s, to make the best choices for your family—fur and feather babies included. But just in case you need a boost, you did the best you possibly could for your people and your animals. THAT is what real love is—and real love is always a bit messy and often really hard. I have a trans daughter and nephew and this white knuckle ride is forcing all of us to think and plan in ways we’d never have imagined we would have to. We wish all of you safety, joy, and peace. ❤️
I'm so sorry that not only have you had to give up your home and your beloved dogs, but you also are having to deal with so-called allies turning their backs on you. It's heartbreaking, and earlier when I was reading this I was feeling so bad for you and also thinking of my own adult kids, who are both trans, and what they're going through that I couldn't stop crying and my husband actually came to find me to see what was wrong. My son and his kids are preparing to move from the state they've called home for most of two decades to a somewhat safer one, but it's much farther away from family. I'm meeting them at my mother's house this weekend so he can give me some boxes of important things to store for them, and all this has happened pretty quickly so I haven't asked him yet if their two dogs are going with them or not. I know how difficult it is to part with a pet; it's not something you take lightly, and if they do have to leave the dogs it would probably be with friends who have better accommodations for them than us, but I know it would be devastating for them. I can't imagine wanting to make someone feel bad about something that's already so difficult.
Wishing you both the best. I hope you can find a sense of peace and contentment and beautiful places to rest on the road.
I get frustrated with people in my real life when they give "advice" as though they understand my situation...dealing with hundreds of them sounds beyond infuriating.
That's all really hard. I hope peaceful moments find you in the midst of all this. Thank you for your sharing your voice with us.
So much love to you. I appreciate you sharing, and the challenge you are giving your readers to think outside of the ways in which they are ally’s, to a more true form of standing by a community.
You’re writing is beautiful and moving— I hope sharing this also feels cathartic.
Being trans is a gift— shame on those who believe otherwise.
I am so sorry. It took so much courage and loss to do what was best for your dog. True love. I know what it is like to be hated for who you are. I came out in the 70's and now I'm an old lesbian who doesn't present like a cute young dyke anymore... but i still come out all the time. It is my way of honoring the queer community. I think what the trans community suffers is the worst though and I hate it. I have a newsletter on substack too, about living in this small Washington town and my art practice. I am sending lots of love to you. You are an amazing writer.
So many hard decisions have to be made in these difficult times. No one has the right to judge you - you are pioneering a life that will work for you in this very strange and frightening time. Thank you for showing us how to find joy even when life is really scary.
The greatest act of love is to do what is best for our animals, even if it hurts us. So, I’m so sorry for your loss,and you shouldn’t have to be dealing with any of this, but you making space for and then leaving Balto behind tells me just how much you love him. His needs came first even if it broke you and your husband’s hearts.
I am facing down a similar barrel of the same gun, and it’s devastating. I’m grieving my loss of people I thought were friends and the life I was trying to build for myself. It feels a lot like I’m trying to outrun a volcano that’s about to blow. Everyday little bits of lava litter the path and the rumblings get louder.
Then there are people in my life who seem to have no understanding nor seem to want to, of what is actually happening. I think they’ll deny it till we all turn to ash. The disparity between having to completely turn my life upside down and inside out, while they go their way like it’s business as usual is a screaming discordant note ringing in my ears.
Anyway, I’m glad you have each other and you have your cats. I’m glad you’re mobile and looking after yourselves. Wishing you guys the best
I'm sooooo proud of you and grateful for your honesty. My heart aches for the terror, anger, sadness, and fear you've been subjected to. Big love to you and Xilo ❤️
Your words are a gift and a summoning each and every time. I’m so thankful for you, and for this new format where you’re able to express yourself so much more fully than in a grid post.
You're being faced with heartbreaking choices that no one should have to make. As someone who adopted a dog when another family needed to make a different horrible decision, I know it's never easy but you made a decision you know is best. No one has the right to judge your choices.
It's conditional allyship: allies as long as you stay in your lane, don't ask too much, and never ever show anger or upset. We're supposed to be grateful, as if it should not be a given that we should be accepted, fully, including going out of our lanes, asking too much and showing anger and upset. We should be grateful, and anything beyond that is punished by taking away allyship.
Because you're right, people like Jennifer are accepting of the IDEA of transgender people, but they're not actually invested in what it means to have to live with that in a world that is like it is now, especially with things escalating in the US the way they are.
What WOULD have been the solution here, Jennifer? Make a big dog stay inside a small trailer for the next years, days on end? For the trans people involved to stay and be findable for everyone who hates them? What solution would you have preferred? It's pretty obvious you're choosing the imagined slight against an animal over the absolute reality of the horrors against transgender people.
As so often I can not imagine the laziness in thinking this way. I understand the mechanism (reptile instincts, we-them thinking), but I do not understand the ease with which people accept it happening in themselves without making an effort to take themselves to task for it.
We-them thinking is a very old instinct which absolutely makes ZERO sense in today's world. None. There are enough resources for everyone, as long as we're willing to share. As long as we're able to see that other people are just as different as we ourselves are. The ingroup is just as diverse as the outgroup, only in different, more known ways. And it is a very stupid reason to have in and outgroups: the fact that you're simply familiar with one set of differences and not the other and that therefore the other is OTHER and not right and should be kept away at the very least or non existing maybe better.
It's so insane. And so incredibly sad.
I've not been aware of me being trans for very long, a little over 2 months, but I know this kind of betrayal from the ingroup, because I am bi. Lesbian women are often more hateful and painful than people from the outgroup, because you'd think that they'd understand how it feels to be excluded on basis of your orientation, but here they are, joyfully excluding you and being proud of it, calling themselves gold star lesbians, as if having sex with men is somehow BAD, when it's just simply not your preference, not something you chose not to do because you're above it. Small side road lol, sorry.
I am sorry you, as such a public figure, have to endure that ON TOP of losing your dogs. As if that is not leaving you heartbroken already. I am so sorry.
I hope you will find some peace and quiet on the road, and lots of beautiful places, and above all lots of beautiful people who are not conditional allies but real ones.
Xilo and you are kind, gentle people. I will carry this anger for you. I mean this with a full chest of disrespect in their general direction. Jennifer can fuck all the way off.
You are a treasure. I had to find a home for a mix Akita when my husband and I were to move from the US to Sweden back in the 90s. I found out that after a long flight from CA to Stockholm, our dog would have to be in quarantine for 3 months without us being able to visit. It was also extremely expensive. I worried about what this would do to our dog, who was also a wonderful dog, but required a lot of exercise and was a handful. We decided to find him a home and not take him with us. He ended up on a potato farm in Idaho where he had an amazing life. It is still gut wrenching for me all these years later and I have never been able to have a dog since then. You are both extremely intelligent, beautiful humans who are navigating horrific times and doing the best you can for yourselves and your pets. All my love to you both!
oh, my heart hurts for you. i'm sorry you faced cruelty from others in response to a decision that was already heartbreaking for you guys. anyone who's loved a dog and been loved by one can understand. your recognition of balto's needs and your inability to provide that under current circumstances is a testament to your mindfulness and deep love for balto and his overall well being. many dog owners have no concept of specific breed needs and the additional individual dog needs (based on their past) because they don't take the time to educate themselves and understand and so they never consider the bigger picture. you understood balto's needs. so fuck the haters. i'm so sorry for your goodbye and the grief you both have felt. you did a deeply loving thing in spite of the inevitable hurt it would cause you. that IS profound love in action...🐾❤️🩹🐾
You don’t need my permission, or anyone else’s, to make the best choices for your family—fur and feather babies included. But just in case you need a boost, you did the best you possibly could for your people and your animals. THAT is what real love is—and real love is always a bit messy and often really hard. I have a trans daughter and nephew and this white knuckle ride is forcing all of us to think and plan in ways we’d never have imagined we would have to. We wish all of you safety, joy, and peace. ❤️
I'm so sorry that not only have you had to give up your home and your beloved dogs, but you also are having to deal with so-called allies turning their backs on you. It's heartbreaking, and earlier when I was reading this I was feeling so bad for you and also thinking of my own adult kids, who are both trans, and what they're going through that I couldn't stop crying and my husband actually came to find me to see what was wrong. My son and his kids are preparing to move from the state they've called home for most of two decades to a somewhat safer one, but it's much farther away from family. I'm meeting them at my mother's house this weekend so he can give me some boxes of important things to store for them, and all this has happened pretty quickly so I haven't asked him yet if their two dogs are going with them or not. I know how difficult it is to part with a pet; it's not something you take lightly, and if they do have to leave the dogs it would probably be with friends who have better accommodations for them than us, but I know it would be devastating for them. I can't imagine wanting to make someone feel bad about something that's already so difficult.
Wishing you both the best. I hope you can find a sense of peace and contentment and beautiful places to rest on the road.
Thank you for this.
“This is temporary. This feeling is big, but if I let myself feel it, it will fade.”
I get frustrated with people in my real life when they give "advice" as though they understand my situation...dealing with hundreds of them sounds beyond infuriating.
That's all really hard. I hope peaceful moments find you in the midst of all this. Thank you for your sharing your voice with us.
So much love to you. I appreciate you sharing, and the challenge you are giving your readers to think outside of the ways in which they are ally’s, to a more true form of standing by a community.
You’re writing is beautiful and moving— I hope sharing this also feels cathartic.
Being trans is a gift— shame on those who believe otherwise.
I am so sorry. It took so much courage and loss to do what was best for your dog. True love. I know what it is like to be hated for who you are. I came out in the 70's and now I'm an old lesbian who doesn't present like a cute young dyke anymore... but i still come out all the time. It is my way of honoring the queer community. I think what the trans community suffers is the worst though and I hate it. I have a newsletter on substack too, about living in this small Washington town and my art practice. I am sending lots of love to you. You are an amazing writer.
So many hard decisions have to be made in these difficult times. No one has the right to judge you - you are pioneering a life that will work for you in this very strange and frightening time. Thank you for showing us how to find joy even when life is really scary.
The greatest act of love is to do what is best for our animals, even if it hurts us. So, I’m so sorry for your loss,and you shouldn’t have to be dealing with any of this, but you making space for and then leaving Balto behind tells me just how much you love him. His needs came first even if it broke you and your husband’s hearts.
I am facing down a similar barrel of the same gun, and it’s devastating. I’m grieving my loss of people I thought were friends and the life I was trying to build for myself. It feels a lot like I’m trying to outrun a volcano that’s about to blow. Everyday little bits of lava litter the path and the rumblings get louder.
Then there are people in my life who seem to have no understanding nor seem to want to, of what is actually happening. I think they’ll deny it till we all turn to ash. The disparity between having to completely turn my life upside down and inside out, while they go their way like it’s business as usual is a screaming discordant note ringing in my ears.
Anyway, I’m glad you have each other and you have your cats. I’m glad you’re mobile and looking after yourselves. Wishing you guys the best
I don’t think you had to explain…. I know you considered deeply everything. Our family is considering changes, too 🥲
I'm sooooo proud of you and grateful for your honesty. My heart aches for the terror, anger, sadness, and fear you've been subjected to. Big love to you and Xilo ❤️