Last updated on 26/12/2025
Did you know Christmas is a really rotten time to move your family half way around the world? You might suspect it, of course, but until you find yourself either foolish or desperate enough to make an attempt, you have no idea just how bad it is, let me assure you.
I’m going to tell you a story, and then you can decide for yourself which camp I fall into. Actually, let me start with a fragment from the resignation letter I was too cowardly or prudent to send. Again, you can decide which is which:
Well, you finally did it. Whether it was through inaction, apathy, or a lifelong mission of making America unbearable for people who aren’t exactly like you, you finally fucking did it. The political situation in Indiana and the states generally has become untenable for my family. Between my trans ass, my queer as shit wife, and our unwillingness to see my daughter treated as nothing more than chattel or breeding stock, we can’t stay here.
A bold, angry sentiment to be sure. I wrote it because I couldn’t get a nice earnest one out without clearing away the anger that dominates my feelings about the current moment. Let me be clear, I’m stoked to be going back to academia. I love fundamental research. I love to teach. I love a university town and a campus. Students are simultaneously one of life’s greatest trials greatest joys.
And yet I still feel like my old job, my old house, my old life are being ripped away from me. I’m real angry about that. Now, right before the AI practice that I’ve worked to build takes off, is not when I would choose to leave — absent external factors, of course. Tragically, external factors there are in abundance. Every day is filled with reports about trans care being stripped away from people. Trans folks are purged from their jobs for no reason other than being trans. Every day it seems the government finds a new way to hound us from public life.
And let’s not forget that the hatchet men that chase us from every job, every public affordance, every experience that might let us, if only for a moment, feel like valued contributing members of society are handsomely rewarded for their gruesome fucking work. Some, I’m sure, also do it for the simple love of the game.
And it’s not just my folks. We’re in the midst of a new lavender scare, but it’s not just the queers that are in the crosshairs. It’s anyone that’s somehow other. Bleak as it is, man am I fucking glad we weren’t the first demographic on the chopping block. That terrible honor goes to immigrants, who have known no peace this year. My heart weeps for those folks, but the sorrow is mixed with profound gratitude and relief.
Without their suffering, my family would have come under the crosshairs sooner and more directly. As it is, I’ve been able to secure work in a foreign country. Work in my field, even. Everyone who feels they have to flee their home should be so lucky. Granted, no one should feel unsafe where they live, but here we fucking are. We all read the poem. I saw them coming for the imigrants, and I got my family the fuck out. The operative word in survivor’s guilt is survive.
Will it get that bad? It’s hard to say. The recent 60 Minutes piece that Bari Weiss of CBS tried to spike, the one about migrants being sent to El Salvador’s CECOT prison and tortured? The one that accidentally aired in Canada? The one you can only see when it pops up for a few minutes before a DMCA strike on youtube, by downloading via torrent, or in short fair use allowable segments plastered on social media? It suggests, well no, it outright says we’re operating concentration camps right now, if by another name. Actually, it says we’ve outsourced it to keep overhead down, and if that isn’t the American spirit, I don’t know what is.
In somehow less horrific recent news, Chicago has seen nighttime raids with ICE agents coming into apartment complexes from helicopters. They aren’t even all that special. LA, Portland, New Orleans, Columbus, Minneapolis? They’ve all got their turn on the horror carousel, and we’re left wondering who is next.
How many public calls for violence from elected officials constitutes a pogrom anyway? The world may never know.
I don’t know how to follow that up, honestly. Maybe I should have burried the lede, but seriously, all of the other grievances feel trivial in light of what’s happening to others. Let me air them anyway.
For the last few days, I’ve been dealing with my heartbroken kid. She got less for Christmas than everyone she knows. Why? Because those kids aren’t picking up their whole life and moving it across the world. It’s a petty grievance, but it’s a real one. She didn’t do anything to deserve this. None of us did, but we all get a non-traditional Christmas this year: While everyone else is absorbed in an orgy of consumerism, I’ve been holding every object I ever held dear in my hands wondering “Does this make the cut?” We all have.
The big one though is all of the people that I’m leaving behind. Friends I will likely never or only rarely see again. My folks who have never left the US. Well, once, 40 years ago, before Canada demanded passports. I can’t bring them with me. Can’t bring my friends. Can’t bring the ladies who pointed the way for me early in my transition. Doesn’t seem like there’s anyone I can get out of the situation but my family, and that feels rotten folks.
You spend your whole life watching kickass monologues filled with righteous fury, Ray Patterson on the Simpsons, Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech on the Boondocks, but that’s not how it is. You just end up feeling empty and guilty; you’re left with the knowledge that you’re a coward, but at least you don’t have to live every day with the dread of what comes next. Cold comfort, that.
For the last two months, since I landed my new gig, I have been waiting for someone, anyone to tell me I’m over reacting. I wanted any adult in my life to take me aside and say “What in the fuck is wrong with you? You march back into work and beg for your old job back.” That hasn’t happened. Every friend, every relative, every professional acquaintance has been happy for me. Or jealous. Often both. No one thinks I’m doing the wrong thing by me and my family, and my god is that fucking telling.