Today trans people exist in an atmosphere where it has become normal for strangers to demand of us that we extemporaneously provide inarguable, indisputable proof that without very safe medical care we would be stone-cold dead.

Every day we are besieged by people who feel entitled to seek us out in vulnerable places and demand an audience. Suddenly, everyone with a social media account believes they are an expert in what has always been a highly specialized and technical field, even within the larger field of medicine itself.

Monday, Republican Florida state representative Webster Barnaby made headlines after an unhinged tirade during a hearing on HB1421 where he referred to trans people as “mutants”, “demons” and “imps”. Then it went downhill from there.

Re-authoring is the process of exploring subjugated storylines buried by the dominant stories given to us by those in our lives with more power. It seeks not to replace or supplant dominant narratives, but rather to explore alternative ways of understanding more congruent to the people we know ourselves to be.

I write this at 4am on March 31st, what is internationally known as Trans Day of Visibility.

It is 12 hours after I emerged from my second gender-affirming surgery. Like a lot of people, my impulse to accelerate transition goals has escalated over the past year as a growing unease fills my body every day that one day, my body and the care it needs, will soon be outlawed— or as is more likely in states like Massachusetts, will no longer be covered under Massachusetts’ implementation of the Affordable Care Act.

With the unprecedented onslaught of hateful anti-trans bills and policies waging war on trans youth happening right now, I see a lot of rampant speculation about social transition in school, and an equal number of claims around "clusters of kids" doing the same. Any number of “concerned parents” groups, op-ed columnists and headline-starved science writers are swearing up and down that entire friend groups are suddenly declaring themselves with different names, pronouns and descriptors related to gender and sexual orientation. And for the right-wing, this offers a perfect platform to inject fear into an already hostile climate as they prepare to dismantle every inch of progress made over the past forty or so years.