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Happy National Coming Out Day… Celebrate With Your VOTE!

Martha Madrigal
6 min readOct 11, 2022

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©Keith Haring, 1988

We are less than a month out from the US elections on November 8, standing at the crossroads of love and fear, knowing that once again, voters will help determine whose lives matter. In my book, all of the anti-trans legislation across America should be enough to send republicans packing. But of course, that’s not the thing that’ll do it. Overturning Roe, though- seems to have sent motivation to many. Good. It’s all the same conversation, really, a political party that is trying to (continue to) legislate a sickly twisted version of Christianity onto all of us. But the cishet rank and file, unless they both know AND support a trans human, likely wouldn’t rush to the polls in any great numbers to save us.

Perhaps I am cynical, but it’s evidence-based cynicism. AIDS brought home the need to be visible, to be counted, and to get LOUD. We’d been talking about it since the 1960’s (at least) and Stonewall became the catalyst for organizing, for insisting, that we be seen and counted. I was 3 years old that late June of 1969 when so much began to change. In 1981, when the first cases of AIDS began to present (and they initially called it GRID…) I was just 15. I was a lonely kid trying desperately to survive high school.

It would be years before it occurred to me that (most) gay men are simply not attracted to trans women, even…

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Martha Madrigal
Martha Madrigal

Written by Martha Madrigal

Trans Artivist/Writer/Humorist ~ co-host of “Full Circle (The Podcast) with Charles Tyson, Jr. & Martha Madrigal.” Rarely shuts up.

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