As a member of the community who’s seen the world change more times than I care to count, I’ve been sitting with Mark Carney’s recent Davos speech. Now, Carney isn’t usually the first person we look to for “queer theory,” but listening to him talk about a “rupture” in the global order—the end of a “pleasant fiction” and the beginning of a “harsh reality”—it struck a chord.
If you’re like me—a bit of a “tarnation” at heart, someone who has survived the jagged edges of history and built a life out of the fragments—you’ll recognize the feeling he’s describing. He’s talking about a world where the old rules don’t work anymore, where being “good” and following the “rules-based order” doesn’t actually buy you safety.
For the LGBTQ+ community, that’s a lesson we’ve learned the hard way for decades. Here is what I think we can take from Carney’s “Message to the Middle.”
1. Compliance is Not Safety
Carney was blunt: “Compliance will not buy safety.” He was talking about middle-power countries like Canada trying to please great powers, but the metaphor for us is crystal clear. For a long time, the mainstream “strategy” for queer liberation was respectability politics. We thought if we dressed right, stayed quiet, and proved how “normal” we were, we’d be granted a seat at the table.
But Carney warns that the “rules” were always a bit of a fiction. When the political winds shift—when the “hegemons” of the status quo decide they no longer need us or find it profitable to target us—those rules vanish. We are seeing it right now with the rollback of rights across the globe. We cannot rely on the “goodwill” of the old order to protect us. Our safety isn’t something we can buy with good behavior; it’s something we have to build with collective power.
2. “If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu”
This was Carney’s most stinging line. In the geopolitical world, it means middle powers need to stop acting like observers and start acting like players. For our community, it means we have to stop being a “special interest group” that people talk about and start setting the agenda.
In this new, fractured world, being “middle-of-the-road” or passive is dangerous. We have to be “principled and pragmatic.” We need to diversify our alliances, look inward to strengthen our own community “infrastructure” (our health systems, our legal defenses, our mutual aid), and ensure that when the “great powers” of politics are carving up the future, we aren’t the ones being served for dinner.
3. Nostalgia is Not a Strategy
I love this line from him: “The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
It’s easy to look back at the 2010s as a “golden era” of progress and wish we could just go back to that “pre-rupture” normal. But Carney is right—that world is gone. Trying to rebuild the past won’t work because the foundations have shifted.
Instead of mourning a world that maybe wasn’t as safe as we thought, we have to look at the “fracture” and see it as a place to build something “better, stronger, and more just.” We don’t need to return to a world where we were tolerated; we need to build a world where we are foundational.
4. The Power of the “Greengrocer”
Carney alluded to Václav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless,” specifically to the greengrocer who takes down a sign he doesn’t believe in. Carney argued that when we stop “performing” for a system that doesn’t serve us, the illusion of that system’s power begins to crack.
As queer people, we are experts at “performing.” We’ve spent lifetimes masking, code-switching, and pretending to fit into structures that weren’t built for us. Carney is telling the world what we’ve known all along: there is immense power in refusing to play the part. When we live authentically—when we “take down the sign”—we aren’t just being “out”; we are dismantling the “pleasant fictions” of a society that demands our subordination.
The Bottom Line
Mark Carney’s speech was a wake-up call for nations, but it’s a manifesto for those of us living on the margins. We are in a “rupture.” It’s messy, it’s scary, and it’s loud. But as a community of survivors—of “tarnations” who have seen the rubble and kept walking—we know how to navigate a fracture.
We don’t need a “rules-based order” to tell us we exist. We need each other, we need “strategic autonomy,” and we need to be the ones holding the pen when the new rules are written. Because, as Carney said, from the fracture, we can build something more ambitious.
Let’s get to work.
In the face of ever-increasing, and baseless, legislative and rhetorical attacks, a profound and painful question echoes through the transgender community: Where are our allies within the Democratic party? The trans community is getting hammered on a daily basis, and, though we try our best, we cannot defend ourselves alone. While the silence is deafening, it is the actions of those who once claimed to be our staunchest supporters that are even more jarring, signaling a retreat in the name of political expediency at a moment of crisis.
The visible and public engagement of figures like California Governor Gavin Newsom serves as a particularly stark example of this apparent backsliding. Newsom, who has long positioned himself as a progressive champion of LGBTQ+ rights, chose to host the late Charlie Kirk on his podcast. Beyond a simple, one-time conversation, reports indicate that Newsom expressed a sense of agreement with Kirk on certain trans-related issues and later described the conservative activist as “gracious.” This engagement, and the comments made within it, are deeply unsettling. When a prominent Democratic leader finds common ground and civility with a figure who built a platform on extremist and dehumanizing rhetoric against our community, it sends a clear message: our fundamental rights are a negotiable bargaining chip, to be traded away in the pursuit of political optics or broader electoral strategy.
Even more confounding is the recent vote by Representative Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender member of Congress. The community’s hope for a voice at the highest levels of government was, in many ways, embodied by her election. Yet, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death, McBride voted in favor of a national day of mourning for a man who repeatedly and publicly attacked the very existence of trans people, including herself. While she released a statement explaining her vote as a condemnation of political violence, this rationale does not fully alleviate the pain and frustration felt by a community under siege. It raises a critical question: when does the act of seeking common ground with those who demonize you become an act of self-betrayal? When do we stop fighting for a seat at the equal rights table and start simply being satisfied with the chance to sit with those who would deny us entry?
This is not merely a matter of political disagreement; it is an inflection point for the transgender community and, more broadly, for human rights. We have been fighting for our place at the table for far too long, and we cannot afford to be left behind for the sake of political maneuvering. The trans community’s fight is a fight for the basic right to exist without fear. Our allies, particularly those within the Democratic party who have promised to stand with us, must understand that this is a moment for unyielding conviction, not quiet compromise.
The time for performative allyship is over. We do not need elected officials who will simply tweet a rainbow flag while remaining silent on the floor of the legislature. We need vocal, unflinching allies who will stand up against every piece of discriminatory legislation and every hateful remark, no matter the political cost.
We need leaders who understand that protecting the most vulnerable is not a political choice, but a moral imperative. Without them, the transgender community is left to fight a war on its own, and in a climate of escalating hostility, that is a battle we cannot win.
The air crackles with an unsettling tension, a silent but deafening alarm bell ringing in the chambers of our collective consciousness: Are we losing the narrative? This isn’t some academic debate; it’s a visceral, heartbreaking struggle for the very soul of our society, and nowhere is this battle more fiercely waged than in the insidious war on transgender people. While we, the champions of understanding, acceptance, and the undeniable truth of human diversity, strive to build bridges of empathy, the political Right has embarked on a seemingly endless, venomous torrent of misinformation, disinformation, and junk science designed to poison the well of public discourse. This isn’t just about influencing opinions; it’s about systematically dismantling lives, and as the Supreme Court’s chilling entanglement in cases like Skrmetti v. T.W. starkly reminds us, the stakes have never been higher.
My heart aches as I ask once again: Are we truly losing the narrative?
Their strategy is a masterclass in manipulation, a cruel symphony of deceit. First, they inundate our digital landscape with a relentless flood of misinformation, twisting the beautiful realities of transgender lives into monstrous caricatures. They misgender with malicious intent, deadname with dismissive cruelty, and spin fantastical tales of “detransitioners” without a shred of genuine empathy or context. This isn’t mere error; it’s a calculated, brutal assault designed to plant seeds of doubt and fear, to rebrand a profound aspect of human identity as a contagious illness, a terrifying aberration.
Then comes the full-blown disinformation, a weaponized assault on truth itself. They conjure entirely fabricated narratives, meticulously crafted to ignite raw, primal fears. They scream about transgender people in bathrooms, conjuring phantom threats that exist only in their prejudiced imaginations. They screech about sports, demonizing trans athletes with baseless claims that unravel with a moment’s scrutiny. And most horrifyingly, they brand life-affirming gender-affirming care as “mutilation” and “child abuse,” uttering these heinous lies with a straight face, knowing full well the terror they inflict. These are not arguments; they are emotional hand grenades, thrown to bypass reason and detonate prejudice.
And what gives their vile pronouncements a veneer of legitimacy? The insidious citation of flawed studies, or the cynical twisting of legitimate research into grotesque caricatures of truth. These “studies” are often nothing more than thinly veiled propaganda, lacking scientific rigor, based on miniscule, unrepresentative samples, or birthed from openly biased institutions. Yet, they are amplified across their echo chambers, parroted as unimpeachable “science,” a cruel mockery of genuine inquiry. The relentless repetition of these debunked fictions, long after they’ve been torn to shreds by the true scientific and medical communities, creates a suffocating reality distortion field where lies become “facts.”
The devastating impact on the narrative, on the very fabric of how we understand transgender people, is an open wound. The conversation has been brutally hijacked, dragged from the realm of human rights, healthcare access, and social inclusion into a dark abyss of “gender ideology,” “protecting children” (from their own authentic selves, apparently), and the archaic phantom of “biological sex.” This poisoned reframing is the fertile ground for horrific, restrictive legislation: bans on life-saving gender-affirming care for minors, cruel exclusions of transgender athletes from sports, and chilling “Don’t Say Gay” laws that seek to erase queer existence from the classroom. All of it cloaked in a deceptive veneer of protection and tradition.
And now, the Supreme Court, the supposed bastion of justice, has become embroiled in this very battle. While the legal minutiae of Skrmetti v. T.W. are still being dissected, the very fact that such a case reached the highest court of our land sends a shiver down my spine. It’s not just a legal decision; it’s a stage, a national platform where the Right can re-litigate their preferred narratives in the full glare of public attention. Even the most seemingly neutral legal discussion can, in their hands, become a bludgeon, reinforcing existing prejudices and deepening the cruel narrative of fear and otherness.
So, I ask again, with a knot in my stomach: Are we losing the narrative?
When I see the public discourse so thoroughly warped, when I witness the relentless erosion of trust in truth itself, I fear the answer is a chilling yes. The sheer, overwhelming volume of their propaganda, coupled with a cynical dismantling of our shared reality, has created a toxic environment where lies flourish and compassion withers. When so many are fed a diet of deliberate falsehoods, how can empathy possibly survive?
But losing is not an option. My spirit refuses to accept defeat. The fight for truth, for love, for the very right to exist authentically, demands every ounce of our passion, every fiber of our being. We must respond with an unyielding force of education, painting vivid, human portraits of transgender lives. We must be relentless fact-checkers, tearing down every lie the moment it appears. We must amplify, with every fiber of our being, the authentic, powerful, beautiful voices and stories of transgender people themselves. Our media must reclaim its moral compass, refusing to legitimize hatred under the guise of “balance.” And we must be unwavering in our legal battles, our community organizing, our political engagement – fighting tooth and nail to protect and affirm the rights of every transgender individual.
This is not a detached intellectual exercise. This is a battle for hearts and minds, for the fundamental dignity of human beings. The Right’s systematic campaign is a poison, and we are the antidote. We cannot, we must not, let them win. We must rise, united in truth and love, to ensure that the stories of transgender people are not just told, but celebrated – accurately, empathetically, and with the profound dignity that is their birthright.