Shields

They ride the elevator down and it's all a mess.

On October 11, 2024, LGB Alliance hosted its 4^th Annual Conference in London. The organizers invited me to speak. Just as I was about to take the stage, several very young women, who identify as male or non-binary, disrupted the event. They released thousands of crickets into the auditorium, forcing its evacuation.

This is my response to that disruption.

***

I know I should only feel anger, but my heart is filled with empathy as I see a photograph, shared online not long after the incident, of one of the young women on the elevator. I know that she didn’t act alone. And the truth is, I don’t want her to be alone. I only wish that the company she kept wasn’t leading her down a dead-end path. I fear what other kind of trouble she will get into. I fear that next time it won’t just be crickets.

We need her connected and close and loved. We need her exploring every pathway to enlightenment she can find. I understand that the faux revolutionaries with whom she keeps company believe that testosterone is somehow the pathway to freedom. In reality, these drugs are no better than heroin, but we can’t convince her of that by ignoring her anger and pain.

Apparently, I was the target at the conference. That was hard to learn. These young women know my name. They are angry at me. It seems that, to them, I represent The Man, The System. I’m what they need to rebel against.

We are in The Upside Down.

“Their target was you, you were the target,” I’m told as I sip a glass of red wine at a conference afterparty.

I was the target, I learn, surrounded by these gloriously alive homosexuals—these beautiful people I never want to see harmed.

Kate Harris, a co-founder of LGB Alliance, tosses me flowers. Ben Appel and Mr. Menno chat happily nearby.

After the girls released the crickets, Kate spoke to them. She tried to get them to engage, to share their feelings. She offered them a connection. As soon as she mentioned my name, they reacted. They were angry. They were trying to silence, not only the six-hundred-plus attendees, but me—a woman, a lesbian. A person who might understand their anger better than anyone.

I don’t want to be swallowed by fear. I don’t want to have to wear a bulletproof vest the next time I speak publicly.

I want to acknowledge the young woman’s anger. I want to tell her that she has a reason to be angry. She’s just angry at the wrong person. Adult men have led her to believe that I am the enemy.

***

I wore a knife around my neck for years, as I traveled to faraway places like Ghana and hitchhiked in Canada.

In 2001, in Africa, I traveled to a stilt village—a village built in the middle of a vast lake. We arrived by canoe and couldn’t leave without our guides. One of the men made a pass at me. I said that I was a lesbian. The men laughed and said that all lesbians needed was a good raping by a man.

That night, my traveling companions barricaded the door. These women slept around me and protected me. I grasped the knife in my fist until I finally fell asleep.

I was in Africa on September 11. I returned to the U.S. somehow angrier than I was when I had left. As a young woman, I donned many shields. I was dirty back then. A layer of grime was the first shield. I was a punk.

Combat boots, shaved head with bangs—a look that signaled to those in the know that I was deeply embedded in the punk movement. Punks are angry, the music is angry. At punk concerts, the pit is a place to shove and fight and hit and slam and feel something other than numb.

***

It was after midnight—the earliest moments of Valentine’s Day, 2003. I closed the coffeeshop and headed to the Metrolink train alone.

I was still, and forever will be, a woman.

I rode the public transport train home, with my bike. I didn’t own a car.

I loved my bike, it was almost a limb, but it was a mountain bike and heavy. It had a metal pannier and a sticker on it that said, “THIS BIKE IS A PIPE BOMB.” It was how I transported everything. I made minimum wage. I was trying to finish a college degree.

I had two options when the train pulled into the station. I could flip my bike frame up onto my right shoulder, carry it up the six flights of stairs to the street and catch the bus, or I could get onto the elevator that always smelled like urine.

I was tired, I had slung coffee for eight hours, it was nearly 1 a.m. It was cold and dark and I made the wrong choice, the weak choice, the tired choice.

I got on the elevator and put my back against the wall. I placed my bike between my body and the door and I pushed the button to go up. Then he got on.

The door closed and he turned around to face me. He smirked and from the look he gave me I could tell that he was disturbed, and I was suddenly not tired anymore but completely and entirely awake and aware.

Aware of the trap, aware of the smell of urine.

That’s all that I could think of—the smell—as he slammed me hard with full force into the back wall and tore at my clothes. The smell of urine, the sound of metal grating against the floor, and pain. I remember pain in my breasts and head.

I froze at first. And I will never feel shame for something that my body did for me, so that I could stay alive. I only feel gratitude that my body knew to do so.  I froze and the parasympathetic nervous system took over with such speed, it must have been designed by gods. Breathe in, and oxygen floods the lungs. The oxygen travels to the brain and the synapses begin to fire. The muscle fibers recoil and prep to respond. Lock it all down and tighten it all up or retract and prepare to explode.

Fight or flight.

Blood pooled into the sections where bruises would develop. My back kept hitting the wall.

Finally, somehow, my body went from freeze to fight and my bike became a battering ram. I slammed it back against him. And then I pulled it back and I did it again. And then I pulled it back and I did it again. And the pedal of my bike, my beautiful red bike, caught him in the shin. The handlebar got him in the gut. And it stopped.

Everything stopped except for the smell and the awareness underneath my boots that the floor was textured metal. The doors opened to the air that didn’t smell like urine anymore and out we spilled.

And what happened next is somehow worse.

I roared at the people standing in the quiet, cold, tired line, waiting for the bus.

HELP ME.

There were about a dozen men and women in the queue. I roared again and again.

HELP ME.

But no one did. They looked at me and then looked away, and the man, that man, he joined the queue. They let him join the queue, and when the bus came, they all shuffled on board.

Something died that night, at the bus stop. Maybe it was the girl who believed in shields, and the safety of elevators, and others ever coming to the rescue.

So again, my body, the body that is the only place I will ever be contained, took in a breath, and my lungs filled with oxygen, and I climbed back onto my battering ram and I rode home.

I called the police when I got home. I’m sorry to tell you that they didn’t do anything, even though the platform of the train had a camera, and the bus had a camera, and the man paid a fare and rode on that bus. Three years later, when my motorcycle was stolen, they cared. But they didn’t care that night.

***

So, my darling young girl in the green jacket in the elevator—21 years after my own memorable ride in another elevator, far away—I know your anger and pain. I know when it feels like everything has been taken away from you, and that you are up against The Man, that you must fight with everything that you have. I admire your courage, and I understand that you cannot see that you have been lied to.

You have been lied to by The Man. Because we ARE in The Upside Down. The Man tells you that I am the enemy, that I am the one who wants to take away your shield.

Your shield.

Here’s something you must know: No amount of testosterone injected into your skin will ever be enough. Because they always find a way. That shield will never hold.

So, my darling young girl in the elevator. My darling young spirit. You can hate me, hate me with everything that you have. You can ball up your fist and beat me with everything that you have and I will still reach out to hold you.  You can scream at me until your voice is hoarse, but I will not leave you.

I will be the battering ram and slam against those men and their pharmaceutical poisons who promise you an even fancier shield than the ones I tried.

Instead of combat boots and the grime you have been told a beard and a lower voice will work. It won’t.

Instead of a septum ring and a scowl you have been told that cutting off your breasts will protect you from ever feeling them groped and torn at. It won’t.

I will not leave you. I will be here when the shield fails, when you crumble to the ground.

I will be the battering ram against the surgeons, who promise you that just cutting off your breasts, will make the pain and the anger go away.

Eventually, radicalization burns out.

You’ll grow old and wiser.

You’ll learn that in 2024, we were ALL in The Upside Down. And when you do, please find me. I will embrace you with open arms.