On missing the news.

Some years ago now, I made a private decision. I think we always need to start by discussing transness as private. It has its public component, but that component comes down to one rather simple thing: please don't pretend that I haven't made this private decision. The concept of "good manners" is a very fraught one, but it does contain a drop of uncomplicated virtue, which is the idea that some things aren't your business. Of course, one of the complications of "good manners" is that "good manners" involve pretending uncomfortable things aren't happening, which means that by many people's definitions, misgendering is "good manners." If there's anything that has got humanity in trouble, it's our inability to agree on a definition.

I have been thinking about avoiding the news. My loved ones tell me that it would be good for me. Temporary fasts, long-term commitments to stop looking at certain outlets. The trouble is that it's hard for me to cope with the transphobia that's become a central tenet of public life, here in the United States as well as in many places overseas. The Times eagerly profiles critics of transition who are widely discredited elsewhere. The local alternative paper breathlessly reports on which elderly rock stars think I'm disgusting. The queer media is solidly pro-me, but in a tokenizing, patronizing way – trans people are either joyous and life-affirming, or we're dead. In my social media feeds, people regularly tweet violent accusations and threats against trans people in order to dunk on them, but somehow the dunk never carries the same force as the violence. The dunk is a gleeful bird pecking at a charging rhino.

All of this foments many things: exhaustion, bitterness, the inability much of the time to write. I know myself, and I know that the best thing I can do for trans people is to keep writing novels as a trans person, many of which portray trans people – and do so in a complicated, humanizing light. As a writer, one hopes to be read in a shining void, evaluated on skill and only skill. One wants to do art for art's sake, ex gratia artis, but the reality is that books do have functions, they are machines, and one of the things they can produce is empathy. Another is hatred and violence. Books don't inherently ennoble, but maybe mine can.

That's part of why there is such a strong movement on the right to censor trans books and trans art. I read the news. I know how many powerful people – with track records – want to see my work, our work, choked out of the public sphere, want to see a trans person never publish again. Perhaps it looks self-involved of me to talk about this in terms of publishing, but speech, they say, is a fundamental right. They keep saying it, even though increasingly in this country, people define "the right to free speech" as "the right to bigoted speech"; the objects of that speech are not held to have rights at all. Still, I was promised free speech, and I'm going to hold out for that promise. I want to write good and lasting novels on topics that move me. It's what I was placed on Earth to do, and I would rather it not be a political cause, but if it must be a cause, I guess it's mine.

I'm afraid. And so I have to stop reading all this news. Because at this point, I'm informed enough about what's going on with trans people. I know what the model legislation looks like. I've seen the t-shirts the men with guns wear. I can see the lineup of old rock stars who'll come out as transphobes soon; they're like task bubbles in The Sims. I'm set. I'm ready.

If I'm going to be able to do anything to help trans people, I need to stop spending every single day clicking on articles, clicking on articles, clicking on articles, in which there will be a quote from someone from an arch-conservative think tank who wants me forcibly detransitioned, or a politician who's signing a law to prevent a couple of 13-year-old trans girls from playing lacrosse and talking about them like they're junior Arnold Schwarzeneggers, or the parent of a trans person who thinks Twitter did it. Someone will say the word "contagion." The purpose of both kinds of coverage – cruel and sympathetic – is to keep people scared, whether of trans people or for trans people. The Times specializes in a potent blend of both. ("Oh, these poor people! They're being exploited into thinking they're trans!") Trans people are the sexy topic right now, the thing we're talking about instead of this strange hot weather we're having. It's a trend. It's an extremely dangerous trend, but it's just a fad, and like many fads, it's just a rehash of an older fad.

We can be informed, and we can be appropriately alarmed, without clicking on every single article. And if we don't have the ability to not click – I generally don't – then we have no choice but to limit our intake of news itself. I think that's unfair, and I hate it! I love to stay informed; I'm fascinated by the world; I love good journalism, and there's nothing I enjoy so much online as settling into a deeply reported piece about something. I have a strong sense of old-fashioned civic duty about staying informed. At the same time, the Internet leads to a toxic relationship with news, and I find that relationship impossible to resist.

The problem of the Internet has been the same since the 1990s – now that we're connected, what do we do with it? What is the Internet for? That's why social media became so central; without constant contributions from the public itself, there wouldn't be enough Internet to read and watch from morning to night. It's also why there is so much news, updated continually. When you need to shovel news into people's heads like that, it leads to scaremongering, trumped-up stories, passionate reporting on the contests of the powerful. It leads to fucking Elon, the perfect food for the Internet, because he constantly says shocking, upsetting things and has the power of life and death over many people. But most of all, it leads to fads. The irony is that trans identity itself is often accused of being a fad, by the exact people for whom that accusation is a fad. It's as true in the media as it is in divorce court: people will always accuse each other of doing what they're doing themselves.

I don't know yet what avoiding the news looks like for me. Probably it'll be a drastically ramped-up version of what works already: productivity apps on the laptop, no apps on the phone, a small handful of trusted newsletters, a book to hand instead. If that can't stop me from clicking, I'll take more drastic measures. I really want to know what's happening, but as long as I'm unable to resist the maw of the fad, I have no choice but to know less.

Maybe, as a trans person, there's no way to avoid detachment from civic life, which our enemies so ardently desire. Maybe all we can do is choose how we'll detach, and how we'll stay, and for me, friendship and literature are how I'll stay. I'm not hiding my head in the sand. This statement feels fake to me, but it's true. There isn't enough sand in the world, even if I wanted to.

The news. Jesus Christ, man. I'm a thinking adult and I just want to live.