Remember the good old days, when men were men and women didn’t have the right to vote or have their own money?
When marriages lasted longer because women were basically slaves with no resources and no rights?
Yeah, good times. Not. There are people who think that’s a good idea now being slotted into powerful positions in our government.
But this is nothing compared to what they are doing to trans/genderqueer/nonbinary people. It’s getting downright dangerous to look like anything other than whatever some doctor decided to assign you at birth. Anytime a government starts taking away rights, including the right to be who we are, we’re in danger. They’ll come for the immigrants, and then they will come for the LGBTQ+ folx, and then they’re absolutely gunning for the women (I chose that word deliberately, by the way), and then … they’ll have nobody to come for but you, Mr. White Cis Male.
And your life already won’t be worth living.
Please, let’s not. This is unconscionable and horrifying and yes, dangerous.
I’m lucky – my “book cover” looks like I’m a nice little old gray-haired cis white married-to-a-man lady. And I may lean into that camouflage now and again, but open the cover and I’m 75% boy and my gender is guitar player. I have never felt like a woman, whatever that even means, and I refuse to shrink who I am for the comfort level of some narrow minded bigot who thinks he’s in charge.
My dear friend Christine Moad and I wrote a song back in 2021 which we released this past June, about the indoctrination people go through to try to force them to conform to their perceived gender, and to keep them in their place. We’re done with that. And we’re not going back.
Indoctrination, copyright Christine Moad/Alma Drake 2024
You can purchase this track here, and all proceeds go to Iowa Trans Mutual Aid Fund.
We’re so much bigger than words can explain us
No box book or bottle can contain us
You make assumptions cuz it’s easy to see
What a doctor assigned us but that’s not reality
Chorus
Indoctrination
It started with your mother’s milk
Indoctrination
Got some more from your father’s belt
Emancipation, we’re
breaking out of the lies
We’re living the truth
that we’ve always known was inside
You say it’s weakness, that we should be ashamed
If we’re so helpless, why are you so afraid?
We say we want equality, it goes right over your head
When you legislate gender, children end up dead
Chorus
Bridge
No, I don't want you to protect me
And I know it's hard for you to listen and hear me
So you threaten me, and tell me my life is a sin
But what if God made me non-binary
Chorus