A Cursed Meme, A Tiny Utopia
Goodbye Puerto Vallarta, Hello Sayulita, Video Coming Soon
I recently fell off of my Substack cadence for two reasons, one fun and one less so:
The Fun Reason! (Video coming soon live now!)
The fun reason is that I filmed a three-hour interview to start a series of interviews with “Hollywood” filmmakers about their art and practice as artists. It’s a topic I’m obsessed with. We don’t talk to filmmakers the same way we talk to musicians, painters, dancers, etc. Because of the financial stakes and daunting impenetrability of the Hollywood system, conversations with artists who work there tend to focus on questions of career advancement and finance.
I’m more curious about the “why” of it all. Film people tend to be smart and resourceful. They’re good at problem-solving and politics. They have patience and perspective, but they’re also nimble and adaptable, able to take advantage of a limited-time opportunity or a chance encounter. So why don’t they do something stable and lucrative? Why not start fast-casual dining restaurants, become lawyers, earn MBAs, and run things?
Usually, the “why” is deep and strange and personal and artistic, and that’s what I want to learn about. I also think that these passionate people contending all the worst symptoms of late-stage capitalism (corporate consolidation, AI, labor disputes, climate change, reckonings over highly racialized and patriarchal power structures) might have good ideas about what we all do next when our current systems unravel.
The vibe I’m going for is “What if Werner Herzog was the producer of Entertainment Tonight and the show focused on existential joy/dread instead of hot celebrity gossip?”
Oh, and if that’s not annoying enough, when I talk to people about it, I’ve been saying things like, “It’s not a podcast, per se, it’s more a series of short films that use the distribution mechanism of podcasting.” Because, after all, I’m trans, and we love to keep people on their toes about language.
The Not-Fun Reason!
The not-fun reason I haven’t written is just, you know, depression? A couple of weeks ago, the rapidly growing list of Trump’s anti-trans executive orders, the inescapable Substack notes about trans suicide and murder, and total fucking panic penetrated the calm of exile. It left me an internet ghost floating through Puerto Vallarta’s crowds of hook-up-hungry gay boys in banana hammocks, biker-adjacent Florida people, and retirees from both of those communities.
A cursed meme because it was the open and closed parentheses around this couple of weeks of darkness.
The meme is below. If you spend time on “I’m a good liberal!” Facebook, Substack, Bluesky, etc, you may have encountered it. You’ll usually find it on low-depth virtue-signalling accounts, among other memes that, when taken as an aggregate, create the impression that if we just sort of Democrat hard enough in our hearts and social media pages, America will reject MAGA, embrace science, and atone – a little – for the sins of slavery, and systemic oppression of non-whites, religious minorities, women, queers, etc., but, you know – only a little.
“What’s wrong with this meme?” You might ask, if you are a cis person who doesn’t spend a lot of time listening to trans people or witnessing our lives.
“Well,” I would say, if you were a real person asking me this. “First of all, the intention is good. Trannies, good, Nazis, bad. That’s the right answer of course. You get a cookie.”
But, then I would say to this imaginary liberal “But, it cedes territory. The position of an actual ally would be that trans people aren’t a topic of debate. You don’t need to say you’re not concerned for the same reasons you wouldn’t use the word ‘concern’ to address the presence of someone from a different race, religion, or gender. Expressing your relationship to another group of people in terms of ‘concern’ or ‘lack of concern’ is inherently dicey.”
Then, in this imaginary conversation, I’d offer: “Go back and watch newsreels of trans-GI Christine Jorgensen. In the 1950s, there was a lot of civility and a total lack of ‘concern’ about this woman who was once perceived as a man. The ‘concern’ was invented sometime between 1950 and 2025. Do you know who invented that concern? Are you aware of the similar damage that style of concern around bathrooms, access to children, and trustworthiness did to gays and lesbians in those intervening years? When we allow terrible people to frame the conversation, we’ve already compromised.”
Concluding my sermon, I’d tell this imaginary liberal friend, “And also, no trans person in 2025 would ever say ‘I’m transitioning from a man to a woman.’ Most of us feel that we are becoming externally what we always were internally. But even those of us who feel a sense of connection to the gender we were prescribed at birth would not use this language. This meme tells me that the poster thinks that trans people are something to be talked about, not people to be listened to.”
“Oh my gosh, Jude.” my imaginary liberal friend would say, throwing their arms around me, “I see the error of my ways. Henceforth I will not discuss trans people as a topic of debate, or allow myself to be sucked into fearmongering about sports, bathrooms, and private medical decisions. Instead of amplifying the voices of mediocre liberal ‘content creators’ I’ll seek out voices from the communities most affected by fascism since they’re probably way ahead of the rest of us.”
“That’s so great, gurl,” I’d say, gently breaking the embrace, “look at you growing.”
“You know,” they’d say, “this just seemed like some dumb meme in the context of Everything That’s Going On™, but clearly it’s really important.”
“It’s the most important thing. You and me? We literally just saved the world.”
Cue: swords being beaten into plowshares, lions lying down with lambs, peace in the Middle East, etc.
But of course, this conversation has never happened in real life. It’s only happened in comment sections. I see this cursed meme and, despite absolutely knowing better, write things like: “Wow, shit take,” or “In case you care, this meme sucks for trans people,” or “Tell me you don’t know a single trans person,” etc.
The cursed meme goes on to be reposted tens of thousands of times. Trump and Musk continue bringing about the end of days, unconcerned. Three other fragile, broken trans people hit “like” on my exasperated spasm of trying to bend the “discourse” in a direction that acknowledges our actual humanity. We all play our parts.
This lead to what Rich refers to so astutely in our coming conversation as “podium time,” applying your creativity to imaginary press conferences directed toward people in the past and present who have offended your ego.
At the beginning and end of my mini-depression, my podium time was directed at two of The Angriest Liberal Men Online™.
The first one responded to the cursed meme “TBH, I’m concerned about both.”
He gave away so much of the game here. There are so many liberals religiously convinced that Trump is wrong about: rape, Ukraine, immigration, tariffs, DOGE, entitlements, abortion, BLM, vaccines, Russia, public education, the appropriate use of bronzer, freedom of the press, sharks, windmills, magnets, what constitutes a conventionally attractive male body, North Korea, the social acceptability of discussing Arnold Palmer’s cock, The Village People’s gay anthem “Y.M.C.A.” etc., etc., etc… But maybe Trump kind of sort of has a point about transgender people? Sure, he’s mainly Hitler, but even a broken clock is right twice a day, isn’t it?
I looked at his profile. He was the toughest lib on the internet. He showed almost half of his face in his profile pic. You could sort of make out the shape of his head behind his wrap-around sunglasses. He’d dutifully reposted every pro-dem meme available and even some more Antifa-adjacent memes about fighting Nazis.
I wrote back “Great news, my bro, you’ve got a president who is working hard to address one of your two concerns. Congrats on not having any problems that actually affect your life!”
He wrote back “You are lost 💀” and then blocked me before I could send my reply about how certain I was that his browser history is packed with shemale porn.
For a few short minutes, I felt a smug sense of superiority to this man. I reveled in how not lost I am. How sacred it is to be oneself. How sure I am that while most of us aren’t trans, most of our authenticity is equally socially inconvenient, dangerous, and destabilizing to the status quo. My brother in Christ, you wouldn’t dare to remove those wrap-around sunglasses and risk truly seeing, truly being seen.
I didn’t think about him for two weeks. I started to book travel for the next time I would see my kids. It would be April. What would April hold? How many more anti-trans executive orders between now and then? How would the ACLU lawsuit fighting for trans passports and Social Security cards have progressed? Would “Big Balls” be running the FAA? Could I dip into America and out without having my passport seized? Any amount of research into any of these questions ended in a lot of bleakness, and little hope. Ultimately, Krista and I found a generous chaperone willing to bring the kids to Mexico City.
The sadness of thinking about this kind of thing stuck to me. I did dozens of work Zooms. A recent fixture of these conversations is me offering, or other people discovering that I’m not in LA. And then I explain why, usually with “Well, technically I’m based in LA, but at the moment I’m in Mexico until there’s a little more clarity about what the current administration does with anti-trans laws, passports, and our ability to travel.”
And then, the people on the other end of the Zoom say something like: “Wow. Jesus. I’m so sorry for everything that’s going on. You shouldn’t have to think about things like that.” It’s kind and true, and I’m so grateful for this recognition. Often we spend a little time with this. They have trans friends, immigrant friends, or other reasons to be scared for themselves. It’s heavy.
But also, we are on these Zooms to do business. So I say something chipper like: “Well, I feel very privileged to be able to get ahead of whatever bad things might happen! I mean, running away from America is only so bad when you’re in Puerto Vallarta. I was on the beach yesterday. Today I ate three incredible tacos for ten dollars. Tomorrow, perhaps I will get a massage. It’s really like a vacation!” I try to sage away whatever bummer vibes I’ve brought to the conversation.
After all, these things are true. I am as comfortable as any trans person I know, and I have plans A, B, and C in place if MAGA metastasizes in the ways we fear it might. And, hope springs eternal. The queer community has an incredible history of surviving the impossible.
I don’t have much right to feel sad or worried, but there I was on Substack, reading the words of brave trans people, terrified trans people, revolutionary trans people, historically informed trans people, and on and on, just so sad and worried and fucking furious that a community with so much to offer is spending so much psychic energy on a half-there old conman with a full diaper and the world’s most emotionally needy ketamine addict.
So, that was no fun.
I bought some mushrooms from a white hippie. I planned a beach, whale-watching, and shroom day to reset from this uniquely 2025 flavor of transgender digital sadness.
Then I met Eduardo, washing a car parked outside of the tattoo shop around the corner from our Puerto Vallarta apartment. He spotted Zeby, my lopsided, overweight, goblin-looking Husky mix, and dropped the bucket to run over and hug her. He gushed about how beautiful she is. He tried to buy her. I told him she wasn’t for sale. He hugged her again.
There was a demonstration series of US college softball at the park that week. Eduardo asked if I was one of the softball players. He said he was rooting for California. (I don’t think there was a West Coast team). I told him that I wasn’t a softball player, but I was from Los Angeles. This was enough. More dog hugs. More offers to buy Zeby. A salute to Eduardo, to me, to Mexico. Eventually, he asked if we could hug. He was exactly breast height to me and when we did, he was face-first, Fellini-style in my tits. “Oh, Heaven!” He said.
“Fuck it,” I thought.
There were more salutes: to Eduardo, to Mexico, to Jude, and then “To America! To White Zombie!”
“To White Zombie!” I shouted back down the block. “More Human Than Human!”
“Hey!” Eduardo shouted back. “White Zombie! Yeah!”
It was weird and druggy (him, not me, I had the shrooms in my bag, not in my system), but in a way that was better than online interaction. “Hi, stranger! I love your dog! I love you! I love me! I love Mexico! I love California! I love your tits! I love White Zombie!” It was a tiny utopia.
I ate half a heart-shaped shroom chocolate that Saturday and went to the beach. Lying on a blanket, I checked Substack on my phone and saw that the second Angriest Liberal Man Online™ had found my comment on the cursed meme.
I commented:
“In case you want the trans perspective on this: this meme sucks for trans people. Love the intent, but the execution reveals that you don't spend time with trans people.”
The Angriest Liberal Man Online™ said:
“Great takeaway here. Glad you're focused on the important stuff.. For fuck's sake stop making this into another issue where there is none. Now is not the time to be splitting fucking hairs over "who actually spends time" with who. There's fucking Nazis running around. Put the little shit aside for 30 seconds and recognize nobody here is against you. Stop LOOKING for an argument”
And the conversation went in the direction you might expect. Except that, I was on a beautiful beach, shrooming away, melting into the sun and sand and waves. Whales breached in the distance, splashing in the water between me and the nearest sailboats. A woman sold me and Krista a coconut and then, when we’d drank its contents, returned to scrape the meat into a slimy goo which she augmented with various sauces.
This all should have been enough for me to disengage from The Angriest Liberal Man Online™, but it wasn’t. On my way towards being at one with the universe again, I felt an overwhelming desire to needle him and indulged it.
I watched his videos. He was way tougher than wrap-around sunglasses guy. He created in the genre of “Man sits in truck and screams about what is wrong with other people.” His innovation here, screaming about people on the right, instead of people on the left. Sometimes, a simple twist is all you need for success online. This is not one of those times.
Other than videos, The Angriest Liberal Man Online™ posted a litany of memes about fighting Nazis. This was a point of connection: I post these memes too. I’m sure we are equally ineffective in frightening a single Nazi, but both succeed somewhat in flagging our progressive bonafides to a left-of-Chuck-Schumer scroller.
I thought about the online arguments I used to get into with trans girls when I was an angry man online. I thought: Oh buddy, I hope it’s not just us you’re fighting with, or you’re in for a ride. I thought about how easy it is as an able-bodied, straight white American man to slip into the belief that problems that aren’t yours are a secondary class of problems. How I, like him, used to think that if all the people with those secondary problems could just, you know, chill the fuck out for a little while, we could solve the first order of problems.
It wasn’t really The Angriest Liberal Man Online™ I was angry at. It was me. For having lived for decades under the illusion that there was some way for us to dominate our way into righteousness… For thinking that there was a path to an equitable world that requires that some people spend years (or generations) waiting for their turn… For confusing my ability to be louder and scarier than other participants in a conversation for having something worth listening to… Not seeing that all of these things, despite my affinity for the people I consider to be “the good guys,” is pretty fascist.
At some point, The Angriest Liberal Man Online™ was done explaining the world to someone as “childish” and “uneducated” as me, and just told me to “GO FUCK YOURSELF.”
Before blocking him, I wrote, “LOL, stop arguing with trannies online and go punch a Nazi.”
I took a conscious breath, made peace with my large, persistent inner demons, and explored a tidepool with Krista. Giant lifeless rocks boiled with Miyazaki crabs when we came near, their entire surfaces skittering away to avoid interacting with us. We returned a shore-blown sea urchin to the water. We hiked through a series of beautiful coves, up a hill, and back to the thumping queer party of the Romantic Zone.
My depression was gone (at least for a little while).
When a cis friend texted to check in with me after seeing Hunter Schafer’s TikTok about being misgendered on her passport, I was able to be sad for the state of America and also laugh that someone heard that MAGA hatred had reached the flawless trans movie stars and models and thought to check in with me.
And now I’m in Sayulita. The beaches are beautiful and Pelican-filled. The skies are beautiful. The horses are dancing.
