Resist Trump: A Survival Guide

by Max S. Gordon

Click here for the audio version of this piece:
Resist Trump: A Survival Guide

(Speech given at the event, “One Year Later: Writers, Artists & Advocates Respond to Our American Crisis”, First Person Plural Reader Series, November 7, 2017 in Harlem, New York at the Shrine.)

1.

Please allow me to introduce myself.

I’m a black man, I’m gay, I’m an addict. I’ve been a crackhead, I’ve been a drunk.

I don’t remember being sexually abused, but I was a gay boy, now a gay man in a homophobic society that continues to destroy people like me for our sexual orientation — and that’s a kind of abuse, isn’t it?

This week, a father in Nevada killed his 14-year-old child, because he’d “rather have a dead son than a gay one.” In our society, we kill transgender women and men every day for telling the truth about their lives.

Sometimes I feel I’m fighting for my life. These days, I’m not always sure I’m winning.

I was at a gym in a small town I was visiting last month and a man asked me for my phone number. Another man overheard us talking and whispered under his breath something about perverts and how disgusting we were. I was too scared to confront him, so I…