OUT ON THE HILL is the official blog of the Victory Congressional Interns. Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of LGBTQ+ Victory Institute. Learn more about the internship at victoryinstitute.org/vci.
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On a Tuesday at the Congressional Equality Caucus, there are appropriations markups to watch, dangerous bills to respond to, and 900 pages of Project 2025 to read. Traveling to the Capitol, I’ll enter an elevator with a police officer and a group of women who ask the cop, “Have you tazed anyone today” at which everyone laughs. On the way back to the O’Neil office building, I’ll look through the foggy walls of another office, seeing a sign that’s fallen behind a printer, announcing “Gus [the big fluffy white dog] is in,” and wonder if he’s still alive.
To be clear, these hardships do not undermine the good and the hope coming from my time on Hill. Information is power, and I feel a new sense of vigor with every activist and passionate staffer I meet. But, holding a minority of the House, we are on the defense. We’re meant to keep the needle steady, not receding. And though the majority of bills won’t pass the Senate or into law with the President’s signature, rhetoric and fear-mongering have harmful material consequences on legislation and marginalized individuals.
The way out, I’ve heard, is storytelling. It’s difficult to discriminate against someone you see as human. Fear-mongering of the unknown makes hate easy. Humanity makes it difficult. At the EqualityPac Gala, a mother discussed the trauma of Governor Greg Abbot’s investigation into the parents of trans children; donors responded favorably. Trans teenagers in Florida testify to their state representatives; one vote switches in their favor. Stories compel us to read on, to lift our pocketbooks, and maybe just maybe change our politics.
But story-telling is a double-edged sword. We cry because that mother at the podium is crying. We are compelled to action because that trans teenager says she is tired and just wants to live a normal life, not testify in hearing rooms over her right to exist. We ask people to lay their trauma and interiority on the table so that we might be intrigued enough to act or change. I believe in the power of narrative journalism—it ties facts to community, and it is why I want to write—but the line between exploitation and stories as tools for change is difficult to walk.
In For Opacity, Édouard Glissant criticizes our obsession with understanding one another, arguing instead towards opacity. To acknowledge one’s right to opacity is to abandon our need to analyze the other and allow people to exist without scrutiny. To Glissant, it’s naive to think we can know ourselves or each other completely, and we must be able to say “I don’t understand you entirely, but I don’t need to for your existence to matter.” I believe in this principle. But I don’t know if we’re ready to give up our interrogations of the other.
Queer and trans youth are labeled confused, forcing them out into the spotlight to defend themselves. No one is asked to defend the norm, but LGBTQI+ people and other marginalized groups live a constant catch-22 wherein we must choose between the right to live unquestioned or the limited civil rights we currently have. Fighting for one negates the other. Representation is necessary, but it is in constant conflict with our right to opacity. We must constantly know ourselves—the evidence of our queerness and our certainty in that conclusion—for fear that we may need to explain ourselves to friends, family, and those on the Hill.
Even explaining one’s identity again and again isn’t always effective. There are certainly narratives of conservatives switching parties after their grandchild comes out, but LGBTQ youth still have disproportionate rates of homelessness. JD Vance allegedly gave cookies to a trans friend after their surgery, yet, last year, he introduced the Protect Children’s Innocence Act, which would have categorized the performance of gender-affirming care on minors as a Class C felony.
So what’s the way out? How do we navigate this catch-22? How do we relinquish the need to understand each other, to poke and prod at identities that are not like our own?
One opinion is to move the conversation away from Congress entirely. Democrats argue that they’re not trying to make gender-affirming care for youth extremely and easily available, but rather they’re ensuring that those conversations are between doctors and families, not politicians. The only issue is that those decisions are currently in politicians’ hands in half of the states.
Another possibility is to shut off our phones at 5 pm, to acknowledge that we exist in a much larger framework of activists and allies who can fight when we need to catch our breaths. But that feels especially impossible when you’re on the Hill, watching the stakes of the November election play out in front of you.
Or maybe this is an impossible question. We have to defend ourselves with our narratives. But we have to maintain enough energy to tell those stories. With our rights and lives on the line, we can only hope for balance and celebrate the wins as they come: applaud the poisonous bills that don’t pass, find communities that remind us the world is much larger than the Hill, and cheer as Gus the big white fluffy dog gallops down the hallway.
