The current backlash against trans and LGBTQ+ communities is not simply a political skirmish over identity. It is a deeper psychological phenomenon that mirrors the very structure of dissociation itself. When individuals, communities, or nations form rigid identities rooted in trauma and false belief, the existence of queer voices threatens to unravel the partitions they have built to survive.
Trauma and Partition of the Self
At the level of the human brain, trauma overwhelms our capacity to integrate experience. To survive, the mind creates partitions: dissociation, masking, compartmentalization. In some cases, this develops into Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), where different âpartsâ of the self carry truths too painful for the whole to hold at once.
Rigid belief systems function in much the same way. When a child grows up under doctrines that declare queerness a sin or gender fluidity a threat, they may exile the parts of themselves that resonate with those truths. To survive, they lock those parts away and build an identity in opposition to them. The belief becomes a shield, even if it requires the person to wound themselves in the process.
Fascism as Collective Dissociation
What happens individually also unfolds at the collective level. Nations built on binariesâmale/female, straight/deviant, white/other, Christian/heathenâconstructed their identities on the erasure of difference. These partitions allowed societies to maintain an illusion of order, purity, and superiority while burying the violence of slavery, colonization, and patriarchy.
But just as in a dissociative system, the exiled truths cannot remain silent forever. The more a nation represses its contradictions, the more fragile it becomes. The rise of fascism is a collective âprotector partâ attempting to silence resurgent voices. Book bans, bathroom bills, and anti-trans legislation are not random acts of hatredâthey are desperate attempts to maintain a partitioned identity in the face of undeniable complexity.
Why Queer Voices Are Threatening
Queer and trans existence destabilizes these rigid partitions by simply being. If gender is fluid, then the binary is false. If love is diverse, then the hierarchy of ânormalâ collapses. To those who have built their entire sense of self around denying these truths, the presence of LGBTQ+ voices demands a reckoning:
What if I was wrong?
What if I harmed myself in the name of a lie?
What if my identity is built on silencing others?
These questions are unbearable without compassion, and so many retreat into erasure instead. The system doubles down, trying to erase the âevidenceâ of harm rather than face it.
Queerness as Integration
Yet queer and trans voices are not a threat to humanityâthey are an invitation. In fact, they are the living embodiment of integration. Queerness demonstrates that identities can be fluid, multiple, overlapping, and evolving without collapse. Trans lives show that becoming whole sometimes requires rewriting the self, not erasing it.
This is why queer liberation is so revolutionary: it embodies the healing process that both individuals and nations must undergo. Where fascism says, âchoose one or die,â queerness says, âyou can be many and live.â
Conclusion: The Global Threshold
We are witnessing a global dissociative crisis. Nations are resurfacing their old traumasâcolonialism, genocide, slavery, patriarchal violenceâand fascism responds like a rigid protector, trying to lock the exiled parts back out. But the voices of the marginalized will not disappear, because they are essential to the survival of the whole.
Trans and queer people stand at the center of this integration. Their existence reminds us that erasure is not healing, and that liberation requires the courage to face what was once silenced. Just as an individual cannot heal without acknowledging every part of their system, humanity cannot heal without embracing every expression of itself.
Integration is liberation. Queerness is the future.
