WORCESTER, Mass. — Thu Nguyen, the first nonbinary politician elected to office in Massachusetts (but, trust me, not the last), dramatically announced a hiatus over the toxic “transphobia” of colleagues.
“Mr. Chairman, under your leadership, I have felt unsafe around this council body,” Ngyuen announced via Zoom to colleagues gathered in Worcester’s city hall. “I have faced transphobia, with being misgendered, and recently learned that I have been dehumanized to the point where I am being referred to as ‘it’ by my colleagues on this council. Mr. Chairman, you have also misgendered me. Therefore, I never felt there was any avenue I could turn to for safety and feel protected against the discrimination and toxicity of our council culture.”
That Nguyen felt compelled to make such a dramatic announcement in a city that awarded just over a third of its votes in November to Donald Trump, biennially sends to Congress one of its more liberal members in Jim McGovern, and features a city council comprised of politicians almost exclusively left-of-center tells us one of two things. Either a) transphobia runs deeper than even the most cynical among us ever grasped, or b) some people compulsively need to play the victim even when the local community throws parades and flies flags in their honor.
“For the record, I will not be taking on the responsibility of proving my experience of transphobia and the discrimination and toxicity of council culture,” the city councilor explained. “My experience is enough. I understand the amount of hate I have been and will be getting for speaking up.”
Or plaudits for “courage” and “bravery” in the face of the transphobes of … urban Massachusetts?
It all recalls the Little Britain character Daffyd Thomas, “the only gay in the village” — and not just because of non sequitur victimhood. Like Daffyd, Thu says “they” cannot go to work because of “their” sexuality and raises all sorts of issues ancillary to what goes on in the surrounding “village.”
In the keffiyeh-wearing city councilor’s case, this has included advancing legislation mandating that crisis pregnancy centers refer clients to abortion clinics. Grievances expressed Tuesday included the intransigence toward an older Israel–Hamas “cease-fire resolution” (“Let us not prioritize potholes and snowplowing over Palestinian lives,” Nguyen had earlier commented) and a sunsetting of remote participation in public meetings by elected officials, which prompted the declaration: “COVID is not over.”
Candy Mero-Carlson, one of the three city councilors called out for not using “them” in reference to Nguyen, noted “their” attendance record ranking lower than any other councilor (despite the advantages possessed by plural beings) prior to the announced hiatus and “apparent determination to prioritize political agendas each week over the pressing work we are elected to do.”
In a working-class city of 210,000, obsessing over ideological abstractions, often of a national bent, when such concerns as trash collection, schools, dangerous people in the public library, and public safety require the attention of councilors, strikes locals as more bizarre than a singular person’s demand that others use the third person plural in reference to “they/them.”
Denizens of Worcester, which hosts a gay bar and a lesbian bar, encounter a preponderance of the 72 genders and show a penchant for using pronouns beyond he and she. Thu Nguyen is not the only trans in the village.
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