Lent Day 28: Rage, Reality & Revolution

“We have to be visible. We should not be ashamed of who we are. We have to show the world that we are numerous. There are many of us out there.”

— Sylvia Rivera

It’s April now, but today we’re still taking the time to celebrate resistance, persistence, and resilience—especially in the face of injustice. Because let’s be honest, there’s a lot of injustice happening right now.

I want to take a moment to honor Sylvia Rivera, a trans rights activist, freedom fighter, and revolutionary. She wasn’t trying to be palatable or respectable. She was unapologetically herself—and she stood beside the most vulnerable. She cared about people who had nothing, because she had been one of them. She wasn’t out there chasing likes or performative allyship. She was doing the work, on the street, every single day.

“Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson were not respectable queers… They were poor, gender-variant women of color, street-based sex workers… focused on the immediate concerns of the most oppressed gay populations: street gay people, the street homeless people, and anybody that needed help at that time.”

And here we are, in 2025, still having to argue about someone’s gender or humanity. Still debating bathrooms and book bans and drag brunches like those are the existential threats to our society. Really? That’s what we’re doing? Instead of addressing real problems like misogyny, white supremacy, or toxic masculinity?

I am furious that politicians continue using trans people as weapons in their campaigns. They stoke fear. They manipulate ignorance. And they do it to gain power—not to protect anyone. Because if they cared about children, we’d be addressing gun violence. Not drag shows. We’d be funding schools, not banning books. We’d be protecting lives, not attacking identities.

This fake culture war is a distraction. And cruelty is the point.

There is no war on masculinity. But there has always been a war on women, and anyone who dares to embody femininity. Trans women. Queer women. Femmes. It’s about control. It’s about dominance. It’s about the systems we’ve allowed to flourish and go unchecked for far too long.

Did you know that 4 out of 5 women—80%—have experienced sexual harassment or assault? That statistic makes me physically sick. And what’s even more twisted is how normalized it’s become. How we accept it. How we teach women and girls to stay safe instead of teaching boys and men to stop hurting them.

We teach women to carry keys between their fingers. To take self-defense classes. To text a friend when they get home. But we don’t teach men accountability. We don’t teach men how to unpack toxic masculinity. We don’t talk about rape culture enough. We don’t listen to victims enough. We don’t change systems fast enough.

It’s not drag queens who are harming women. It’s not trans people who are erasing women. It’s not DEI trainings that are destroying this country. It’s unchecked male entitlement, patriarchy, and the refusal to evolve.

We’re broken. But we don’t have to stay broken.

We—especially men—must be willing to do the hard work. To speak up. To hold each other accountable. To stop protecting abusers. To believe survivors. To treat trans women and cis women with the same respect, dignity, and humanity.

We can’t heal what we’re not willing to name. And we can’t change what we keep defending.