Mateer is a man who has made derogatory comments about transgender CHILDREN. I feel a profound sense of disappointment—an emotion even stronger than anger (for me, anyway)—whenever I read articles such as this. I WANT to be surprised by such hatred—and I don’t use this word lightly, Mateer’s comments were cruel—but I am not anymore. I oftentimes want to block such hatred out of my world… so that is what I did, for this poem.
I decided to use a digital format to make this poem. I chose this for two reasons. Number one being: I see hatred on the internet more often than I see it in real life. Two being that I can completely blackout words online, whereas, on paper, words are harder to erase completely.
I tried to black out as much of the hatred as I possibly could. I subverted the cruel statements by changing their focus. Trans children aren’t the work of the devil, but hatred is his work. I left in some of the facts, but I made sure to position them in such a way that positive statements surrounded them. We can never completely erase hatred, but we can surround it with positive messages to negate its influence.
