An earlier version of this essay orig­i­nal­ly appeared on Tina’s sub­stack under the title Ugly Algo­rithms: Another Thing Being Tina Taught Me.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us 

how dif­fi­cult it is to remain just one person, 

for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, 

and invis­i­ble guests come in and out at will.

–Czeslaw Milosz, “Ars Poetica?”

This week, Tina gets her own phone.

There has been a lot going on.

JJ’s reptile menagerie has been rapidly expand­ing, which Tina (JJ’s mom) aids and abets because she con­tin­u­al­ly hangs from the grim cliff of knowing that trans kids easily get depressed. Tina hopes that letting her fifteen-year-old non­bi­na­ry kid keep snakes, lizards, and frogs will stave off ado­les­cent depres­sion, obses­sions, deviances, and/or vices. 

The current tally: 3 tree frogs, 1 crested gecko, 1 snake. But typing that out, Tina real­izes she’s exag­ger­at­ing.  JJ is only getting one new snake, and it’s a baby. Very small.

“Like a shoelace!” JJ exclaims. They’re madly in love with the little black-and-white snake they met at the pet store where they vol­un­teer on Sundays.

Tina has been pre­oc­cu­pied lately. More accu­rate­ly, she is over­whelmed. There are at least five things a day coming up in the news that affect trans people, rising like some kind of seepage from out of the ground that threat­ens to ruin her shoes. These are all things Tina wants to write about, but she does not have time because she has papers to grade. Or, at least, I do.

Tina gets her own phone because she acci­den­tal­ly posted a sym­pa­thet­ic response to an ill col­league of mine who does not know who Tina is. Tina had to delete that comment, hope­ful­ly before anyone noticed. Tina and I real­ized that switch­ing between social media accounts on one phone is a fool’s errand—at least for those of us old enough to remem­ber when phones were attached to the wall. I got her a pink-and-red case at Five Below. Tina does not get a nice phone. Just an SE. That’s all she needs. She doesn’t com­plain. She knows we’re on a budget. 

I publish a column once a month in The Bollard, an inde­pen­dent pow­er­house of a local news­pa­per in Port­land, Maine. I write there as Tina Carson to protect my child and myself from the haters.

Tina’s column is about raising my trans teenag­er (also pseu­do­nymed: JJ). Raising this child has been a hell of a journey, and I’ve learned a lot. It is my hope to help those who strug­gle to get the pro­nouns right, or who need to get a grip. But it hasn’t been easy. Not by a long stretch.

My mom was furious with me recent­ly because Tina quoted her out of context in the last install­ment of my column. Tina men­tioned that her mom (my mom) ques­tioned the cause of death of Nex Bene­dict, the trans teenag­er in Okla­homa who died after being beaten by her class­mates in the girl’s bath­room at school. This pissed Tina off because she felt it was obvious that Nex was mur­dered, by phys­i­cal and/or psychic violence.

I tried to explain to my mom that Tina isn’t me. She has her own socials, and her algo­rithm is entire­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the cause.  She says all the things I’m afraid to say. 

Tina’s algo­rithm reveals to her that there are many trans folks out there who are seri­ous­ly, right­eous­ly happy. That there are also many mothers like Tina feeling the same way Tina does. That there is cloth­ing designed for her trans non­bi­na­ry child. Really and truly!

This is a valu­able dis­cov­ery. Given that JJ has a habit of pur­chas­ing a LOT of clothes.

Let me rephrase that.

Given that Tina has pur­chased a lot of clothes for JJ because JJ has con­vinced her that THESE PARTICULAR CLOTHES are the ones that will solve every­thing … and then these clothes end up god knows where, maybe in a closet, with JJ apol­o­giz­ing and explain­ing that they didn’t quite have the fit figured out. Tina is excited about the clothes that show up in her algo­rithm. They are designed very specif­i­cal­ly for non­bi­na­ry bodies, so maybe the “fit” will be right this time (but let’s not forget that teenagers will be teenagers when it comes to clothes).

The new algo­rithm is every­thing. It’s a com­plete world, purple and shiny, sparkly, righteous.

But it’s also ter­ri­fy­ing, as it also offers up to Tina stories of trans young people who have been murdered.

When I’ve had enough, I put Tina and her phone over there, an arm’s length away on the coffee table. If I need to see into her thread, I can pick her back up. 

******

As a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor, I’ve been trying to dig into the real work of finding trans voices, as opposed to relying on an anthol­o­gy. I suspect when I read work by trans folk, and it does not appeal to my aes­thet­ics, that my aes­thet­ics are being chal­lenged, and I realize that this lack of con­nec­tion (between me and the text) is more reveal­ing of my deficits than those of the trans author I am reading.

I’m becom­ing a little obsessed with the work of scholar and poet Cameron Awkward Rich. I teach Awkward Rich’s poem “Walking Lake Calhoun” to my class. There is a moment when the poem speaks to me so fully that I see myself and all my past selves, and I wonder if this poet lived in Minneapolis.

Because that’s where Lake Calhoun is, and I lived there, too, long ago, and walked around that lake.

So I sloop down a research rabbit hole—when all I ini­tial­ly wanted to find out was whether or not Awkward Rich did his under­grad­u­ate work in Min­neapo­lis-St. Paul—and it’s then that I land on a website called Pro­fes­sor Watch­list, which “reports” pro­fes­sors who discuss or teach Crit­i­cal Race Theory, Fem­i­nism, or Queer and LGBTQ+ focused stuff. These far-right folks have refash­ioned them­selves, as you may know, as victims of an extreme leftist regime that is apparently—because we don’t have any­thing better to do—trying to indoc­tri­nate them. This is nar­cis­sism on steroids.

Before I know it, my algo­rithm is fucked. I should have been doing this on Tina’s phone.

I’m getting adverts now from a website that claims some douche-bag kid has been “dis­crim­i­nat­ed against” because he had the “courage” to wear a t‑shirt saying “THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS” to school and was rep­ri­mand­ed, and I’m sud­den­ly dis­cov­er­ing a cadre of “foun­da­tions” pur­port­ing to fight inequal­i­ty. Their pages display a ver­i­ta­ble smor­gas­bord of “diverse” faces—some looking serious, some smiling, all looking very clean—by which I mean not one of these people wears hand­made jewelry or has their hair dyed an unnat­ur­al color, and my eyes are squint­ing as I click further and further, finding my way into the plastic soul of one of these orga­ni­za­tions’ web pages that appear to dupli­cate them­selves across the Inter­net, inde­ci­pher­able from one another, an inva­sive species of thought that strikes me as similar to the tow­er­ing tangles of mul­ti­flo­ra rose in my back­yard, an inva­sive weed I’ve been fight­ing for years. 

Mul­ti­flo­ra rose sucks on so many levels. The worst part—aside from the fact it only has thorns and lacks flowers—is that it invades every­thing, wrap­ping itself up the trunks of apple trees, killing them.

Evil can be incred­i­bly banal. Years ago I would have deemed that state­ment melo­dra­mat­ic. Now I con­sid­er it an obser­va­tion. It would be very easy to glance at one of these web­sites and think they are sup­port­ing my values. Because they are pre­tend­ing to, but it’s like reps from Catholic orphan­ages showing up at abor­tion clinics to counsel preg­nant teens. 

My point is that we must be on the lookout. I know it seems dumb: these Repub­li­can/Right-Wing douches attempt­ing to appear sym­pa­thet­ic, masking them­selves as vic­tim­ized. I know it’s sad. It would be embar­rass­ing if they didn’t actu­al­ly know what they were doing.

I don’t for a second think they don’t know what they’re doing.

I don’t for a second assume they are dumb.

They know exactly what they are doing.

Like the Nazis knew what they were doing only eighty years ago.

Making myself aware of these decep­tive prac­tices and then point­ing them out to others is the first step toward not having to raise my Prozac dosage.

I wish I could call Tina at her number and ask her to make all of this go away, but if I did, I know what she would say. 

“Honey, you created me to raise your aware­ness of all this madness.”