A few weeks ago I impulsively released Performance Review, a novella about a lot of things, but which was inspired in part by the intersection of erotic hypnosis with transgender identity, and by experiencing the decline of liberty in Florida first hand.

Shortly after I’d read Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones by Torrey Peters, the premise of which, as one of the main character’s declares, is “In the future, everyone will be trans,” I’d watched as Florida politicians and an international network of anti trans activists enacted the opposite: in their future, no one would be trans.

This is obviously an impossible project in one sense: trans identity is not only a product of culture, but an interaction between culture and an innate biology. There are no genetic markers of transness (despite attempts to uncover them by cis researchers), yet there is a long history of trans people across cultures. The modern conception of transness is only about a century old, coinciding with advances in medicine. “Trans people will always exist” is a common refrain by people fighting to protect a public trans existence, for good reason.

However, the skeptic in me also wagers that the modern trans eliminationist project can succeed in a materially meaningful sense: a period of continuous suppression with long lasting consequences on the life and well being of many. The expression of transness can indeed be forced away, even if transness itself never will. This has long been the project of various reactionaries, who have, until a handful of years in the 2010s, widely succeeded with their suppression. A classic example is the manifesto by Janice Raymond published in 1979, which proposed that “the problem of transsexualism would best be served by morally mandating it out of existence”. Based on her anti trans attitude, the Reagan administration later contracted with her to write a paper on the “social and ethical aspects of transsexual surgery”, which the Department of Health and Human Services used as the basis for a report to declare trans surgeries controversial and experimental, resulting in a Medicaid ban on all trans care that remained in place from 1981 until 2014, when the Affordable Care Act passed. It took more than three decades to correct the transphobia Raymond laundered into a policy that had reversed the department’s prior consensus that trans healthcare was medically necessary. While trans people did not stop existing, living a trans life became materially much more difficult. Lifespans were shortened. The scope of a trans life narrowed severely. The window possibility closed to a slit.

Compared to many of the anti trans activists today, Raymond appears almost quaint. Recently, republican states have not only outlawed trans medical care, but have proposed and passed laws putting bounties on trans people for using the bathroom, have targeted doctors with jail and revocation of medical licenses for providing care, have censored awareness and discussion about trans existence in schools and other institutions, and have legally defined trans identity out of state law. States have stopped allowing trans people to update birth certificates, driver’s licenses, and other IDs. Raymond’s dream is finally being realized. Florida, where I lived until recently, has lead the way for much of this, and inspired the setting for Performance Review.

Florida. I love that state even though the yankees who retire there hate me. Even though the Ivy league elite who runs it spends his days sending the cops after anyone who doesn’t kiss his shiny boots. Even though the state is no place to raise a family, no place to create a future. Even though the only things Florida produces are gated communities full of single family mansions surrounded by fences, pointing ring cameras at each other. I still love that damn state. The Florida in Performance Review is diseased and suffering. It is infected by an ideology that has gripped many in this country: a selfish greed propped up by the repression of the other. The symptoms are hurricanes and flooding, an endless summer, and invasive species that only consume. It is an ugly place, reflecting the successful implementation of an ugly ideology.

Hypnosis isn’t real. But it works. If you desire the outcome, you will respond to hypnosis. Erotic hypnosis focuses on, no surprise, the erotic wants of a listener. It is popular not just with trans women, but women in general. In fact, the files that inspired Performance Review were made for cis women, only later becoming popular and more widely distributed due to the interest of trans women. These files have a simple premise: they tell the listener they are not in control, and then instruct the listener they must change their appearance and personality to that of a highly desirable woman. They release the listener from inhibition. From worry. From anxiety. From shame. They take away the weight of making a decision the listener deeply desires but cannot bring herself to act on. They are a permission structure, similar to the fantasy of a Christian Grey type taking control of one’s life.

In Performance Review, a juiced up form of hypnosis is used as a form of conversion therapy by the Department of Health to cure citizens into a cis identity. These treated individuals, in turn, are reduced to a source of exploitable labor for the tech company that this conversion therapy has been outsourced to. Because hypnosis is not actually real, the “cure” does not actually work. The company fudges success numbers in order to meet the unrealistic demands of the government, and the government in turn does not check, because on paper everything works as desired. They are engaged in a cycle of delusion which makes them weak.

Cissy hypnosis, for the protagonist, “works” temporarily because it is a means for survival in a hostile society. A way to avoid guilt, shame, and deep trauma. Their avoidance of their inner self becomes strained as they interact with other virtual reality player-actors, disrupting their isolation. Community is not a panacea, but it is necessary.

Ultimately, my contention is this: society will never succeed in repressing trans identity through legislation or surgery bans. It succeeds when trans people stop trying, or don’t even know to start trying. When trans people become isolated. It succeeds when a trans life is no longer a visible possibility. When the window is shut and the curtains are drawn tight.

There will be a lot of takes about the results of the election. A lot of advice for what to do. Reassurances too. Most of these will be wrong, or misguided, especially if you’re trans or queer. I don’t know how the next four (or more) years will go, but I know what Trump and the other eliminationists have promised. They will attempt to outlaw us and to unmake our bodies and lives as best they are able. But hypnosis isn’t real. The proffered appearance of total state control deceives. They are blinded by their rejection of reality. They are weaker than they want you to think.

It’s your life, not theirs. So live.

Performance Review is available as a pay what you want PDF, and as a signed and numbered limited print run paperback.