Cassandra Roxburgh: Finding Trans Hope When the World Feels Like It’s Burning

Amid the rising global vilification of gender diverse individuals and identities, Cassandra Roxburgh reflects on how to hold onto trans hope in dark and uncertain times.

Five years. Five years I’ve lived openly as trans, five years I’ve poured my experiences and frustrations into writing and advocacy. And yet, it often feels like we’re running in place, or worse, being dragged backward.

The very issues that fueled my writing for the past two years – the heartbreaking toll of queer suicides, a healthcare system that continues to fail our community, the bureaucratic nightmare that is Home Affairs – have not only persisted but, in many ways, intensified.

Home Affairs remains stubbornly resistant to progress, and the departure of Dr Aaron Motselidi to the Department of Health, where he’s already championing harmful policies like banning hemp and cannabis, offers little solace.

So, the question claws at us: how in the face of a seemingly inexorable slide towards fascism do we hold onto hope? In seeking an answer, my mind keeps returning to the brief, almost ephemeral, trend of “hopecore.”

This algorithmic balm, custom-designed to soothe the anxieties of the perpetually online, stitches together saccharine moments of joy and nostalgia, often accompanied by a gentle affirmation – “maybe you were put on this earth to make art and write bad poetry.” It’s a digital microdose of positivity, a temporary escape into the curated happiness of others.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In many ways, it feels like a natural, almost necessary, response to the relentless negativity of the internet. It’s the dying gasp of Gen Z and Gen Alpha optimism as the digital realm is increasingly colonised by capitalist content-slop and Trump’s vision of the internet: straight, white, cisgender, and viciously American.

But as quickly as hopecore blossomed, so too did its deconstruction. In the cynical ecosystem of the internet, unfiltered positivity is a red flag.

You cannot express joy online without someone questioning your privilege, demanding an acknowledgment of the suffering of others (just ask Daisey Miller). Parodies of hopecore cloud the trend. Mocking its perceived “cringeness” with absurd audio clips set to the soundtrack of Flawed Mangoes. My own Instagram Reels feed, having pegged me as a trans gamer, frequently serves up these ironic takes featuring Master Chief from Halo.

And this, in a strange way, resonates with me. I still identify as emo, a label I’ve carried for years (hell, I run an event called Emo Night, going strong for nine years now).

Woven into the very fabric of emo is this concept of nihilistic hope. Your friend dies, but you find a way to carry their memory forward (Trophy Eyes’ Chlorine). An album steeped in themes of cancer and mortality ultimately delivers a message of resilience (My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade). Zoom out further, and you see this echoed in post-hardcore and metalcore, genres where bands relentlessly speak to how society tries to beat us down, yet we can find hope in our connections (The Plot In You’s Forgotten).

Perhaps hopecore, in its own way, is just another contemporary manifestation of the enduring need to find a reason to keep going.

Which brings me back to the specific context of trans hope. Things are undeniably broken. I still find myself navigating the same tired questions in comment sections, DMs, anonymous emails – beyond the usual barrage of transphobia – about why trans issues should matter when South Africa faces such profound poverty and corruption, or why we should receive foreign aid.

But for once, I’m choosing a different path. The emails remain unanswered. The DMs sit unopened. If I cannot control the external stimuli, I can certainly choose how to react. My anger, my energy, is too precious to waste on the endless cycle of keyboard battles.

The path forward, I’m starting to realize, won’t be paved in budget meetings or found at the end of a protracted email thread. It lies somewhere else, perhaps in those very cracks where hope has always managed to find its way through.

Hope is necessary to survive. We just have to find it while dancing on a knife’s edge.

 

By Cassandra Roxburgh, a non-binary writer who has written for News24, Mail and Guardian, Minority Africa, and Yes Magazine. When fae isn’t writing about queer issues, fae can be found jumping behind DJ decks as the founder of Emo Night South Africa, trail running, or scaling fake boulders in a climbing gym.

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This article was made possible with the support of the Other Foundation. The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent those of the Other Foundation. www.theotherfoundation.org.

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