Rest In Peace, Charlie 😔

This morning at six, I was most shocked, astounded, and in complete disbelief at the devastating news that befell my eyes.

Charlie Kirk was shot and died.

I was just watching and liking his videos yesterday, and now… he's gone?

I didn’t agree with everything he said, but I liked the man. I very much liked him.

So I related this awful news to Cloud, who was on the phone with me the entire time and who had heard my raw reaction of surprise. Cloud is a radical leftist who didn’t know who Kirk was, so he didn’t share the gravity of the news it had on me. And I didn’t expect him to; I had just learnt of the news at that exact time he happened to be with me.

Still struggling to process what transpired, I scrolled through my liked videos on Instagram and sent to Cloud a video of Kirk in one of his Prove Me Wrong debates at a university.

“This is the last video I liked of him yesterday..” I said, feeling strange and sentimental and… in utter disbelief at it all.

Cloud watched the video and then laughed. “That’s a stupid point,” he said.

With faculties still confounded from the news, his amused derision tugged at my heightened sensibility. The man had just died.

The video is about a student carrying a sign that said, “Charlie is a Nazi,” who then proceeded to say: “I know that you are obviously very anti-trans. I think that’s the best term for it. You’re anti-trans. I know you haven’t said that you are—”

Charlie: “I’m pro-reality.”

Student: “Okay. If you were pro-reality, let me tell you a story that explains the sign a little bit.”

Charlie: “Let me guess. All the Nazis were against trans people too, and that makes me a Nazi. Do you have a dog?”

Student: “I do have a dog.”

Charlie: “And so did Hitler. Are you a Nazi? Oh my goodness. Hitler had a dog. You have a dog. You’re a Nazi.”

Student: “Oh my god, do you have short hair and fucked-up teeth? You must be a Nazi, motherfucker!”

I asked Cloud what he found stupid. He said Charlie’s argument.

Me: “So the other guy’s argument was smart to you?”

Then he went on explaining that having a dog is a common thing and that being anti-trans is a political stance. It’s different. But I argued that the guy’s point was stupid too; that’s why Charlie countered it with stupidity.

Besides, Kirk’s views were (it’s still so strange to say “were”...) rooted in biological realities and children’s welfare. Though many perceive his comments as harmful and divisive, calling him a Nazi is factually wrong. Nazis supported genocide, white supremacy, and totalitarian control. Charlie Kirk is far-right and controversial, sure, but he doesn’t advocate for mass murder or white supremacist ideology.

Also, I find it extremely hypocritical how, within LGBTQ+ or progressive spaces, there’s a strong emphasis on accuracy, consent, and respect. Using correct pronouns, names, and identities—because mislabelling someone to them is offensive and can be deeply harmful. Yet, outside of that, some people are much looser with labels, especially politically. They’ll throw around extreme words like “Nazi” or “fascist” without really checking whether the person actually fits that definition.

It’s basically a mix of rigid accountability for marginalised groups versus emotional or rhetorical exaggeration for everyone else. They care a lot about precision when it protects vulnerable people but treat political or public figures’ labels like blunt weapons.

If you’re going to be careful about labels in one context, it makes sense to be careful everywhere; otherwise, the credibility of your argument drops.

Me: “If I were anti-trans, am I a Nazi too?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Isn’t calling me a Nazi an insult to the people who actually suffered under them?”

He began to explain how it’s reasonable to call someone a Nazi if their ideology or political stance aligns with them. However, to me, throwing that word around, especially to every political opponent, waters down the historical reality of what Nazis actually did. And I think that’s not just sloppy, it’s disrespectful to the people who were tortured, experimented on, starved, and murdered under that regime.

I was too upset, and I was just angry with him the entire time for even talking about this, so my words wobbled, I couldn’t explain myself well, and my voice lost control. The conversation escalated into a heated discussion about transgenders, and how apparently people don’t accept them—but I told him people already accept them as trans. But the insistence that they are literally “women” or “men,” the pronoun confusion, the invasion of women’s sports and spaces, and the redefining of what a woman is—I do not accept. He asked me the definition of a woman. I answered: an adult female with XX chromosomes. Mind you, during this point of the discussion, my eyes perceived comments of people celebrating and rejoicing in Charlie’s death, all the more infuriating me.

A gif of a man laughing hysterically and pointing towards the camera, in this case, at Kirk being shot.
Comments like, “Finally! He deserved it.”

My attention was in constant division. And between these comments and hearing Cloud asking from the other end: “Can you look at your chromosomes?” I thought him mad. I was like, the fuck? Can he look at his heart? Because it seems to me he doesn’t have one. I told him of course I couldn’t see it, but I’m certain I have XX chromosomes. Then he said, “Some people have different chromosomes, so what about those people, then? Are they neither men nor women?”

Me: “Yeah, okay, they’re the special kind. Intersex.”

Him: “If being a woman depends on having XX chromosomes, why is it that we assume a person is a woman when they’re dressed like a woman? When they have long hair, painted nails… We don’t know that they have a vagina under all those.”

I wasn’t able to listen to him very well here, so it wasn’t exactly what he said. I have probably stitched some of his words together very poorly, but I heard some big boobs, small boobs, and I might have misunderstood what he was trying to say, but if that is how I understand it, then I don’t agree at all, because even if a male dresses feminine, it’s absolutely obvious that they’re still men because of their muscles, voice, and bone structure. I’m not saying it’s always detectable, but it’s super rare for a penis wielder to actually achieve looking and sounding like 100% woman. I wanted to say that, but I was far too distracted and vexed, so I simplified it with: “If she has a vagina, she’s a woman; if he has a penis, he’s a man. Simple. And even if I can’t see my chromosomes, my female reproductive system is enough proof I am a woman.”

I’m going to clarify that my oversimplification comes from the fact that most women have XX chromosomes. Of course, Cloud has repeatedly argued that not all people with female reproductive functions have them. That’s why I said they’re special cases. Intersex conditions (AIS, CAH, ovotestes, etc.) → they don’t follow the majority pattern, so they get their own category/consideration. 

Basically, my baseline belief is this:

I see sex as binary—male and female.

Intersex is the exception that proves the rule, and I resolve it by fitting them back into the binary (whichever side they lean toward).

→ That puts me in the “two sexes, two genders” camp.

Also, they naturally fall outside the norm, so they qualify as exceptions.

Transwomen who alter themselves surgically don’t rewrite their biology. A manufactured vagina ≠ a naturally occurring one.

Now, I understand that people can identify as whatever they want in a social context. That’s their business. But for me, gender is rooted in biology. Surgery, hormones, or self-identification don’t change your biological sex. Social identity may shift, but biology doesn’t. That’s my reality and I’m not going to bend that to cater to people who think their “reality” is the absolute truth and the only acceptable one.

Also, saying ‘not all women give birth’ isn’t the same thing as saying ‘a male can be a woman.’ Infertile women still belong to the female sex. The capacity for female reproduction exists in their biology, even if it doesn’t function. A transwoman never had that biology in the first place. That’s not a limitation—it’s a total absence. So the comparison doesn’t hold.

It’s not even about denying their existence or hating trans people. Au contraire, I do respect transwomen with whom I interact in person and call them either ma'am/miss. It’s just to me, and a whole lot of like-minded people, womanhood isn’t just an outfit or an identity. It’s an entire lived reality that comes with physical risks, pain, and experiences that shape who you are.

Periods, pregnancy fears, hormonal shifts, menopause.. those aren’t optional add-ons, they’re baked into what being a biological woman means.

So when someone who’s never lived through those experiences says, “I’m just as much a woman as you,” it feels like they’re skipping the hardship but still claiming the title — like they’re taking the crown without fighting the war.

A lot of biological women who feel insulted aren’t coming from hate, they’re coming from protecting the meaning of their own experience.

Lastly, where I'm from, transwomen recognise this. When they introduce themselves, they don't blatantly say "I'm a woman". Instead, they say, "I'm a transwoman"—because they know the distinction. 

Even in Thailand, they’ll say “I’m a kathoey” or “a ladyboy,” which signals: I live as a woman, but I know I’m different from women who were born female. It’s not self-hate, it’s cultural realism. They embrace a third-gender identity that’s widely recognised and accepted socially. But when pushed about biology, they’ll admit they’re male or men at the core. They don’t usually insist, like in Western discourse, that “transwomen are women in every sense.”

I never got to coherently explain any of this to Cloud. I was devastated. He continued to bombard me with his points, and I was just super annoyed because he wouldn’t shut up.

“Why are you even arguing with me?? Charlie Kirk just died. I am upset! Have some compassion!”

“You started it.”

And he still didn’t stop. In the midst of his relentless political correction, on the screen my eyes were still reading horrid comments about Charlie’s death:

“We wish you a happy abode in hell.”
“All hail the sniper 💪✌️❤️”

Cloud’s words in my ears were long lost to me by this point.

“Shut up..”

“I hope he suffers, and then doesn’t make it. So he can suffer more. Forever.”
“Glory be to Allah, in the world, it is easy to confront anyone and interrupt him and say their usual justifications, but now he is—”

“Shut up—”

Cloud’s voice kept raising.

“Shut up!”

“—so he was stupid.”

“YOU’RE STUPID!” I snapped, then hung up, unfriended him, and cut all possible means for him to reach me on Discord.

I started it? How did I even start it??? By telling him Charlie Kirk died? By showing him the last video I liked of him? He was the one who said he was stupid — the very man I still had trouble grieving! And it escalated from there. I was already upset Charlie died, and he just made me feel worse! At least he had some compassion for Hitler’s life because I remember, and oh I remember it very well, him saying Hitler didn’t deserve to die.

Am I being irrational? What was wrong with what I did?

I wasn’t inviting debate. I was opening up, showing him something personal in the middle of my shock. That’s a vulnerable moment. And instead of recognising that, he bulldozed right past my feelings and went straight for the intellectual cockfight.

For all my regard of his scholarly knowledge and intelligence, it was here I realised Cloud is ruled by ego. It seems to me that for him, everything is a stage to prove how "clever" or "morally superior" he is. Even tragedy becomes an excuse to flex his ideology. That’s why, instead of shutting up and respecting my grief, he picked at Kirk’s politics like a scab. He wasn’t listening to me — he was listening for his chance to sound smart.

I don’t feel emotionally safe with him, and I have never found him so repulsive. He isn’t the kind of man who can protect my vulnerability. He’s the kind who dissects it until it bleeds. Each time I think of the times I doted on him, it makes me gag.

Thank goodness he believes that “traditional values are a myth, they don’t exist because they keep changing,” because then, my admiration, affection, attraction, respect, and high regard for him — are all a myth, too. They never fucking existed, because they’ve absolutely and tremendously changed now.

I might be being too harsh, but that’s how I feel at present and how he made me feel.

But perhaps he was right.

Yeah.. I see it now. It was all my fault. I did start the fire. I confided in and expected comfort from the wrong person.

It was almost seven in the morning when I ended things with him. I had initially planned to sleep in the little time I had left before I needed to get up, but because of it all, I wasn’t able to.

With a sleep-deprived mind, a heavy heart and grieving spirits, in my desperation to seek comfort and solidarity, I reached out to Johannes to share the gruesome news. He went through the same reaction I did. We were both gutted and shattered.

Despite the still-lingering acrimony I felt for the man, it was nice to have him empathise and grieve with me.

Rest in peace, Charlie 😔