Anyone who knows me knows that I have never been quiet, submissive, or polite. I speak my mind, stand my ground, and will always fight for what I think is right. And I refuse to stop doing so now, no matter what you preach to me. I will not whisper, I will not sit down, I will continue to fucking rawr. Not because my candidate lost. Not because I’m bitter or a sore loser. This is about far more than one person or one campaign. This is about the future that the next generations will have to inherit. I hear your comments, I see your Facebook posts, I read the texts you send me. I listen as you plead for us to “give the guy a chance” and to “stop judging him before we see how he actually leads”.

Well, I want you to know that we tried. We really did. We hoped and prayed that his bigoted rhetoric was just an effort to pander to the far-right voters he needed to reach. We desperately wished that he would be different in the end. Our hopes were to no avail.

It’s only been 17 days since he was declared our president-elect. In those 17 days, he has already vowed to nominate Supreme Court justices that would work to overturn Roe v Wade, aiming to eradicate a woman’s right to choose. Before we won that right, an average of 5,000 women died per year as the result of illegal or self-induced abortions. But this does not seem to faze the president elect.

He has already nominated Jeff Sessions for attorney general. The same Jeff Sessions that once tried to jail black voters (including an activist that worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr) for unconfirmed accusations of voter fraud. The same Jeff Sessions that was previously nominated for a federal judgeship before being rejected for the position due to speculations of racism on his part. But this does not seem to faze the president elect.

He has already appointed Steve Bannon as his chief strategist & senior adviser. The same Steve Bannon that praised Palin and Coulter for being feminine unlike liberal women and feminists, who he called “a bunch of dykes that came from the 7 Sisters schools”. The same Steve Bannon whose website referred to Bill Kristol as a “renegade Jew”, repeatedly mocked “trannies”, preached of the  confederate flag’s “glorious heritage”, and compared feminism to cancer. The same Steve Bannon whose hired tech editor is Milo Yiannopoulos, a radical alt right journalist that embarked on a hate-spewing speaking tour he called the “Dangerous Faggot Tour“, and published articles for Bannon’s site with headlines like “Attack of The Killer Dykes!”, “Feminism Kills Women”, “There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women In Tech, They Just Suck At Interviews”, “Trannies Are Gay”, and “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive And Crazy”. But this does not faze the president elect.

As horrifying as these men are, my fear of them doesn’t hold a candle to my fear of the man Trump picked to be our vice president-elect. Mike Pence, our new second in command, has objected to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes bill, voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act three times, argued against repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, voted against The Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and once proposed cutting all of the federal funds that go towards HIV prevention/awareness and instead using that money for anti-LGBT conversion therapy programs. His words are as disturbing as his voting record, openly blaming the LGBT community for “societal collapse” and “the deterioration of marriage and family”. He has preached that smoking doesn’t kill and that “disguised do-gooder healthcare rhetoric is more dangerous than second hand smoke” (after receiving $100,000 in campaign donations from the tobacco industry, of course). He thinks that allowing women to serve in the military is a “bad idea”. He has attacked working mothers for thinking they can “have it all” and selfishly leaving their “daycare kids with the short end of the stick”.  He says he longs for the day that Roe v. Wade is “sent to the ash heap of history”. Again, this does not faze the president elect.

Tell me, does any of this faze you? Are you racist, sexist, homophobic, and down with white supremacy? If you are, you’re already not a friend of mine. If you aren’t, then why the fuck are you accepting and normalizing it?

And let’s get this out now: before you start to preach to me about your black friend or your gay cousin or whatever else you think gives you some kind of tolerance cred, don’t even waste your breath. I already know for a fact that many of you are not racist, misogynistic, homophobic, islamophobic, or antisemitic. You may not be a bigot at all, but you have supported and accepted bigotry. And in my eyes, that’s just as bad. So no. Hell no. I’m done hearing that I need to give him a chance. He had it, he blew it. I’m done biting my tongue. I’m done trying to accept this. And I’m done tolerating and excusing everyone in my life that thinks this is okay.

So I want to give a shout out to my friends and family that are accepting (and sometimes celebrating) this insanity.

To the one who lectured her heartbroken sister for crying over the election: I hope you know that she was crying for immigrants (like the one you’re married to) who feel like enemies in their own home and for the LGBT community (which your own relatives are members of) who have to watch a man that despises them become the second most powerful man on earth.

To the one filling my Facebook feed with pleas to give the guy a shot and articles about how he’s not so bad because he held up a rainbow flag once: I have no interest in your attempts to normalize bigotry. I’m too busy worrying about Jewish families, like the one you married into, who woke up on November 9th to swastikas and Trump’s name spray-painted on local buildings. I’m too busy feeling heartbroken for special needs children, like your sweet nieces, who have to watch America glorify a man that mocked the disabled.

To the one that proudly proclaims that he voted to “make America great again”: As you voted for a man who verbally attacked prisoners of war and gold star families, I wonder if you thought about your uncle who barely survived Vietnam after finding his entire troop dead, castrated and hanging from tree limbs. I wonder if the dignity of those who fought for us mattered at all to you.

To the mother who defended her son after he uttered “ew, we are NOT feminists” in disgust to my siblings as if the word “feminism” itself is a curse, and who laughed it off when her husband told me that my people need to “stop whining about the Holocaust”: I don’t know whether you voted for Trump alongside the xenophobe you married, but that doesn’t matter to me. Tolerating him and allowing him to preach these things to your kids says more than enough to me about your true colors. I hope that one day when your children are grown, someone will teach them about acceptance, love, and everything else you guys deprived them of.

You guys all need to own your shit. No more excuses. If you voted for him, supported him, or celebrated his win in anyway, you are part of the problem.

Your actions are why my local convenience store’s beautiful Muslim cashier has – for the first time in her entire life – stopped wearing her hijab out of fear after an angry old white man told her “that shit on your head won’t be tolerated anymore so treasure it now”.

Your actions are why fearful and ostracized LGBT youth called suicide hotlines in record numbers on election night.

Your actions are why an entire conference room of white supremacists were able to hold a celebration where they gleefully raised their right hands and chanted “HEIL TRUMP!”

Your actions are why my best friend is seriously considering getting IUD’s for my young goddaughters because she is that scared that our rights as women could be stolen from us in the near future.

What I want you all to understand most is that this is not small potatoes. This is not me being bitter over us rooting for opposing football teams. This is not me giving you shit for eating meat because I’m a vegetarian. This is not me attacking your religion because I worship differently. And no, this is not me being a know-it-all brat that just doesn’t like the right. I’m not vilifying you for being conservative at all. I have great respect for many republicans – I even volunteered once for John McCain. But this is different. This is NOT politics as usual. This is more than that. This is you willfully celebrating and supporting an administration that wants to take away my rights as a woman, that hopes to banish citizens based solely on how they worship, that vilifies Americans based on their race and origin, that ostracizes people based on who they love and how they identify. This is a direct violation of America’s most basic rights and ethics and if that doesn’t disturb you, I genuinely think you need to reevaluate your moral compass.

If I’m making anyone feel uncomfortable, good. You should be. I really hope you can take just a second to try to understand why many of us are unable to let it go and accept this. But if you can’t and you’d prefer to defriend me on Facebook or call and tell me off, go for it. I don’t want anybody that celebrates hate being on my side anyway. So go ahead and burn our bridge if you have to. I think you need some time to sit down on your side for a while anyway to think about what you’ve done.