#black trans women
“Honey, I don’t care if I never have nothing ever’ till the day I die. All I want is my freedom.”
Marsha P. Johnson, a black trans woman who was known for pioneering a movement that has had incredible long lasting systematic change. During the so called Stonewall riots (riots which broke out after the police had once again raided the lgbtq bar Stonewall Inn) in 1969, she was one of the first to begin resisting the police. Without her and other black lgbtq+ folks, we wouldn’t be celebrating pride. #HappyPrideMonth ✨
Instagram:@ arthurshahverdyanart
Angie Stardust shooting billiards in her eponymous nightclub Angie’s in Hamburg, Germany | date unknown, likely 1980s
A message from Miss Major (ft. Janet Mock!) for TDoV - worth sharing for Pride as well
Transcript:
MM - “Trans youth, they’ve got to stand up and not take this bullshit from straight men who don’t know nothing about transition… at all.“
JM - “Bam! And that’s word from ya mutha.”
[laughter]
A Letter To Black Trans Women About Embracing Our Natural Hair
“Kinky, coily hair is beautiful. It’s professional and elegant. It validates my sense of self and does not take away from my femininity,“ writes Ivana Fischer, a culture journalist on assignment for HuffPost. "These and many other mantras continue to guide me throughout my transition every day. Showing myself love in that way has helped me to embrace being a naturalista. I have a newfound, unwavering confidence that could only come from finally accepting myself, and my features, as beautiful."
You can read Fischer’s full story here.
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Icons Tanay Pendavis, Alyssa Laperla, Onjenae Milan, and Octavia St. Laurent
Fem Queen Face, Chanel Ball[1993]
Source:Jamal Milan
Octavia St. Laurent, circa 90s.
FFQ Octavia and Renee St. Laurent, circa 90s.
happy belated 50th birthday to the beautiful, Laverne Cox!
Ballroom Royalty
via,Vogues’ Best
New zine just dropped! This zine is particularly exciting because it features work exclusively from Black queer and trans folks!
Check out mentalrealnessmag.com/shop for more info!
Sexual assault programs must address racial power dynamics & acknowledge the history of racist lies about assault
Sexual violence prevention programs—often delivered as discussion-based workshops directed towards youth—are crucial to ensuring community safety. Participants often learn important skills towards ending sexual violence, like building empathy and bystander intervention. But these programs have also demonstrated a terrible shortcoming: When program participants are presented with situations of sexual violence, they are less likely to empathize with Black victims, more likely to blame them, and less compelled to intervene to help.
Sexual violence prevention programs must stop treating the intersection of race, ethnicity, and sexual assault as only a footnote. Racism is much more intertwined with sexual violence than our society likes to admit. Ignoring this fact will only result in the further criminalization and victimization of the same Black students these programs claim to help.
The most glaring issue with sexual assault prevention programs lies in its most useful tool: roleplaying exercises and scenarios designed to build empathy or encourage bystander intervention. Participants are given hypothetical sexually violent situations and are asked to intervene to help the victim or empathize with them.
In many versions of prevention curricula, most of the victims have “white” or generic names. This causes Black participants to feel that they are being erased, due to our deeply racist ideas of what a “perfect victim” looks like. For some organizations, the response has been to include more victims in the scenario with “Black” names, which studies show leads participants to blame the victim and show lower empathy for them.
The solution isn’t to stop including Black victims in these scenarios, it is to make sure that the scenario explores the role of race in the sexually violent situation, not glosses over it. In the discussion, participants should intentionally be asked open-ended questions about how society treats Black people who disclose sexual violence, and what specific stereotypes contribute to Black victims—particularly Black women—not being believed.
In prevention programs, detailed and complex discussions about the role of race in sexual assault are often ignored in favor of simple solutions. In my experience as a consent educator, when facilitators mention that the vast majority of survivors (90-98%, and probably more) are telling the truth about being sexually assaulted, some Black male teenagers will then ask about the historical fact of white women lying about rape by Black men. While most facilitators would never demonize this question, it’s common for them to simply reiterate the statistic and move on. This results in Black students feeling unheard and invalidated.
i hope everyone had a really fantastic pride month and don’t forget this month and every month that black trans lives matter
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