This is what it really is like to be a YOUNG BLACK TRANS artist/model/talent in 2022 who is actually holding people accountable in the way they treat you, and unpacking racism, sexism, and predation, in their work.
1. You are repressed
2. Preyed on
3. Silenced
4. Over Sexualized
5. Your work is imitated by established, older, white, cis artist, and others with other identities more understood and accepted by society at large than your own.
6. People tend not look past their projections of how they think you are, because you are so unique to them, and people are also often spiteful of the unique beauty and talents you possess, so you aren’t often given space and understanding to show who you really are. People act harshly off who they think you are. Or act harshly off what they thought you were communicating, rather than listen to what you were communicating in reality. Or purposely are oppositional to you and your work from a purely racist, sexist, or ageist place, likely some combination of all three.
I get seen as so young, it negatively impacts my life, and people often take my ideas and vision with less weight because of it. I have a history to current of attracting predators/predatory people who unleash their predation on me, in my work and my personal life. Being young, and seen that way, while being overly sexualized, is a prison of dehumanization. My thoughts and pain are often treated passively, people often already have an agenda and interact with me like I just came into existence to suit their interests, then are mad when I set boundaries and expectations of how I deserve to be treated.
We all grow up seeing images of girls in their late teens and 20s presented as the ideal for women. But being one myself, I can say I do not feel like a “women,” in the way media typically presents a women to feel. I do not feel any different around my sexuality, body, and maturity than I did in Highschool. But there’s an sexist expectation that is often projected onto me, being seen as an attractive, young, black, trans women with a certain aesthetic to be using my desirability in society in manipulative ways, or be very sexually available. So I have people interact with me like a young sexualized female character in misogynistic media, like I’m a porn actress, or a pretty girl added to a plot, to just be killed. Most of my reference for my lived experiences, are k-12 schooling, and even when people have the maturity from lived experience, they feel like kids forever; and that deserves to be acknowledged, and respected. We need to treat everyone with the softness you would a child. It’s disturbing that one year could mean the difference between someone trying to push for sex, or copying my work being societally deemed an obvious predator, to society feeling less of a conscious around a predatory person doing the same predatory stuff when I am of age, despite being perceived the same. I still have people seeing me as a possibly underaged black youth, in most settings young enough that it others me, and it’s something people prey on.
All humans deserve respectful, soft, understanding treatment, and to have their boundaries respected. If everyone doesn’t get it, none of us do. Most people are not conscious and participate in dehumanizing others, but still pity themselves for experiencing dehumanization, or things perceived as such. Too many are emotionally selfish, reflecting others negativity instead of subverting it so they become part of the problem.
