there are entire segments of the “left” that see trans women as their political enemies when worldwide, some of the most destitute and exploited people under patriarchy and imperialism, are trans women, who are disproportionately stuck in the sex trade, homelessness and poverty.
“transition poses some ethical questions. Such as, from what age should you be allowed to irreversibly change your body.“
This of course completely ignores the fact that puberty makes irreversible changes to your body. But let us just rephrase the question: “from what age do you gain bodily autonomy?” Now it gets very easy to answer: From the moment you’re fucking born.
I’m sorry, I’m reblogging this twice in a row it is that important
Stand up and say it again for the people in the back row.
This is all completely true and correct, of course, but on the topic of changes that irreversibly change a child’s body, prithee, go and talk to a fucking ballet dancer.
If you start ballet at 16, you are too old to ever expect to be able to do it seriously. If you start at 12 you’re too old. If you want to do ballet as a serious thing, as a career, you need to start at like eight years old or even younger, because your bones and joints need to be trained while they’re still flexible in order for you to be able to perform many of the required motions and stances of ballet. In particular, you need to be able to perform turnout of the hips, but all of your joints in your legs and feet will be affected, and this irreversibly changes your body.
And yet! Nobody talks about this as a negative thing! Little girls say they want to be ballet dancers, and if their parents have enough money, that’s what they get to be! Does it cause problems in later life? Yeah, sometimes! Often, even! But nobody talks about that because it’s a thing for cis people to do and so naturally it’s all fine!
lmao wanted to see if i can find some sensible takes on the mulaney/chappelle shituation & i had forgotten that i had blocked mulaney’s name long time ago
[Image Description: text overlaying image of Sylvia Rivera. Text reads: “What is the bedrock on which all of our diverse trans populations can build solidarity? The commitment to be the best fighters against each other’s oppression.” ~ Leslie Feinberg, Trans Liberation]
TRANS RESISTANCE SYMBOL (Reposting this so it’s under my new blog name) I’ve long been kind of annoyed with the traditional circle-with-lines-coming-off-it design. Its round but not round, a little too on the nose and imho kinda blasé. I decided to deconstruct it and make it a bit more visually appealing. I also felt in these fucked up times a better symbol was needed for trans resistance and insurrection. Easy to recreate, memorable, visually impacting. The break down is of course the masculine and feminine symbol for trans men and women, the combined symbol for genderqueer identities and the circle crossed by the lines for nonbinary genders. The direction of the lines implies movement, striking out in multiple directions. Included above are a black on white and white on black version with a circle border as well as the glyph itself. The images are 17″x17″ @ 500dpi so if you want you can make stuff and it should be crisp. And because I’m leftist trash have some flags! ALSO: PLEASE SPREAD THIS!!! I want this symbol and it’s ideal to be spread far and wide. I want people to know what it means and that trans people will no longer be forced to reside on the margins of society. We are here, and we are going to fight for our lives with all we have. So long as you’re art/group/statement keeps with these ideals and those of liberation for all trans people (keep it intersectional, folx) then use it! Let me know if you do (tag me/link to this post) cause I wanna see! Also no commercial use w/o asking me first plz.
TRANS RESISTANCE SYMBOL (Reposting this so it’s under my new blog name) I’ve long been kind of annoyed with the traditional circle-with-lines-coming-off-it design. Its round but not round, a little too on the nose and imho kinda blasé. I decided to deconstruct it and make it a bit more visually appealing. I also felt in these fucked up times a better symbol was needed for trans resistance and insurrection. Easy to recreate, memorable, visually impacting. The break down is of course the masculine and feminine symbol for trans men and women, the combined symbol for genderqueer identities and the circle crossed by the lines for nonbinary genders. The direction of the lines implies movement, striking out in multiple directions. Included above are a black on white and white on black version with a circle border as well as the glyph itself. The images are 17″x17″ @ 500dpi so if you want you can make stuff and it should be crisp. And because I’m leftist trash have some flags! ALSO: PLEASE SPREAD THIS!!! I want this symbol and it’s ideal to be spread far and wide. I want people to know what it means and that trans people will no longer be forced to reside on the margins of society. We are here, and we are going to fight for our lives with all we have. So long as you’re art/group/statement keeps with these ideals and those of liberation for all trans people (keep it intersectional, folx) then use it! Let me know if you do (tag me/link to this post) cause I wanna see! Also no commercial use w/o asking me first plz.
We are here to serve our community, to empower our siblings in struggle to the best of our abilities. But we can’t do that without your feedback!
What do you want to see from Trans Empowerment Project next year? What did you love, like, or dislike about our efforts this past year, and what do you want to see more of moving forward?
Please share any thoughts, feedback, or ideas you have in the notes, through the DMs, or by emailing us! Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated and will inform the work we do in 2021.
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The trans community is inherently linked with all other oppressed communities. We are interdependent; our oppression and therefore our liberation are inextricably connected.
Without Black, Native, queer, disabled, and all other groups’ liberation, we cannot have trans liberation. If we are not all actively anti-racist, anti-colonialist, anti-queerphobic, and anti-ableist, we cannot promote the joy and liberation of the trans community.
[ID: Light blue background with blue sparkles on the top and bottom. Black cursive centered reads “trans liberation cannot happen without: Black liberation, native liberation, Queer liberation, Disabled liberation.” The TEP logo is at the bottom.]
The path to our liberation is more than just the nationwide protests. It’s the behind-the-scenes organizing, the local mutual aid efforts, the activist art, the community care.
Everyone has a part to play in our liberation, in the cultural and political revolution needed for our collective joy. If you don’t have the space, time, expertise to organize a protest – there is plenty you can do.
[ID: Background is a protest in the street with an overlaid blue to purple gradient. Rough white text reads “everyone has a part to play in the revolution” down the center. The TEP logo is centered at the bottom.]
Trans people don’t need to be palatable - to anyone, for any reason, in any situation.
Trans people don’t need to explain or justify or modify their existence to be more acceptable.
Trans people need to be able to live and thrive in whatever way is most affirming to them - full stop. And if you think there is any criteria that needs to be filled for trans people to have that right, you need to evaluate why access to joy needs qualifications.
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Janet Mock: The deaths of 6 trans women in the U.S. in 2015 February 17, 2015
This morning I read about the murder of Bri Golec in Ohio. She was stabbed to death by her father. She was only 22 years old. Her death marks the sixth trans woman to be reported murdered in the U.S. in 2015. It’s not even March.
As the New York City Anti-Violence Project noted in their tweet about Golec’s murder, “This time in 2014 we knew of no homicides of Trans women in the US. As of now there are AT LEAST SIX.”
This time in 2014, just a year ago, Laverne Cox and Carmen Carrera had publicly challenged Katie Couric; I sparred about language and identity on CNN; Cox’s Netflix series Orange Is the New Blackwas preparing for its second season; and my memoir had landed on the New York Times bestsellers list. This was the highest media saturation for trans women of color in U.S. history. As a writer and journalist, I had been forecasting the game-changing moment that was soon to come in May: Cox, a black trans woman from Mobile, Alabama, appearing on the cover of Time magazine.
After decades of erasure, trans women of color were finally garnering mainstream attention. Cox used her time in the pop cultural spotlight to not only advance her acting career, but to tell the stories of women like CeCe McDonald. We both stood behind Monica Jones as she resisted police profiling in Phoenix, Arizona, and trans Latina teen Jane Doe as she was unlawfully held in an adult prison.
Personally, I know that my visibility has to be more than just about my own pursuits. When I walk into a space, I am cognizant of the fact that I am bringing communities of people with me, communities that have historically been exiled and silenced. The weight of that responsibility never lightens, even as Inavigate uncharted terrain as a TV host. My show So POPular! explores the intersection of popular culture, representation, politics, identity and community. Though it doesn’t explicitly cover trans issues, it’s a space created and fronted by a trans woman of color, so the lens to which I explore topics on my show is that of a trans person, a black person, a woman of color. My goal is to take the focus away from myself as a subject, and instead be the person asking the questions, shaping the conversation.
I’ve seen folks juxtapose the recent media visibility of trans women of color and these recent murders. I’ve read sentences to the effect of: “At a time when trans women of color have visibility, we still see trans women murdered.” I find this logic to be quite basic.
Yes, trans women are being murdered. Yes, trans women of color have gained mainstream visibility. But trans women, particularly those of color, have always been targeted with violence. The differences now? There are some systems in place that better report violence and there is finally visibility of a select few that helps challenge the media’s framing of these women’s lives.
But cultural representation is just one piece of the social justice pie, and we must be clear about one thing: Trans women of color have had one year of visibility in the media, after decades of erasure (think about how many times historians, archivists, filmmakers or books mention the revolutionary work ofSylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson or Miss Major Griffin-Gracy). It’ll take more than a year of a few trans women in media to transform decades of structural oppression and violence, decades of misinformation, decades of exiling.
We are not existing in a fairytale where the very recent successes of a few individuals — whether that’s Laverne or Carmen or me — could quickly and radically transform the lives of our sisters who are resisting in already struggling communities, who are navigating poverty, homelessness, and joblessness while also facing high medical and educational costs, police profiling and incarceration as well as HIV/AIDS, the risks of underground economies as well as the looming threat and reminders of violence.
I nodded and responded: “So much of it is linked to the idea that women are not valued, people of color are not valued and trans people are often invalidated in our society. So when you throw that all into one person’s body, there’s a lot of targeting that comes into that space. We need to have a national outrage over these bodies that no one is protecting.”
Maher then said, “I thought, and maybe I’m wrong, that the violence came because the transgender person didn’t tell the guy about their past and then the guy kissed her or something and then found out. And he’s like, ‘Oh now, I’m a homo.”
I challenged Maher by telling him that trans women are not being targeted solely because men find themselves attracted to us. No woman deserves violence. Period. We do not exist to “trick” or “deceive” men into sleeping with us. Trans women are targeted because we exist at vulnerable intersections of race, gender and class. My sisters are vulnerable because no one movement has ever centered the bodies, lives and experiences of these women, except for the severely underfunded, largely volunteer-staffed work of organizations run by and for our communities (from TGIJP,Casa Ruby,TransLatina Coalition,Sylvia Rivera Law Project,TWOCC,TransJustice, to name a few).
Trans women of color dangerously fall in between the cracks of racial justice, feminist and LGbt movements.
Our visibility at this particular moment in culture is helping reshape the narrative of trans women’s lives, it’s helping those who may not know a trans person get familiar with the lives and struggles of trans people, it’s helping push media gatekeepers to report on our lives with a more just and true lens (though it still seems to be struggling when it comes to Bruce Jenner’s alleged transition). What we can’t expect this visibility to do is cure our society of its longstanding prejudice, miseducation and myths surrounding trans women.
Even on the most liberal shows, trans women are still often punch lines (see any lazy joke targeting Jenner’s femininity and body). Even in our moment in the media spotlight, one fallen white trans bodygarners mainstream headlines over the consistent murders of those that are black and brown. Even in movements organizing against violence against women or black and brown bodies, trans women of color’s bodies are not prone to mass mobilization and I watch as my sisters and siblings speak with one another about protecting trans bodies with hashtags #blacktranslivesmatterand#translivesmatter.
I point out these disparities in an effort to better frame this moment we’re existing in, as someone who has been privileged with access to visibility, as someone who grew up with little access to mirrors that represented me. I am humbled that I can be one such mirror for girls growing up like I did. Representation is an affirming start, but it’s not everything.
There’s much we should be applauding, yet as we applaud, we must also be aware of those women existing outside of the media’s narrow lens, the women organizing, the women on the streets hustling, the women rejected from shelters and improperly placed in men’s detention and prison facilities, the women volunteering their limited resources to support communities of trans folk who’ve been overwhelming neglected by movements.
The names of our sisters shouldn’t only make headlines when we walk a red carpet or lay in a casket. Our visibility shouldn’t be subject to such extreme circumstances. We’ve grown too accustomed, in the past year, to speaking the names of Laverne Cox and Janet Mock, and giving ourselves social justice cred for doing so. This is dangerously tokenizing and speaks to the hypervisibility of women of color who are expected to not only carry their dreams but the dreams of an entire race and people with them.
It’s part of the reason why I am weary of amplifying these women’s deaths because it often feels like these women’s names are only spoken by the majority of us when they can no longer respond. But I must speak their names and when I do, I am aware that my sisters do not need to be reminded of their vulnerability and the threat of violence that looms over their lives.
Rest in power: Trans woman stabbed to death by her father February 16, 2015
A man has been charged with murder, after his transgender daughter was stabbed to death.
Ohio-based artist Bri Golec was killed on Friday in her hometown of Akron.
Kevin Golec, 52, of Inman Street, was arrested and charged with murder and domestic violence over the incident.
Mr Golec is being held in custody, and is set to appear in Akron Municipal Court on Tuesday.
The initial local media coverage and her obituary appeared to misgender Ms Golec, reporting that she was Mr Golec’s “son”.
Police said that Mr Golec had called 911 to report a robbery, but the incident was a result of an altercation between the pair.
Mr Golec told police that his daughter was in a “cult” – but it is not known if he was referencing her Pagan religion or the transgender support group she attended.
Trans Ohio said: “We are saddened to learn of the murder of Bri Golec, a 22-year-old trans woman who resided in Akron, Ohio.
“Her father has been arrested and is in jail at this time. Please keep our Akron community in your thoughts and prayers.
“The results of the autopsy have yet to be revealed. Golec will be buried on 20 February.”
“We are saddened to learn of the murder of Bri Golec, a 22yr old trans woman who resided in Akron, Ohio.
“We’ll provide more info at a later time as they become available.
“We are community – We stand strong, together. Always.”
I know this is extremely disturbing. I know the black trans community doesn’t need to be reminded of their trauma. And I am so damn sorry that you still have to wake up in such a hateful world and ostracizing society but I refuse to simply forget about two innocent souls that were taken away way too soon. We have to raise awareness, we have to educate ourselves more on these very touchy subjects, we have to be better, we have to build a better future, we just have to, this cannot be a regular, standard routine.
May they rest in peace.
“You can help the Brave Space Alliance provide funeral accommodations for Courtney and Tyianna by donating to their Funeral Fund at
Courtney and Tyianna, rest in power. We will say your names aloud as a solemn commitment to fight tirelessly for dignity, safety and justice for all trans people.”
The trans movement is not about making cis people comfortable. Trans liberation is not supposed to only be for the people who can appear most palatable to cis people. It shouldn’t ever be.
Cis society desires our eradication and silence. Placating those desires by silencing and fighting any trans and gender nonconforming person who is easily visible, atypical, and targeted by cis society’s hatred…that leads directly into a path of community “cleansing” that denies & kills every one of us who does not meet cis standards. By the way, that’s most of us, and the most marginalized first.
