#trans people are welcomed with open arms and terfs can fuck off
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As a cis lesbian, it is beyond frustrating that most terfs are cis lesbians. I hate that many terfs use my sexuality and gender as an excuse for their hate. I hate that lesbian terfs have experienced what it’s like to be ostracized for not being attracted to men and then do the same thing to a group of people who don’t want to be men. We are allies. Trans women and lesbians are groups of people who don’t want men to be a part of who they are. Terfs diminish women to biology and bodily functions. Women are so much more than that. Being attracted to women as a woman is a beautiful thing. And I hate that hate is being brought into that experience.
As a cis lesbian, I want to apologize, especially to all my trans friends, that a large amount of hate comes from people like me. It’s beyond hypocritical and they are against what lesbianism is truly about. Trans people are always welcomed and accepted here and terfs will not be tolerated. Holding so much hate for others who are different is such a sad thing to do and I don’t want to be anywhere near that. Just a reminder that this blog is safe for all trans people and not safe for terfs.
#when I’m unfortunate to see terf shit reposted or accounts following me and so many of them are cis lesbians and use that fact for their#hate makes me so mad#and I just saw a whole argument about real lesbians should be against trans women#and I go on blocking sprees of terfs and it breaks my heart when their bios read ‘lesbian’#idk I don’t post a lot of serious shit on here and when i post stuff about lgbt stuff it’s usually just about lgbt not trans specific things#so just a reminder#trans people are welcomed with open arms and terfs can fuck off#rae’s rambles#fuck terfs#anti terf#trans rights#terfs dont fucking touch#trans safe
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You can distance yourself from “weird” pussy loving lesbians all you want, but at the end of the day you’re only pushing your kin under the bus, and one day the homophobes are going to turn on you too. It’s not enough to be “one of the good non-genital fetishising gays”. If you’re homosexual they hate you too. You can dislike the icky genital fetishising lesbians, but they’re still lesbians and they’ll have your back even if you won’t have theirs. Solidarity.
I….. girl what
I’m. Okay. Let’s break this one down
1) I’m literally a lesbian. Homophobes have already “turned against me.” They’ve never been turned towards me.
2) It is a radical, usually upsetting to cishet people thing to do to be attracted to women regardless of genitals. It reinforces the fact that trans women, regardless of medical transition status, are women. Homophobes and transphobes will invalidate my sexuality all day every day because I think trans women are hot. (Believe it or not, the same thing happens to cishet men who find trans women attractive, because they’re often accused of being gay or having a fetish. This far too often leads to transphobic violence.) So no, it’s not “good enough,” because it’s actually worse than insisting trans people aren’t their gender based on genitals. It goes against the status quo, which queerphobes are determined to enforce.
(2.5: it’s okay to have genital preferences, really. You just have to communicate that to them. “Hey, I really like you and I think you’re cool, but I wanted to let you know that if this goes in that direction, I absolutely see you as a woman, but I’m really only interested in women who have a vagina. Is that going to be okay?” Worst case scenario they’ll probably say “oh, no, sorry!” and idk, maybe you’ve made a new friend.)
3) You and your fellow terfs absolutely do not have my back, and to suggest so is honestly comical. Until you accept that trans women are women, you do not have my back. Until you believe nonbinary people, which I am, are valid, you do not have my back. Until you respect everyone’s pronouns and stop making comments about how ridiculous they are, you do not have my back. Until you stop licking the boots of the cishet patriarchy by insisting gender and sex are binary and permanently whatever you were assigned at birth, you do not have my back. Do you know how many terfs have misgendered me and called me confused? Do you know how many have harassed me and people I love? Did they have my back, as you suggest?
4) You misunderstand what I want for the world. I want every person, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation, to be able to express themselves safely and free of harassment, be able to hold hands in the street without wondering if they’ll face violence, for all lesbians to feel welcome in the community regardless of agab, for all gay men to feel welcome in the community regardless of agab. I want standards for what is and isn’t masculine or feminine or beautiful or attractive or desirable to not be based on racist standards that ostracize and further oppress POC. And I want that for everyone, regardless of where they started. I’m not pushing anyone under the bus by wanting that.
Calling out transphobia also isn’t pushing anyone under the bus. You act as though it is, but really it’s just someone on the sidewalk telling you a bus is coming. You have an opportunity to get the fuck out of the way. The folks on the sidewalk might not embrace you with open arms at first, but they’ll still be glad you’re safe. But if you tell them to fuck off and stare it down, it’s your own fault when you get hit.
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Text in captions, if that won’t read on text to voice please let me know <3
This is a half-year old, but I only paid Blobs Magician to help me out once and I’m fresh out of delicately painted acorns and he gave me commission rights so I’ll be tipping him a ziploc bag of goldfish later
I feel awkward writing about all of this--there was a bit of jealousy when I got my hyst (not projecting, I was told flat by a trans friend), and I worry that I may be making other people feel alone, anxious, or less-than in their gender by talking about it. If you feel that at all, please, stop right now. Don’t look in the mirror, because mirrors are scary. Like, really scary, they have ghosts or stuff probably, but also in the genders sense, so instead, look in your head. Look at your self. It’s in there, because it is you. What is happening to me now is a shell upgrade, a hermit crab moving domiciles. I was a boy once, then a young man, then a oldman, and now I’m a oldman with a society man shell. Never mistake the shell for the crab, go “hey crab, I like your shell, I hope you find the perfect shell, because you are the perfect inhabitant” and celebrate that crab. Because we are all crabs, and we are all beautiful, and we all deserve the shells that reflect us as individuals, and anyone who says otherwise can fuck off into a spiny urchin bush and not have a shell. Or. Something. Did I say I felt awkward? I AM awkward. But anyway, drive-in movie totals and such after cut, potential TMI, and protect yourself love yourself, you lovely crabs <333
(with cut ‘cause longtext is looong)
(ORIGINAL POST)
Alt-text: I'm always the last one to know
so uh
I'm a blithe idiot and somehow never processed or dared to dream that this was possible
which makes the timeline look SPECTACULARLY dumb but I was going through SO MANY LIFESTYLE CHANGES
HYST DATE: SEPTEMBER 28, 2016
2017:
Me: Man, living in the townhouse has really amped up my leg game, all that up and down stairs.
Me: I'm down ten pounds since the hyst!
Megan: That's probably your natural weight.
Me: That or getting there. Not surprising, I'm not feeding the beast constantly.
Me: *punches Megan playfully in the arm*
Megan: OW goddammit Del that hurt like SHIT!
Me: oh my God I'm sorry I didn't mean to!
Megan: It's okay, just be careful!
Me: That's so weird I'm sorry D8
Me: man is it just me or am I good in bed lately? oh right I'm the only one here...I guess it's because I'm more confident?
Me: ghghjh my hair's thinning out at the temples, well been expecting that one for awhile, at least it waited for 30
2018:
Me: Holy shit, the stairs plus the shopping is paying off! My thighs are HUGE! I wonder if cracking a watermelon with these bad boys is hyperbole. I bet I could though. I BET.
Me: Down to 162 and holding, fuck you past doctors! I just needed ENERGY goddammit!
Me: Wow, I've lost a lot of weight from my face especially. That makes me super happy. Anyway better pluck these stray hairs. ...have I been yanking these more lately? Getting old is weird.
Me: (struggling with shorts)
Megan: Do you need a belt?
Me: I'M WEARING A BELT (lifts shirt to reveal belt double wrapped around hips)
Megan: Well then
Me: I just need to buy new shorts, my ass is just GONE
Megan: In the meantime maybe pay attention to what underwear you have on
Me: yeah thank God for boxers
Me: My acne scars are heck of acting up. I wish I hadn't picked at my face so much as a kid, I guess the pores are just kinda fucked, I've read about that happening.
2019:
Megan: New shorts look good
Me: I am so bad at shopping
Megan: At least you have them now
Me: I'm an assless chap is all
Megan: Go to bed Del
Me: It's four in the afternoon
Me: My throat feels so *thick* lately. I haven't been hitting the vape that often, why does it feel weird? And why am I noticing my own voice more? I NEVER notice my own voice, I make a point of it. Am I subconsciously pitching it lower like I used to do talking on Skype because I'm more socially active? What is my brain I'm so AWKWARD
Me: UGH I'm falling back into derma habits, I haven't picked in my face in years, I think I need to change cleansers. But...my face looks...good? I guess I had this hiding under that baby fat all these years. ...I guess?
Me: Am I getting a hump from my bad computer posture? Shit.
Me: Oh no, it's not a hump, my shoulders are starting to put on muscle! That's a relief. That must be from the...laundry? Carrying...laundry?
AUGUST 5, 2019:
Me: (lying in bed)
2 + 2
Me: wait why am I putting on shoulder muscle now? I've been doing laundry for years, and it's never done that. And my legs didn't get this buff with a routine job where I was walking three hours a d--
Me:
AUGUST 14, 2019:
New Endocrinologist: We'll test your levels to make sure it isn't a pituitary gland issue or (some syndrome I've already forgotten the name of), and it could be because there's some small element of testosterone in the estrogen replacement, but the brain does produce androgens. We can definitely look into switching you to T if you want, but if it's facial hair you're worried about...well, once the follicle is there, it's there. These are irreversible changes.
Me: No on that then but irreversible,, like,, what I have now,, is forever,,,,,,,?
New Endocrinologist: Forever, and I would expect to continue to see muscle gains if you work out.
Me:
welcome to my second puberty
please be aware it apparently involves as many mood swings as the first one but i'm tryin'
Since then, it’s been continuing confirm, confirm, confirm.
My acne turned out to be little follicles growing in odd places--not fullblown hair, just enough to irritate the skin while it was developing. Tiny tufts of 1-3 entirely white, downy hairs have popped up in a few places on my breasts. The real fuzz proliferation has been in the southern quarters--with all delicacy, there is no itch like the itch of hair beginning to grow anywhere sweat can proliferate, and I now understand why cis men scratch privates in public. Having NOT gone through a unified social experience with a peer group accepting of such measures, I am sure there is footage on grocery store cams of someone with an agonized expression walking like he has a weasel down his pants and worrying that 30 is early for hemorrhoids. Both have settled in for the most part, leaving me with a very fluffy, barely-there peach fuzz mustache that’s only noticeable in the right light, some spare hairs across my chin and neck that I keep in order, and a profound relief that I prefer boy shorts and swim trunks.
I went through a few weeks of being especially rank despite all the showering and was worried that was my new normal, but apparently T sweats be like that, and I’m back to smelling like...whatever I smell like, probably lavender with our fabric softener. I experienced what I believed was a relapse a month later that turned out to be a false positive--specifically, our thermostat was slowly dying and frog-boiling us until it got hot enough that my sister also went “dear God it is a sauna in here”, leading to replacement of the faulty element and another notch in the “my life is dumb” bedpost.
My face bonebs, which I frankly expected the least out of (when I wasn’t expecting at all), have slowly but surely been rearranging, a visual effect doubled by the much faster redistribution of fat. I honestly have no idea how this one works. I know more about dead bonebs than live ones. I would doubt it if I didn’t have pictures to back it up. I would say it’s easier to look in the mirror now, but I already stated my opinion on mirrors, do it too much and a skeleton will pop out. It WILL. My brain tells me this and it is never wrong about fears and or phobias. Don’t do it kids.
If there’s been a single most beautiful moment so far, it’s been getting back into Steven Universe after a long hiatus, opening my mouth to sing the opening like I did years ago, and realizing all at once that I was singing falsetto. I ran it back, dropped a register, and the first names I sang became those who would believe in me most. There were tears, and later, showing it off, there were fierce hugs. (Yes, the first ep I watched once I realized was Stevonnie, and YES GARNET GOING “GO HAVE FUN” wah)
I can’t begin to express the validation--I am no gender essentialist’s data point, this is MY experience and no one else’s, but I keep going “my aunt had a hyst and didn’t transition and I had one and I am because my brain makes androgens my brain makes androgens MY BRAIN MAKES ANDROGENS IT HAS BEEN MAKING ANDROGENS ALL THIS TIME IT HAS BEEN TRYING” and living in that, living in “not even SCIENCE is against me”, which is a tremendous thing as a scientist. (As a scientist, I would be a blithering dullard to claim this is the only thing that affects or proves my gender, and I do not. Again, TERFs fuck off. This is simply a very validating thing to me, personally, in my experience. I’m not thrilled that I have to underline that this hard dammit internet.)
What lies ahead is...I don’t know! I thought I was done changing, but the post I saw that nudged me to finally do this on here went “you may stop being able to cry for awhile” and this is Important because I have been trying to figure out if I have Sjogren’s but apparently I have androgens which is slightly easier to pronounce. I’m not sure how I feel about that, because transitioning is a lot of “I’m not sure how I feel about this” and then things being okay. I would definitely say that the more I learn, the easier it is to feel steady and normal, which is important because the mood swings have been REAL. This is more than I asked for or bargained for, but I still only have one regret, and that’s that my hyst scars are just slightly asymmetrical and it Bothers Me, but even that is growing on me.
I don’t know how to end this post. I love you all to death, and I hope if you’re seeking transition, you find it and twenty dollars, and if you’re not seeking transition, you still find twenty dollars. Thank you so much for you and all you do and are. Remember--you are great!
Unless you’re truscum. Then this post isn’t for you (dammit Internet) and you can fall off a boardwalk onto a dead fish. Have fun with that!
hekk
#trans#trans mtf#trans timeline#del is a trans guy#gender#gender*#blobs magician#i'm sorry this wasn't sooner i was shy aaaaa#you are all tock to me#and you are all wonderful crabs#let us go for a scuttle#longpost#long post#scrolling
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happy ace awareness week
i think you’re all probably aware that i’m ace by now, i mention it from time to time, but in case you’re not... heyyyyyy
you can find a lot of ace resources around, teaching you about asexuality, what it means, etc. i’ve been personally appreciating the hell out of lyd’s comics on the subject, the most recent of which is here.
this post isn’t for that. this post is for being aware of where i’m at regarding being ace. i would appreciate it if you read it.
hashtag lgbt/ace discourse ahead.
it’s been a weird year for me. a lot of good things have happened, and so have a lot of bad things. dealing with my asexuality has fallen into both categories.
when i first encountered the term asexuality and adopted it for myself it was a very different time. i had made a friend who was ace. without going into detail, they were a little older than me, and were dealing with the aftereffects of a bad relationship where they felt harrassed and later assaulted by a partner. so i came into it with the full awareness that being ace could be rough and cause discrimination, etc.
but honestly, in some ways, it was an easier time. back in 2011 asexuality felt less visible, but where it was visible, it was accepted pretty freely. some conversations around terms like “allosexual” began cropping up around them. i think i navigated them fairly well, and i learned a lot, and with everything i learned i grew surer that being ace was both a term that made me feel validated and comfortable, and the word that best defined my gender/sexuality experience.
the worst thing i had to deal with was people who hated “aces prefer cake” jokes and the occasional “stop calling yourselves aces you’re not playing cards” which, meh, it’s just a cute shortening. i love it. didn’t stop then, won’t stop now. you couldn’t pay me to go back to a time when i thought sherlock was worth any attention (i at least didn’t fuckin ascribe to a lot of the shit like “oh he’s ace/aro and it excuses his bullshit” haha fuck off.). but. boy. sometimes i miss it.
this past year or two, it’s been shitty. first we had the tail end of the “queer” discourse. i understood some viewpoints coming out of that, but ultimately settled on feeling like it the people arguing to remove it from the lexicon were wrong. i think there’s some valid points to be made, but mostly found the whole argument tiresome. Let people call themselves what they want, and don’t use it for people you don’t know like it, or for the whole community. Done.
and if I’m a little more hesitant to use it for myself, if i once described myself as queer freely and happily, and now do so nervously, backspacing it out of the text once or twice, that’s... something i hope to overcome.
but boy oh boy did that discourse just dovetail right into my personal hell. the kind of people who don’t want to see the community expanded, who want to stay on top and exclude people who aren’t being their kind of gay, immediately dug their claws into that argument about “queer” and didn’t stop.
i’ve endured months and months of ace discourse now and it’s... it’s been exhausting. i’m not even directly involved in it, but it’s still there. it’s constant. it’s insidious.
what started as a counter argument of “queer is a great as a blanket word for people with complex identities, such as ace people” dove directly into “well, are ace people lgbt?” and didn’t stop. suddenly it was the topic of the season. early definitions said “yes” or “if they think they are.” more arguments. “well, heteroromantic aces aren’t lgbt,” became popular. i can see why. that kind of invisible distinction could play well into pretending you’re straight, after all - right? so went the discourse. ugh.
as that argument caught on, people with anti-ace agendas pushed it further. “so being ace alone doesn’t make you lgbt.” “kids can’t identify as ace, that’s sexualization.” “cishet aces just want to steal our resources.”
i don’t want to go into all of these but. boy. some of them were presented logically, kindly. others devolved quickly into “aces are the worst and can die,” “ace people don’t belong full stop,” and even “lol look at me i’m a tumblrina i’m 13 years old asexual fictkin special snowflake” as the punchline of jokes that spread outside of this site.
some ace people are assholes and of course stirred the pot more by being overtly bitter/turning things into oppression olympics type bickering over how aces have the worst, or whatever. some blogs people cited for examples of “terrible ace people co-opting lesbian stuff” or whatever else were literally from sockpuppet blogs making fun of ace people.
for a time, i even bought into some of it. i thought some of the early arguments, that heteroromantic aces shouldn’t be considered lgbt, might have valid points. but you know what? that’s bullshit. if you believe you belong, you should be welcomed with open arms. hetero aces experience some of the same shit i do. they probably also experience other shit. just because i don’t know what it is, or it’s different from mine, doesn’t mean it isn’t an alienating, and perhaps even queer, experience. their sexuality, as nuanced as it is, still sets them apart and they deserve support. we all do.
it sucks to think that this shitty shitty discourse had me believing in a position that invalidated my own experience of aceness being the source of much of my queer experiences, for a while.
all this to say nothing of the invisible hate seeping towards aromantic people as well, lolololol. it’s not a big part of me the way being ace is but i’m probably somewhere on the aro spectrum and. great. thanks. i’m still so tired of split attraction model arguments. if it works for you, use it. if it works for other people, let them use it. is it so hard to believe that some people might experience things differently to you? or differently to how you would imagine? god.
my favorite part is when allo people started saying “allo is a slur!!!” when, get this: allosexual was pushed for and partially created by allo people who (rightly) didn’t want to be called “sexual,” like poc, and rape survivors. ace people adopted it into their language for their benefit, not for ours, lololololol
so. that’s the year i’ve been dealing with. i’ve had to unfollow a number of people i thought were otherwise cool over this. i haven’t gone a single month without finding someone i think is amazing, reading through their blog, and discovering with a sense of nausea that they would hate me. genuinely hate me. there’s no love there. someone who says “u shouldn’t follow me if you think ace people are lgbt lol” isn’t interested in hearing and believing my stories, my experiences, my life which is hard and queer and as deserving of support as anyone’s. they aren’t interested in treating me like a person. that’s... i mean, i think that counts as hate. yeah.
i still hesitate on the word aphobia, or, similarly, biphobia. i don’t know if it’s the right way to describe it, when the hatred you refer to comes from within a similar group of people with oppressed sexualities. i wouldn’t hesitate to say post from an allosexual person in favor of in corrective rape w/r/t ace people are aphobic. i wouldn’t hesitate to say a straight person who thinks bi people are disgusting is a biphobe.
but is that reality talking, or is it just me being unable to acknowledge that oppression is oppression, fear and hate are fear and hate, and discrimination towards aces, which i’ve spent the last two years being told isn’t real, despite experiencing it on a regular basis both in and out of community?
what’s the line between discrimination and oppression? if people’s everyday biases make it harder for ace people to live their lives, is there a point in determining that line?
i fuckin dunno. i’m so tired. i’ve spent a long year feeling like i’ve shrunk myself. i feel more comfortable lately talking about fictional ladies and my attraction to them, which isn’t sexual, and isn’t exactly romantic, but it’s... it’s something that exist. just recently i became comfortable feeling like i can use the term “wlw” for myself, which i fought myself for a long time on. being ace, being quietly non-binary were both things that felt like obstacles.
and the wlw community is just full of toxicity still. terfs have grown and drawn others to their ideologies, some of them using anti-ace tactics to do so, others using tried and true biphobic messaging and of course, who could forget the constant hammering of “trans women aren’t women” bullshit they like to pull.
so that’s one triumph of the year. i’m nb, i’m wlw, i’m ace. i can say those three things and feel pretty comfortable in it.
i just wish it didn’t also come at costs. i find it harder to express my ace life. i find it harder to feel positively about it. i don’t have the energy to deeply deal with ace headcanons lately. it feels like the online world is hyperaware of us now, if anything. everybody has an opinion. moreover, people feel entitled to an opinion, in a way they weren’t before. people feel like it can be their opinion that my ace experiences aren’t lgbt, or that my sexuality doesn’t exist or even harms theirs, or... i don’t know. what will be the next big reason asexuality is terrible/invalid/not lgbt?
if you bothered to read or hell just skimmed this long post... thank you.
thank you.
i know i’ve been quiet about a lot of this. not all the time, but a lot of the time. i feel bad about that, a little? i want people to know what this looks like. knowing asexuality exists is so, so good. but knowing that ace people are facing right now, the movement of hatred that has swept across pockets of lgbt people in recent years, and having the awareness to try and combat it...
it would mean a lot to me, if it felt like more of that could exist.
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I dont like white women.
Whenever I say that, white women look at me like I just decapitated Taylor Swift. If Im being honest, their reaction is part of the reason I say it. But rest assured, its not the only reason.
I dont like white women because Im not particularly fond of the construct of whiteness or what it represents. I also dont appreciate those who are complicit in my oppression and benefit from it. When I say I dont like white women, its not in reference to any specific white woman (aside from maybe Taylor Swift). Its a declaration that white women pose a very real threat to my existence, and I dont have to embrace that threat with open arms. You have to earn my fondness. This goes for several other groups, obviously, but for some reason white women seem the most baffled by it. Whenever I meet a white woman whos not baffled by it, we instantly become friends. Those are the white women I like.
I dont like white women because Im not particularly fond of the construct of whiteness or what it represents.
As an unapologetically black, queer, and cash poor femme, I accept that I can only speak definitively on my own experiences. In fact, Im of the belief that our experiences are the only things any of us can definitively speak on. But that doesnt mean ours are the only experiences worth acknowledging. There exists a space between the oft chanted chorus silence is violence! and the realization that when we advocate for other people we usually have no idea what were talking about. Navigating that space can be difficult, but its vital to achieving universal liberation. The fact so many white women continue to evade this space is why Black women like me are under the impression they arent all too concerned with our liberation. And just once, Id love for them to prove me wrong.
Im not a scholar, so occasionally I get left behind by academic terminology used to define my identity. Ill never understand why I have to classify myself the way others see fit. Once, someone asked why I refer to myself as cash poor instead of working class. I think working class is a misnomer, since work is no indication of any shared socio-economic status. An undocumented sex worker, for example, and a white housewife trying to get her Etsy Store off the ground dont have much in common. Saying both are working class does a lot to alleviate the conscience of those in positions of privilege. Yet still, when I turn on the news, thats the group I hear politicians declaring their allegiance to. Thats the group I see folks clamoring to fight for. Terms like working class often erase intersections of oppression and replace them with a fictional shared experience. The same can be said of words like feminism, and even women. Ultimately, its not our shared experiences (real or imagined) that will unite us. Its acknowledging our differences.
Today, intersectionality has become a buzzword meant to lend credibility to social agendas that are anything but inclusive.
We leftists and liberals often like to think of ourselves as an intersectional body of unity. When Kimberl Crenshaw coined the phrase intersectionality in the late 80s, the concept was meant to bring attention to co-existing layers of social identity. Today, intersectionality has become a buzzword meant to lend credibility to social agendas that are anything but inclusive. I witnessed this, first hand, last month at the Womens March.
The Womens March was bittersweet for women of color and trans women. Although the official platform of the march referenced intersectionality twice, the experience was anything but that. For all its symbolism and potential, the Womens March was largely a tightly packed shrine to alabaster skin and pink vulvas. My compatriots and I jokingly nicknamed the crowd a sea of astroTERF (a reference to the way trans women were all but excluded from the concerns of the participants). I made a mental note whenever I saw a white woman holding a sign that acknowledged women of color or immigrantsor Black lives mattering. My mental notepad remained largely unused.
I immediately began to think of the violence and harm that self-proclaimed feminists inflict on the most marginalized among us. I thought of all the times I, as a queer individual, believed I was doing enough for queer Black folk by just providing my queer Black body to spaces where not enough of us were present.
I considered the ways in which I was complicit in the erasure of trans women, non-able bodied femmes, and undocumented immigrants; the times I was in my feels because a trans woman made a Facebook status dragging the fuck out of my perception of solidarity. I thought of instances when I actually said Why would I want to fight alongside your struggle if you arent welcoming people like me who are actually trying to advocate on your behalf?
Each of those times I had the wrong way of thinking. I came to that realization by listening and learning and surrounding myself with people who were gracious enough to share insights that I lacked. I believe this has led me to not only be a better feminist, but a better human being. I havent quite yet reached the pinnacle of intersectional Shangri-La, but I know some stuff. And in the interest of sharing my own insights, Ill leave you with three things I try to consider when partaking in liberation work.
Maintaining a Growth Mindset I try to always keep in mind that there are things I dont know. More importantly, there are things I think I know now, that Im just flat wrong about. Hopefully in the future Ill figure out what those things are, and continue on my path of self-determination. But we can never grow mentally, emotionally, or spiritually if we approach things with a closed mind. I always try to listen to the accounts and experiences of others with the notion that Ill pick up something new. Thats how we learn about privilege and our role in oppressing others. Thats how we learn about intersectionality. I cant overstate the importance of listening to people who are willing to share their experiences with us. We just have to be cognizant of who were willing to listen to most intentlywhich brings me to my next point.
Diversity from the Top Society has a hierarchy of experiential priorities. Those priorities align with the social pecking order, starting with straight white able-bodied cisgender men, and proceeding down the line accordingly. When I do anything, I try to start by flipping that hierarchy upside down before I proceed. If Im picking a restaurant to eat dinner, Im going to go out of my way to support a minority-owned business. If Im participating in a direct action, I want to make sure its led by, or in alignment with, the leadership of the most marginalized.
Many Black women who attended the Womens March did so begrudgingly because Black women were largely excluded from the planning until the 11th hour. That doesnt go unnoticed. In order for our liberation to become a reality, we have to incorporate diversity from the top. And it cant be symbolic diversity or tokenism. Are you centering the voices of the unheard? Are you following their direction and listening to their needs? I promise you that your own liberation depends on everyone elses. When you fight for the lives of the most marginalized you simultaneously liberate yourself. A rising tide lifts all boats, yall. Dont end up with a yacht in the desert.
Love Lastly, even when I say I dont like white women, I dont do it from a place of hatred. I do it from a place of self-love and preservation. I dont have to like you to have love and respect for you. If you prescribe to the idea that impact trumps intent, you still cant deny the fact that people who act with love in their hearts usually have the most positive impact. And the best way to convey love is with our actions, not just our words. So when doing this work, its OK to stop and ask yourself if your motivation is coming from a place of love or a place of fear. Its easy to hate. I hate the police. But thats not why I do this work. I do this work because I LOVE my beautiful people, in all their magnificent shapes, sizes, shades, and orientations. I see you. I hear you. And I promise to do my best to honor you.
Reposted from Black Lives Matter Medium.com page: http://ift.tt/2lhA7yy
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1/21/2017
100,000 people showed up in downtown portland today for the women’s march. it was fucking incredible-- for a while the streets were too packed to even march. i think my favorite cheer was “we will not go away, welcome to your first day”
there was a marching band, and thousands upon thousands of incredible signs. my housemates ditched me so i took the bus and everyone sitting near me wanted to look at my pins and patches and my sign (one side: support your sisters not just cis-sters. other side: queer goblins for women’s rights) and i ended up talking with a lovely older women in the back about college and debt and progress. everyone was so kind and excited and even though we got absolutely drenched, the atmosphere was positive. it was a celebration as much as a protest. it was so supportive (for the most part) and i am so glad i went.
there was also the knowledge of the history we were creating. in a hundred years (should our species survive that long) future generations will look back and they will see that we fought. they will see how angry we were, how much we wanted to survive, how badly we wanted to love and to be kind. i hope they will trust the personal accounts more than the bare-bones misinformation of the media. i hope they will admire our art and our dedication and our passion.
there was a little more that went on, in the personal sphere: kissing and getting lost and not being able to find my friends in the crowd. there were awkward interactions and sweet interactions. i got hugged by a lovely queer woman who liked my trans girl sign (it was a little bit popular, and i hope most of all that trans femme ladies saw it and i hope they felt a little bit safer). i danced my ass off in front of the band, of which there is definitely internet footage. (i am not looking for it; i don’t want to look at myself, i feel shitty enough occupying this corporeal form) the last song the band played was “i will survive”
there were also the bad parts-- Aru, Lloyd’s girl, getting separated from her group and being harassed by terfs at the march because she wasn’t “feminine” enough. i am so fucking angry. i can’t think of what else to say. i am furious and in pain and because i am myself, i’m angry for not somehow preventing it. im angry for not having more energy to argue with terfs and im angry at my own internalized transmisogny that makes me surprised it happened.
i’ve been feeling numb recently. i guess its normal in such different environments-- my body suspending my emotions until i’m safe enough to filter through them. i find the fear leaking back in, and even among all the pink and the solidarity and the music, i can’t forget that some of us will not survive the next few years. maybe all of us.
for example:
yesterday, inauguration day, we took to the streets. it wasn’t a sanctioned march-- i heard they tried to get permits and were refused, i also heard they don’t give a fuck about permits, i heard a lot of things. it started out as always-- talking a little longer than the crowd was prepared to sit for, and then out onto the streets. the cops have learned since the election day times, and they were out in full riot gear everywhere they didn’t want us to go, which was roughly everywhere. on the news sites, they’re saying protesters threw projectiles. i just want to say that the whole march, i didn’t see anything like that. there were legal observers all standing near the cops, people with cameras recording, but i didn’t see anything that could be construed as violence.
eventually, i guess they got tired of us marching. they forced us to go up toward pioneer square and then, once next to it, they told us our protest was unlawful and to disperse. unfortunately, they’d blocked off all the exits (the way we’d come was open, but everywhere else had lines of riot cops) and nobody was really ready to go. they used flash bangs and tear gas and pepper spray. i got to know what the phrase “snatch and grab” means.
we made the best of it. my heart swelled for every single marcher that night (even the white anarchists). bobby had a megaphone they kept using, to heckle the cops (”I’ll go home if you make out!” “give us some sloppy coppy” “just kiss each other!” were some notable shouts) to spread information, to attempt to find me (apparently a whole section of the crowd was on the lookout for me. once i was located, they reported their finding and the entire section cheered). after the cops declared the protest unlawful, they started a rousing round of “All Star” by Smash Mouth. i shared the chocolate chip cookies i’d made earlier (they were a little underdone and squished-- more slightly baked dough, but no one complained) and later received a delicious scone from some humans. everyone i interacted with was kind and strange and angry. it was clearly stranger, sharper, and more homegrown than today’s protest. more dangerous as well, but just as worth it.
not to say i’m completely happy-- i go back and forth with the anarchists. their actions put the more vulnerable members of our community at risk, and making a mess that pam the janitor is just going to have to clean up in the morning. some of them are so fucking shitty to working class people (Aru let us into her work so we could pee, some time around 8, and a crowd came past. they dragged one of her works dumpsters into the street, presumably to stop police following them. one of the store’s managers came out, because they’d only have to drag them back, and the one of the protesters mocked her.) it’s messier and some of the people are worse. in the days following the election i got into a screaming match with a few. i dont know if i trust the organizers of the event-- i want to, but we admittedly don’t know much about them. i hope i’m doing the right thing
i think we are. i think i am. i think i could be doing more-- i think we all could, and i think if i believe we’re doing enough, we’ll be losing. we have to walk the line of staying strong and striving for more, so we don’t wreck ourselves, but we don’t get complacent. i’m going to be honest, i love the graffiti, and i have some stencil or sticker ideas to look into. im going to keep writing, and im going to put angry words on my clothes and flowers on my vest and i am going to hold my friend’s hands in public and i am going to call my representatives and heckle them and i am going to sing at the riot police and i will participate in whatever marches or strikes or sit-ins or teach-ins i can. i will defend my family to the best of my ability, and i will try to forgive myself for my inevitable failures. i will keep myself strong and i will hold out my arms to pull as many people up as possible. dark days ahead, but i’m the monster who thrives in the dark.
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