We embrace joy and love. We embrace listening to ourselves more than them. We embrace what could be instead of taking for granted what is. We see a future that doesn’t have to be the way things have always been. We are brave enough to fight for our right to exist outside of the norm so they fear what else we are willing to fight for. Our existence questions the validity of the entire system, because if they could be so wrong about something that is seen as so static and so fixed and intrinsic in our society, what else are they wrong about?
Also, we are an easy target because we are a small portion of the population. We are not fully understood by most people. Even many of those who consider themselves our supporters don’t fully understand us, although many are trying hard to. It is hard for many to really grapple with our existence because understanding us requires taking a hard look at everything you’ve ever been taught to be true. We make cis people so fucking uncomfortable because if they really thought about their own gender too hard they’d realize the system isn’t really working for them either. We are trained from the day we are born into our gender system and to believe that gender is fixed and innate. There is very little education about gender happening because actually studying and thinking about gender too much would topple the entire system.
There is even a part of the “left” that hates our existence so much that they have been willing to collaborate with the far right, who one would think would be their enemy, in an attempt to erase us completely from society. They are part of a sect of feminism (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism aka TERFs) whose belief system is that there are two competing groups in our society that of men vs women and is based on biological essentialism that was born out of reactionary anger at the gendered based violence and oppression of the 1960s but lacks a class analysis of society and lacks an understanding of the socially constructed aspects of gender. So they have gone full on in their hatred and fear of trans people, specifically trans women, and are willing to do anything to take away our rights to exist.
So, the far right saw this collaboration from folks supposedly on the left as an opportunity to splinter the population and pick an easily attacked target. And they found strength and division in this collaboration. That is in large part why the far right makes trans people the focus of their current campaign. It is because they feel it will divide society so much that they can fully take power on the backs of the split. They rely on the assumption that so few folks actually support trans people in our society that they would not be getting any large push back. They are counting on people being scared of us because they don’t understand us. They are counting on a lack of connection between the working class to stand up and fight for us. They count on people’s silence and complacency. So as long as folks stay quiet, they will continue to expand their power. As long as we stay divided they will continue to conquer. So long as the many stand by and watch this happen we will continue to be ground into the ground.
We shout, stop the trans genocide, because let’s be clear this is an attempted genocide. If you think I’m being dramatic we have literally experienced 8 of the 10 stages of genocide. Classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation and prosecution (here’s where we are at). The last two are extermination and denial. Please let’s not let it get there.
But when we shout stop the trans genocide, what we mean is stop murdering us. Stop the bills being forced through across the country restricting our access to health care, to play sports, to use the bathroom in public, to wear the clothes that we feel most comfortable in, to have our children live fulfilling lives where their authenticity is not only validated but celebrated. Stop the militarization of our racist police force that harasses and murders our siblings for just existing. Give us full housing and employment protections. Make trans health care accessible and free. Make housing and good paying jobs and mental health care for trans folks more accessible. End the criminalization of sex work. End the criminalization of our lives.
Stop calling us groomers. This is a dangerous label attempting to scapegoat our community for the child sexual assault and abuse mostly perpetuated and committed by cis men in positions of power. We are fighting for the right of youth to be free. They are fighting for the youth to be tightly controlled.
Make gender neutral public restrooms accessible. Give us full autonomy to choose which restroom and which locker rooms to use. End the gatekeeping need for therapist letters to receive gender affirming care. Remove barriers to changing gender markers on documents and make X a gender choice on documents in all states. Or better yet, fully remove gender markers from our documents altogether.
We have fought too hard and too long to finally be comfortable in our bodies to have it snatched away now.
Trans women are women. Trans men are men. But then some of us are neither or both or something completely different. For some of us our gender is constantly changing and evolving because it’s a journey with no specific destination, and for others it stays the same and finding the gender that is right is like coming home finally. Any way your gender exhibits itself is valid. Because it is your personal journey with who you are and who you become. And we should all have full autonomy over that journey.
Humans are so much more diverse than the tiny, suffocating boxes they are trying to force us into from the moment we are born. We deserve to explore all of the facets of ourselves and we deserve so much more than the tiny boxes they try to force us into based on what they assume our bodies to look like.
Cis people get gender affirming procedures every day. And no one is trying to take away their right to do that. So why do they want to take away our right to gender affirming healthcare, care that literally saves people’s lives? Because it doesn’t fit into their narrow worldview of how they have been taught to understand the world. So much so that they force our intersex siblings whose bodies do not line up with their understanding to have surgeries and procedures done as children without their consent to fit into their ideas of what bodies are supposed to look like. Yet they are not coming for those surgeries. Because they don’t actually care about children. They care about control. This isn’t about and has never been about protecting kids. Bills that take away children’s rights to gender affirming care will kill children. And the blood of those children are on the hands of those pushing through these bills, and those sitting idly by doing nothing as it happens.