Welcome back to another installment of Trans 101 With Julie. I am the titular Julie.
I have spent the better part of the past 24 hours mulling some thing over, and trying to come up with a way to discuss things without resorting to vaguebooking or doing the essay length version of subtweeting. I'm still not sure I've come up with the best way to achieve this, but let's work our way through the mine field that is Julie's brain, OK?
We'll start our little excursion here:
white feminism: A brand of feminism centered around the ideals and struggles of primarily white women. While not outright exclusive, its failure to consider other women and its preoccupation with Western standards and the problems faced by the "average woman" is often alienating to women of color, non-straight women, trans women, and women belonging to religious or cultural minorities.
When I say...and I do...that I loathe white feminism, this is what I mean. You can be white, and a feminist, and not be a white feminist. I know lots of white feminists who don't practice white feminism...they are aware of the unique problems, oppressions, and lived experiences of people outside their social bubble, and ready to step back and ensure that those unique things are noticed and spoken about.
I have seen some pictures that equate the A in LGBTQIA+ as 'ally,' and it makes me sick. It's centering. It's stating that a cisgender or heterosexual ally is an integrated integral part of the community, that their experiences are the same as ours. And that is filled with so many falsehoods that I don't even know where to start.
I have made no small reference to the fact that I do not like ‘allies.’ I don't like the word ally. For me, this is what ally means: you're someone who talks the talk, but when it's time to walk the walk, you shrink back. You post all kinds of stuff all over the place about things, but when it's time to put money where mouth is, silence ensues. While we're out there living our lives and experiencing things you can't understand but might be able to at least see if you weren't busy posting the latest cause you're supporting, you're...talking about how people have so much more to learn.
I'd laugh if I wasn't crying.
Or is it I'd cry if I wasn't already laughing?
It's hard to tell sometimes.
I do not exist to make people feel better about themselves. I do not exist to placate and coddle. I exist to exist, to live my life as safely and fully as possible, and to evolve from the pupal stage I was in for far too long into the person I have always been but hid away under lock and key. If someone steps out of their lane, steps into my lane, and starts telling me how I should interact with them, expecting anything other than a slap back is disingenuous beyond reckoning. I won't be polite. I won't be kind. I'll call you out on your bullshit, and I will call you what you are. I won't be belittled, I will not be denigrated, and I will not stand for being told I'm rude for 'talking down' to someone, or that I haven't earned their respect. I don't want respect that is only given for fitting someone's societal norms.
Someone that really cares for people in a community do certain things. In my mind, these things include, but certainly aren't limited to, the following:
1) They listen twice as much as they speak. I have a saying I live by, and that's 'I have 2 ears and 1 mouth...that tells me how I should act.'
2) They speak with, not for. They amplify our voices, they don't speak in lieu of us.
3) They listen when we say something is ignorant, offensive, or hateful. When one of my friends says something is racist, I trust in their lived experiences that it is what they say it is. This has tripped me up in the past, and I felt horrible about it. I've learned and trust those voices. Basically I don't act as if their knowledge and experience is less important than my opinion.
4) They collect their own. They tell their social group when something is wrong, and direct them to resources to provide empirical evidence and lived experiences to amplify their assertion.
5) They do not give power back to the oppressor.
6) They apologise when they fuck up in a timely manner. And they offer an honest, complete apology. As examples:
I'm sorry for hurting you.
I'm sorry you’re upset by what I said.
What's the difference between these two? Simples: one takes ownership of the fault...the other defers ownership to the injured party.
Which one do you think I would want when someone makes a mistake?
~~~//||\\~~~
A number of things have changed for me over the past several months. I am in more fear for my continued existence than I have ever been in my life. I do not know what the next four years are going to bring for any of us who is not a white cisgender heterosexual Christian male. And I have been presented with a choice.
To wit:
a) Live my life with my head down, try not to get any attention, and try to skulk my way through the shadows in order to try to blend in and keep 'safe.'
b) Be myself. Get angry. Express my anger. Fight. Point out stuff. Talk about my life in the hopes that sharing my experiences, from my depression to my grey-ace/demi orientation to my transgirl identity, help others to understand theirs should any of those resonate with them...and hopefully, for people who share none of those characteristics, that it gives them some sort of basic understanding of something outside their bubble.
I have spent tens of thousands of words over the past several years talking about my life as a transgirl (and please note...I use the term transgirl because I claim it. Just like I claim the word queer to describe me. You don't get the privilege of using them. They're not your words. Trans women are women, trans men are men, and I'm a woman who happens to like the word transgirl and applies it to herself. Quod erat demonstrandum.). I have spent countless hours tearing bloody open my life and splattering the rawness of it on the digital page for it to be examined. I don't have to do this, and a good number of people have in fact suggested I might be happier, or at least more content, if I didn't. And maybe...it's possible. But the thing is this: while I have a choice, I don't feel that I have a choice. There is so much false information out there, and so many people trying desperately to paint us as mentally ill, delusional, and not 'truly' trans as there's no such thing as 'a true trans.'
In life, we all have a choice. We can choose to live on our knees, or die on our feet. I have spent too much of my life on my knees, trying to metaphorically suck off whoever I need to in order to sneak by in life and keep my head down. And yeah, that's maybe an explicit analogy, but I'm far beyond the point of caring about the words I choose to express myself in matters such as these. I am not a politician, I don't make nice, I don't do respectability or apology to people trying to bring me down or invalidate my life. You can argue all you want, but if you're racist I'll call you a racist, if you're fascist I'm going to bash you, and if you're saying stuff that's transphobic, you can be sure as eggs I will call you a transphobe. And I won't apologise for it.
My initial plan for this, before things went pear shaped, as to write about a number of things that started with the letter A that I felt were important (attitude, acceptance, affirmation) both internally (i.e., the self) and externally. I was even outlining a course through this when I had to put it aside for...reasons. And so, you get this instead.
Thank you for reading. I'll see you back here next time, hopefully with a more optimistic, positive bit of essay.
(This essay is free to share, and I encourage it. This is posted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license with the intent that you may share it if you have found it informative, helpful, or enlightening. You may use extracts, properly attributed, as part of your work as long is it is openly shared under similar license.)
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