It’s up to us, cis folks, to stop treating this like it’s not “our” issue. It’s up to us to stop making anti-trans jokes, to stop treating gender like a binary, to stop using anti-trans slurs, to stop defining gender by genitals and reproductive capacity, to stop misgendering with wrong names and pronouns, to stop denying access to medical care and domestic violence shelters, to stop making “woman-only” spaces that are trans-exclusive. Just as importantly, it’s time to start speaking up whenever we see other people do these things, instead of waiting for trans* folks to do it themselves. Because while speaking out is not always 100% safe for cis people, it is a million times more likely to be safe for us than it is for those who are trans*.

And it’s time, too, for cis people to start recognizing all of these supposedly “small” things, the jokes, the assumptions, for what they are — the roots of violence, violence themselves against people’s identities, the precursors to even more severe violence. It’s time to recognize that when you make someone’s identity a joke, you make their humanity a joke, too. And there is no way for that to not end in violence.

This this this, especially this.  If you read and ponder nothing else today, at the very least THIS.

I think today, as I do every day, about my fellow transgender people who didn’t make it through the year, for a wide variety of reasons. The people who died because they could not access health services, ranging from trans women denied care at women’s clinics to trans men dying of conditions they weren’t screened for because of cissexist assumptions about bodies, to trans people who couldn’t meet the exacting standards for medical transition and decided they didn’t want to live anymore. I think about the people who were raped and beaten and murdered in the last year for their gender, their misgendering in the media and the decision on the part of some journalists to violate their memories by using the wrong names, employing the wrong pronouns, suggesting they deserved that happened to them.

And I think about all of the bullied trans people, not just trans youth, but trans people of all ages, who died in the last year, who came close to dying, who will die this year. I think about the tidal wave of hatred for us and the way it expresses and the fact that it is so rarely discussed. I think, too, about the bullying within the transgender community, the binarism, for example, that leads to people making assumptions about my body and causes people to think it’s perfectly appropriate to misgender me and people like me. I think about the ways to address the problems both outside and inside the trans community, to make the world a safer place for every person, of every gender (and nongender). I think about how we can possibly build a better world.

(Source: se-smith, via thecurvature)

I always instantly lose followers whenever I blog or reblog something related to giving a damn about transgender people and issues.

RANT alert.

So here it is: My tumblr is arts and crafts, pretty pictures, literary quotes, nerdy stuff, inspiration AND a fuckload of political things I care very deeply about.  I don’t live in a world where passionate arguments and discussions of very relevant issues and things that are happening right now - (many of which are upsetting and things I’m outraged by) - don’t happen just because they aren’t happening to me. 

If people are being murdered, beaten, raped, harassed and ridiculed because of their gender identity, that affects me.  Especially because people with the same privilege that I have as a cisgender person are perpetrating that violence  And worse, most people with privilege stay silent and don’t care.  I care.  I am uncomfortable (to put it mildly) with the hetero and gender normativity lockdown our society has going on, so I’m going to talk about it and reblog others who are talking about… right the fuck next to my pictures of knitted crafts, amazing paintings, or pretty beaches, ok?

I see tumblr as a scrapbook that reflects this world, the beautiful and the ugly that I don’t believe we should turn away from.  In fact, I believe I have a personal obligation to pay attention to things like the Transgender Day of Remembrance.  I’m not asking everyone to reblog it or engage in the discussion (although maybe some thought should be given to why you don’t want to, if you actively don’t want to).  But today if someone (several someones) actually, more or less, liked me or what I had to share, show or say up until this point… that pisses me off.  Because I don’t exactly make a secret of being political, so they were fine with it up until now and within minutes I lose followers for reblogging and link to posts about actively fighting and confronting transphobia? 

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Earlier today, I linked to a post by Cara at the Curvature.  I put an excerpt of a part of what she wrote that I thought was particularly amazing and important and commented on it.

My post is here.

Since then it’s been reblogged about a bazillion times.  And that makes me happy because I want people to go read it.  However, I did notice that even though I put her blog url in the content source and the link directly goes there, a lot of people removed my comments and because of the structure of how reblogs look, it makes it appear that I wrote what I had been excerpting. 

So, just wanted to clarify, to anyone who clicks back and visits my blog and follows me after reblogging that, that I did not write the post in question.  I hope most people will click and read and pay attention to the source etc.  But I’m not comfortable with the credit going to me if they don’t!

Just a public service announcement.  Giving credit where credit is absolutely due.  Carry on.

Also, if you had the same reaction I did to her piece and reblogged it to share it with others, her tumblr is here for you to follow.

This is super long, but important!

cartographies:

Nearly half of living trans people–surviving trans people–have attempted suicide.
Nearly half of those of us who did not succeed in killing ourselves have tried.
Nearly a tenth of us will be murdered.  Nearly half of us will be raped.  Most of us will experience violence from loved ones and almost all of us will be denied homes and jobs.  This is not hyperbole.  These are the numbers as the world currently stands.  But the most devastating one, as far as I am concerned, is that first one.  Nearly half of the living have tried not to be.  That is:  let’s leave behind all the nearly.  More than half of us have tried to end our own lives and many of us have succeeded.  We are a heartbroken people.

This is not arbitrary.  This is not a mistake.  This is not for no reason.  This is because we live in a world that has systematically forced into us the falsehood that we are unworthy of the basic consideration of humanity.  This is because we–and we are a beautiful people, a powerful people, a beloved and phenomenal people–have been fed falsehood after falsehood until we were convinced that we were the problem, and not the campaign, from the institution on down to the individual, to erase, denigrate, break, and murder us.  This is the failure state of the communities we live in:  our families, our religious communities, our political leaders, our movements, our governments, our cultures.  This is us–trans people–as a people–being forced to carry the weight of an entire world’s failure.
If we are so desperate to escape this world–if we see no other alternative, or worse, loathe ourselves so very much–it is because our communities have failed us.  They can do better.  We can do better.  We deserve better.  We are not so full of self-hate because something is wrong with us.  We do not do such terrible violence to ourselves because that is what we deserve.  We do not abdicate the belief in our own inherent dignity and worth lightly or easily.  It is torn out of us, little by little, in daily, tiny murders.  And every time we cringe and scrape and apologize for breathing, for taking up space, for speaking, for loving, every time we ask for forgiveness just for being what we are, every time we internalize story after story about how we are dead to our loved ones, ask to be brutalized, need to expect that what we are will merit every door closed in our faces, we are participating little by little in our own suicides.

I am no longer interested in sweet words about this.  We convince ourselves we are the problem because we are taught to do so, and we are all taught this, minute by minute, even those of us who mostly don’t believe it.  We are reminded every hour how low and vile we are despite our best efforts.  If you have for an instant believed that you are unworthy of love, that you are wrong, that you are anything less than a person, it is very simply because your community has failed you.
When you have been told you are less than human–less than sacred–less than beautiful–your community has failed you.  When you believe it, it is because your community has failed you.  I do not intend to mince words.

If you are out there believing that you are less than other people–that you are unworthy–that those who love you are settling, or tolerating, or deserve your apology–that those you love are not lucky to have your love–your community has failed you.  Your family has failed you.  Your faith, if you have one, has failed you.  Your leaders have failed you.  If you or the people around you are using words that make you feel like a thing; if you are frightened to have basic bodily functions in public; if you talk about yourself like a disease, not a person; if you see nothing ahead in your old age but the bleakness of despair, isolation, and abuse; if your youth is a neverending desperation to get out and away to somewhere you cannot trust exists; if you are quietly taking your bag out from under the seat another has taken from you and moving on instead of asserting yourself; if you are telling yourself it is excusable for other people, even loved ones, not to afford you the basic respect of your own name; if you are believing this is the best you can do, they have let you down.
You deserve better.  Because you are not the problem.  You are not broken.  You are not worthless.  You are not a problem and you are not a mistake.

We talk a lot about principles and rights, but I am not talking about rights and don’t want to.  Rights are the purview of politics and I don’t want to talk politics.  I don’t want to talk analysis or discourse or theory.
I want to talk morals.  It is a moral issue that our community is full of despair and self-hatred and self-disgust.  It is not a matter of rights.  It is not a matter of laws or votes or commandments.  It is a moral issue.  It is a theological issue.  It is an issue of fundamental, basic human-ness.  And I think sometimes we, as a community, especially those of us so proud to be radicals, forget that sometimes we rush ahead of the community, the culture, the people to whom we are connected, and want to talk about our rights before we talk about what we deserve and why we deserve it.  We want to talk about protecting our own before we give each other reason to believe we are worth protecting.  We want to jump in with both feet and spread the word about what we ought to have in society without convincing our people that we are worthy of not just full participation in society, civil or social, but of love.  Of beauty.  Of truth.  Of basic humanity.  Of self-respect.

This is not about self-esteem.  This is not about self-help.  This is a moral issue.  This is an issue of the basic liturgy of human interaction–because it is our daily rituals that define the four corners of the world and the arches of the sky, it is our stories that tell us how to recognize our own faces, and we have been denied our place in the human liturgy for far too long and it is long past time to erupt up from the landscape that conceals us and demand, not just our rights, but the basic essential core of worth and decency that makes us people and therefore worthy of rights in the first place.  We have been denied this and we have been told we are the problem.  Those of us who are political, like me, hear often about ourselves as a cause.  Those of us who are academic, like me, hear often about ourselves as a concept.  But we have gotten ahead of ourselves because too many of us–leave alone everyone else, us!–have not heard about ourselves as people.  We have been excluded from our own landscape of story and ritual.  We have been ejected from our own moral universe.  We have been torn from our own regard.  And we are killing ourselves by degrees because of it.  At eight years old I put a kitchen knife to my chest and pushed, and it was only a miracle that caused me to falter and fail.  That eight year old child was not the problem.  I was not the problem.  A world that taught me that I had no place in it, that taught me to look away from my own holy truth and afford myself not even a scrap of the respect I agreed all other people merited, that taught me that nothing done to me could be wrong because my own moral universe did not include me–that world was and is the problem.

If for a moment in your life you have spent a breath or a thought hating yourself, looking on yourself with disgust and contempt, it is because people have let you down, and those people were wrong.  You deserve not to submit to them.  You were never the problem.  If for a moment you thought your family, your friends, your lovers, needed to compromise to love you, thought they could do better and have a real person instead, it is because your community has let you down, from the top to the bottom.
If our leaders cannot tell us this–if we as leaders cannot tell each other this–we are fundamentally and profoundly abdicating our responsibility to our people, who are crying out for justice.  If you run a church or a support group or a political faction or a newsletter or a website.  If you speak to our people in public, if you guide young people or those just discovering themselves, if you are entrusted with the responsibility to guide any of us, and you do not make it clear that we are whole, we are real, we are worthy, we are beautiful?  You are letting us down and you can do better.  You can do better than letting that lie go unchallenged.  Our people are hungry for the truth.  We are starving.  If you deny them that food, if you feed them garbage instead, it is on you.
This is not politics, or theory.  It is a moral issue.  We are under the arch of the same sky, and yet we are denied the sight of it, leave alone the hope that we might be virtuous enough to share in holding it up.

We are not the problem.  We are not broken.  We are not dirty.  Wrong is not our name.  We are not wrong.  It is long past time to recognize that though we may lose much from truth-telling, when it all burns away, everything that is left is true.
Do not trust me because some great Word is in me.  Trust yourself and the Word in you.  Trust that you are brim-full of truth.  Trust that there is a mighty and lie-less core within you that from birth has told you that you are full of what is good, and trust that the fact you cannot hear it ringing out over your landscape is because it has been buried by other people in a landfill of falsehood.
The fact that you can doubt the truth within yourself is because your community has let you down.  And we can do better.  We deserve better.  We are better than that.  We are not wrong.

I do not intend to mince words.  Whatever there is in you that tells you that you are not worth loving, not worth living, not worth fighting for:  burn it.  Burn it down and dig for the truth underneath.  Dig down through the ashes of all those lies until you hit bedrock and then, pushing off from it, rise up.  We walk in places much too dark and terrible to deny ourselves this.  In a world that sanctions and blockades our sources of spiritual nourishment, we carry too much already to weaken ourselves by collaborating with this enforced and unjust impoverishment.  We deserve to rise up, and, even if only in ourselves, nurture revolution.

We are real people, beautiful people, and we deserve families, communities, movements, and cultures that honor us.  I think we can have them.  I believe we can make them.  We are part of this human family, worthy, complete, pure, and mighty.  And we ought to be able to say this out loud and to ourselves until we know that it is true.

Welcome to church.

THIS.  especially this part: “I do not intend to mince words.  Whatever there is in you that tells you that you are not worth loving, not worth living, not worth fighting for:  burn it.  Burn it down and dig for the truth underneath.”

If I could say one thing over and over and make it true, make you all believe it, it’s this. Not just for trans folks. For everyone I know who struggles with mental illness or depression. And/or everyone I know that is queer and been through it. And/or anyone reading this that wonders if their life will ever get better after high school (or whatever era of their life that they are struggling in) and wonders how they will make it out.

But especially for my trans friends, for whom this world is exponentially more hostile and dangerous, I wish I could keep affirming this and make it true. You do deserve better. I want you to know there are a lot of cis folks in the world that want you to be here and won’t give up fighting by your side for you to be able to live safely being nothing less than 100% yourself.

(via bohemianarthouse)

loveismymixtape:

gaywrites:

In this week’s disgusting news:

A transgender woman entered a McDonald’s in Baltimore to use the bathroom when two patrons started attacking her, beating her violently. The link above has a video of the incident; watch at your own discretion. 

The manager yelled at them to stop, but no other employees helped as the people dragged the woman across the floor. Two suspects have been arrested. 

As the video spread, McDonald’s first acknowledged that it had occurred in a Baltimore restaurant and said they were working with local police.

“We are shocked by the video from a Baltimore franchised restaurant showing an assault. This incident is unacceptable, disturbing and troubling,” the company said in a statement posted on its website. “Nothing is more important than the safety of our customers and employees in our restaurants. We are working with the franchisee and the local authorities to investigate this matter.”

This is absolutely too vile for words. What’s wrong with society? How can we let things like this happen? 

Thanks to thegayrepublican and alicebessoni for the news tip. 

My level of anger against the world just increased by about 9000 or so.

I couldn’t watch this because I didn’t want to spend the entire rest of my day alternating between crying and wanting to break shit and reading about it is bad enough.

But all those other employees? Criminal charges. Right fucking now. If you watch violence happening in front of you and do nothing, you are condoning it and making it possible. Scream, throw shit, call for help, run for help, anything - anything to try to help the victim and not support the violence.

(via bohemianarthouse)

telegantmess:

beautifulanddying:

mainstream feminism already has so many problems: cissexism, racism, heterosexism, etc

but it’s getting harder and harder to me to call myself a feminist when i see how the trans* and non-binary community is being treated by people who are supposed to support them.

“not everything is about you.”

yeah, well, it’s not about you either. genderqueer people are barely recognized as people every fucking day of their lives; is asking you to incude them in something that directly effects them so fucking hard? is the world going to suddenly implode if you use more inclusive language? why should i have to ask all these questions?

(please note, the following rant is directed at unknowablewoman and anyone that agrees with her.)

That line “not everything is about you” made my fucking jaw drop. It shouldn’t, but it did.

Because its never fucking about me in these conversations. FUCKING. NEVER. And you know what? I don’t go huffing away from every point that treats abortion and reproduction as purely the realm of cis-women complaining that I wasn’t included. I could, because its fucking accurate. So the idea that people like me are trying to take something the fuck away from you by issuing the occasional reminder that we are fucking here too, and we also fuck, and we also get pregnant and we also may be in need of the healthcare that is rapidly becoming only accessible to the most privileged in this fucking country is absolute bullshit.

I have a uterus, it has helped me produce a child and I am non-binary. I’m sorry if my existence pisses you the fuck off, but I’m not going anywhere. No not even to make you feel like your precious fucking message is intact.

I don’t even know what’s going on and who said what at the root of it, but the basic theme is something that’s been playing out a lot lately and it’s not cool. So I just wanted to reblog for support/solidarity. Because I think it’s important to say - I’m a feminist. And the feminism I practice doesn’t have any room for transphobia and the erasure of any genderqueer or nonbinary people. Period. -

There will always be people splinterting movements, saying and doing fucked up things in the name of feminism (and a lot of other things). So, more voices need to be calling back and listening to the people getting marginalized.  I’ll keep reblogging your voices when they come up on my dash, so you know someone hears you and cares. I’m glad you aren’t going anywhere. 

ceasesilence:cherutenu:

I did not know the Girl Scouts were so inclusive.  That’s not the case with the Boy Scouts, right?  I mean, would they allow a transboy to join?  I seem to recall they have issues with letting gay men be Scout leaders…

Anyway, who wants Girl Scout cookies?  I’ll buy.

I don’t know about the Boy Scouts. The Girl Scouts made the news when Christian groups found out that transgender girls were in some troops, and had a tantrum over it, and then Girl Scouts of the USA stood up and said that it welcomes all girls, and if someone identifies as a girl and wants to be a Girl Scout, that’s good enough for them. That, of course, made the right-wingers have conniptions and choke on their drinks at the very thought of children being included in a group that fits them, hence this video.

And the reasons to buy lots and lots of girl scout cookies just keep on coming!

(via robot-heart-politics)

subconciousevolution:

If it weren’t discouraging enough that the Tennessee legislature will consider a “license to bully” bill and reconsider the “don’t say gay” bill, the new session has opened with the introduction of a blatantly transphobic bathroom bill. Sponsored by Sen. Bo Watson (R), the bill (SB 2282) would institute a $50 fine for anybody who does not use the public restroom or dressing room that matches the sex identification on his or her birth certificate:

(b)  Except as provided in § 68-15-303, where a restroom or dressing room in a public building is designated for use by members of one particular sex, only members of that particular sex shall be permitted to use that restroom or dressing room.

(c)  A violation of subsection (b) is a Class C misdemeanor punishable by a to a fine of fifty dollars ($50.00).

If passed, this bill would make Tennessee a particularly unfriendly place for people who are transgender. Tennessee law does not allow for the sex to be changed on birth certificates, which means this law would make it illegal for transgender people to utilize any public accommodations that match their gender. It would also impose on any businesses — such as Macy’s — that have transgender-inclusive policies.

Last year, the Family Action Council of Tennessee ran transphobic ads to support a bill that banned all municipal non-discrimination protections for LGBT people. The ads rehashed the “bathroom meme,” the fear that all transgender people are sexual predators trying to use the wrong restroom to find children to abuse. In reality, there has never been a case of someone using a transgender identity to molest children, nor is there anything to suggest that this bill would do anything to make children safer from actual predators. (HT: Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition.)

I also would like to add that there have been several cases of trans folks getting attacked in public restrooms.
they aren’t looking for victims, they deserve to be safe in a public restroom instead of being the victim of a hate crime themselves.

so, fuck this noise.

(via bohemianarthouse)

thecurvature:

The headline itself makes me angry — while the deal involves pleading “guilty,” coercively accepting the best of bad options in a terrifying situation where you are being aggressively prosecuted and likely to face a hostile jury that is NOT made up of your peers is not the same as “admitting” that the whole self-defense line was bullshit — this is the first time I’ve actually seen Freeman make his argument about why prosecuting CeCe was necessary:

“This is not a self-defense case, because if you have a weapon, you have a duty to retreat,” said Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman.

McDonald did not try to walk away, Freeman said, nor did she act reasonably toward Schmitz. He said McDonald was beating up the woman who threw the glass when Schmitz pulled McDonald away.

“There was no indication in that point in time that there was any weapon about to be used against Ms. McDonald. Nor was there any evidence that she was in any threat of harm by the victim,” Freeman said. “She pulls her scissors out and stabs him in the chest. That’s not self-defense.”

1. CeCe had ALREADY been attacked with a weapon. How is is possible to assume that they did not have an additional weapon when they had already used one against her?

2. How, exactly, do you “walk away” from a group of white supremacists who have smashed your face in?

3. In what universe is being grabbed by the guy who just made violent threats against you (shouting racist and transphobic slurs at a person walking down the street is a threat) an example of “no evidence” that she was about to be harmed? How is that NOT a threat?

4. Notice the differences and similarities between this case and that of Trayvon Martin. CeCe was arrested immediately over a death in a fight where she was not the aggressor, had been attacked with a weapon, and received threats against her safety. George Zimmerman was free for over a month after a fight in which he was the aggressor and was the only one who possessed a weapon. BOTH CeCe and Trayvon were expected to “retreat” from their aggressors rather than fight back. George Zimmerman got to “stand his ground” in a fight that he started, while CeCe McDonald was expected to somehow walk away from a group of people who had used a weapon against her … because she had a weapon, too.

I know that someone is going to say something about different states, different laws, and good for them. That might be the “technical” “explanation.” But what this comes down to is that white folks are allowed to assault and even kill Black folks as much as they damn want to, and Black people are not allowed to defend themselves.

I’m so angry and disgusted by how this case went down and how it’s being handled by the media now. I literally have to stop reading about it because it’s making me want to puke and I can’t afford to puke right now.