Thank you for this important post. When I was younger and exploring my gender identity, there certainly was unnecessary harm happening in the trans and queer community. Harmful things being said like “you’re not trans enough”, or “why do they always have to be so flamboyant and out about their queerness it makes us look like freaks.” I found this so harmful because we were doing to ourselves what the world was doing to us. We must uplift each other, we are not a monolith and I celebrate each trans person’s individual identity and how they are in the world. We need each other to uplift one another to dismantle what we’re up against. Love wins.
I agree with this in principle, but in reality the trans community isn’t monolithic. We aren’t just trans, we’re many other things. If a trans person is, for example, racist, then not calling them out sends a message to people of colour both within and outside the trans community that we’re okay with racism. Failing to call that person out and denounce their views creates disunity, within the trans community (what message does that send to trans people of colour?) and forgoes any opportunity for trans people to build unity with communities of colour outside our own. And I think at this point creating unity with other groups outside the trans community is just as important, if not more, than building unity within the trans community. I think we can call out behaviour in a way that attends to the need to recognise human fallibility and does so with compassion, but I don’t see much benefit in keeping it internal for certain matters. Other groups have to know we are more broadly anti-oppressive, not just against anti-trans oppression. And if we aren’t more broadly anti-oppressive, we’re fighting a losing game. Nobody is free until we all are.
Oh my God, I love every word of this so much. SO VERY MUCH!
I attended my first Transgender Awareness event recently as a CIS-HET straight White man from Rural America and all I have to say about it is this:
I found my people.
Thank you for this important post. When I was younger and exploring my gender identity, there certainly was unnecessary harm happening in the trans and queer community. Harmful things being said like “you’re not trans enough”, or “why do they always have to be so flamboyant and out about their queerness it makes us look like freaks.” I found this so harmful because we were doing to ourselves what the world was doing to us. We must uplift each other, we are not a monolith and I celebrate each trans person’s individual identity and how they are in the world. We need each other to uplift one another to dismantle what we’re up against. Love wins.
I agree with this in principle, but in reality the trans community isn’t monolithic. We aren’t just trans, we’re many other things. If a trans person is, for example, racist, then not calling them out sends a message to people of colour both within and outside the trans community that we’re okay with racism. Failing to call that person out and denounce their views creates disunity, within the trans community (what message does that send to trans people of colour?) and forgoes any opportunity for trans people to build unity with communities of colour outside our own. And I think at this point creating unity with other groups outside the trans community is just as important, if not more, than building unity within the trans community. I think we can call out behaviour in a way that attends to the need to recognise human fallibility and does so with compassion, but I don’t see much benefit in keeping it internal for certain matters. Other groups have to know we are more broadly anti-oppressive, not just against anti-trans oppression. And if we aren’t more broadly anti-oppressive, we’re fighting a losing game. Nobody is free until we all are.
Thank you, Ari, for articulating a social framework that I can commit to, as I do now. If we don’t heal the pain in our community, who will?