Fabulous article by @🌈Lucy🏳️‍⚧️ | Revoluciana:

Revoluciana

Say Trans Genocide

To our last breaths, we will be asking you to save us from trans genocide, and most of you will still be afraid to #SayTheWord genocide.

And her post about it:

Chaosfem

🌈Lucy🏳️‍⚧️ | Revoluciana (@revoluciana@chaosfem.tw)

I need you to #SayTheWord genocide. I need you to stop fearing the word more than you fear #trans oppression. This is critical. You have every ri...

Here’s the bit that hit me hardest: “Why are you more afraid of the word than what will happen to us, and what is happening already? Are you afraid you will be wrong? Why are you not afraid of what will happen if you don't say it? Why are you not more afraid of losing us than being wrong? I hope you say the word and you are wrong. With every fiber of my being, I want you to say it and be wrong. I want this to not be genocide. But I already know the truth, and so do you. You already know this is trans genocide. So fucking say it. #SayTheWord genocide.”

When I tell you I’m #trans, I’m not telling you about the history of my body - my body is as you see it, and it’s uncomfortable that you think it’s okay to imagine what you cannot see because it’s hidden by clothing, time, or both. I’m not fishing for compliments - I already know I’m stunning, and I totally do fish for compliments, just not like that. I’m not telling you about my romantic and sexual life - I have lots of other words for that, and the relevant ones are “that’s private.” I’m not even telling you about my gender - my name, pronouns, and gender presentation have already said everything I intend to say on the subject. I’m telling you about pain. I’m telling you that I’ve been pickled in emotional agony, like a specimen in brine - it was all I knew. Emerging brought new horrors, as I uncovered and mourned the ways my body was wrong for me, suffered to remake it, dug up my emotional daemons only to have them eviscerate me, tore at the people closest to me and starred with sadness and acceptance at the wounds I made, discovered gaping holes in my memories, hugged myself in the depths of believing myself unworthy of compassion, and cried in the dark with the need for affirmation. I’m telling you about joy. I’m telling you I thrill to be myself, and I cherish every detail of living authentically, no matter how small. With the pain for contrast, my experience of joy is soaring and unfettered. I revel in the mundane and the outrageous in equal measure. Each and every day is a treasure: another day sick at home in bed, as Myself: Rhinovirus Edition? Marvelous. A day filled with adventure, affirmation, and new friends? Superb. Being myself is inexpressibly wonderful; I wish you could know this joy. 1/2

Fascists treat Queer People like a Renewable Resource Public, group-endorsed murder is an easy expression of power. Possibly the easiest. “Look, we are killing this person. If you don’t do what we tell you, we’ll kill you, too. Killing clearly doesn’t bother us.” It’s why the organized mass murder of out-groups is used by fascists to enforce in-group unity. Queer folks occur naturally in all human populations. How many is somewhat influenced by what is considered queer or not in any given culture, but we arise consistently. This makes us, by the very nature of human variation, a population that is NOT immediately individually identifiable as an out-group from birth, but a population that can be counted on to exist, lurking, in all general populations. In other words, we are a perfect fit for a scapegoat population: we are subject to witch hunts - anyone MIGHT be queer, so policing activities can be justified because we are not necessarily obvious. We have inherent urges to live authentically, so there IS available evidence for identifying us. We engage in behaviors that can be portrayed as deviant or dangerous to the general population, specifically to the patriarchal order promoted by fascism. And no matter how many of us they slaughter, there will always be more of us by the time the next political crisis rolls around. This is why fascists find us to be so politically useful. They can never wipe us out; the genocide is continuous. They use that genocide to make the general population complicit in their crime and to provide examples of their willingness to use horrifying and deadly force to coerce obedience. Before I understood this, I hoped that I might one day live in a world that is not hostile to me as a queer person. Now, I understand that I will live my life in a world where fascists hunt me, either with the power of the state or in the goal of attaining that power. My life as a queer person is an act of resistance. Every breath I take in the knowledge of my truth is valuable. Every day I live authentically is a statement about how the world should be. Every life I shine my light into will carry that experience forward, the ripples of my radical self-acceptance and centering of love, emotion, and humanity spreading outwards. They will never stop hunting us. Every day I do not live authentically is a day they steal from me. One day, I will be dead. I choose to live all the days between then and now authentically.

When cis people craft jokes that are only funny if the idea of a man in a dress is funny, we hear that they are not safe for us. An especially insidious one I heard recently: a man in a position of power joked he’d only wear a dress if it was a very expensive brand - a drag queen offered him one, and he declined with a panicked expression; they were my heroine in that moment. But the joke he made only makes sense if “a man in a cheap dress” is inherently absurd. That is what trans femmes look like when we come out as adults. We did not have friends and family help us learn to dress and style ourselves when it was safe and accepted to make mistakes - if we had that kind of safe home environment that was emotionally attuned to us as the femme people we were, we would generally have come out as children. Even if we have steady work and resources, which many trans femmes do not, buying a totally new wardrobe is a daunting task. We’re gonna look a mess, at first. And we know it. There’s a further twist of the “comedy” knife: we, the joke’s audience, are being asked to laugh. Trans femmes who transition during adulthood often are just waking up to the layers of denial and coping mechanisms that kept them safe and alive to reach the point they can finally meet themselves and transition. They may well not have a strongly established sense of self-worth, yet. Their traumas are raw and likely still hidden from their own view, emotional triggers that have not even been identified yet, let alone confronted. And these emotionally vulnerable people are being told to laugh at themselves, to degrade and devalue the tiny flickering light of hope and happiness they have painstakingly coaxed into being. The naked cruelty of that is hard to overstate. I honestly don’t give a fuck that comedy is hard to write if you cannot punch down. Do better. Don’t say things we cannot unhear.