“There
was a moment about 10 years ago when I was walking to the subway on the
Upper West Side. It was the Fourth of July, and I was wearing a red,
white and blue dress. I was feeling very patriotic, and it was really
tight.
I passed these two men. One appeared to be Latino, and the other
appeared to be black. The Latin guy says “Yo, mama, can I holla at you?”
And the black guy said “Yo dude, that’s an n word.” Then, the Latin
guy says “No, man, that’s a bitch.” The black guy said “No, that’s an n
word.”
They began to argue about whether I was the b word or the n word. What lovely options.
I was just standing there at the light, waiting for it to change
“Please let it change so I can cross the street”, ’cause I needed to
cross the street. At one point the Latin guy turns to me and says “You
ain’t an n word, are you?”
That moment is indicative of a lot of the street harassment that I
have had to endure. Street harassment started first because these men
found me attractive, because I’m a woman.
Then they realized that I was trans, and it became something else. It
turned into something else. So many trans women have to experience
this.
Just last month in New York City, a young girl named Islan Nettles
was walking down the street in Harlem with her friend and she was
catcalled by a few guys. They realized that she was trans, and then they
beat her to death.
In 2001, a trans woman named Amanda Milan, who I knew but not very
well, something similar happened to her in the Times Square area, and
she was stabbed to death.
Our lives are often in danger, simply for being who we are, when we
are trans women. There are a lot of intersecting identities and
intersecting oppressions that make that happen.
That moment when I was called the b or the n word, it was a moment
where misogyny was intersecting with trans-phobia, was intersecting with
some racist stuff.
The racial piece is actually really important, because I’ve talked to
a lot of white trans women who haven’t experienced quite the level of
street harassment that I have.
I’ve gotten in trouble by saying this publicly, that most of the
street harassment I’ve experienced has been from other black folks.
That’s not to suggest that black folks are more homophobic or
trans-phobic than everybody else, ’cause I don’t believe that. But there
are some homophobic and trans-phobic black folks.
I think the reason for that is there a collective trauma that a lot
of black folks are dealing with in this country that dates back to
slavery and to the Jim Crow South.
Most of us know that during slavery and during Jim Crow, black
bodies, usually black male bodies were often lynched. In these
lynchings, the men’s genitals were cut off. Sometimes they were pickled
and sometimes they were sold. There was this sort of historic fear and
fascination with black male sexuality.
I believe that a lot of black folks feel that there is this historic
emasculation that has been happening in white supremacy of black male
bodies. I think a lot of black folks dealing with a lot of
post-traumatic stress see trans, my trans woman’s body, and feel that
I’m the embodiment of this historic emasculation come to life.
So often when I am called out of the street, it’s as if I am a disgrace to the race because I am trans.
I understand that as trauma. I have love. I have so much love for my
black brothers and sisters who might call me out on the street, ’cause I
get it. I understand. They’re in pain.
I feel so often our oppressors are in a lot of, lot of pain. I think
whenever someone needs to call out someone else for who they are, and
make fun of them, it’s because they don’t feel comfortable with who they
are.
If anyone ever has a problem with someone else, I ask you to look at
yourselves first. What is it about you that you have a problem with?
What is it about you that you have a problem with? I also think it’s
important that when we talk about bullying, we understand that when kids
LGBT/QI kids are bullied, oftentimes it is because of their gender
expression.
We hear the gay slurs, the anti-gay slurs, and it’s really about
these kids not conforming to the sex that they were assigned at birth.
Gender expression is not meeting the expectations of society, so we have
to begin to create spaces where we can express our gender in ways that
are true to ourselves.
The gender binary model, most of us don’t fit that, and that’s OK. I
think too, the violence so many trans women experience, trans women of
color are disproportionately victims of violence.
Our homicide rate is the highest in the LGBT community. It went from
43% in 2011 to almost 54% of all LGBTQ homicides were trans women, and
mostly trans women of color. There is a link between the bullying that
we inflict on our LGBTQ youth, and the violence that so many trans women
experience.
What are we going to do about that? I think love is the answer.
Cornell West reminds us that justice is what love looks like in public.
I love that, because I feel that love, if we can love trans people, that will be a revolutionary act.” - Laverne Cox
Signal boost this guys bc I had no idea this was happening, I was going to order from recently too, I already had it planned out. This is NOT OK and needs to stop.
:(
And also, Victoria Secret has children picking the cotton for materials.
Urban Outfitters has clothing made in sweatshops, same with Forever 21. Not to mention H&M being one of the biggest sweatshop brands.
Romwe, SheIn, and especially Wish are fucking dreaful companies that profit from design theft and child labour, and should not be supported in any way, shape, or form.
Saturday morning, on the 26th of October, a Nazi walked into a Pittsburgh synagogue, shouting “All Jews must die!” and opened fire. He killed eleven Jewish people, including grandparents, husbands, wives, and a doctor remembered for his compassionate care of his patients during the AIDs crisis. Several of them were there celebrating a baby-welcoming ceremony for a gay couple’s newly adopted twins.
This was the deadliest antisemitic attack in all 364 years of American Jewish history. Jews all over the world are shaken, upset, and scared. We know that this could have been any of us, but beyond that, this attack struck at the heart of our people. We were attacked in a place of safety and sanctity. We were reminded that as Jews, we are not safe in America. And we lost eleven Jewish souls.
Some of us are grieving, some of us are angry, some of us are devastated, some of us are numb, some of us are crying, some of us are terrified, some of us are anxious, and some of us can barely walk up the stairs because this doesn’t make any sense and yet it makes so much sense because we all, on some level, imagined this was coming. Our history has taught us that our safety is never guaranteed, and over the past two years we have watched the sickening rise of Nazism and antisemitism all over the world, including in America, where, despite our history, many of us had been lulled into believing it could never happen here.
We lost a third of the world’s Jewish population within living memory. So many Jewish families, in every country, fled antisemitic violence within the past few generations. The tragedy we just experienced is visceral, it’s terrifying, it’s devastating.
So please, check in on your Jewish friends and ask how they are doing. Please, take a moment to understand and absorb this tragedy. Please, understand how this is not just yet another mass shooting (that while theoretically tragic, you don’t really have the space for another one, what with compassion fatigue), but rather an attack that pierced the heart of a group of people already carrying centuries of pain and trauma. Please, make space for this one. Please, when you talk about this, don’t use generalized language about hate and about how no one should be killed for their religion. Please speak the words: Jewish. Antisemitic. Say this was an antisemitic attack, on Jewish people. And please, keep us in your thoughts today.
Folks who aren’t Jewish, you can reblog this. In fact I’d be grateful if you did.
Hey there US friends! If you’re voting using these machines (Hart eSlate) or similar ones right now or in the near future, make sure that the machine has NOT changed your ballot before casting it, ‘k? It’s apparently an already known problem, and has been for years, but has never been fixed.
