On one hand there might be a higher-than-average percentage of autistic people among trans women, on the other hand I’m not thrilled for neurotypical cis people researching any correlation that might exist before they learn to discuss autistic and trans people in a way that isn’t the most dehumanising shit imaginable. In my opinion.
I know I’m like the bazillionth person to say this but… this site has truly been instrumental in my transition process. And that’s largely because it was one of the first and only places where 1) I was able to find and follow real people in my generation / peer group who were trans, and 2) experience content normalizing trans bodies that wasn’t filtered through the lens of fetishistic porn. This is one of the main places where I actually learned what trans femme bodies actually look like for everyday people like me. This is one of the main places I learned that this body I live in now, this body I love, was even possible.Â
And of all the things that sting with the “adult content” ban, that’s a particularly ironic one – that so much of the value I got from this site was a place that normalized our bodies outside of porn entirely, and with stuff that you would call porn, still making space for earnest and ethical expression controlled by people in our community.Â
And so reading that statement from the CEO about making it a safe place for “our communities” is just particularly rough. Because y’all just torched the space for mine.Â
On the plus side, it’s kind of affirming to be roped in to the “female-presenting nipple” ban.Â
Gotta love the appropriation of trans woman-inclusive language to pinkwash their torching of our community, eh?
do i know any trans people who haven’t housed someone in need? who haven’t themselves had to beg to stay housed or keep food on their family’s table?Â
almost without exception, every trans person i know is either jobless, precariously employed at minimum wage while navigating daily discrimination, or meticulously policing every single movement and word in their workplace to maintain stealth.
the people i know who aren’t in that position are, largely, working in gay and trans resource centers. they’re working for you, or people like you.
how can you look at some of the poorest among you and tell them that your main concern—as a leftist, as someone who believes in the women’s liberation, in the gay power—is that they have too much healthcare?
[id: Tweet by @immissmajor reading “After 70 years I am here to tell you the system has always tried to break us. All us trans girls know we got to depend on each other and when enough of us bitches come together we can burn it down and use the ashes to build the motherfucking mansions we deserve! #stillfuckinghere”]Â
Make no mistake. Trans people, especially trans women, are the canary in the coal mine. If the United States government manages to pass legislation making it essentially illegal to be trans again, mark my words it WILL continue on up to sending us right back into McCarthyism and the “kill or imprison anything you disagree with or dislike” policies of the 1950s (not that that hasn’t already been happening under the radar, but it’s going to be More).
There really are people out there who are acting like suggesting genetic testing to “confirm the identity” of a group of people isn’t a wildly dangerous thing for a government to start doing. This is not a door that should be opened.
we’re not the canary. People already died in this mine, it’s unsafe, but those in charge keep sending us in. This government has already illegally incarcerated innocent people, made false arrests and annulled citizenship based on ethnicity, stolen children from loving parents and given them to white, straight, cisgender christians. This government has enacted and encouraged policies around identification, citizenship, proof of being who you say you are and a citizen of where you live, that are only enforced when the people enforcing them decide they don’t like your skin tone, religion, politics. This government has made every effort possible to ensure that the physically and mentally disabled and chronically ill citizens will die faster while also forcing us to thicken the wallets of those who want us gone. This government is doing its damnedest to erode religious protections except for Good Old Fashioned American Christianity, which is being granted privileges and special rights to discriminate against people who don’t fit its narrow view of morality. This government is making the richest people richer, and convincing the poorest people that it’s good for them by turning them against their best allies.
trans people, especially trans women, are not the canary. We’re not a distraction, either, in spite of what some other people are saying. We are yet another in a long list of groups threatened by an administration that pushes fascist policy after fascist policy. And if we’re going to be a metaphor, we should be the last straw.
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