Transcendent
In November, we remember. Respecting our transcestors, past and present.
Greetings, friends. By writing to you early this week, I’m diving under the wire of Trans Awareness Week, which ends today. This is mostly so as to pay anticipatory homage to Trans Day of Remembrance (TDoR), which is tomorrow. Every year on November 20th, TDoR calls on us to slow the wheels of the capitalist crunch machine and mourn folks whose lives have been lost to anti-trans violence over the course of the past year. At least that’s the idea. To honor at least the losses we know of, because the number is always underinflated.
So far in 2024, we know of at least 29 lives taken in the US by anti-trans violence and 350 globally. Most, but not all, of these have been trans women of color. And among those, most were Black. That’s the way it’s been since 1999, when TDoR began, because that’s the sad and inconvenient truth. If you’re Black, trans and female identified, that makes you at least triply vulnerable, but more likely exponentially so.
I see TDoR as a sort of sobering exclamation point at the end of Trans Awareness Week, which as the name suggests, is a time to promote awareness of the legal and societal challenges we face. It’s also a time when we appeal to non-trans identified folks to stand in solidarity with us in our advocacy efforts and in celebrating trans joy and resilience.
As is true of any marginalized identity in this country (basically any identity that’s not white, cisgender male, straight, and able-bodied), trans folks live the paradox of being both highly visible yet invisible all at once. We get more than our fair share of negative attention and less than our fair share of basic rights.
But thanks/no thanks to the identity politics baked into the 2024 US elections, trans visibility has been underscored, bolded and italicized this year. Our existence has been spotlighted far beyond what the most concerted Trans Awareness Week efforts could possibly have achieved. Trans “awareness” (read: scrutiny) has taken off like never before. Much like a bat out of hell.
Simply by existing, trans folks have unwittingly become a favorite (and effective) wedge wielded by the right to drive voters into their ideological fold. This past election cycle, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on political ads warning voters about the threats trans people allegedly pose to their way of life and their most sacred mores. In these ads, at rallies, and in other forums, ominous oaths were made with the utmost solemnity as to the right's plans to eradicate our trans “insanity" in myriad of ways (if happen to be trans, take heed: your days of howling at the moon be numbered).
But it’s not just a simple but awful matter of ridiculous rhetoric being bombastically broadcasted from the bully pulpit of TV and social media ads. Anti-trans legislative efforts have been picking up steam annually since 2015 and are solidifying with blunt force. Currently, over 80 anti-trans bills are active at the federal level, and 650 have been introduced this year across 43 states.
These bills aim to take away our legal rights across the board. Rights to healthcare, education, and most fundamental of all, to exist publicly. Such legislation is humiliating and dehumanizing. Some of it, like the so-called “bathroom bills,” put us at acute risk of the kind of brutal hate crimes that pave the way to the TDoR list of lost lives.
These bathroom bills require us to use public bathrooms corresponding to our assigned birth gender, regardless of how we identify, and regardless of our current legal gender identity. They do so without simultaneously offering any means of protection against harassment, bullying or outright violence. For some of us, this is like throwing us into a shark tank.
Consequentially, an increasing number of trans identified people are fleeing trans “hate states” for places that provide sanctuary. And unsurprisingly, trans-identified people across the age continuum have higher than typical rates of suicidality.
What an incredible output of resources, just to squash an already marginalized group of human beings. Human beings who make up such a small overall percentage of the population, no less (estimates — again, likely underinflated — put us at about 1% of the total population). It seems to me that the only way in which such a disproportionate expenditure makes any sense is when trans folks are viewed as a commodity to be exploited for purposes of ginning up political support.
Imagine, if you will, the positive impact this sort of investment could have, were it applied to services supporting trans lives.
Some of the anti-trans messaging portrays us as some sort of new-fangled, liberal Frankenstinian experiment gone awry. The truth is that we’ve been around since time immemorial. As long as there have been humans, there have been humans who haven’t conformed to the contrivance of the gender binary. The language used to describe us may be relatively new (although even the word “transgender” is over 60 years old now), but we are not. We have always been here, we will always be here, and we cannot be cis-washed away.
I, along with many other trans folks, know this from personal experience. I came of age in a time and place where there was no public concept of trans as an identity. Heck, there was no publicly accepted concept of any sort of gender fluidity or expansion. If you colored outside the lines with regard to your gender expression, you were assumed to be gay — and maligned for it.
Yes, I knew I felt like a square peg trying to cram myself into a round hole as I tried to “get it right” with my assigned birth gender, but there was no other choice available. So I made a mighty effort to conform. This effort had me sweating a steady stream of self-loathing inside my ill-fitting costume, and I quickly began seeking escape by way of various addictions. While my efforts appeared, from the outside, to succeed for the better part of five decades, “success” came at a tremendous price and nearly killed me.
As you’ve oft heard me say here, the body doesn’t lie. The mind? All the time. The body? Never. And my body knew. All bodies know whether they are aligned with their identity or not, and mine was no exception.
I often wonder what it might be like, for trans deniers and trans haters, if they were told that their cisgender identity is fake; a delusion caused by mental illness; or an abomination. I wonder what it would be like for them if they were required, under the duress of law, to use a public bathroom designated for a gender identity other than their own. Or if they were told their doctor would no longer be permitted to provide them with care because of their gender identity. I wonder.
I’ve been trying to find an angle, any angle, from which anti-trans rhetoric and policies are anything other than tragic and toxic. So far, no luck whatsoever with that. When trans people are forced to choose between their own integrity and societal belonging, it causes 360° harm. Even to the perpetrators of that harm, regardless of the zeal of their conviction.
In fact, perhaps especially to the perpetrators of that harm. In dehumanizing and denigrating people based on identity, they’re not just harming the targets of their venom. They’re also deepening a collective soul wound. A wound that likely began with the colonization of the land now known as the United States and has festered ever since. In deepening that wound with the poison of “othering” (not just trans-identified folks, by any means), they ensure a malignant burden for future generations to shoulder.
Fortunately, denigration and dehumanization, hateful and heinous as they are, do not equate with eradication. Trans people cannot be erased, because the human will to live doesn’t discriminate, no matter what body it’s carried inside of. And the truth is the truth even when it’s relegated to the shadows. Even when it’s gaslit.
Well, friends. Thank you. For bearing witness to me and my thoughts, yes. But more importantly, for bearing witness to trans lives lost, to trans lives trying desperately to survive, and to trans folks longing to thrive. To those of you already actively allied with the trans community, thank you even more. To those of you who haven’t yet, please do. We need you, now more than ever.
My parting wish today? That we might all feel secure in our identities, whatever they may be:
May you recognize
your own skin for
the raiment it is,
bespoke and buttoned
securely with belonging.
May it snug with certainty,
neither chafing
nor constraining, containing
enough room to breathe
but not enough to lease.
May it wear well, sturdy
at its seams, its pockets
deep enough
to carry all your dreams.
What a beautiful piece. Thank you. I have forwarded to caring friends.
Well said. Thank you for sharing this beautiful wisdom. 💔