homme sinistre vêtu de rose

from "Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in relation to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics" by the Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions

For those who haven't heard of Shivy Bhat: he was 19 years old and already being abused by his family while living in California, when after asking his mother if he could cut his hair, she demanded he give her access to his phone and was outdated as trans. Under the pretense that they were taking a trip back to India to see his grandmother, Shivy's family kidnapped him, planning on forcing him to live in India in order to "fix" him by teaching him to be a "cultured Indian girl," and planning on forcing him into an arranged marriage. They had taken away all his identifying documents and his phone. He managed to escape with the help of a local queer feminist group, which then resulted in a legal battle as Shivy's family tried to accuse the group of kidnapping and sex trafficking to get access to him again.

Made this post about 15 minutes after the repair guy who fixed the pump on my dishwasher packed up his tools and left, as the dishwasher was whirring along doing my dishes from that morning.

I was vaguely openly queer, as in, I hadn't told my parents I was trans yet but I had an online girlfriend when I was 14 that they knew about, I was publicly identifying as pan, and was involved in my high school GSA, etc. and I needed a private space outside of school and the internet where I could process my traumas while being out as trans. As such it was really important to me that I had a queer or queer friendly therapist. Now that was hard to come by in Indiana even in the 2010's (especially bc a lot of the ones advertised were covert conversion therapists) but we did finally find one that took our insurance. A middle aged, married cis lesbian, who advertised as having experience with trans clients*.

I didn't know this until my early 20's when my mom and I were reconciling her poor reaction to my eventual public coming out as trans at 18, but my therapist was very convinced that I was not trans when I came out to her. She shared the fact that I told her I was trans to my parents and explicitly told all four of them she doubted me in her sessions with them about me.

I'm thinking about this all because the anniversary of my dad's passing was recently and I've been doing a lot of reflecting on my conflicting feelings about the ways he treated me as a teen (that was part of why I was in therapy, and why my parents were having sessions with my therapist without me). Then the memory of a day where he took me to Barnes & Noble and made me pick out several fashion magazines because "he thought I needed to be more feminine" came to mind and it clicked.

My therapist probably told him to do that.

It always struck me as very odd that my dad did that because while he was always kind of a "girl dad" with me growing up, he was also the first parent to fully embrace me when I publicly came out and never had any issue with my general lack of femininity when I was younger - in fact he often encouraged it and was very progressive about my upbringing... Until I started seeing my therapist and suddenly he was very concerned about me being a young woman and not being "feminine enough".

If that isn't a perfect example of transandrophobia, anti-trans masculinity, the gendered correction young people perceived as young women experience when exploring our genders/gender expression, and the private violence cis queer adults in positions of power can inflict on trans youth - particularly that adult cis women can inflict upon trans masculine youth, I don't know what is.

It pains me to inform you all that we have found @transfaguette He unfortunately has passed on. Thank you to everybody who aided us, reposted, and had conversations with us to help find him. I wish I had better news to share.

He’s at rest now.

Please take care of yourselves and each other. You are loved, you are cared for, you are so much more important than you could ever realize.

Suicide Hotline 1-800-273-TALK

I never met him, I got here after his note, I never got the chance to meet him; but he is the reason I am who I am now.

I saw his note, and it shattered me, and I saw other transmasc people being bullied, and I couldn't just leave it, I can't let this happen again. I can't lose anybody knowing I could have done something. So now I'm fighting, because I could have been there for him, cause I can be there for others like him, because I will never forget I didn't grow fast enough to help.

Through him, through what he inspired me to do, through how he inspired me to grow, I met more transmasc people, as well as nonbinary and xenogender people. Through him, I realized that my gender and identity don't end at femininity, and I've grown as a person because of it, and I'm genuinely a happier and better person because of him.

I owe my identity to him, I owe my current activism to him, and I will damn well never forget him.

I never met him, I never spoke to him, but he changed my life, and I've been hoping beyond all hope that he was still alive so I could tell him that. I'm grateful for him. I'm grateful he lived. I hope there's something, anything, out there for him.