Katyaaaaaaa

if you havent read this yet, what Aaron's friends have said about him, i think you really should. I don't tend to cry much but the words they shared about him have brought me completely to tears which i am wiping off my face as i type this.

My friend said that everywhere Aaron went, he planted trees. I imagine these seeds planted in our hearts and minds. They will sprout, and they will grow into giant strong trees with deep roots built to weather the many battles that lie ahead on this burning planet. They will remain upright, like Aaron did, until they no longer can, but by then their own seeds will have been planted in the hearts of our loved ones, and they will grow into trees as well. They will continue this struggle until the beautiful world that Aaron knew we deserved is born.

And I think all these chuds that claim forcefem is "tRaNsAnDrOpHobiC" know that. Especially since the stuff made by trans women makes it extremely explicit that the message is "it's ok to want to be a girl, you don't have to spend the rest of your life in misery pretending to be a man." It's extremely obviously not directed at trans men.

And when I'm around transmascs excitedly talking about their voices changing that trauma and dysphoria all comes back up. But you know what? I don't say shit because thats a me-problem that has nothing to do with them and they deserve to celebrate finding joy in their transition.

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.