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The explosion of trans identities in the early-2000s challenged my own assumptions, including the assumptions that once felt like challenges, and it wasn’t just the transfeminine spectrum that gave me hope in fluidity. I’d always believed that masculinity could only be the enemy, but then there were the trans fags who showed me something beyond the predetermined, a masculinity negotiated and transformed, a flamboyance through choosing a bodily language of one’s own making. A freedom, but not a freedom from accountability. The meanings of queer and trans are constantly shifting—this is part of the allure. At once identities that declare an end to borders, and identities that constantly build walls, challenging enough to derail conversations and at the same time empty enough to use in the name of a TV show or nonprofit.

One problem with the politics of representation is that often it’s about who is represented, but not what. I’m not saying we don’t ever need an us and them. I know this is how many of us find one another, dance with the scars into arms that might hold not only to harm. I don’t think there always needs to be an invitation to join us, I don’t think this has to be the case, but I do think this should always be an option. I do think a world without borders is a dream we must hold onto—personally, politically, intimately, explosively, expressively.”

There is incredible beauty to the naming and claiming so often found in these worlds, but also there’s a frightening territorialism. I don’t want to become the cops, I want to end policing in all its forms. This is the dream that queer and trans worlds have helped me to imagine.”

Sameen Shaw (Person of Interest)