My Beautiful Blog

sometimes a trans woman wins against a cis woman. sometimes a cis woman wins against another cis woman too. yet only one of them is allowed to win without facing consequences.

The former definition is de-politicised and ahistorical, and I think when you adopt that former definition, you quickly run into conclusions about how asserting the importance of medical transition is itself normative - that to resist transmedicalism means to instead privilege a generalised fluid ‘queerness’ that eschews more durable and lasting forms of transition (HRT, surgery, name/gender marker changes) in favour of something that is more ‘radical’ than transsexuality. Because after all, isn’t the goal of medical transition to just look like a cis person? You see this line of thinking in the invocation of the “binary trans person” - an assimilationist transgender subject. The act of remaking one’s entire body and administrative relationship to the state is positioned as normative in comparison to the act of ‘individual’ (ie, non-state, non-administrative, non-medical) self-identification and expression.

This is a massive betrayal of our trans siblings, of course, not least of all because it deliberately ignores the coordinated efforts of all levels of state governments, the media, medical and psychiatric institutions, religious organisations, and civil society broadly to eliminate trans people from the world. A trans person who is denied HRT and gender marker changes is not more radical for being forced into that position, nor is the assertion that they should have access to those things somehow cisnormative. If it was so normative, they’d give us those things in a heartbeat! Shouldn’t it preserve the cissexual order by giving HRT to minors so they don’t have to go through the wrong puberty and look as much like cis people as possible? But somehow our enemies have come to the opposite conclusion - that we are freaks, degenerates, perverts and predators who want to mutilate ourselves and every child on planet earth. To change one’s sex is to thwart the will of god and destroy meaning itself. 

I think this mode of thinking valorises transgender suffering as noble and radical, that being closeted, being denied care, or having to hide one’s transness in the many spheres of our lives (such as work, family, social activities, dating, etc) is itself a radical act. And I think it sucks real bad! It patronises our trans siblings who suffer under oppressive restrictions/bans by telling them they’re radical for not transitioning ‘the normative way,’ and it condescends to our trans siblings who assert their humanity through hormones, surgery, and name and sex marker changes by telling them they’re just trying to emulate cis people. 

And if I can be particularly confrontational for a moment, I think some queer people believe trans people are monsters for doing this to ourselves, that we really are mutilating our bodies to “look like” cis people, that the act of bodily and administrative transformation is gross and weird. To access state or private health care (or worse, to use DIY hormones), to change our administrative being, is inherently assimilationist. Exercising a form of sovereignty by (to paraphrase Stryker & Sullivan) petitioning the king to correct the record is just bowing to the king himself.

i HATE self-censorship for a lot of reasons, but being in crisis work makes it even more frustrating. who are you censoring for? like i am being so fr, WHO are you censoring for? have you even thought it through? people who have been raped know that they have been raped. if someone attempts suicide or is grieving someone who did, saying "sewer slide" isn't going to protect them from any of the feelings. a murder victim's family isn't going to feel better bc you said "unalived" instead of murdered. if anything, it's just extremely invalidating and othering. it's saying "what happened to you is so bad that i won't even say the word," which is NOT trauma-informed care. you are not protecting survivors/victims when you self-censor. the ONLY things you protect when you self-censor are the puritanical ideologies that are being encouraged by rich fascists who want your money and obedience

During the stop, Lorenzo had 3 coworkers with him in his truck who have all been taken into ICE custody.

His family described Lorenzo as a hardworking family man who didn’t deserve to be killed. All he wanted was to provide for his wife and see his sons become great people. His eldest son recognized his father by his cries and pleas when trying to identify who the victim was.

The Salgado Araujo family has set up a gofundme to help with funeral and legal costs, and to help keep their family supported since Lorenzo was the sole provider.