#cis normativity

Cuz for some reason something I’m having a lot of trouble unlearning is separating primary and secondary sex organs from gender. Like, I can know someone’s pronouns 100% but the second I start joking about, say, them having nice tits, the wrong pronouns tend to slip in there.

That, these institutions of media are not here for empowerment of our communities, but rather for the consumption of privileged folks and the continued assimilation of oppressed cultures into white, western, capital, able bodied, cis, hetero normatives. Normatives. The idea of taking diversity, taking all forms of how human beings enact themselves in the world, and bottling it all up into “acceptable” forms so as to continue the divide of people into marketable demographics for continued labor under imperial holdings. I know these ideas I share for my critiques are not popular with most folks. I recognize that when I speak out against these things, people consider me to be, somehow, tearing down the advances of trans women who have made their way into media to try and gain acceptance for our community. But I am not trying to tear down these women. These women are doing what they need, what they want, what they have been told is the way toward a better world, if only for their own peace and self fulfillment. I cannot begrudge them for taking on these ways of enacting themselves in order to feel secure. To be alive, to be secure and feel good is what our community strives for each day.

However, I cannot sit back idly and allow my fellow trans sisters and siblings to be impacted, as I have, by a barrage of imagery that seeks to enforce assimilation and not speak out. I cannot just hold my tongue and hope that someone with more privilege will somehow pave the way for my survival or my liberation. Instead, I offer these ideas, not as tomes written in stone or incontrovertible evidence of all I’ve seen, but rather as reflections and considerations of how we are seeking, as a community, our liberations and our freedoms to explore how we enact ourselves in the world.

I cannot possibly speak for anyone, save for myself, but, perhaps, that is enough to share some ideas that may spark more ideas of how we can live without having to have a continual contention with a world that seeks to have us neatly fit into their ideas of how we should be. What I am saying is that our community has so much more than just Caitlyn, or Laverne, or Janet, or Carmen to live up to. These are still amazing women, but they are not the only women we know and love. These are still inspiring women, but they are not the only muses for our own lives and liberation that we can call upon.

What I am saying is for us to openly step away from all these institutions in such a way that we create our own communities of consensus, care, consideration, and consent. That there are, in fact, a number of communities here on tumblr and within our local communities where we can share these kinds of imagery that we create, that we have a say over, and that we want to see.

I ask not for mainstream media to change (it won’t or, at least, it won’t until it finds a way to be marketable for its own benefit), but for us to seek out new ways of forming community without a mainstream overseer to make sure we conform. I am saying that all these ways we have of being cannot possibly be encapsulated by any single photo shoot, cannot be shared by some magazine, cannot be embodied by any single performance, or work, or writing.

What I am calling for is an uprising of our voices, our expressions, and our lives, to oust the ideas of what folks believe we should be and, instead, create worlds as we choose. In consent. In honesty. In praise. In love. In finding ways to form communities that do not rely on oppressive systems. And, that when we fuck up, (because there is no way to start on these kind of endeavors without making mistakes) that we listen and share compassion and know when someone truly has made egregious error. For us to come up with ways that allow for the multitude, the infinite, the ever expansive ways of being we know and see each day we find a new gender, a new identity, a reclaimed being of amazing and fantastic expressions.

This writing went on much longer than I anticipated, but I cannot help, but feel a need to share all this now. I see my communities out there, struggling, dying, thriving, sharing, critiquing, validating, educating, understanding, learning, inventing, liberating. Each and every day.

Why settle for old media? Why settle for magazine covers? I know they offer a large audience and the potential for widespread understanding, but who controls those avenues for understanding? Who owns those magazines? Those media conglomerates? Who signs the paychecks of the editorial staff? Who makes the call on what will be selected, what will be shared, what will be given the limelight of fame, glory, and approval?

Who makes the decision to shower praise and validation to one soul while so many walk our streets hungry, not just for acceptance, but for the very means of surviving in a world that still treats us with the cruel hand of violence that has been endured by so many women, so many queer folx, so many poc, so many folks of various ability, so many people with perspectives, ideas, and thought patterns unlike a colonial world of normatives? What am I saying? I am saying we do not need a world of capital offenses, handed down from generation to generation of how to treat a populace of all folks under yokes of power afforded because some white dudes long ago decided to carve our very existences into parcels for their dominance. I am saying that, as our communities strive toward liberations, we will have to find new ways of sharing our healing, our being, our lives, that cannot rely on these old ways. The old ways of media only seek to hang onto a past borne of blood, iron, and oppression that speaks in so many ways, telling us how we do not fit, we do not matter, we do not deserve to live as we feel. I cannot ask us to somehow reform or participate in those systems. I cannot see how any reform could possibly undo the vast, hegemonic thought policing that has become normalcy for each of us instilled with colonial expectations of personhood.

All I can ask is that we honestly consider how these images play with our sense of self and that we find ways of doing something to find liberations not in just our own person, but in our travels through a world continually hell bent on showering us with ideas of ideal forms that kill, maim, and hinder our abilities to find ways of expressing ourselves without fear. Again, for Caitlyn and Laverne and Janet and Carmen (to name a few), their survival, safety and security may be well taken care of with their choices. But why not open all kinds of possibilities for folx to find all of those things, without having to feel pressured toward cis normativity, or any normativity for that matter?