#transdayofremembrance

Trans men are not less “real.”

We were assigned female at birth.

That’s a classification — not a destiny.

If your idea of biology only works when it excludes us, it was never biology.

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Looking at this year's - or every year's - statistics of m*rders of transgender and gender-diverse people just makes me speechless. It is absolutely appalling. If there ever was a time to speak up for trans people, it is NOW. Show up & show your support 🏳️‍⚧️

Here's the meat of my statement.

Refuse to die, by any means necessary.

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For people like us it feels like everything is always happening all at once, and because it never slows it feels like we're standing still, paralysed as the world moves against us, never being able to so much as take a breath as this world tries to strip our joy from us, our grief from us, our friends and our lovers from us. There is no reprieve, we exist in a living death in perpetuity, with our heads on the block and with a sword demanded to follow, and at the same time we're chastised for treating our own executioners with contempt, for refusing to die in any way that matters. 

I don’t care what motivates your desire to survive, as long as you refuse to die. Love may be a beautiful emotion, but it is one we fetishise too readily, one often misconstrued as shameless acquiescence to every indignity, that by suffering the violence and disrespect with restraint we attain virtue and valour, we do not, there is no virtue, no valour, and no honour in being a slave to our own undeath.

And yet rage is othered, treated as evil, as monstrous, but rage is beautiful too, rage can be sublimely beautiful in its application as a tool against those who do us harm, there is beauty in spitefully surviving your enemies weapons, in hating them for their transgressions, in your acts of sublime rage against those who wish to annihilate you.

“But that will make us monsters” you might say, but I would ask, in the eyes of those who are regarded as our betters, in the eyes of a world that strips us of our hopes and our dreams, a world that devours the people we love, have we ever been anything else? Would you really want to be anything else? This world is my enemy and I say it proudly.

Cherish your rage, nurture that nucleating fire, forge it into a weapon for you to wield against the ones who kill us, kill our friends, kill our families and our lovers.

Embrace your grief, let it fuel you, let it bring you to your feet to demand that enough is enough, to demand to see your people grow old around you and to demand the dignity of a good life and an even better death.

Honouring those who have lost their lives to anti transgender acts of violence and celebrating the courage, individuality, and identities of transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming individuals.

Trans Day of Remembrance

https://youtu.be/Znsgf9NShHs?si=EQoKzy0XD9jNVdK2