#transmisogynoir

istg if some of you werent trans you'd be terfs your view of gender is just as fucking strict. you're not doing anything for transfems nor the greater queer community. do transfems and trans women deal with more problems compared to the rest of the community? absolutely yes!! should discussing transfem specific issues be brushed off as just "infighting"? absolutely no!! but tearing down our tmasc brothers is doing nothing to help. trans men ALSO experience misogyny and a lot fucking of it.

call out bad behavior when you see it. uplift those who are good to you and hold accountable those who aren't. they want us all DEAD, doesn't matter which way. do not let more division take place in our community, especially in a time like this. especially towards transfems and transmascs, trans women and trans men.

intersectionality. intersectionality.

I live with a roommate. One who can drive where as I can’t do to my legitimately very subpar motor skills and honestly general lack of faith in myself and trust in strangers driving 2000 pounds of metal. One who can have the jobs that are unsustainable for me due to my level of neurodivergence. They had a pretty easy life of someone who grew up white and impoverished. I do my part to compensate around the house and try my hardest to take care of myself. Be it cooking or cleaning, the obvious things like scheduling my own appointments and outings or the usual. But between the realities of my unfortunate childhood and even early adulthood and accepting that I am a trans woman, I am tired, and at a crossroads where the resilient individualism of my youth fought well & got me me past 20 but won’t get me to 40. And I am coming to terms with the fact that while assimilation was certainly never the goal, I was hoping to live a long life, be able to have the opportunities and basic benefits of adulthood, and actually be seen as a human being. How naive…

There are days I kinda just wander around the apartment or the neighborhood like I lost puppy. In my journals I write endlessly. Maybe I’ll play Minecraft for a few minutes. An hour or two if I’m feeling extra lucky. But often I can’t do anything at all. I still have too ofc. I try to schedule outings and even still make connections via proximity like dates or various outings at protest and community events. But the decades of dealing with state violence, being homeless and even flatlining during the fresh parts of the pandemic in 2020, the working myself into the ground doing front facing work with the general population, terrible food & customer service jobs to get my first apartment in 2021, then just to keep a roof above my head, and then having to ultimately flee my birth state that was & still is being wrecked by climate change, rising costs, anti-trans legislation, and a influx of the most reactionary, money driven, selfish people you can think of, with a roommate who honestly is kinda neglectful and mediocre, has done a serious toll on me.

As someone who is black and living in Amerika there are already so many things and experiences I have to consider regarding something as simple as choosing a general practitioner or the places I work (given my already limited options, the low employment levels for autistic and trans individuals as is because we either do our own thing, get lucky, or are forced into sex work, and in a dying empire with the typical blatantly fascistic tendency, armed with a shitty AI dominated job market). The normal responsibilities many have without to much worry of consequences. Or if necessary they can phone a friend or parent to inquire about how to do something. The harsh realities of race is something all black peoples here deal with, but because of my personal experiences during childhood and my history with state violence and having to deal retaliation to survive, I have to think about the extra “If this (Doctor, employer, etc) looks into my medical records or my past, my life and literal human agency is at stake”. Especially with being trans and the current state of this “country”. And especially with apathetic to outright cruel population when it comes to our lives, and a roommate who tbh, I long realized if push comes to shove wouldn’t be (and isn’t) reliable or able to spot, handle, or be available if (or when) the direct and harsh violence, and the emotional distress that comes with, that I grew up with that is coincidentally sweeping this whole sea to shining sea plantation built on stolen land & LARPing as a nation.

I can’t for my safety break no contact with anyone in my family, even my nieces who I miss dearly and probably don’t know their uncle is actually their aunt. It’s too dangerous. My parents are a risk. And because they chose assimilation, this system and any “normal” person sees them as in the right for being “one of the good ones”. My safety nets, the things people don’t really worry about or never had to outright struggle with are essentially non existent. They are hopes, my two bare hands, and the continued growth and lessons I receive from trying. I had one friend throughout my whole life (consequences of growing up neurodivergent and black in the part of the south known as the “redneck revine”), she was taken from me by state violence, long-distance, and the pandemic. She was also my first everything. When I was homeless she was there. Fighting our families we stood together. We were a team. Shared goals and curiosity. No insecurity, no drama, and no bullshit. The college or career paths many have were not something I was ever going to have, nor do I have, let alone can reasonably pursue, and especially now that hiring trans women is seen as a “lawsuit waiting to happen”, as I heard someone describe it. Between discrimination and the lack of accommodations as is for neurodivergent women and the push for everything to be fast paced, performative, and online, I am certainly in a position that should not be envied.

And the reality is, transmisogynoir is the fulcrum. A lot of black people have internalized the American idea of blackness and see neurodivergence, being articulate, or queerness and especially being unemployed as “white people shit” or being a “bum” or “selling out”.

A lot of my fellow neurodivergents and sisters in the trans community (online and offline) struggle to see or listen to how race affects us and can’t really fathom the reality that (at least for me) the most black trans women are neurodivergent people I have seen in one room was jail dropping to the floor during the pandemic, or as a kid during the countless times my own family decided handing me over to the state was a good idea. To the point where we keep to ourselves often out of concern but too fatigue. We leave online spaces, or if we stay it’s to focus on what we love or aspects of our lives that go ignored or slandered by angry settlers. Or too we are ran off by censorship or tbh hurting the sentiments of white people (boohoo 🫩).

Many comrades online and in the encampments are college educated and can’t imagine not assimilating or considering antiblackness a “distraction”. Too focused on book reading and settling for reforms. We are alienating the (white) masses and are expected to be martyrs for the cause and/or be silent for the sake of unity and obey. All war is class war. But disability and race are treated as something separate and beneath appealing to “normal” people. I wonder whose class, empire & logic that enforces? Hmm…

Why does this matter? Fundamentally it makes connection and trust, especially building up a support network as one marginalized woman, incredibly daunting and a testament to either bravery and human strength or a testament to naivety and vanity. You can spot the reactions and detect the direct of the wind. You get ghosted, dismissed, infantilized and even criminalized before you even can clarify or even if you do so. You’ll be told that “you are so strong”, to “be the bigger person”, and that you seem just fine or told you have nothing together at all and your experiences are invalid because you evidently didn’t try [insert thing you tried or isn’t in your best interests]. Essentially you’re expected to be omnipresent and when you’re not (wow) you are the worst thing walking on earth or a child who must lift themselves up by their bootstraps for eternity or die. You’ll be victim blamed & not believed too. Essentially, it’s isolating. People projecting expectations always is. And empathy seems to be nonexistent or selectively given. The only thing giving you hope being the few healthy connections you did have. Or if you are lucky, still do & hopefully in abundance.

Accountability? Well that’s the thing. I don’t lack accountability. Tbh I find people who bring this aspect up are looking for a reason to deny their complacency or justify their blame and privilege, but let’s engage. My struggles aren’t imagined or from some lack of trying or refusal. I certainly refuse to try what I know doesn’t work for me or is essentially people telling me to get in line, prove you are valid, or die. I am doing what I must to survive. I am a good person and not pushing people around, being a Hitlerite or an asshole unlike a great many, nor am rejecting actual (and rare) opportunities that do come to me and match my material circumstances. I still go outside to enjoy the Michigan summers and the relatively friendly community compared to everywhere I lived in Florida. I still show up to events and protests when I can. The reality is I wasn’t born into a good family, or a healthy region and I was doomed by my circumstances like many people in this system. I tried. I always try. Don’t we all? But normalcy, assimilation, and the usual milestones is not something I ever actually had access to. The amount of self hatred and psychosis that requires as a black person in America is staggering and not worth it. Especially as this empire lashes out and falls.

My childhood wasn’t one of being spoiled and coddled but neglected and isolated “for the greater good”. One of my first allergic reactions to peanuts was a traumatic experience that I imagine heavily factored into my life. Especially considering I was in daycare and thus likely 4-5 years of age. It was one of the other (white) kids being attended to, pampered, and fed. I was trying to tell one of the staff members I don’t feel good. I was ignored by the first, an older white woman, and then yelled at and aggressively pulled then walked down into a room to “shut up and rest”, by another white woman of similar age. The first came to check on me because she had no clue where the one black kid in the entire facility went and saw me belly up on my back and presumably swollen in hives, barely breathing, and the usual signs of someone undergoing a allergic reaction. “Oh shit…”

Through out my youth I was prone to “unpredictable” outbursts. Which at every point was a result of being ignored. Having to scream when many had the luxury to raise a hand. I wasn’t proud. I was 5, 7, 10 years old. I was facing a form of social violence I couldn’t name then being subjected to the hard violent consequences in the forms of interventions, institutions, and abusive reprimanding of my own family. Each spanking, each restraint, each pen click, each added then removed diagnosis, each joy and say so taken from me until I “did things the right way”, each push pushed me further from the family, the nation, religion and certainly the ideals of patriarchy and being a “real man”. Essentially forcing me from being pushed away, to actively walking away. It made me love humanity and my autonomy more. Ask more about the world and explore myself endlessly in a world that was grossly incurious about me when it wasn’t outright waging siege warfare against me. Each push led to me eventual retaliation against my own family, against the threats around me in my 2nd spaces like school or the few times I was ever allowed over with “friends”. FBI interviews by 9th grade. Taking charge of my life and developing what I can only describe as Juche with hyper-independent characteristics by 12. Having to learn basic self defense by 17 and the way AmeriCapitalism worked by 10. Abusers turned fearful and scared to lay a hand on me again by 13. Focusing and creating my own path by 16. The fattest thumb shaped chud officers surrounding me expecting violence based on what a racist staff member told them and being utterly embarrassed or taken aback by my calmness and “articulate speech” by 20. Working my way up from homelessness and into my own place by 21, attending my first protests and doing “martial labour and sabotage” by 23. Standing up for myself against a social worker over stepping her bounds when noone else would respond to my messages or posts by 24. Being comparatively better off than I was 4 years ago by 25. Certainly not great. But better.

The point being I did things, and things I had to do often as a response to bullshittery and being blamed for first doing nothing or not trying and then trying and doing anything at all. Things that shaped me into a resilient human being with so much love to offer but too much on my back or against my back to give without hesitation or wariness. Things that have made for cool triumphs and trials but too struggles in what “normal” people and the “free world” describe as adulthood.

I think that the US transfemme desire to disown drag/ballroom is a symptom of both white culture’s destruction of ancestral ties and the importance of cultural continuity, and of the predominantly white ignorance of it as a gentrified Black art form similar to how whites treat other Black art. They want a destruction of it because they see the effects and results of the gentrified version and assume that’s all there is/was.

In particular it’s frustrating because while some drag queens are cis, a lot are trans women, non-binary, or otherwise transmisogynized and drag/ballroom and the tipping culture associated with it existed in part because the transmisogynized are so fucking unemployable and it provided/s a method beyond mutual aid for the redistribution of money, through the labor of performance.

In relation to trans women, I view drag queens as a pathway to transness similar to crossdressers, femboys, (unfortunately) sissies, and similar - where although the perception of them currently may cause harm to the perception of trans women at large due to the ways they compromise with predominantly white cishetero society to allow transfemmes to explore their gender, they are, in fact, still functionally people within the spectrum of transfemininity even if they haven’t fully accepted their gender expansiveness for themselves. Harm they cause to the perception of transfemmes does not lessen them from that societal assignment, any less than we can say Caitlyn Jenner, Blair White, or Kelly Cadigan are less trans women because of the harm they’ve done to the perception of trans women. They are all, in effect, varying levels of transmisogynized whether they realize it or not.

When I was in DC I knew a lot of drag kings/queens and literally 95% of them are trans and either came to drag/ballroom as a way to explore their gender through art and/or make money bc poor, or started it and it was a gateway to unlocking their gender. Not counting the cis performers elevated by stuff like RuPaul, who is explicitly transphobic, I think I can count on my hands how many cis performers I’ve met. Hell, even with RuPaul shit a number of drag artists who have been on his shows later come out as trans (such as Bosco, who I literally grew up with), in part because they suppressed their transness publicly to maintain their career until they reached a point the blowback of coming out wound impact them less. Pulling a F1NNSTER to keep cash flowing for survival, if you will.

Iunno like. The earliest Balls we have records of were literally 1880-90s, predominantly Black (the oldest drag/ballroom performer we have records of was a Black trans woman from DC), and was one of the only safe places for trans people to exist as themselves. So I find the idea of writing it off due to a much more recent gentrification and commercialization of it as ignorant as how people often treat other demonizes or commercialized Black art.

“I just don’t like the spectacle it makes of transness and harm it causes-“

Baby all Blackness is spectacle to crackers and An Amount of modern drag is white people doing minstrelsy of all Black women - not in the sense of gender at all but in the sense of race.

Like. A lot of Black culture in the US specifically is Big and Loud *because* of the repression of it we’ve faced and the force towards respectability politics, which has echoed to queer culture because queer culture in the US is made vast majority from Black culture. Our existence is a spectacle so why not make a show out of why they hate us and try to erase us so that they can’t get rid of even more.

Hating “the spectacle” of an actual performance art form is solidly rooted in white supremacy and white cultural notions of propriety/respectability. Many aspects of “spectacle” seen in drag are directly taken from Ballroom or adapted from it/vogueing.

In summary: traditions are meant to change with situational, cultural, and environmental need but still be sustained as part of a culture. Gentrification is a poison to this that makes it harder for those the culture belongs to to practice it as it should. White ancestral shame is a poison that makes them think they should nuke everything historic/cultural that makes them uncomfortable regardless of whether it’s theirs or whether it’s something they stole and gentrified. Also yeag like,,, it’s a job/gig income predominantly for societal “undesirables” to make money when they’re under/unemployed due to marginalization. And it’s also been gentrified to *gestures at RuPaul, et al.*

No matter what you think about drag or ballroom, poor predominantly racialized trans folks still gon be doing it because it is part of our culture no matter what tv shows and big names and people who have only seen those do to it, and it’s always going to be seen as one of the “disreputable” pathways to transness that makes other trans people look down on them because of the complicated ties to transmisogyny, because until someone publicly says the words “Im also a trans woman”, WE also view them as a personification of what we fear the world sees us as—a man in a dress—rather than an egg finding their way to gender in a way we deem unacceptable because it doesn’t align with how we think it “should” be done.

And I think that’s on us honestly, not on them. If we say it can take as long or as quickly and as easily or messily for someone to sort out their gender as needed, this also has to be extended to the transmisogynized we view as “disreputable” regardless of if/when they reach a conclusion we deem acceptable or whether they die in the shell, never able to remove their masks fully.