Sleeping to Dream

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

Several decades later my sister had an MRI, as a long shot, to try to figure out why she was sick and deteriorating with a number of symptoms that were close to being written off as anxiety. She was sent straight to the hospital for adult onset hydrocephaly. Two days later she had brain surgery to put a shunt down her neck into her stomach and drain the fluid out. (No, you cannot usually get brain surgery that fast. Yes, it was that urgent.) Recovery was long and squiggly but it happened.

I think of that boy every once in a while. The one who died. I have no doubt that treatments developed for people like him, and tested on people like him, saved my sister's life.

I've been type 1 diabetic since I was about one and a half, and was incredibly sick. If my mother hadn't also been type 1 and recognized the signs I likely would have died.

I was born in 1982. Insulin was first given to a patient in 1922, and he survived. Before that, type 1 meant death, often very slow and agonizing. Before insulin, doctors advised a super strict "keto" diet to prolong life, and it could work for awhile - up to a year, I believe. But it was a miserable existence as the body was literally eating itself as the blood turned acidic until the patient eventually died.

60 years. Only 60 years before my birth did that procedure work for the first time. That's absolutely nothing given the span of human history and I think a lot about the people who died from it throughout time.

But yes, people tried. Healers and doctors of all sorts tried all manner of things to allow these (mostly!) kids to live. The fact that it was accomplished at all is nothing short of a miracle. The fact that I've been alive 42 years is fucking insane considering my body doesn't produce a hormone necessary for survival. If you think that doesn't blow me away on a regular basis you have another think coming. It's nothing short of a miracle.

Every medical advancement is. The amount of work that goes into it and the vast amount of luck necessary to get it right even when all the research and information is sound is just astonishing.

In 1930, having diabetes type I would basically mean being hospital bound, being woken every few hours for regular injections.

In 1965, you'd be able to live at home and get by with a very strict diet and a few timed injections. You'd struggle with chronical side effects. Having children wasn't done - passing on your genes would be immoral, and it might not even be legal for you to marry.

In the year 2000, you'd have a device clipped to your belt that would measure your blood sugar and distribute insulin, you only need to change the needle a few times a day. You might even be allowed to join in P.E. class

In 2025, you stick on two patches that do the same thing. They're synchronized through your phone.

Tempted to actually put this on spotify so I can secretly stream it at work...

Also, in case anyone was worried, rest assured mim the local void is missing no meals

And not one person thought to bring it up.

When I was talking about how horrifying puberty felt. When I was cutting myself. When I was in inpatient care. When I attempted suicide. When I talked for YEARS in therapy about how dissociated and trapped I felt in my body. When I felt like I never truly fixed something that was deeply wrong about me that started at puberty.

Not one person said it was a possibility. No one thought "hey, maybe this kid should go to someone trained to identify dysphoria". No one mentioned that trans people weren't some weird other group of people. It didn't have to be pressure. It didn't have to be "forcing" me. Just mentioning that trans people exist and it could be me. That it was possible and it was easy. No pushing, just laying the option out there.

HRT is treated like this last ditch option. This horrific, mutilating thing that I GUESS we can give to you if you have NO OTHER options. Because did you know it's permanent? Did you know you'll be on it for the rest of your life? Did you know the health risks? Did you know it'll make you infertile? Did you know that it's deviant? Did you know that it's an alternative lifestyle for other people?

No one said it was okay to WANT it to be permanent. Or noted that most people are reliant on the medical system in one way or the other anyways (and it's not even necessary for HRT). Or that the health risks are the normal parts of having that hormone, even in cis people of your gender. Or said it was okay to not want kids, or mention that you can just freeze gametes. Or acknowledged that the "deviant" people are just people, living their lives, that have been violently pushed out of "normal" society.

I grew up in an area that Republicans mock for being a kind of "woke central". And even then it's just. Not treated as an easy option. It was never on the table if you don't specifically already know you're going through gender stuff, and no one will help you get to that point. At which point, it's still treated like the last ditch option. Did you know you can be a feminine man? Did you know you can slap a "she/her" in your twitter bio and be done with it? Did you know that you're oh-so-valid without it? Did you know that you shouldn't take HRT? Maybe don't take HRT? Don't take HRT? Don't take HRT? Don't ta-

When you've been in it a while, HRT is the easiest, most casual thing in the world. Just pop a shot on a Saturday as part of your "everything shower" routine and you're done.

The above is a video shared by smrchildsadness on Twitter, showing a person participating in a pride parade exchanging a pride flag with a person standing on his (am using his pronoun based on the TikToks/Tweets of what happened) doorway who had a Portuguese flag. There are sounds of cheers and crying and the two people hug each other as they exchange the flags. The man at the doorway then waved kisses to the crowd within the pride parade.

The Tweet says: "NO YOU DONT UNDERSTAND HE WAS WAVING THE PORTUGUESE FLAG BECAUSE HE DIDN'T HAVE A PRIDE FLAG AND THEY TRADED FLAGS AND HE'S SO EMOTIONAL TO GET HIS OWN PRIDE FLAG I'M EMOTIONALLY RUINED"

For context, apparently they were worried that maybe he's a nationalist because he was waving the Portuguese flag and some nationalists opposing the pride march were waving that flag. But upon interacting with him, it turns out he didn't have have a pride flag and he wanted to wave *a* flag in support of the pride march. So they had an exchange and now he has his own pride flag 😭🥹.

The image above is a Tweet by kunwara_ladkaa that says "I'm crying so much right now (Image taken by Manuel Fernando Araújo/Lusa)". The image shows the same man from the pride parade crying as he hugs his new pride flag.

The above image is a Tweet by dudz_zZzz that says "ainda não parei de pensar nele," which according to Google translate from Portuguese to English is "I still haven't stopped thinking about him." The image is a drawing of the person from the pride parade, crying as he hugs his new pride flag.