I can't tell you how many times I get in arguments with people over this very subject. I had a person tell me a week ago that living any way other than stealth is dangerous. She brought up how many trans women have been murdered, and I pointed out to her that hey were almost all women of color.
When I got in my car wreck last year, I was treated with the utmost respect by the officer. Even after I showed him my driver's license with my ugly old male picture, and my guy name, he still called me ma'am. He was polite, and I was on my way shortly. And here I was in Pasadena, TX. Where anti-trans discrimination supposedly runs rampant. I have no predilections that I would have been afforded the same level of dignity and respect had I not been white.
As a white, middle-class, suburban, lesbian, trans woman I do not face the same dangers and risks that our sisters of color face, and there is no way in hell I'm gonna try to act like I do. It's time that us white trans women stop standing around feeling sorry for ourselves, and talking about how dangerous it is to be us. Instead, we need to start acknowledging the fact that TWOC face a very serious danger that we don't. And, it's a danger that isn't going to go away until it is addressed.
In other words. Can we please stop making this about us?
6:31 PM
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When it is my young trans people who are being slaughtered along with trans Latinas in 2015.
Please do not part your lips to say that vanillacentric privilege laden 'All Trans Lives Matter' crap. Not in the mood to hear that from some white trans people, especially after a week in which the deaths of FOUR Black trans women in different parts of the country were announced, one of them was in Texas, and the four trans people in question were all under 35.
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As my Texas trans elder Sharyn Grayson said to me earlier in the week when we were talking about it, "Our babies are being killed."
Yes ma'am they are, and some of the people doing it share my ethnic heritage. It's why I have zero tolerance for that 'All Trans Lives Matter line. It's insulting and problematic to say for the same damned reasons as that jacked up marinating in white supremacy 'All Lives Matter' response to #BlackLivesMatter.
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Let Moni school you on something right now. There are because of whiteness and white supremacy, some trans lives that matter more than others. The narrative about trans femininity has been focused on white trans women ever since Christine Jorgenson stepped off the plane in 1953, and now in the 2K15 attention and focus is finally being paid to trans women of color for something besides our murders, and some of y'all are still hatin' about that..
I repeat, we have had FOUR Black trans women's deaths announced in this week alone and five in this month of August that still isn't over yet. This is a crisis situation that deserves immediate attention and action to solve it.
#BlackTransLivesMatter
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Some of you may not care about Black trans peoples lives, but I, my trans elders and our Black cis trans allies damned sure do. Those kids are my next generation of trans people, and it deeply concerns me, my trans elders and cis Black allies they are being eviscerated before they have even had a chance to live their lives and make whatever contributions to society they would have possibly made.
If you're saying 'so what?' to that point or the problematic life expectancy average of a Black trans woman being age 35, better rethink that. If my 34 year old self hadn't kept a cool head and gotten myself out of a potentially dangerous situation in 1996, I wouldn't be here to talk about it, much less make the contributions to trans kind that I have made since then.
This blog wouldn't exist either.
[Image]We Black trans peeps have talents that we can contribute to this community. We may also be the ones destined to do some great things for humankind in general. But we can't do that or make those contributions to society while buried in a grave.
I'll bet if the script was flipped and we had young white trans women under 30 dying at the same rate as Black and Latina ones have been in 2015, we would already have the 100,000 signatures on that White House We The People petition calling for the federal investigation of anti-trans violence and then some.
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton would be saying it from the Democratic campaign trail, and Hollywood's trans supportive allies would already be talking about 'stopping the orgy of violence aimed at young trans people.'
So no, don't even dare part your lips to let that infuriating and insulting 'All Trans Lives Matter' comment pass through your lips when some of these trans kids have yet to be buried..
It's fairly obvious some trans lives matter more than others, and we need to keep it real on that point.
posted by Monica Roberts at 12:00 PM on Aug 16, 2015
"Don't Even Dare Part Your Lips To Say 'All Trans Lives Matter'..."
1 Comment -
I can't tell you how many times I get in arguments with people over this very subject. I had a person tell me a week ago that living any way other than stealth is dangerous. She brought up how many trans women have been murdered, and I pointed out to her that hey were almost all women of color.
When I got in my car wreck last year, I was treated with the utmost respect by the officer. Even after I showed him my driver's license with my ugly old male picture, and my guy name, he still called me ma'am. He was polite, and I was on my way shortly. And here I was in Pasadena, TX. Where anti-trans discrimination supposedly runs rampant. I have no predilections that I would have been afforded the same level of dignity and respect had I not been white.
As a white, middle-class, suburban, lesbian, trans woman I do not face the same dangers and risks that our sisters of color face, and there is no way in hell I'm gonna try to act like I do. It's time that us white trans women stop standing around feeling sorry for ourselves, and talking about how dangerous it is to be us. Instead, we need to start acknowledging the fact that TWOC face a very serious danger that we don't. And, it's a danger that isn't going to go away until it is addressed.
In other words. Can we please stop making this about us?
6:31 PM