#pride trans cisallies twccc cyndilauper

[kalesandfails]

Pride!

There’s a lot of things I want to write about Pride, but I can’t find the words, because honestly, while I think everyone should feel celebrated during Pride — even cisgendered white bisexuals with husbands and children, who never managed to fully hate ourselves for how we were (though high fives to the brave Seventh Adventists and homecoming courts for trying!) — really what we all need to pay attention to this month is trans women of color, and how we just can’t seem to stop murdering them.

Muhlaysia Booker was alive a month ago. Muhlaysia Booker was twenty three years old. She had all the things you and I have — a history, a family, friends — all things that the fetuses for whose sake we are collectively stripping women of their autonomy don’t have, not to belabor the point. 

She had a story, probably a difficult one, and she had courage, or she wouldn’t have survived and fought to live life on her own terms, and the struggle to do so, to live on one’s own terms, is supposedly something we admire.

And yet she died facedown in a street somewhere far from the people who loved her.

And yet her last moments were ones in which she was subjected to violent assault because (1) who she was triggered enough hate that someone felt entitled to murder her and (2) we’ve decided, collectively, that while we will literally redefine half the population of Alabama as something less than citizens with rights to their own bodies, we can’t summon up an unambivalent rejection of straight-up murder.

I want to rock Pride, because I’ll be honest, self-love is a goddamn uphill slog for me right now. All of it — my sexuality, my personality, my appearance, my clothes — none of them were ever right, growing up, and Pride, for me, is a month all about talking back to the eye-rolling Beckies who dominated my adolescence and never seem to step wholly off.

But I think we need to be celebrating Pride, at least in part, by recognizing that we can’t start and stop by loving ourselves -- especially those of us who enjoy significant amounts of privilege because of all the ways our bodies and identifies do conform to the expectations of others. 

Bisexual erasure is real, and I don’t think anyone has the right to write off your sexuality because it seems somehow closer to straightness than their own. But we also need to love queer and trans people who are getting killed in the streets by the same country (and we are all part of this country; it’s not just Trump’s problem) that just can’t seem to decide under which circumstances abortion is murder.

Hint: none. But also, you know what definitely is murder?

This

and this

and this.

And even “our” guys — our Bob Caseys and Chrissy Houlihans, or whoever your Democratic representatives are — need to hear from us about the importance of keeping this issue as visible as the antiabortion wack jobs keep their Lacanian baby signifiers.

Look, inexplicably, of all the things Ben Carson could be doing, he roused from his nap long enough to propose taking protections away from transgendered and nonbinary homeless human beings. Why? I don’t know, and I’m certainly not going to connect it to the very same religion that had no time for the repeated sexualized intrusions onto the bodies of its Sabbath School attendees, but plenty of time to predict that their “same sex attractions” were a sign of the End Times. (Christians, have you thought that your religion might be more warmly embraced if you toned down that recurring leitmotif of fucking things up for everyone?)

The point is, friends, write to Bob and Chrissy and Horrible Pat and everyone else who represents you, and tell them that you do not want the government rolling back protections against one of the most vulnerable populations in your country. You know, the population that is being killed in the goddamn streets.

Be proud of who you are because being LGBTQ+ is great and you are fabulous, and also because speaking out when your government is collectively not addressing actual murder, as in the intentional killing of living human beings, is even better.

Addendum:

(When you write to Chrissy and Bob and Horrible Pat, you can specifically make them aware of Virginia Representative Jennifer Wexton’s Ensuring Equal Access to Shelter Act, which is designed to prevent this ruling from putting trans women at increased risk of sexual assault and murder by forcing them to be housed with men (which is what this bill does and which is tenable only if you imagine an endgame in which the threat of violent sexual and physical assault will magically make someone cisgender, because apparently violence is the answer, sometimes?)

Here’s another article that details the underlying reasoning, such as it is, underlying this move by Carson (apparently, the idea is that by restricting the right of a given rando to determine for herself the gender of another human being, the federal government is taking away the rando’s right (to override the self-determination of others) And here’s an account that clarifies exactly how this specific proposal increases the risk that trans women -- who, say it with me, are already facing an epidemic of violence -- face when they attempt to secure safe housing. 

Here’s the Transequity Action Center, which gives some context to this as part of an ongoing movement against trans people and also a place where you can send money to support ongoing efforts to fight these efforts. 

Finally, you can comment on the HUD proposal by filing a discrimination complaint (although this is clearly not the intent of the complaint form, it is one way to reach them, and to make the point that this is their agency openly endorsing the discrimination they are supposedly charged with preventing, or you can directly comment on this ruling here (not to bury the lead, but DO IT)!

The you can up you joy factor by checking out Cyndi Lauper’s True Colors initiative, which is working to help get safe housing for LGBTQ+youth, and the Trans Women of Color Collective , which lays out specific and meaningful ways that those seeking to center trans women of color and support a  more just world can do that.