This didn’t take very long to stop being fun
This is the fourth article in a series I’m writing on gender. Equal parts personal narrative and transgender studies I hope to explore topics that have, by-and-large, been nagging at me for some time, but that I haven’t taken the time to write about. What does a thing called “The Cyborg Manifesto” have to do with being trans? What’s the relationship between transgender people and Frankenstein’s Monster? What are neopronouns and why do they upset some people? These are just some of the topics I hope to address in this series.
I knew that this project was going to be work when I took it on, but I thought it would be fun and rewarding. It didn’t take very long to begin to feel like a chore.
This isn’t helping me and my trans friends (or the trans people around me who don’t consider me a friend, or the trans people I don’t know but care about (though some scholars say you can’t care about people you don’t know or what the ever-loving fuck ever.).)
This isn’t helping me and my trans friends because it isn’t comprehensive healthcare, this isn’t helping me and my trans friends because it isn’t affordable housing, this isn’t helping me and my trans friends because it isn’t living wages, this isn’t helping me and my trans friends because it isn’t healthy homes.
This isn’t helping me and my trans friends because we’re all so hurt and torn and bitter and angsty — we’re all so overworked and underappreciated, we’re all begging with our every action for a chance at survival, while battling off suicidal thoughts.
I forget why I write in the moments when I can’t heal. I forget why I write in the moments when I can’t heal others. I forget why I write in the moments when I can’t heal myself.
Will an academic essay stay up with me when I can’t sleep? Will the data help me through a panic attack? When I’m hyperventilating and I can’t breathe — will my attempts to educate be able to save me?
Some say that you can’t make X person care about Y issue if they don’t already, or if they don’t want to. So what is all of this about?
I’m surrounded by trans people who could use just any semblance of a fucking break — God what I wouldn’t give for just a little bit of mercy.
When you’re part of a trans community (as with any marginalized community), every day you act in resilience. The things you do so that you and those around you can survive another day might be considered by those outside of the community as acts of activism when they do it, but you know that that’s just life.
Sites and apps like Venmo and the Cash App make it easy for a community that isn’t always spatially close to support one another — $5 and $10 increments shared here and there so that folks can eat.
I wouldn’t be able to survive without my friends who take me to the grocery store.
I was going to write about the term “transtrender,” this go-round and what it means to me and why I choose to reclaim it, but I just haven’t been able to focus on that. I’m preparing for my second year of grad school (which will hopefully be my last year of grad school), trying to ensure that I have a place to live in five months, trying to ensure I have a job in two month and then again in six. I’m trying to be here for my friends, and I’m trying to ask of my friends what I need. I’m dealing with conservative politicians who want to roll back decades of work (including my work and the work of my peers the 4 years I’ve been actively involved in the campus community).
Through all of this, it didn’t make sense to write about transtrending in this moment — because fucking hell, I just want a minute to speak inward to my community and say that I love y’all. I’m one person and because I’m one person, I can’t fix anything, but I can’t help but to fight like hell.
I want to speak inward to my community that I believe in us — not because we’re perfect or inherently good, we aren’t and we don’t need to be, but because we are who we are — as resilient as we are vulnerable, as tenacious as we are open, as loving as we are quick to our stoicism.
I’m not perfect and this is not a perfect addition to this series, but I have more than my fill of academic conversations on a regular basis, and I talk outward very often, so I don’t ask for forgiveness for deciding to talk inward. I am hurt, and my community is hurting, and I see it every day — and it is worth it to take pause that I’ve stopped feeling the fun of this project.
On my Facebook, I make posts ascribing genders to fictional characters:
I meme about gender a fuckton to cope with being poor, I meme about gender a lot to cope with being dysphoric, I meme about gender a lot to cope with the way I was denied a gender for much of the first 18–22 years of my life. I meme about gender a lot to cope with the way I’m still denied gender in certain social and professional settings.
It’s fun, and my friends and I get a kick out of it — but it shouldn’t erase the hurt, and it definitely doesn’t erase it. I constantly try to bridge the stubborn divides between activism and academia and emotionality and academia. Sometimes you just have to say fuck it, look into your community and say that ideas like “community,” and “solidarity” aren’t bullshit — at least I will always try to act them out and make them real to the best of my ability. I don’t want any trans person to feel isolated, alone, or to feel like they don’t have a place they can turn.
I reckon that’s all I have to say this go-round. See y’all again in a couple of weeks!
Have questions? Don’t be afraid to leave them in the comments below! Questions asked may turn into pieces written in the future!
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What it means to be an agender trans woman
I am Frankenstein’s Monster: An echo of Susan Stryker’s call to action
