CW: discussion of transphobia
You don't need to be a hero to be loved. You don't need to be magic to be celebrated.
This week is Transgender Week of Awareness, a one-week celebration leading up to Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR), which memorializes victims of transphobic violence particularly Black, Latinx, and Indigenous trans women and transfeminine people.
There are so many places to go to support and uplift trans and gender non conforming people like:
"9 out of 10 people say they don’t know a trans person. We believe that ignorance fuels fear, hate and violence both within individuals and institutions. That’s why TransLash—a trans-led project—uses the power of personal stories to dissolve the lack of knowledge at the heart of trans erasure. Our goal is to shift the cultural understanding of what it means to be transgender in order to foster social inclusion and reduce anti-trans hostility.
That is why TransLash is committed to creating an integrated and healthy society for trans, two-spirit, non-binary and gender non-conforming people. Our work seeks to create a world in which all forms of gender expression have equal rights, protections, and opportunities, as well as the ability to live freely and openly in all forms. That is why we also value self-expression through media art, music, dance, the written word, and technology."
I thought about this a bit ago but it feels important to bring up now. People don't need to be magic or extraordinary in order to be deserving of love and support. I feel that , especially, trans BIPOC people are required to show how extraordinary (funny, charming, resilient, resourceful, artistic, etc) they are in order to prove their worthy of societal support (since our society wrongly and inhumanly makes it so hard). And this is so unfair.
We need one another. We need all of us.
I recently listening to a podcast called Survival of the Friendliest and I'm listening to an audio book I checked out from the Houston Public Library (yes, you can do that) by the same name.
What I've learned (and there's still more) feels very intuitive to me (even if it's deemed naive) is that humans evolved to need each other (capitalism, that's about competition and division, is antithetical to our evolution). Our communication skills and ability to connect, empathize, and trust strangers is something that sets us apart from other now-extinct humans (like neanderthals). We traded knowledge and information through these connections. It wasn't our superior intellect; it was our ability to work together.
And it takes EVERY "ordinary" one of us to do this. We need trans people, with their fresh perspective, to be vanguards in repairing the world. In essence, none of us are magic as individuals, we're only magic when we work together.
What I'm listening to that's inspiring me right now:
Lido Pimienta's new album:
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