#transliberation — Public Fediverse posts

This post starts with a warning. A terribly important warning that you probably don't expect, at least not from me. But hear me out:

Trans people are extremely fucking dangerous!

We are dangerous in the way that a cat is dangerous to a carefully arranged bookshelf.

We are dangerous in the way that a question is dangerous to a very bad answer.

We are dangerous in the way that a tiny stone is dangerous to a machine designed on the assumption that nothing will ever get stuck in the gears.

We are dangerous because we demonstrate something profoundly inconvenient:

the boxes are not laws of nature.

Someone drew them.

Someone named them.

Someone decided who goes where.

Someone built an entire social architecture around pretending that the boxes had been handed down from the heavens, carved into the chromosomes, engraved into the bones, and personally notarised by God.

And then along comes some queer little creature with purple hair going,

“Hmm. I don’t think this box fits.”

Catastrophe!

Civilisation trembles!

Someone phones the newspapers.

Someone demands a parliamentary inquiry into the alarming existence of a person who bought the wrong socks.

Because gender, apparently, is supposed to be terribly simple.

You are assigned a category.

The category comes with instructions.

The instructions come with expectations.

The expectations come with consequences.

And everyone is supposed to nod politely and spend the next eighty years pretending this arrangement was inevitable.

Except humans are gloriously terrible at obeying arbitrary rules forever.

We transition.

We question.

We experiment.

We refuse.

We discover ourselves.

We change our names.

We change our clothes.

We change our pronouns.

We change our lives.

And sometimes we look at a rule that has been treated as sacred for centuries and say:

“That’s a funny-looking rule.”

This is where things become politically inconvenient.

Because patriarchy doesn't merely say that people have genders.

It says gender tells us who should lead, who should obey, who should provide, who should nurture, who should speak, who should remain quiet, who should be powerful, who should be pretty, who should be tough, and who should bloody well know their place.

Authoritarian religion can turn that into theology:

Someone else gets to tell you what you are.

Capitalism can turn it into administration:

Someone else gets to categorise you, market you, insure you, employ you, regulate you, and sell things to you on the basis of that category.

And authoritarian politics can turn it into a particularly ugly little demand:

Stay where we put you.

Trans people answer:

No.

Not because every trans person has read Gramsci before breakfast.

Not because we have all assembled a revolutionary committee beneath the local kebab shop.

Sometimes we're just trying to figure out why our reflection looks wrong.

Sometimes we're just trying to survive.

Sometimes we're just trying to buy a fucking skirt without somebody writing a newspaper column about it.

But our existence nevertheless demonstrates something revolutionary:

identity is not necessarily obedience.

And once that idea exists, you can't put it neatly back into the box.

Because someone else starts wondering:

Why do I have to be this way?

Who said?

Why?

What happens if I don't?

Who benefits?

And why does my freedom make you angry?

Oh dear.

There goes the furniture.

The great secret is that rigid systems don't necessarily fear the individual.

They fear the example.

One person stepping outside the line proves the line can be crossed.

One person surviving outside the category proves the category wasn't the universe.

One person refusing their assigned role creates the horrifying possibility that other people might realise they have choices too.

And suddenly the problem isn't:

“What are trans people doing to society?”

The problem becomes:

“Why does society require everyone to be this particular way in the first place?”

That is the dangerous question.

So yes.

I was wrong.

Trans people are dangerous.

We are dangerous to compulsory conformity.

Dangerous to inherited hierarchies.

Dangerous to authoritarian certainty.

Dangerous to the idea that bodies come with political instructions attached.

Dangerous to the notion that identity is something assigned once, stamped on the forehead, filed in triplicate, and never questioned again.

We are dangerous because we keep demonstrating that human beings are messy.

Wonderful.

Contradictory.

Uncooperative.

Impossible to sort perfectly into little administrative boxes.

And if your entire social order requires human beings to remain inside those boxes forever, then perhaps the existential threat isn't the person climbing out.

Perhaps the existential threat is the fact that the box was never the world.

It was only a box.

And somebody just opened the lid.

Sorry about that.

Well.

Not that sorry.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #NonBinary #GenderFreedom #FuckThePatriarchy #QueerLiberation #ResistConformity #SmashTheBoxes #BeDangerous #RadicalQueer

This post starts with a warning. A terribly important warning that you probably don't expect, at least not from me. But hear me out:

Trans people are extremely fucking dangerous!

We are dangerous in the way that a cat is dangerous to a carefully arranged bookshelf.

We are dangerous in the way that a question is dangerous to a very bad answer.

We are dangerous in the way that a tiny stone is dangerous to a machine designed on the assumption that nothing will ever get stuck in the gears.

We are dangerous because we demonstrate something profoundly inconvenient:

the boxes are not laws of nature.

Someone drew them.

Someone named them.

Someone decided who goes where.

Someone built an entire social architecture around pretending that the boxes had been handed down from the heavens, carved into the chromosomes, engraved into the bones, and personally notarised by God.

And then along comes some queer little creature with purple hair going,

“Hmm. I don’t think this box fits.”

Catastrophe!

Civilisation trembles!

Someone phones the newspapers.

Someone demands a parliamentary inquiry into the alarming existence of a person who bought the wrong socks.

Because gender, apparently, is supposed to be terribly simple.

You are assigned a category.

The category comes with instructions.

The instructions come with expectations.

The expectations come with consequences.

And everyone is supposed to nod politely and spend the next eighty years pretending this arrangement was inevitable.

Except humans are gloriously terrible at obeying arbitrary rules forever.

We transition.

We question.

We experiment.

We refuse.

We discover ourselves.

We change our names.

We change our clothes.

We change our pronouns.

We change our lives.

And sometimes we look at a rule that has been treated as sacred for centuries and say:

“That’s a funny-looking rule.”

This is where things become politically inconvenient.

Because patriarchy doesn't merely say that people have genders.

It says gender tells us who should lead, who should obey, who should provide, who should nurture, who should speak, who should remain quiet, who should be powerful, who should be pretty, who should be tough, and who should bloody well know their place.

Authoritarian religion can turn that into theology:

Someone else gets to tell you what you are.

Capitalism can turn it into administration:

Someone else gets to categorise you, market you, insure you, employ you, regulate you, and sell things to you on the basis of that category.

And authoritarian politics can turn it into a particularly ugly little demand:

Stay where we put you.

Trans people answer:

No.

Not because every trans person has read Gramsci before breakfast.

Not because we have all assembled a revolutionary committee beneath the local kebab shop.

Sometimes we're just trying to figure out why our reflection looks wrong.

Sometimes we're just trying to survive.

Sometimes we're just trying to buy a fucking skirt without somebody writing a newspaper column about it.

But our existence nevertheless demonstrates something revolutionary:

identity is not necessarily obedience.

And once that idea exists, you can't put it neatly back into the box.

Because someone else starts wondering:

Why do I have to be this way?

Who said?

Why?

What happens if I don't?

Who benefits?

And why does my freedom make you angry?

Oh dear.

There goes the furniture.

The great secret is that rigid systems don't necessarily fear the individual.

They fear the example.

One person stepping outside the line proves the line can be crossed.

One person surviving outside the category proves the category wasn't the universe.

One person refusing their assigned role creates the horrifying possibility that other people might realise they have choices too.

And suddenly the problem isn't:

“What are trans people doing to society?”

The problem becomes:

“Why does society require everyone to be this particular way in the first place?”

That is the dangerous question.

So yes.

I was wrong.

Trans people are dangerous.

We are dangerous to compulsory conformity.

Dangerous to inherited hierarchies.

Dangerous to authoritarian certainty.

Dangerous to the idea that bodies come with political instructions attached.

Dangerous to the notion that identity is something assigned once, stamped on the forehead, filed in triplicate, and never questioned again.

We are dangerous because we keep demonstrating that human beings are messy.

Wonderful.

Contradictory.

Uncooperative.

Impossible to sort perfectly into little administrative boxes.

And if your entire social order requires human beings to remain inside those boxes forever, then perhaps the existential threat isn't the person climbing out.

Perhaps the existential threat is the fact that the box was never the world.

It was only a box.

And somebody just opened the lid.

Sorry about that.

Well.

Not that sorry.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #NonBinary #GenderFreedom #FuckThePatriarchy #QueerLiberation #ResistConformity #SmashTheBoxes #BeDangerous #RadicalQueer

This post starts with a warning. A terribly important warning that you probably don't expect, at least not from me. But hear me out:

Trans people are extremely fucking dangerous!

We are dangerous in the way that a cat is dangerous to a carefully arranged bookshelf.

We are dangerous in the way that a question is dangerous to a very bad answer.

We are dangerous in the way that a tiny stone is dangerous to a machine designed on the assumption that nothing will ever get stuck in the gears.

We are dangerous because we demonstrate something profoundly inconvenient:

the boxes are not laws of nature.

Someone drew them.

Someone named them.

Someone decided who goes where.

Someone built an entire social architecture around pretending that the boxes had been handed down from the heavens, carved into the chromosomes, engraved into the bones, and personally notarised by God.

And then along comes some queer little creature with purple hair going,

“Hmm. I don’t think this box fits.”

Catastrophe!

Civilisation trembles!

Someone phones the newspapers.

Someone demands a parliamentary inquiry into the alarming existence of a person who bought the wrong socks.

Because gender, apparently, is supposed to be terribly simple.

You are assigned a category.

The category comes with instructions.

The instructions come with expectations.

The expectations come with consequences.

And everyone is supposed to nod politely and spend the next eighty years pretending this arrangement was inevitable.

Except humans are gloriously terrible at obeying arbitrary rules forever.

We transition.

We question.

We experiment.

We refuse.

We discover ourselves.

We change our names.

We change our clothes.

We change our pronouns.

We change our lives.

And sometimes we look at a rule that has been treated as sacred for centuries and say:

“That’s a funny-looking rule.”

This is where things become politically inconvenient.

Because patriarchy doesn't merely say that people have genders.

It says gender tells us who should lead, who should obey, who should provide, who should nurture, who should speak, who should remain quiet, who should be powerful, who should be pretty, who should be tough, and who should bloody well know their place.

Authoritarian religion can turn that into theology:

Someone else gets to tell you what you are.

Capitalism can turn it into administration:

Someone else gets to categorise you, market you, insure you, employ you, regulate you, and sell things to you on the basis of that category.

And authoritarian politics can turn it into a particularly ugly little demand:

Stay where we put you.

Trans people answer:

No.

Not because every trans person has read Gramsci before breakfast.

Not because we have all assembled a revolutionary committee beneath the local kebab shop.

Sometimes we're just trying to figure out why our reflection looks wrong.

Sometimes we're just trying to survive.

Sometimes we're just trying to buy a fucking skirt without somebody writing a newspaper column about it.

But our existence nevertheless demonstrates something revolutionary:

identity is not necessarily obedience.

And once that idea exists, you can't put it neatly back into the box.

Because someone else starts wondering:

Why do I have to be this way?

Who said?

Why?

What happens if I don't?

Who benefits?

And why does my freedom make you angry?

Oh dear.

There goes the furniture.

The great secret is that rigid systems don't necessarily fear the individual.

They fear the example.

One person stepping outside the line proves the line can be crossed.

One person surviving outside the category proves the category wasn't the universe.

One person refusing their assigned role creates the horrifying possibility that other people might realise they have choices too.

And suddenly the problem isn't:

“What are trans people doing to society?”

The problem becomes:

“Why does society require everyone to be this particular way in the first place?”

That is the dangerous question.

So yes.

I was wrong.

Trans people are dangerous.

We are dangerous to compulsory conformity.

Dangerous to inherited hierarchies.

Dangerous to authoritarian certainty.

Dangerous to the idea that bodies come with political instructions attached.

Dangerous to the notion that identity is something assigned once, stamped on the forehead, filed in triplicate, and never questioned again.

We are dangerous because we keep demonstrating that human beings are messy.

Wonderful.

Contradictory.

Uncooperative.

Impossible to sort perfectly into little administrative boxes.

And if your entire social order requires human beings to remain inside those boxes forever, then perhaps the existential threat isn't the person climbing out.

Perhaps the existential threat is the fact that the box was never the world.

It was only a box.

And somebody just opened the lid.

Sorry about that.

Well.

Not that sorry.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #NonBinary #GenderFreedom #FuckThePatriarchy #QueerLiberation #ResistConformity #SmashTheBoxes #BeDangerous #RadicalQueer

This post starts with a warning. A terribly important warning that you probably don't expect, at least not from me. But hear me out:

Trans people are extremely fucking dangerous!

We are dangerous in the way that a cat is dangerous to a carefully arranged bookshelf.

We are dangerous in the way that a question is dangerous to a very bad answer.

We are dangerous in the way that a tiny stone is dangerous to a machine designed on the assumption that nothing will ever get stuck in the gears.

We are dangerous because we demonstrate something profoundly inconvenient:

the boxes are not laws of nature.

Someone drew them.

Someone named them.

Someone decided who goes where.

Someone built an entire social architecture around pretending that the boxes had been handed down from the heavens, carved into the chromosomes, engraved into the bones, and personally notarised by God.

And then along comes some queer little creature with purple hair going,

“Hmm. I don’t think this box fits.”

Catastrophe!

Civilisation trembles!

Someone phones the newspapers.

Someone demands a parliamentary inquiry into the alarming existence of a person who bought the wrong socks.

Because gender, apparently, is supposed to be terribly simple.

You are assigned a category.

The category comes with instructions.

The instructions come with expectations.

The expectations come with consequences.

And everyone is supposed to nod politely and spend the next eighty years pretending this arrangement was inevitable.

Except humans are gloriously terrible at obeying arbitrary rules forever.

We transition.

We question.

We experiment.

We refuse.

We discover ourselves.

We change our names.

We change our clothes.

We change our pronouns.

We change our lives.

And sometimes we look at a rule that has been treated as sacred for centuries and say:

“That’s a funny-looking rule.”

This is where things become politically inconvenient.

Because patriarchy doesn't merely say that people have genders.

It says gender tells us who should lead, who should obey, who should provide, who should nurture, who should speak, who should remain quiet, who should be powerful, who should be pretty, who should be tough, and who should bloody well know their place.

Authoritarian religion can turn that into theology:

Someone else gets to tell you what you are.

Capitalism can turn it into administration:

Someone else gets to categorise you, market you, insure you, employ you, regulate you, and sell things to you on the basis of that category.

And authoritarian politics can turn it into a particularly ugly little demand:

Stay where we put you.

Trans people answer:

No.

Not because every trans person has read Gramsci before breakfast.

Not because we have all assembled a revolutionary committee beneath the local kebab shop.

Sometimes we're just trying to figure out why our reflection looks wrong.

Sometimes we're just trying to survive.

Sometimes we're just trying to buy a fucking skirt without somebody writing a newspaper column about it.

But our existence nevertheless demonstrates something revolutionary:

identity is not necessarily obedience.

And once that idea exists, you can't put it neatly back into the box.

Because someone else starts wondering:

Why do I have to be this way?

Who said?

Why?

What happens if I don't?

Who benefits?

And why does my freedom make you angry?

Oh dear.

There goes the furniture.

The great secret is that rigid systems don't necessarily fear the individual.

They fear the example.

One person stepping outside the line proves the line can be crossed.

One person surviving outside the category proves the category wasn't the universe.

One person refusing their assigned role creates the horrifying possibility that other people might realise they have choices too.

And suddenly the problem isn't:

“What are trans people doing to society?”

The problem becomes:

“Why does society require everyone to be this particular way in the first place?”

That is the dangerous question.

So yes.

I was wrong.

Trans people are dangerous.

We are dangerous to compulsory conformity.

Dangerous to inherited hierarchies.

Dangerous to authoritarian certainty.

Dangerous to the idea that bodies come with political instructions attached.

Dangerous to the notion that identity is something assigned once, stamped on the forehead, filed in triplicate, and never questioned again.

We are dangerous because we keep demonstrating that human beings are messy.

Wonderful.

Contradictory.

Uncooperative.

Impossible to sort perfectly into little administrative boxes.

And if your entire social order requires human beings to remain inside those boxes forever, then perhaps the existential threat isn't the person climbing out.

Perhaps the existential threat is the fact that the box was never the world.

It was only a box.

And somebody just opened the lid.

Sorry about that.

Well.

Not that sorry.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #NonBinary #GenderFreedom #FuckThePatriarchy #QueerLiberation #ResistConformity #SmashTheBoxes #BeDangerous #RadicalQueer

This post starts with a warning. A terribly important warning that you probably don't expect, at least not from me. But hear me out:

Trans people are extremely fucking dangerous!

We are dangerous in the way that a cat is dangerous to a carefully arranged bookshelf.

We are dangerous in the way that a question is dangerous to a very bad answer.

We are dangerous in the way that a tiny stone is dangerous to a machine designed on the assumption that nothing will ever get stuck in the gears.

We are dangerous because we demonstrate something profoundly inconvenient:

the boxes are not laws of nature.

Someone drew them.

Someone named them.

Someone decided who goes where.

Someone built an entire social architecture around pretending that the boxes had been handed down from the heavens, carved into the chromosomes, engraved into the bones, and personally notarised by God.

And then along comes some queer little creature with purple hair going,

“Hmm. I don’t think this box fits.”

Catastrophe!

Civilisation trembles!

Someone phones the newspapers.

Someone demands a parliamentary inquiry into the alarming existence of a person who bought the wrong socks.

Because gender, apparently, is supposed to be terribly simple.

You are assigned a category.

The category comes with instructions.

The instructions come with expectations.

The expectations come with consequences.

And everyone is supposed to nod politely and spend the next eighty years pretending this arrangement was inevitable.

Except humans are gloriously terrible at obeying arbitrary rules forever.

We transition.

We question.

We experiment.

We refuse.

We discover ourselves.

We change our names.

We change our clothes.

We change our pronouns.

We change our lives.

And sometimes we look at a rule that has been treated as sacred for centuries and say:

“That’s a funny-looking rule.”

This is where things become politically inconvenient.

Because patriarchy doesn't merely say that people have genders.

It says gender tells us who should lead, who should obey, who should provide, who should nurture, who should speak, who should remain quiet, who should be powerful, who should be pretty, who should be tough, and who should bloody well know their place.

Authoritarian religion can turn that into theology:

Someone else gets to tell you what you are.

Capitalism can turn it into administration:

Someone else gets to categorise you, market you, insure you, employ you, regulate you, and sell things to you on the basis of that category.

And authoritarian politics can turn it into a particularly ugly little demand:

Stay where we put you.

Trans people answer:

No.

Not because every trans person has read Gramsci before breakfast.

Not because we have all assembled a revolutionary committee beneath the local kebab shop.

Sometimes we're just trying to figure out why our reflection looks wrong.

Sometimes we're just trying to survive.

Sometimes we're just trying to buy a fucking skirt without somebody writing a newspaper column about it.

But our existence nevertheless demonstrates something revolutionary:

identity is not necessarily obedience.

And once that idea exists, you can't put it neatly back into the box.

Because someone else starts wondering:

Why do I have to be this way?

Who said?

Why?

What happens if I don't?

Who benefits?

And why does my freedom make you angry?

Oh dear.

There goes the furniture.

The great secret is that rigid systems don't necessarily fear the individual.

They fear the example.

One person stepping outside the line proves the line can be crossed.

One person surviving outside the category proves the category wasn't the universe.

One person refusing their assigned role creates the horrifying possibility that other people might realise they have choices too.

And suddenly the problem isn't:

“What are trans people doing to society?”

The problem becomes:

“Why does society require everyone to be this particular way in the first place?”

That is the dangerous question.

So yes.

I was wrong.

Trans people are dangerous.

We are dangerous to compulsory conformity.

Dangerous to inherited hierarchies.

Dangerous to authoritarian certainty.

Dangerous to the idea that bodies come with political instructions attached.

Dangerous to the notion that identity is something assigned once, stamped on the forehead, filed in triplicate, and never questioned again.

We are dangerous because we keep demonstrating that human beings are messy.

Wonderful.

Contradictory.

Uncooperative.

Impossible to sort perfectly into little administrative boxes.

And if your entire social order requires human beings to remain inside those boxes forever, then perhaps the existential threat isn't the person climbing out.

Perhaps the existential threat is the fact that the box was never the world.

It was only a box.

And somebody just opened the lid.

Sorry about that.

Well.

Not that sorry.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #NonBinary #GenderFreedom #FuckThePatriarchy #QueerLiberation #ResistConformity #SmashTheBoxes #BeDangerous #RadicalQueer

In those days, before the internet, before endocrinology, before the words transgender and gender identity had entered the languages of men, there were those who knew themselves to be other than what the world had named them.

And they were many.

In the beginning, there were the gender-diverse people of ancient civilizations: priests, warriors, healers, lovers, servants, rulers and rebels. Some were revered. Some were feared. Some were merely allowed to exist.

And the centuries passed.

Kingdoms rose and fell. Empires were built and burned. Religions declared what people were permitted to be. Physicians invented new words for old experiences. Governments invented new laws for policing them.

Still, the people remained.

Then came the twentieth century, and with it new knowledge. Physicians learned that bodies could be altered. Hormones could be administered. Names could be changed. Lives could be lived.

And for a brief moment, it seemed that perhaps the ancient question might finally have an answer:

“What if we simply let people become who they know themselves to be?”

But the enemies of freedom did not sleep.

They gathered in laboratories, churches, parliaments, newspapers and television studios. They forged accusations. They declared that trans people were a modern invention, despite the inconvenient existence of thousands of years of history.

And so began the Great Erasure.

They took the ancient records and said, “Those weren't trans people.”

They took the gender-diverse people of other cultures and said, “Those don't count.”

They took the pioneers of the twentieth century and said, “Those were merely confused.”

They took Stonewall and said, “They weren't there.”

They took the people standing beside them and said, “You have never existed.”

Yet the trans people endured.

They endured the laws.
They endured the ridicule.
They endured the doctors.
They endured the police.
They endured the newspapers.
They endured the people insisting that their existence was somehow historically impossible.

And still they stood.

For history is a stubborn thing.

You may burn a book.
You may alter a photograph.
You may rename a person.
You may pretend an entire generation never existed.

But you cannot make the people disappear simply by refusing to remember them.

And so the story continues.

Not because trans people suddenly appeared.

But because, after thousands of years of being told they were impossible, they finally became impossible to ignore.

#TransHistory #TransRights #TransPeopleAreHere #QueerHistory #LGBTQHistory #Pride #Stonewall #TransLiberation #HistoryMatters #StopTransErasure #TransIsNotNew #QueerJoy #TransJoy #Solidarity