#transliberation — Public Fediverse posts

Transphobic gay men are betraying us.

Not because gay men are somehow required to agree with every political position held by everyone under the rainbow. Disagreement is perfectly fine.

What is not fine is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with people who want to strip another queer minority of their rights, dignity, history, and humanity.

And that is exactly what some transphobic gay men are doing.

They rewrite Stonewall as though trans people weren't there. They erase trans women and gender-nonconforming people from queer history. They suddenly treat people who have been fighting alongside queer communities for decades as dangerous interlopers who somehow wandered into their movement.

And then there is the language.

“Biological males.”

“Men in dresses.”

“Groomers.”

“Predators.”

“Degenerates.”

“An ideology.”

“An invasion.”

“Protect the children.”

Sometimes they even start borrowing the vocabulary of outright fascists: talking about “purging” people, “cleansing” movements, “defending society” from supposedly dangerous minorities, or portraying trans people as some sinister ideological conspiracy infiltrating queer communities.

And when you point out what they are doing, there comes the inevitable:

“But I'm gay!”

Yes.

And?

Being a member of a persecuted minority does not grant you a magical certificate of moral superiority. A gay man can be transphobic. He can be racist. He can be misogynistic. He can support fascists. He can participate in the persecution of another minority.

Queer history has never been a morality play in which everyone wearing a rainbow automatically becomes a good person.

And that is precisely why this makes me so angry.

Because gay men know what it feels like when society decides that you are disgusting. They know what it means to be called unnatural, diseased, dangerous, corrupting, perverted. They know what it is like when politicians turn your existence into a public debate and strangers feel entitled to tell you that you shouldn't exist.

And yet some have apparently decided that the correct response to surviving that experience is to help inflict it on someone else.

That isn't courage.

It isn't “critical thinking.”

It isn't “protecting gay rights.”

And it certainly isn't solidarity.

It is the oldest trick in the fascist playbook:

First, decide who belongs.
Then decide who belongs less.
Then decide who doesn't belong at all.

And I have absolutely no intention of helping anyone build that staircase.

Trans people are part of queer history.

We fought at Stonewall.

We cared and nursed during the AIDS crisis.

We marched alongside other queer people.

We loved, protected, cared, and fought with and for our connunity.

We are not an embarrassing footnote to queer history that can be edited out because somebody suddenly discovered respectability politics.

We are part of the family.

And when someone tries to erase us from queer history while simultaneously describing us with the language of fascists, I am not impressed by their rainbow credentials.

I'm looking at what they do.

What they do tells me what they stand for.

And I will stand with the people being thrown under the bus.

Every. Single. Time. 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

#TransRightsAreHumanRights #QueerSolidarity #LGBTQIA #NoTransphobia #NoFascism #QueerHistory #Stonewall #Pride #TransLiberation #SolidarityForever

I really need to stop reading all the trans-exclusionary stuff. It makes me angry. It makes me depressed. Frankly, my nervous system has filed a formal complaint.

Unfortunately, I also feel the need to document it. Screenshots. Dates. Names. Statements. The whole miserable little dossier.

Because one day, when the political weather changes, some of these people will suddenly insist they were always on our side. They will say they supported trans people, that they were merely asking questions, that they were always fighting for equality.

And I will remember.

Not because I enjoy keeping score. Not because I want revenge.

(I do enjoy both of these things, but...)

But because history has a nasty habit of being rewritten by people who know perfectly well what they said when it mattered.

I will not let that happen. Neither should you.

For future historians. For accountability. And because apparently somebody has to keep the fucking receipts.

#TransRightsAreHumanRights #TransLiberation #TransHistory #QueerHistory #NoErasure #KeepTheReceipts #NeverForget #LGBTQIA #Solidarity

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