What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? - Audre Lorde
I have a hard time parsing the concept of trans genocide. Whenever I think about it for too long, I end up staring down the reality that I was brought up during a trans genocide. That is a fact I've ignored for too long, and it's time for me to write about it.
This topic is difficult. It's hard for me to even just think about the violence that was enacted against trans people (not to mention other marginalized groups) where I was raised because I'm still traumatized by it. Even as a middle class white person, I couldn't escape this violence. It was ingrained in our culture.
There weren't trans people where I grew up. I never saw any trans adults and certainly not trans children. The only two out trans people I met before moving were seniors at my highschool when I was a freshman. I remember the fear in their eyes as they walked through the cafeteria. They were alert at all times; they didn't have the luxury of relaxation. I remember a teacher pointedly deadnaming one of them. I remember the fear in the student's voice when he corrected the teacher. I felt my classmate's fear, because I feared the teacher too.
Every institution I interacted with was radically opposed to my continued existence as a queer person. Most individuals were too. It's impossible for me to communicate the violence and trauma I saw at that time, but I'll attempt to put it succinctly. There is no trans life or livingness where I am from. Coming out as trans in that town would have been, for me, the equivalent of a death sentence.
I do mean that literally; I probably would be physically dead by now, most likely by my own hands. If not, being out would mean social, economic, cultural, political, and public death. Hell, even being out as trans in my current progressive community feels only a stone's throw from death.
Cis people, I want you to be aware of the fact that genocide can seem mundane to the people who are not its targets. Cis (white abled Christian heterosexual) people where I'm from lived perfectly mediocre lives tied to the so called "American Dream." They were stifled, but they seemed okay with that.
When you see totalitarian violence your entire life, you become accustomed to it. That applies to those enacting it, receiving it, and those who stand by and say nothing. No matter where you stand, you dehumanize someone, which is traumatizing. And so every cis person in my hometown was simultaneously complicit in transphobic violence and traumatized by it. It's likely you, dear cis reader, are both of those things too.
For trans people, especially liberal trans activists, I need you to realize that genocide is ongoing in this country, and that every major institution of our day perpetuates it. I am writing this the day that Florida passed a ban on gender affirming healthcare for minors. This event horrified trans people across the country, and brought back into the discourse 'the possibility of trans genocide.' The genesis of this article lies in those conversations.
The rhetoric used by policy makers in Florida earlier today was genuinely disgusting and genocidal, but let me be clear: trans genocide isn't just when minors can't recieve hormone replacement therapy (HRT) via state approved means. In fact, the idea that trans genocide begins when HRT is banned by the state is problematic. Only the most privileged trans minors are able to receive HRT, and they nearly universally come from backgrounds where trans death, erasure, and anti-trans violence are not omnipresent.
Trans genocide isn't solely prevention of trans people from medically transitioning. It is the erasure of trans people from public life. The main methodology for erasure among those who promote trans genocide is to kill trans people, physically, politically, and culturally.
Strategies against trans genocide cannot keep centering the trans people who experience the least violence. It blinds us to the daily realities experienced by most trans people. As an organizer of trans youth, I see that often liberal LGBT+ orgs only work with white binary trans youth with accepting families. They are then put into the spotlight to speak for the supposed monolith of trans youth. Although I respect these youth, they are incapable of speaking for the closeted majority of trans youth.
If you want to stop a genocide, listen to the dead and dying. For us, that means two things. The first is we need to learn from those who did and didn't survive genocides in the past. They hold incredible wisdom in their stories of strength and resistance. The second is that we need to radically center trans youth who are BIPOC, Jewish, disabled, and, perhaps most importantly, those who don't have accepting families or institutional support. They are our dead and dying.
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