I wish that people didn't hate trans women so much. Not in love with the fact that I can't express myself honestly and openly outside of my home without the fear of being attacked or screamed at. And it's overall not ideal that the LGBT community is comfortable mistreating me and my sisters. And then if we react to the violence, the injustice or the scapegoating, we're made to feel unreasonable, and then suddenly everyone looks at you like you are a monster, that you're violent, that maybe everyone else is right to fear and hate you.
It gets worse if you are autistic of course. Then on top of everything else you also probably have trouble reading people, and being read by people. And because you are an autistic trans woman, everyone else is probably going to assume intentional malice. Even if they understand everything a person can understand about being autistic or a trans woman, they may still opt to punish you in some material or social way for your blunder, without ever telling you that you've blundered until it's far too late.
And if you are a poor trans woman, it is worse still. Because you probably aren't going to be able to afford to look as feminine as the world demand of women in general and trans women in specific. And if you do not conform to the standards of middle-upper class cisgender womanhood, then you are in even more danger than you already are.
And if you dare to be beautiful, to be sexy or sexual or to enjoy the any sexual identity as a trans woman, the danger is different and potentially much much more brutal.
Black trans women have it especially hard. I am not black and listening to the words of black trans women makes me sad, and angry, and sometimes they fill me with dread or hopelessness. Other times I am filled with courage, and I'm not sure why. And what I know about being a black trans woman is so little compared to what there is to know.
Which makes me think of other things I am ignorant of. How many trans people of the world have had their cultures and languages so colonized that the words they are compelled to use for themselves, man, woman, nonbinary, homosexual, bisexual, transgender, are like acid on their tongue, because they know that the identity they would otherwise have has been erased or criminalized by colonizers who tried their very best to destroy their way of life. I don't know how many. Too many.
How many of us have been murdered, how many have died to aids or coronavirus or by a weapon, by callousness and cruelty for one bigotry or another on top of the bigotry we face as trans women. Too many.
There are so many of us, almost every kind of person can be a trans woman, and many people of many kinds are. And I've never met a single one who isn't living a life bombarded by violence and terror.
I am so tired. I'm tired of being hated, I am tired of being feared and afraid, tired of the stress, the hopelessness, the anger, the scapegoating, I'm tired of being used in the politics of people who will never care about me and who probably want to kill me. I'm tired of being ignored by allies and by people who say they care about me and by my supposed comrades in the community.
I am so fucking tired.
I don't know why I have typed this. Maybe because I'm tired, maybe because I know that for all I do know of our struggles, there is so much more I do not know, that my relative privilege protects me from, and that makes me even more tired.
I hope that tomorrow the world is a kinder place, and that the people in the world love me and my black, indigenous, poor, disabled, depressed, homeless, sick, ill, pained, autistic, transgender sisters more than they do today. That would not fix the world, no one thing can. But it would be a start.
