Three things have happened in my local trans community in the past month:
A transmasc drag queen made a call-out post about how a newly-out local trans woman is a sexual predator. (The sexual offence was that, 6 years ago, before she came out, she was at a drag show with the drag queen (who was her friend at the time) and joked that the drag queen's makeup looked a bit like semen.) The trans woman spiralled, got drunk, got hit by a car, and is currently in hospital.
A newly-out trans woman and a trans man met at a local trans support group. They decided to meet up again at a local pub. She apparently asked questions about his transition that he considered invasive, and in a voice that was too loud and risked outing him to other people in the venue. She now faces being banned from the support group.
The only trans woman who volunteers to run that support group is being kicked off the team by the trans man who is in charge of it. The reason is that she once told the guy in charge to "stop talking" when he was giving her several instructions at once, and also that a different transmasc volunteer has said they find her "creepy" and don't want to be alone with her.
All three trans women are autistic, isolated, and don't have much practice with irl socialising. Maybe they're a little bit loud, maybe a little bit abrasive, maybe they misjudge the appropriateness of sexual comment to a friend at a drag show, maybe they're too keen to make a new friend that they get excitable and speak too loud and ask too many questions, maybe they get overstimulated by being told too many instructions and need you to stop for a second to give them space.
Maybe their behaviour that you consider weird and unsettling is actually a trauma response to a childhood and adolescence of isolation and bullying.
And you know what the funny thing is? I have been sexually harassed at a drag show by the drag queen in (1), who was performing and making sexual jokes about various people in the audience. I have been in a public place with the trans man in (2) while he asked me loud invasive questions about my HRT regimen and about child abuse I suffered. And I have been misgendered and deadnamed repeatedly by the trans man in (3).
And do you know what I did about any of these things? Nothing, beyond saying "Hey, I'd appreciate if you don't do that next time 👍 No hard feelings 🙂". Because, not only am I aware that people make mistakes, and I consider trans men and transmascs a vulnerable demographic and it would be a totally unjust overreaction from me to attempt to socially isolate them for these offences.
But also, I don't have the social power to do anything about these things anyway, even if I wanted to. My normal response to experiencing even serious abuse at a queer event is to simply stop attending it, isolating myself, and perhaps telling a few close friends about it. Because I already know that my complaints will not be taken seriously.
Trans women are being isolated irl every day for behaviours that other demographics can do with impunity. They are not given any grace, any benefit of the doubt, any second chances, and complaints about even the smallest offence will be taken seriously and escalated. And they will not be able to fight back, because a trans woman who fights back is just confirming all the bigoted assumptions that the wider world already has about her.
There's an aspect blackness adds to the scrutiny. We are expected to be infallible & omnipresent or we will be babied or criminalized to often far more life threatening degrees. Accused of things that sound awfully like the stuff republicans (or our oppressors in general) call us but from the mouths of other (white) trans women or the rhetoric, sham trials & accountability rituals that now and hysterically get us lynched and falsely convicted as black people.
We are not be taken seriously, are gaslit, asked to be humble, advocate in a “more respectful” way for ourselves or say nothing, spoken for or against but never spoken with or at, and punished, victim blamed, or deemed lesser & incapable. Whiter voices will be seen & heard over us. White people speaking on antiblackness & other marginalized experiences or the triumphs & struggles they come with are uplifted over black women talking about antiblackness or those same things. We are asked to prove ourselves more. Never to have fun or make mistakes and be precise.
We aren't allowed to even speak about our own oppression. Or fuck up or enjoy things. It's not a luxury we have and we have to fight so much to the point of exhaustion or death to achieve a slither of peace. It's why so many black trans women are left to do our own thing, leave or burn redundant bridges, even if it "breaks solidarity" or something. Because often not doing so has gotten us erased regardless or has had deadly repercussions. Amongst the homicides of trans women Black Death’s are a significant number after all. We seek community, and unlike our marginalized settler counterparts who can go to a bar or school and see the most of themselves in one room as a majority, the most of us in one room we see in one room (especially in the south) is jail or a hospital.
For me personally I saw first hand during the early parts of the pandemic (and too in my childhood), how we are allowed to fall and die and officers or staff will take their time, holding us back from helping each other or restrain someone who wasn’t a threat, and then move on with insidious levels of apathy.
“What solidarity?" is the question we ask because it was seemingly never there legitimately to begin with and like our labour and skin was just something desirable and to exploit as a means for many to try to reform, assimilate, and secure a position in this society built on our enslavement and death. The society & economic order many "comrades" claim they stand against. Yet our existence is policed, slandered as predatory, childish, or “narcissistic”, (in quotes because of the ablism that often comes on top transmisogynoir) and being divisive then the consequences will always be more deadly for us. Our lives have value.
(A lack luster experience offline and terrible ones online [especially with the settler left] are in part why I sorta accepted defeat personally or not even bother honestly. I do my own thing because noone is watching out for me or us. We will get accused of selfishness or immaturity regardless. Isolated the hardest to be the blackest of black sheep. Whiteness is a hell of a drug yet it's like breathing for many. Any criticism, especially around transmisogynoir or racism, is treating like you're being asked by us to suffocate, or as an attempt to choke you out, or as based from some impossibility completely made up in our heads because you read Fanon, have a black friend or are color blind and marginalized to so you "can't possibly" be racist after “holding us accountable” for trumped up BS or not actually hearing us, or accusing us of “avoiding responsibility” for when we leave or understandably cry or lash out before doing so. Your racism isn’t imaginary to us, it’s invisible to you and you crucify us for it with projections, pride, and manufactured harassment and grievances.)
