Every time I read a book on abolition i sit here like “damn what people do to transfemmes really is just a direct reproduction of the carceral state as a subset of white supremacy and the liberation of transfemmes is directly tied to abolitionism”
“In the late 1600s, officials there legally mandated that every white man between sixteen and sixty join the militia, and legally empowered every white person to arrest, punish, and return runaways. White civilians were not only encouraged to monitor and control Black people, but were *required* to do so—sometimes under the threat of being fined. The government criminalized people for *not* policing.”
—Derecka Purnell, Becoming Abolitionists
Directly compare this to the current culture in predominantly US American spaces of constant surveillance of transfemmes to punish us the moment we slip up, once we prove we aren’t “one of the good ones”. It’s a direct evolution of this same colonial expectation to the point it’s done “naturally” even when not directly expected after generations of it being part of the US’s social contract.
Trans women ain’t gettin free as long as we live in a carcerally focused society, and the liberation of trans women ain’t happening without accompanied racial—especially Black—liberation and abolishment of slavery, including prisons and other carceral locales.