Seeing the post by atiredtrans urging people to not just listen to Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, in addition to white lesbians and white bi women acting like Janelle has neeeeever been gnc because their only stuff they know is DC which is the first time she’s showed herself in parts of it being more feminine, reminds me of the fact that white LGBT people who say they support LGBT poc really only… Perform this allyship with LGBT poc.
Here’s the thing. When LGBT poc ask support from white LGBT people or for them to confront their racism, we’re not asking for you to ONLY extend any sort of compassion or interest towards those of us who’re gay/bi/trans.
You’re white. No matter how gay or trans you are, you’re exactly just as white as your cishet counterparts. Most of you say you understand that but you really don’t. If you did, you’d understand that working on your racism doesn’t simply end with LGBT poc, it’s about you in regards to ALL poc. When you stop at LGBT poc, it demonstrates that you think your whiteness is cancelled out by your gayness/transness and thus you should only give a shit about LGBT poc because with us the field is leveled up in that regard by us being gay/bi/trans.
Your whiteness weights JUST as much in regards to LGBT poc as it does in regards to cishet poc. Your whiteness doesn’t stop benefiting you when the poc in front of you is cis and straight. You’re JUST as dangerous and oppressive to cishet poc as you are to LGBT poc. You aren’t less white in relation to cishet poc than you are in relation to LGBT poc.
Cishet poc, while entirely capable of being exactly as homo/transphobic as cishet white people, don’t level their social power as cishet people over LGBT white people, they do it over LGBT poc. That doesn’t mean that they do not inflict their homo/transphobia on white people, of course not, but it does mean that the exertion of power there is not at all comparable to the one exerted by cishet white people. And when it comes to ANY form of abuse, it is a statistic truth that people mostly inflict it upon those of their own community, so cishet poc concentrate the vast majority of their homo/transphobic violence on LGBT poc.
Cishet poc fear you, more than you’d ever think, because race is a system in a way homo/transphobia isn’t, and the exact same way that white women, white poor people and white disabled people voted for Trump in their majority because they align more with their whiteness than with their womanhood/disability/social class, white LGBT people also prioritize their whiteness over their gayness/transness. That’s why you have white supremacist LGBT white people, even though white supremacists in general are also extremely homo/transphobic. You guys KNOW that ultimately whiteness gives you tremendous power that being cishet doesn’t grant to poc, although it does give them some.
It’s why, too, if you ask around, LGBT poc often receive more support from cishet poc than from white LGBT people. It’s why Janet Mock mentions that when she’s at any event, cis woc show up MUCH more than trans white women.
When you only extend your support to poc who’re gay/bi/trans, this is what you’re telling us: your interest in combating racism is conditional. You only give a shit when you have something in common with the poc in question. Which is why so many of you who preach about being allies to us immediately turn to racist abuse whenever we prioritize race over gayness/transness. You see our gayness/transess as the only bit of who we are that’s worth your time, effort or attention.
What’s more, is that at the end of the day, the people in our immediate communities, from day one, are other poc regardless of if they’re LGBT or not, and the increased rates of poverty and violence we face are directly tied to the rates of poverty and violence poc as a whole face. As long as all poc face material violence and disenfranchisement, LGBT poc will continue to do so. LGBT poc’s conditions are intrinsically tied to those of poc as a whole. If something benefits white LGBT people it won’t necessarily benefit us, but whatever benefits all poc, WILL.
You cannot expect to make this world safer for LGBT poc without making this world safer for ALL poc. You just can’t.
I understand prioritizing LGBT poc above cishet poc, I really do, but you can’t cherry-pick to which poc you’ll give your support or not. You’re white, you’re not in a position that could ever justify such a thing unless idk, they’re a terf/a rapist/an abuser/etc.
You either support ALL of us, or you support none.
jbbartram-illu
dededos
germansingergirl
kianamaiart
annaxmalina
andulkaphoto
