I’m really sick and tired of colonizers forcing the binary of trans vs cis on Black and Brown ppl. not only do all of us exist outside this binary by virtue of our race, ethnicity, and culture, regardless of our personal identities, but there are many of us who consciously do not identify as either cis or trans. those who are forced into the cis role by colonizers do not identify as cis, and thus are not cis. our gender is not limited to cis or trans, and the commonly accepted definitions of both terms are exclusive of our cultures. I have said many times I was not assigned a gender, so how can I identify or not identify with a gender I was never assigned? my gender is not defined by what was or is forced on me, that’s colonial and imperial. nobody dictates my identity but myself. I’m sick of the way that trans colonizers dehumanize and degrade Black and Brown people who do not identify as trans or cis just because they want them to. Black and Brown people who inherently exist outside colonial gender constructs and terms are deemed “oppressors” for not forcefully being identified as trans. trans colonizers delude themselves into thinking they are victims and somehow oppressed by Black and Brown people. the amount of times I have been silenced and degraded for not identifying myself as the particular colonial terms demanded by trans colonizers. if we do not identify ourselves with these terms we are dehumanized and discarded and treated as worthless, our opinions are gaslit and invalidated and spoken over. the term cis is utterly useless unless you are pretending that race is not central to gender and sexuality. cis means you identify with a gender that was forced on you, which is in line with the colonialism and imperialism which has forced English and colonial genders and sexualities and terms and constructs onto Black and Brown people. how can Black and Brown people identify with genders forced on us? why are we deemed oppressors who victimize the very race that oppresses us, just because we don’t fit their gender constructs and rules? this very issue applies to non binary and non man. Black and Brown people are not binary by virtue of our race, white people ARE the binary because white gender is the binary because whiteness is the binary. white queers are the binary. they oppress Black and Brown people of all identifies yet have convinced themselves we somehow oppress them. how can we be non men when our native languages do not know the words non and man? how can we be defined by what we are not, by a language we do not speak, by a culture we do not belong to?
