Maybe If...

Guest Post by Vanessa Victoria.   This was originally on her Facebook page, and it needed to be shared and signal boosted.

Maybe if…

Maybe if every man who has ever hired a trans escort, if every boy who has ever beat off to trans porn, if the millions who fetishize our bodies, who press us against hotel windows, who lay with us in our beds, if the men who adore me and my sisters, but only behind closed doors, would STAND THE FUCK UP AND SPEAK OUT…maybe 17 Transgender Women, wouldn't have gotten murdered in 2015.

Maybe if all of you who read this, our allies and friends and colleagues and family, would call out when others make jokes at our expense, even when we’re not around, if you’d tell advertisers and producers and journalists and writers and comics that you’re not okay with them making trans women nothing but the punchline of jokes or tragic tossaways, that you know us, that we’re not disposable….maybe groups of people would stop feeling so free to harass me and my sisters, maybe crowds wouldn’t just laugh when a man spits at me, or just watch when two young men chase me down the street yelling “shemale”…maybe if you ALL stood up and said enough, maybe a young woman just being herself wouldn’t be beat to death in the streets of the supposedly best place on earth to just be yourself.

Maybe if all the gay men who act as if equality means marriage, if all the white feminists who only serve those that look like them, if all the queers who drop “TWOC” like a shibboleth but don’t know or talk to or walk beside any actual trans women of color…maybe if all of you saw what was happening here and how your actions allow it, how every moment of silence, of waiting for people of color to start the conversation about race …maybe these women could have enjoyed a few more years of being beautiful among us.

It happened because our men won’t admit they love us, because our friends aren’t speaking out against the thousand little dehumanizing actions of others, because our own “LGBT” community isn’t comfortable talking about race and class.

This has to change. Now!
Vanessa Victoria
‪#‎TransisBeautiful‬ ‪#‎StoptheShade‬ ‪#‎TransLivesMatter‬ ‪#‎GirlsLikeUs‬