Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Own Your Power - Get Out Of The House

Image result for Black Trans people walking in the streets
We've lost three trans women in the span of a week and five this month and I can understand why people would feel anxious, scared and reluctant to be out in public. But what can you do short term to push back against the anti-trans violence being aimed at us?

Be visible.

Image result for Black women  walking in the streets
Step outside your homes.  Be visible.  Even if you are just stepping outside for 30 minutes to go to a local store or the mall, taking a short walk in your neighborhood, hanging out with your home girls at some restaurant or coffee shop and go back home after you do so.

Being visible in this case is a trans revolutionary act.   Our opponents and haters want us to be scared to go out and be in public spaces that we have a constitutional and human right to be in.

Don't give in to that fear.  Defy it.


Coming up with the long range strategies, tactics and policies that we'll need to implement to reduce anti-trans violence will be something that we can't do overnight, and falls in the category of a long term project.

Image result for Black women  walking in the streets
We must be cognizant of the reality as trans women that walking around in a female body on Planet Earth will always have issues attached to it and adjust accordingly.  We also have to deal with the reality that because of systemic anti-Blackness, Black womanhood has always been demonized and under attack.

Those are issues that we'll have to work on along with our cis Black feminine counterparts and our allies.  But we can do something right now to take back our power to deal with the anxiety that we feel in the wake of these latest trans murders and it's deceptively simple.

Be out and visible   Be your unapologetically trans self in public, and bump the haters.
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This is the best way in the short term you can honor the people we've lost to anti-trans violence.  

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