Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Before today's quotations, an essay.

Today is the International Transgender Day of Visibility. It's meant to be a day to celebrate trans people and trans joy (specifically in contrast to the solemn Transgender Day of Rememberance in November), to remind everyone we're regular people too, not monsters or stereotypes or "a lifestyle" or a philosophical hypothetical or fetish objects or tragic figures to pity or symbols of courage to use as inspiration-porn. Just people; whole people, as valuable as other people. Like other people, some of us are amazing, some are unlucky, some are beautiful, and we all need community -- are part of your communities.

This year some of us are feeling a little too 'seen' and wonder if we can have a Day of Invisibility instead to escape that gaze -- I've seen four or five tweets making comments like that this week. But the version of us being Examined And Debated in the media, in legislatures, in debates about sports ... aren't really us. They're cartoon versions of us, or straw-trans to argue against or boogie-trans to scapegoat and make people afraid of. We, the transgender people, are being painted over for others to project what they're afraid of or what they find politically useful onto. So the paradox here is that we need real visibility -- see us, as we are -- more than ever, but simultaneously it's an unusually dangerous time to stand up and draw attention.

We need our allies, cisgender friends who already see us and know us, to be guarding our backs. Some of you might have missed the number of states with bills targeting trans people this year, mostly aimed at trans children, banning affirming medical care, banning participation in school sports, framing supportive parents as child abusers. Or how the right wing's use of recycled homphobic language & accusations from the 1980s and 1990s has gotten around to the 'portray trans people as a threat to children' step. (Actually, they're trying to ressurect that one for the rest of the letters in LGBTQIA+ too, thanks to debate about the Florida "don't say gay" law.) Most of you have probably missed the attempts to redefine "trans child" to extend to age 25, for the purpose of denying medical transition.

This is a precarious time for trans people and will likely get worse before it gets better.

And now here are some quotes.

"Another reminder of the violence trans people are at risk of every single day. It's a daily barrage of obscenely violent threats and wishes for our murder.

"People in power want us dead. Simple as that.

"I'm not being hyperbolic at all here: conservative rhetoric about trans people in the US recently has sounded disturbingly similar to rhetoric often employed shortly before a genocide."

-- Commander Stephanie Sterling (JimSterling), 2022-03-22 [Nota bene: the first tweet quote-tweets another that includes a screen-shot of the headline+photo from an article about Mississippi Republican former state senator and gubernatorial candidate Robert Foster saying "I think they need to be lined up against (a) wall before a firing squad to be sent to an early judgment," which he doubled down on the following day.]

"The far right is attempting to use legislation across the US for the sole purpose of forcing LGBTQ people into the closet for fear of facing spurious lawsuits.

"They believe if people are too afraid to be openly queer, future queer kids won't realize they're queer.

[...]

"But also by ensuring that straight cis kids never learn about queer identities means those kids will be less likely to be accepting, compassionate and inclusive. Through their forced ignorance, they're more likely to grow into bigoted adults.

"The right also sees that as a win.

[...]

"The right wants to stop your queer kids from being queer.

"And if they can't do that, they want to stop your queer kids from living.

-- Ashley Lynch (ashleylynch), 2022-03-29

"There won't be death camps and cattle cars. Those are specific to a particular time and place in history. What I am seeing is that conditions in the U.S. will likely be there for a Republican-led effort to remove a class of people from American life via a combination of demonization, legal oppression and stochastic violence, with the goal of forcing all of them to either flee or hide who they are to avoid persecution.

"The GOP has completely demonized trans people to the point where they are depicted as an existential threat. Every day, trans people lose more and more of what very few legal protections they have. And when you lack any sort of political power or friends in government, and are part of a group that would cause minimal economic disruption if you disappear, you are extremely vulnerable. At .6 percent of the adult population, trans people can be scapegoated without being able to effectively defend themselves politically or physically. Just the right percentage that few people know them, but everyone knows OF them, and what they know usually comes from conservative media sources that are framing the existence of trans people in increasingly apocalyptic terms-very similar to the way Hitler spoke of Jews in the 1930s.

"Fox's most popular host, Tucker Carlson, regularly invites Abigail Shrier on his show-she makes claims that trans people are brainwashing children, sucking them into a cult, conducting medical experiments on them, and mutilating them afterwards. She's also promoted the narrative that trans people are part of a trans-humanist plot to destroy humanity, led by a cabal of Jewish billionaires. All of this is eerily harks back to 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion' hoax-a fabricated anti-Semitic text written in 1903 in Russia that popularized the idea of a 'global Jewish conspiracy,' which Hitler would use to justify his exterminating the Jews."

-- Brynn Tannehill (BrynnTannehill), "Trans People Are in Grave Danger", DAME Magazine, 2022-03-15 [This one is very long, but important. Please find time to read it. Or save it to a text file and have your computer read it to you, if that works better for you.]

"Until recently, most open calls for trans eradication on mainstream online platforms have been coded or veiled, with suggestions that transness should simply 'go away' or somehow be removed from public life, but with no specifics given for the implementation of that goal. Examples include spinster users repeatedly saying 'I want them gone' and 'I don't even want to see them anymore. I'm sick of them, the whole gang of freaks.' or a twitter user demanding that the the mayor of greater manchester 'get rid of this plague', in reference to trans protestors. However, Trans Safety Network has recently observed a rise in the number of expressions of explicit violence directed towards transgender people, both from anonymous accounts, as well as named and even verified accounts on twitter." -- Meryl Links (minusplnp), "Increase in open calls for violence against trans people and allies", TransSafety.Network (trans_safety), 2022-03-26

And on a more positive note, since today is supposed to be about celebrating trans people ...

"[...] And what is more of God than a full and unashamed embracing of the people God made us to be, lovingly crafted in God's own image? What is more of the gospel, what is better news, than the truth of who we are? Living, breathing examples of the expansiveness of God's creation and the love which God has for each and every one of us? [...]

"People often think that it is in denying our queerness that we please God, and in embracing it we indulge only ourselves, wrapped up in human affairs and not the divine. And to that I echo Jesus' words to Peter in this reading [Mark 8:27-38]: get behind me, satan, for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. Because what is more human than the social and cultural norms that we use to shame and exclude? What reeks of human corruption more than the use of scripture and of God's name to excuse bigotry against God's beloved creation? And what can come closer to the divine than to see the world as God created it, and to praise God for the wonder of that creation without denying or defying any part of it? [...]

"Jesus asked us to take up our crosses and follow him, and no cross is formed by God. Our metaphorical crosses, like the literal one Jesus carried, are formed by human hands, as a reaction to human fears, and in response to our percieved breaking of human rules in pursuit of God's truth and justice. Our cross is not our God-given queerness, but the world's response to it. [...]"

-- Jay Hulme (JayHulmePoet), 2022-02-27 (video)