Should have got on this more seriously before I know.
Sig boostin’!
Ima keep an eye out, I have a few northern connections that could be useful.
Cheers. <3
It was just announced that CeCe McDonald, who was being charged with two counts of second-degree murder in an incident of self-defense, has just taken a plea-deal—second degree manslaughter with a recommended 41 month sentence. CeCe McDonald’s sentencing hearing will be in a month.
But Ms. McDonald isn’t the first young Black trans woman to be thrown in jail and aggressively prosecuted for surviving a violent attack on her life. Unfortunately, without real systematic change, she isn’t likely to be the last either.
It should be no secret that young trans women of color (TWOC) are being murdered at alarming rates. This is a social problem largely ignored by most people, including the media, the service/nonprofit sector and government. But this is something people in the affected communities can’t afford to ignore.
But attacks on the lives of TWOC don’t go without resistance, and when TWOC resist sometimes their attackers end up dead. This was the case with Ms. McDonald, but it was also the case last year with Akira Jackson, a Black trans woman currently serving a four-year sentence for “manslaughter” for stabbing her boyfriend in self-defense when he beat her with a baseball bat.
Jackson, a Detroit native, moved to the California Bay Area where she became an advocate for young TWOC. She was a Program Specialist from TLISH (Transgender Ladies Initiating Sisterhood), a transgender youth program where she spent her time counseling young women about housing, government assistance, and employment.
If Ms. McDonald and Ms. Jackson weren’t Black trans women it is likely that their cases might not have ended up differently. By being criminalized for their survival, these two women share something in common with many other women of color, including the New Jersey 4, a group of Black lesbian women who were attacked in the New York City’s West Village and later aggressively prosecuted for defending themselves. The attacker fully recovered, but the women were forced to serve time.
It’s a sad irony that we promote self-defense classes as a way of combating violence against women, yet many of the women of color, trans and cis alike, are currently imprisoned precisely because they fought back against violence in their homes and in the streets.
Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive.”
(via mnome)
(Source: , via brynncognito)
Even as you walk all over us.
(via brynncognito)
Verb, past participle
1. To be falsely informed from a cisgender perspective.
e.g:
“I used to think all trans people wanted SRS, but I was quite cisinformed.”
Being able to walk away is a privilege.
If someone says “Cis people are terrible FOREVER” and a cis person is like “fuck this” they can do that, you know? They can get away from tumblr, or where ever the message is, and immediately be inundated with the exact opposite message. They can return to a world where they reign as the majority, as what is held up as right and good and correct. They don’t have to sit there and take it.
But if someone starts talking about trans people in a negative light? I don’t really have anywhere to go. I have trans friends, and they’re amazing and positive and uplifting about being a trans person and being loved by other trans people. But, there’s no escaping the messages the world leaves for me. I’m bad, I’m wrong, I’m unlovable, I’m not sexy, I’m not a sexual being because who would want to have sex with something that looks like a man, but doesn’t have a penis? I can’t escape the message that I’m not enough, that I can’t be good enough, that I won’t ever win.
And that’s why I think it’s a privilege to get to unfollow people because you don’t like the message they send out. If a cis person doesn’t like that I think they’re terrible because they’re cis, if they’re hurt by that, if they can’t handle my “antagonistic behavior”? They can leave. They never have to see what I say again if they don’t want. And that is a privilege. Because I cannot unfollow the world. Not really.
But seriously this thing was marvellous. Unisex,multistall. Each stall had very frosted glass doors that reach from the floor to the top of the doorframe, no room to see anything or slip any sort of camera, and the glass is frosted enough you can’t make out ANY details, but you CAN tell if there’s a person standing in there- no lurking in wait and catching someone by surprise (a concern I see often enough). And they were pretty big stalls. In addition to this is a separate bathroom for PWD, not just a large stall, I don’t know if this is better for everyone but I feel like it gives more privacy- especially with the glass doors- I didn’t look to see what it was like beyond having a solid door to fully separate it. Which also means that people who have anxieties that would make the glass doors a problem have another option.
Not necessarily ideal, but it was really nice to see.
i-sauntered-vaguely-downwards:
you ‘identify as a [insert gender here]’ too
you have preferred pronouns too
kindly remember this and remember that you are not any more valid than trans* folks.
k then
- Leon
shit cis people say to trans people
got all this to come!
fffffffffffffffff
I have heard EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THESE
USUALLY MULTIPLE TIMES
also I know this is an intersex thing and not a trans thing but
if cis and non intersex people could please stop asking me “oh what KIND of intersex are you?” as if it’s their business that would be really super
She needs “a bedroom for me and my stuff and my cat, some pain meds, and a line on a job.” She’s getting kicked out of her place by the first of the month, but she’s a real established organizer, a genius trans woman of color former graphic designer and in need of community support. She needs help ASAP andwants to avoid institutions and civil services that are hostile to her needs. please message with any job openings, safe spaces in north carolina, or resources.
Paypal is donations can be received at octopus@safe-mail.net, in care of( the former) dancingonembers?
all money would go to her, ANY places to crash after the first of the month would be great.
she is black and indigenous, a mother and elder, amazing,The elder’s email is Amandaforcarrboro@gmail.com.
(via queernonymoose)
