Trans rights are human rights

[lokifan]

I was at the trans rights protest in London today, to protest the rollback of rights the government is moving forward on (despite 70% of people in their consultation saying they supported the move FORWARD that was being suggested then) and in favour of a move forward, including various policies.

The protest was very intersectional, and had some great speakers (esp Juno Dawson, a best-selling YA author in the UK, and some others whose names I didn’t catch). I met some nice people. There were great signs.

I’m just feeling rather emotionally bruised after it, and actually had a little quite a big cry just now.

The protest itself was great, I just… I mean, I’m cis, so the chants weren’t affirming for me - and I'm not there to get affirmation but to provide it - but the stories about how awful things are still got to me. And it’s not like I didn’t know, but...

One of the chants was Protect Trans Youth. And we can’t. Like, we as a society can, obviously, if we choose to - but we as caring adults, right now, can’t protect our trans youth. We as a queer community can’t protect our trans youth. We don’t have the institutional power. We’ll get there, this isn’t about giving up, but that’s just so horrible. We’re just so limited in what we can do to save and protect them. There was a very young trans girl, maybe about 12, who spoke. Before her speech about pushing for bathroom rights at school, she was holding a sign about how 30% of trans people attempt suicide, and that blood is on the hands of people who stand in the way of self-ID and healthcare. It hurt my heart.

I feel like this part has got so much sadder and harder as I’ve got older. I’m 30 now. I remember feeling a certain anger about It Gets Better needing to exist - it was a great thing that so brutally exposed our failings as a society - and I was 20 or so then and even then thinking of queer teenagers as definitely separate from me, because I’d gone to uni and it had got better. But I just feel it much more sharply now, that I’m an adult and it’s my job to help and protect and teach the young people of my community and I can’t, not fully. There’s so much I can’t save them from. And it’s just such a mountain to climb to make things better.

It’s really got to me around other axes of oppression too - refugee parents having to take their kids on such a dangerous journey makes me sick and makes me cry, that we’ve let people be in that situation. The thirteen-year-old black boy terrified by a plainclothes officer appearing and yelling at him in Tottenham last week, who ran into thorn bushes and got his face scratched up while his dad was being forced down; the sign a white woman held at a protest saying that if her son was shot while playing or getting Skittles, she’d burn the whole city down.

I don’t think I want to be a parent, and I almost certainly can’t anyway, for both financial and physical reasons, but that’s not the point.

One of my best friends transitioned fifteen years ago and he’d had to wait two years for an appointment. Now it’s almost three. The NHS charter says 18 weeks should be the absolute max. And I just see a lot of bad stuff coming over the next few decades, and it’s just like we’re all hiding behind this tiny rock from a tidal wave. And that isn’t the metaphor I’d usually choose because we’re not helpless in the face of it; oppression isn’t a force of nature. But it’s how it feels a little bit, today.

I did really like the bit at the protest where the speaker spoke to the closeted people out there, saying everyone there was thinking of them and wishing them safe, and we all cheered and yelled maybe the loudest we did all day. And when a separate BLM protest march passed, we all cheered and screamed and did our best to loudly support them. Solidarity forever.

Comments

[lunabee34]

*hugs*

I don't know what to say but I'm listening.

[lokifan]

<3 That means a lot!

[kaleidodope]

Solidarity forever <3

[lokifan]

<3 <3 <3 I really do believe in it so much. It's why I got a t-shirt printed for last Pride saying SISTERS NOT CIS TERFS, and wore it while I marched with B with the T - I'm deeply angry that as a feminist and cis queer woman people try to claim me for the transphobes, and use the spectre of assault against me to hurt my trans siblings.

[drazzi]

That is a great shirt, though.

[trepkos]

"the sign a white woman held at a protest saying that if her son was shot while playing or getting Skittles, she’d burn the whole city down."

EXACTLY! And this is why I think white people are scared of black people - they know that if they had suffered a fraction of what blacks suffer, they would be rioting every day, killing, setting fires - and knowing that blacks have so much reason to do it makes them afraid that they want to do it, and could snap at any moment and take just revenge.

[alafaye]

*hugs*

[lokifan]

*many hugs back*

[archaeologist_d]

it's hard out there in the world. I can't even imagine how difficult it must be for trans people to deal with it. :(

[lokifan]

Me neither. I'm seeing really sad, dangerous signs though. My trans BFF was saying he'd leave the country if he could, and he's the most British person alive. A trans writer and friend, Roz Kaveney, who's an elder who's been fighting for her rights and other people's for decades, was saying she won't leave - but because she thinks it's her duty to stay and fight, not because she wants to or feels safe :(((

[damerell]

I'm starting to feel like we're in the death throes of the UK, which is perhaps not an ideal place to be while it's happening.

[lokifan]

Like that bitter-laugh Tweet that was going around: "I'm in a bad place right now. Not mentally, I live in the UK."

[elisi]

*hugs*

I remember feeling a certain anger about It Gets Better needing to exist
Related, bear with me: I remember El Sandifer being very angry after the Rosa Parks Doctor Who episode, because it seemed to say 'Just hang in there, wait, eventually things will get better' and she was painfully frustrated at this message.

Alas, I don't have any kind of solution. :(

[lokifan]

Haha, I totally see the connection, don't worry! It Gets Better was a great idea and way for queer adults to speak to queer teens, but particularly as it got bigger and more straight, powerful people participated I found it deeply frustrating. It was such a sign of negligence and failure that it needed to exist as a campaign, that we as a society have let down our children so badly.

:( *hugs back though*

[elisi]

It was such a sign of negligence and failure that it needed to exist as a campaign, that we as a society have let down our children so badly.
I hear ya. (Funnily enough, the protagonist of my novel - well, draft - references it twice in the first chapter.)

<3

[ceciliaj]

Yeah. My grad school advisor wrote about how worried he is about queer and trans kids who are being kept out of school right now, and I was very moved. I know what you mean about how it gets harder as you get older and you feel just how young people can be, and how horribly treated.

[china_shop]

*much hugs*