Happy Pride!
Content Warning: Reportings of extreme violence against LGBTQ people, especially transgender people.
Pride started as a riot to end the violence of cops against the LGBTQ community. They would raid our clubs, beat us, and imprison us for existing. Finally, enough was enough, and we fought back, and kept fighting back, until we gained the rights we have today.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a43877100/stonewall-riot-leaders/
But we’re still not fully liberated and equal to cisgender, allosexual/alloromantic, and heterosexual people. We still face violence every day. Anti-trans and LGBTQ bills are on the rise. Transphobes, from conservatives to fake feminists who uphold the patriarchy to “protect women”, threaten to shoot and stab trans women in the bathrooms - yes, you read that correctly. I see it constantly in TikTok and Instagram comments, and Reddit and Twitter threads. Unfortunately, they're not just empty threats, and the police aren't here to serve and protect us.
https://www.newsweek.com/trans-man-attacked-using-womens-restroom-ohio-1723432
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/woman-mistaken-transgender-bathroom-attack
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/31/us/man-guilty-hate-crime-beat-trans-woman-restroom-trnd/index.html
We are more likely to be underemployed, experience physical and sexual violence, and lose our homes than anyone else.
https://phys.org/news/2020-02-transgender-americans-unemployed-poor.html
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/
We have some Christians yelling that “religious freedom” means they can force their ideals onto us and our lives, and if we say no, we’re “persecuting them”. The fascist terrorist group the Proud Boys are saying they want this to be their most violent pride yet.
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/proud-boys-set-target-pride-100507704.html
I know this has been heavy on how everything affects transgender people, and that is because I am a transgender woman. This is what I face every day. There is also a large amount of transphobia coming to the surface right now, and people are using trans people as a rallying cry for violence and fascism. This is just like what happened in 1930's Germany, when the Brownshirts raided Magnus Hirschfeld's gender and sex clinic, burning all of the transgender health research, and killing half of the staff. They started by going after transgender people, then went for the rest of the LGBTQ community.
This is not a mistake on their part. Transgender and Non-binary people are on the forefront of gender and sex based liberation with other feminists, having experienced life in many ways, and eschewing the gender expectations placed on them by the Patriarchy. We are clear examples that the cisheteronormative oppression is not real - it is a social construct, meant to control. The very same oppression that wants to force women into subservience, deny them and all queer folks their rights and bodily autonomy, and force everyone to be cisgender, heterosexual, fulfill strict gender roles, and uphold the ideals of the nuclear family. It is often also tied into Christonationalism, a movement that pushes pseudo-Christian ideals into politics and creates the idea of a Christian and fascist holy land. And lastly, focusing on LGBTQ people keeps us from ending the true cause of sexual violence - the fact that we allow some cisgender heterosexual men to continue to be violent.
https://www.dailydot.com/irl/heteronormativity-definition/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_fascism
https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/06/25/why-is-anti-trans-violence-on-the-rise-in-america/
https://www.texasobserver.org/carter-heyward-white-christian-nationalism-book/
https://time.com/5865581/transphobia-terf-harm/
Pride may be a celebration of how far we have come, but it is still, at its core, a riot. We still have work to do. We are still facing violence. So to all the fascists who pretend to protect women and children, who pretend to be patriots, who pretend to be Christians, I say, “fuck around and find out”. While you've been cosplaying being Nazi soldiers, we've _been_ fighting for ourselves, our trans and non-binary siblings, our rights, and our lives. You have nothing on our feral will to survive.
To my LGBTQ family, I say, we're still here, and we're not going anywhere. I love you. There is so much going on, so many threats within and without, but we will survive and thrive. We trans and non-binary folks, along with our truly feminist cisgender sisters, will stand tall as beacons of autonomy, feminism, and freedom, the likes of which these patriarchal fascists, who say they love freedom but clearly hate it, have never seen.
Fuck the Patriarchy and Happy Pride! 🏳️🌈 🏳️⚧️