On the Transgender Day of Remembrance, Remembering Why They’re Not Here »
It’s up to us, cis folks, to stop treating this like it’s not “our” issue. It’s up to us to stop making anti-trans jokes, to stop treating gender like a binary, to stop using anti-trans slurs, to stop defining gender by genitals and reproductive capacity, to stop misgendering with wrong names and pronouns, to stop denying access to medical care and domestic violence shelters, to stop making “woman-only” spaces that are trans-exclusive. Just as importantly, it’s time to start speaking up whenever we see other people do these things, instead of waiting for trans* folks to do it themselves. Because while speaking out is not always 100% safe for cis people, it is a million times more likely to be safe for us than it is for those who are trans*.
And it’s time, too, for cis people to start recognizing all of these supposedly “small” things, the jokes, the assumptions, for what they are — the roots of violence, violence themselves against people’s identities, the precursors to even more severe violence. It’s time to recognize that when you make someone’s identity a joke, you make their humanity a joke, too. And there is no way for that to not end in violence.
This this this, especially this. If you read and ponder nothing else today, at the very least THIS.
(via fancybidet)
