Iām Not Brave. Iām Alive.
#ThingsYouCantUnsay #trans #DangerousAir #AddressingCisFolks
I will never live in a world where I cannot be hunted by the state for being trans. I, personally, by name and face. My transition is a matter of public record, my name is in a government database. Thereās no hiding.
When I hear āyou are so brave,ā I know thatās another person who will politely preserve a friendship rather than burn a bridge to a transphobe. If they know enough to think Iām brave, they know enough to be ashamed of how Iām treated. And instead, they chose to celebrate the scars I bear from the worldās violence.
Iām not brave. Iām alive. I survived the genocide of my people, for now. But Iāve already died of it.
āYou are so resilient.ā Why me? Why not my siblings who died in the closet, never hearing their own names? Why donāt they count? When cis people congratulate me on my survival, it reminds me of how many others died.
Genocide includes early deaths. I lost 37 years to the genocide of my people - I died in the genocide of trans people.
One day Iāll die, again. My martyrdom is a forgone conclusion - all oppressed people die martyrs. Thereās nowhere to run - trans people demonstrate core inadequacies of patriarchal, capitalist, and racist worldviews; as such, we are hated by those in power in every polity. I could break ties with my community, hide who I am, and go back in the closet, but there are easier and less painful ways to murder myself.
āNot all cis people.ā All cis people know trans people. How many of them protect those trans people? How many of them are even safe enough to *know* the trans people around them?
I hate being called brave. Resilient. Strong. For what? Insisting on being myself? The alternative was death. And to what end should I be brave, and strong, and resilient? So that someone else, some cis person, does not have to stand up to another cis person and insist that I should have extremely basic human rights?
Cis people, should I adjure you to be brave, resilient, and strong? Should I ask you to stand up to each other on behalf of trans people? To center our needs as an act of repair and solidarity?
Or would that be a waste of breath?
If you cannot do that, at least do me the courtesy of sparing me the applause for not yet having been murdered.
āYou are so strong.ā Because you chose not to be.
![Musk: "[DEADNAME] was born gay and slightly autistic , two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria.
I knew that from when he was about 4 years old and he would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was āfabulous!ā, as well as his love of musicals & theatre.
But he was not a girl."
Thereās a lot of stuff I need to debunk which I will get to donāt worry, but I want to start with what I find the funniest which is the notorious āslightly autisticā tweet. This is gonna be a bit so just bare with me
This is entirely fake. Like, literally none of this ever happened. Ever. I donāt even know where he got this from. My best guess is that he went to the Milo Yiannopoulis school of gay stereotypes, just picked some at random and said āeh- good enoughā in a last-ditch attempt to garner sympathy points when he is so obviously in the wrong even in his own fucking story.](/proxy/post_attachment/319285/0f29e0ff3e.webp "Musk: \"[DEADNAME] was born gay and slightly autistic , two attributes that contribute to gender dysphoria.
I knew that from when he was about 4 years old and he would pick out clothes for me to wear like a jacket and tell me it was āfabulous!ā, as well as his love of musicals & theatre.
But he was not a girl.\"
Thereās a lot of stuff I need to debunk which I will get to donāt worry, but I want to start with what I find the funniest which is the notorious āslightly autisticā tweet. This is gonna be a bit so just bare with me
This is entirely fake. Like, literally none of this ever happened. Ever. I donāt even know where he got this from. My best guess is that he went to the Milo Yiannopoulis school of gay stereotypes, just picked some at random and said āeh- good enoughā in a last-ditch attempt to garner sympathy points when he is so obviously in the wrong even in his own fucking story.")
