Forming and finding community can be terrifying, especially for those of us with multiple intersecting identities. There’s a lot at stake — so much to gain but just as much to lose. And so there’s a special feeling for being rejected by people who claim to be a part of you, and you a part of them. In white queer communities, I felt unseen. In this queer community of color, I felt seen but unheard. I felt that community had been discovered, claimed, conquered, owned. A new social hierarchy had arisen, and we called it separatism. A line had been drawn around it, a skyscraping metropolis built in the center, and I was on the outskirts, alone, pressed against the barbed border, not good enough, not brown enough, quiet again. In biological families, we are not bound by blood; in QPOC identities, we are not bound by flesh. Shared identities do not make us one. At best, they make us “other,” together. And that’s where we were then. Was this community? Is this what was missing? I sat in the audience, surrounded by strangers or friends.
Trans women are targeted because we exist at vulnerable intersections of race, gender and class. My sisters are vulnerable because no one movement has ever centered the bodies, lives and experiences of these women, except for the severely underfunded, largely volunteer-staffed work of organizations run by and for our communities…
It’s been 6 years since I’ve left the Valley but the Valley is alive inside of me, wherever I go.
Your bodies are dangerous to the status quo. Your bodies bust through the armor of the gender binary and the patriarchy. Your bodies fuck up neoliberalism. Your bodies are ending white supremacy and heteropatriarchy. Your bodies are evidence that the colonial project has failed; you are here despite it all. We are here despite it all.
We need to start listening before we find out which trans woman of color is murdered next week.
I knew it was hard to come out. I think my life was just set that way because I lived in the fashion world and I was very much on my own and when I had my relationship with Sandra, communication wasn’t like it is nowadays — so it was almost like my family and country were there and my other life was here and they just didn’t cross. It became hard once I really was sure I was gay and I wanted to live my life openly and as the years went by, well I had to be honest to my family and to the people around me and I did — I was — for many years.
I don’t feel shame anymore. I think the book was definitely the last bit of release, in a way, that I had to do in order to feel really proud of who I am. I think the transformation started way before. I don’t feel shame about anything in my life now.
I’ve been struck by how the contributions of Black women in feminism have been consistently minimized, erased, and co-opted by the people who taught me, and ostensibly, many others like me, in women’s studies. It’s legitimately shameful how little credit is given to Black women for expanding feminism and really challenging women who led the movement throughout herstory to consider other components of oppression in their analyses.
Without sounding too much like a conspiracy theorist, my addiction and the resulting ramifications were, in some ways, all part of the system’s plan.