Notices by Vivian, Venus Pirate 🏳️‍⚧️🧋 (willow@chaosfem.tw), page 2

Hey, if you are on #PrEP and you don’t mind being public about it, make some noise! Information and solidarity save lives.

#boost please!

I remember when I said I wanted to be a hostess.

#ThingsYouCantUnsay #trans

The topic was first jobs. I wasn’t excited about entering capitalism’s labour pool, but I had noticed that hostesses were often high femme in their presentation. So when pressed, I said that seemed like a job I might want.

I was informed that hostesses were predominantly young women.

The clear implication was that I was not, and thus I wouldn’t be eligible for such a job.

I never brought it up again.

My parents tell me times were different, back then.

I don’t care.

Being trans is really easy to accept for folks who believe in bodily autonomy and queer rights. Meeting a new person and discovering they are living their truth is all happy, fuzzy upside.

Yay, trans people, being who they are, we’ve solved discrimination. /sarcastic

Transition is different. Transition isn’t about being. Transition is about unbeing. Transition is about refusing to continue telling people the lies they’re accustomed to. Transition is about showing people that everything they thought they knew about you was a mixture of scar tissue and masking.

Transition is about making it clear that scars come from somewhere, and masks take practice. That you practiced at the dinner table. And in the car. And when you held a plastic participation trophy. And at the holidays. And when you went to weekly music lessons, again and again, for years. And every time they saw you.

They don’t like that. Feeling complicit isn’t all happy, fuzzy upside.

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What do they want me to say? Do they want absolution? Should I remove their agency by assigning all blame to the patriarchy? Sure. Congratulations. “You are a pawn of a deep-rooted and pervasive meme-virus.”

Are they hoping with enough explanations I’ll explain my way back around to not being angry with them? That I’ll lay out enough puzzle pieces for them to tell me I’ve misunderstood how things were? There are no puzzle pieces, there’s only me. I AM the puzzle piece - the puzzle is just one piece. The puzzle isn’t how I got this way, it’s how long it will take before they stop looking for a way through that doesn’t involve knowing me as I am.

I’m not angry about it, per se. I understand that I, too, have been and continue to be influenced by patriarchy, racism, and capitalism. I work on that. It’s slower than I wish it were. But I try to own who I am and who I’ve been, and I have learned that wallowing in the self-pity of having done things that support a system that persistently submerges us all in its horrifying self-justifications doesn’t actually help anyone.

I’m not angry. I’m done. Transition is about seeing that you compromised away everything, and changing your approach. Transition is about drawing boundaries, and sometimes, that takes a bit of fire.

Transition is about explaining yourself to YOURSELF. Transition is about learning to stop explaining yourself to everyone else.

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If a #trans person throws a brick, it isn’t news.

If a cis person throws a brick on behalf of trans rights, it’s actually still not news.

Trans rights don’t attract advertising dollars.

News is a business.

News becomes history becomes myth becomes the raw material of tomorrow’s stories, and then everyone says queer people are a recent occurrence and also there’s no way society, and its stories, and its myths, and its histories, and its news, is radically anti-queer, because where’s the proof?

The proof is in the silences. The proof is in how different the stories you hear are from the stories you live.

The proof is in our lives. It is in the stories we tell about ourselves.

🩵🩷🤍🩷🩵

Trans lives are resistance. Live yours.

And if you feel moved to, please tell us something about it, below.

Dear cis women who genuinely want more trans women in your club/company/organization,

Why? Why do you want trans women to feel comfortable in that organization? Let that sit a moment, we’ll come back to it.

Trans women (and do you mean women? What about trans people who identify as… not women, but not men? What about trans women with beards? I’ve barely scratched the surface with these examples) learn fast that talk is cheap, only actions matter. If you want trans folks to feel comfortable with you, do things to help marginalized folks.

Teach technical skills to non-stereotypically technical people.

Publicly pressure local officials to make statements supporting the local abortion clinic.

Shun TERFs. For goodness sake, don’t promote Harry Potter books. Why not your beloved HP? JK Rowling is a famous and well-funded TERF.

Believe people when they choose to speak.

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Hey, cis dudes. I need you to show up as allies at trans #pride events this month. Don’t make a big deal out of it. Don’t expect to win awards for it. Don’t hit on people. Don’t make it about you. Just swell our numbers.

And stand between us and the cops and transphobes, please.

#boost welcome.

PSA: if you drop onto a a trans girl’s post about asking people to help keep trans folks safe to say that she’s asking too much, she’s going to block your ass.

Sometimes I reread my writing, and dang, “When I Tell You I’m #Trans” is really powerful.

https://chaosfem.tw/@Willow/113953311228200046

I’m telling you about oppression. I’m telling you about society-scale gaslighting on history-spanning timelines, about the dissonance of speaking with people who feel safe when I feel unsafe, about the truths I have been forced to accept about society that I get punished for voicing to others. I’m telling you I know what it’s like to know I’ll never get out, I’ll never breathe free air, I’ll never be safe. I’m telling you I know the despair of seeing that all my trans siblings are oppressed alongside me.

I’m telling you about hope. I’m telling you that I can be punished for being myself, but no one can force me to be anything other than me. I’m telling you I can breathe dangerous air, I can live a life of happiness and joy, I can be myself if I can accept that I can only be responsible for my own choices, I can be a beacon to my siblings, I can be remembered as myself, I can hope for more for those who come after me.

I’m telling you that if you stand by me, I don’t know how it will end, but you can know you are standing up for the idea that everyone should get to be themselves. I don’t think I can confidently assert the chronology of my life will have a happy ending. But I plan to make it a happy story, full of memories worth living for.

When I die, tell my story.

While I live, be a part of it.

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When I Tell You I’m Trans

#ThingsYouCantUnsay

When I tell you I’m #trans, I’m not telling you about the history of my body - my body is as you see it, and it’s uncomfortable that you think it’s okay to imagine what you cannot see because it’s hidden by clothing, time, or both. I’m not fishing for compliments - I already know I’m stunning, and I totally do fish for compliments, just not like that. I’m not telling you about my romantic and sexual life - I have lots of other words for that, and the relevant ones are “that’s private.” I’m not even telling you about my gender - my name, pronouns, and gender presentation have already said everything I intend to say on the subject.

I’m telling you about pain. I’m telling you that I’ve been pickled in emotional agony, like a specimen in brine - it was all I knew. Emerging brought new horrors, as I uncovered and mourned the ways my body was wrong for me, suffered to remake it, dug up my emotional daemons only to have them eviscerate me, tore at the people closest to me and starred with sadness and acceptance at the wounds I made, discovered gaping holes in my memories, hugged myself in the depths of believing myself unworthy of compassion, and cried in the dark with the need for affirmation.

I’m telling you about joy. I’m telling you I thrill to be myself, and I cherish every detail of living authentically, no matter how small. With the pain for contrast, my experience of joy is soaring and unfettered. I revel in the mundane and the outrageous in equal measure. Each and every day is a treasure: another day sick at home in bed, as Myself: Rhinovirus Edition? Marvelous. A day filled with adventure, affirmation, and new friends? Superb. Being myself is inexpressibly wonderful; I wish you could know this joy.

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Every time a #trans girl awakens safely from gender affirming surgery, a TERF gets hives.

#Boost this please, so I can screenshot it for my friend!

Hi all, does anyone have current guidance on getting US passports with corrected gender markers and names for #trans folks? I know there was a lot of concern that original documents would be withheld - do we have confirmation of that?

If corrected passports are not available, does anyone know if it’s possible to get passports that still have deadnames and incorrect gender markers?

PSA about trans mascs: the fact that some folks actually WANT to be dudes makes me so happy. They bring such a wholesome energy to masculinity, and it provides such a contrast with my own experience of masculinity.

Once I finally figured out I am a woman, it was trans mascs who taught me that it isn’t testosterone that makes people toxic, it is buying into patriarchy.

Just wanna say thank you to the trans masculine people in my life for showing me the difference. Ya’ll are awesome.

@tokensane You say, “Trans women are women.”

Dudes of the world: I have a challenge for you. This one’s real simple, but like most simple-but-important things, actually DOING it is shockingly hard.

Ready? Okay, here we go.

When women tell you a situation isn’t safe for them, just believe them. Take it at face value. No questions, no negotiating.

That’s it! Off you go. And #boost this on your way.

#Trans USians: The state department is processing passport requests submitted with expedited processing in like two weeks. Just in case that’s a thing that is relevant to your interests.

#uspol

Please boost! #TransFemme folk, what should I be asking in my bottom surgery consult tomorrow? Stress has blanked my mind and I need help thinking of things I’ll wish I asked!

#trans

My first experience in the world was be non-consentually gendered. Before my umbilical cord was cut, medical professionals had decided how they would gender me. Everyone else followed. I was not given a chance to consent to that gendering and the role that came with it. I was not given a chance to say no.

That act of violence came with further coercion. I was conscripted to follow the rules of the gender that was forced on me, and those rules included gaslighting myself about who I was; any deviation from the role I was assigned was to be shamed at a minimum.

#Trans #Asexual

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@jepyang @lennby I HAVE BEEN WONDERING THIS SAME THING.

@brooke @rooster I feel like everything about time zones is cursed knowledge.