forthwritten

Ava Vidal: Transgender Day of Remembrance: why you, yes you, need to care
Eòghann Renfroe: Transgender Day of Remembrance Reminds Society That Trans Lives Are Valuable
Janet Mock: A Letter To My Sisters Who Showed Up for Islan Nettles & Ourselves at the Vigil
TransGriot: 238 names
Miss saHHara: I was jailed in Nigeria for being trans, now I’m proud and free
Kellee Terrell: Why the Transgender Day of Remembrance Matters to Black People
Samantha Allen: Transgender, dead and forgotten:

How could we shorten this list of the dead? What kind of politics would that goal require?

Because most people on the list lack basic economic security, it must be socialist; because the list is primarily made up of women, it must be feminist; because most of those women are people of color, it must be anti-racist. Because so many of these transgender women of color are sex workers, it must adopt a nuanced approach to sex work that respects its economic and personal necessity without ignoring its dangers. And because so many of these sex workers are in countries like Brazil and Mexico, it must be internationalist. If this politics seems impossible, consider that the safety of transgender people is impossible in its absence.

For the 238 people on this list and the countless others whose deaths were never reported, who were misgendered in death, or for whom suicide was the only way out of a world which rejected them.

On Saturday I rolled out of bed far too early for my liking and went to Nottingham Pride. The marching bit was quite fun and I appear on the BBC photo gallery - I'm the one in the checked shirt (that rainbow cuff is actually cobbled together out of velcro cable ties). Rather annoyingly you can't see my placard. I am very proud of my placard.

I'm not sure what to make of Pride. I've never been to one before so it was interesting because of that, but it was odd that we were very much out of the city centre (I thought the whole point was presence and visibility?) and because I'm a pretty rubbish gay, the appeal of the Cheeky Girls and the L word theme is rather lost on me. I was reminded of how much I don't care about mainstream "gay culture" - I don't like kitsch "ironic" pop music, I don't like clubbing, I can't be bothered with drinking or casual sex, I'm not a fan of glitter - and how different my queer spaces are to that. My queer spaces involve tea and discussion and activism and feminism and geekery and hopefully food, that's something I'm happy with and it's not really something I feel is very present in mainstream gay culture. R dug up an essay on Western-style ‘gay’ identity being globalised and how it affects (and flattens) local cultures; it's something that I wish there was more awareness of. Obviously people are invested in this identity - it can be a source of comfort and support to imagine oneself part of a gay family - but I'm wary of monolithic it can appear.

We got a tram back to the city centre and there were four men on the tram, two of who started getting homophobic and transphobic. One of them warned his girlfriend, who was sitting next to a woman who'd been to Pride, that she should be worried about getting turned, then offered to turn various women straight. The other asked the transman who was with us whether he was a man or what, then offered his hand to him to shake. When our friend reached to take it the man pulled his hand away with a comment about being limp-wristed. It was a rather unpleasant reminder that while we'd spent the day in a place where it wasn't weird or freakish to be LGBT, that wasn't how the rest of the world worked. It was another reason why I didn't think the location quite worked - while it was great to have the space, it felt that we were shunted away from the city and the rest of the city just carried on as normal, without any knowledge that Pride was happening. It wasn't this great act of visibility, letting people know that we existed, it wasn't this joyful celebration that gathered people up and reached out to them - it was just a bit out-of-the-way and you'd have to make a deliberate effort to go rather than stumbling into something wonderful while out shopping.

Writing this up I find myself strangely disappointed with how it turned out, even though I found it alright at the time.