Big Black Trans and Beautiful

Home Can’t Be Home Again When They take it away

I’ve always found the phrase forgive or forget to be too simplistic to ever serve as a go to for resolving conflicts or getting over a transgression. I think at the heart of it ,it is asking the wronged to erase the episode in one way or another. Make it blank , clear it out of one’s history. And I’ve found that I have never been able to do one or the other as simply as it has been prescribed. I don’t really forget shit and forgiving is funny to me cause some shit can never be forgiven really. Even when you say it is. We’re taught to let things go by erasure not by actually working thru said event and learning from it what is necessary for our growth. You should never forget your history. And to forgive a trespasser is to easily allow your violation in the future. It is these thoughts that have permeated my conscience as of late. It’s forced me to examine my life, my relationship with my family, the estrangement that doesn’t exist as a full separation, the guilt I experience for daring to own these feelings, the betrayal I feel for my people, my culpability in my pain.

Long before I was instructed that last time to leave my mother’s house at 20 years old, I knew that my home wasn’t really mine. I knew that as myself I was not wanted in that space to be whoever I really was. I had been told in so many ways before all my laundry hit the world that in order to ever live in the world as myself, unafraid, able to explore, able to be, that I could not be me and live in my house . Could not be me and live with my family. That in fact the only way I would ever find any semblance of identity, I would have to sever ties with the unit in which I grew up in. It’s funny you know to me I can never forget these times, can never forget all the fights, all the arguments, all the tears, all the blunts , all the drinks , all of the fuckery . And yet those who were there, those who were the causes and the effects can paint such a different history. The delusion can be so intense that you start to feel like you’re crazy or you’re over exaggerating. But lives lived in past that led to roads unheard of assures you, you weren’t safe in Kansas.

The funniest thing to me that I’m sure others won’t understand is that I get it. When the vitriol was so intense , when fists accompanied the many arguments , when you cried so hard your whole body hurt, when you left with nothing but a Sundress on and garbage bags, destination unknown, you’d think I’d be incredulous to how those who said they loved me could throw me out. But I don’t. I get it. My deviance was evidence of a failure, it was a new fear, it sparked all manners of ignorance and it was a pest that wouldn’t and couldn’t be shaked. It was one thing to be a faggot but quite another to believe you was a bitch. It was heartbreaking to see that big Black boy with so much brains become a tranny. Give up all his possibilities, shatter any vestige of respect and power he could’ve had and become the biggest joke going since the idea of an American Dream. The nerve of he who refused to accept that he could never be a she. WHAT FUCKING PART OF THAT DON’T YOU GET!!!!!! YOU CAN BE AS GAY AS YOU WANT BUT YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A BITCH. YOU’LL BE THE UGLIEST GIRL EVER. YOU’RE A MAN . YOU CANT BE ME!!!! GET THAT BITCH SHIT OUT YA LIFE. I DON’T WANNA BURY YOU. YOU EVER SEE ANY OF YALL BE SUCCESSFUL? WHO RESPECTS Y’ALL? YOU’RE TOO BIG. YOU BREAKING MY HEART.

It’s been years since those words came outta those mouths. I exchange I love you’s at the conclusion of calls with folks who echoed those words. I’ve visited the home maybe 3 times in the last 9 years or so. I haven’t done a holiday in a long time with them and I go at it a solo affair. The words nowadays reek of a so called new enlightenment. Its gingery and clingy and guilt tripping. It’s WE MISS YOU. I WANT TO SEE YOU. IT’S (OLD NAME) I MEAN (NEW NAME) nervous laughter. OLD NAME comes up again almost as sure as the conflation of gay and trans and the idea that I would’ve had so many options at a bar that had Gay Night. It’s me conscious of someone trying , it’s hearing remorse even if history is revisionist, It’s me understanding the old and ongoing fears related to having a Black transwoman in your family, that one who used to be a son , a brother, a nephew , a cuz, a grandson ,never able to extricate the memory of that boy . That sweet boy who read books , who loved to eat and cook. The boy ya’ll had big hopes for. The boy that in many ways sometimes I wish I could’ve been. And not only boy but straight and confident and married and with kids and able to be a shining fucking example of a nigga who escaped the statistics and made his momma proud. And shat on this AMErican instrument designed to keep us fucked up and to send us to our graves early and to be an ambassador for the continued destruction and genocide for my people. I feels all of that and then some. But at the heart of it all , one can’t ignore who they are, you can’t lie about the history that is the present and Home will never be home again after they take it away.

They get us young and pretty

The violence that afflicts the lives of Black trans women keeps us wondering when. When be the day that we are a headline, a mis-gendered corpse that elicits hashtags and sweet memories from those who claim to know us best. I’ve written before about keeping up with my murdered kin, if for no other reason than to be aware that it can happen to me too. I ain’t special , ain’t none of us too special, or too cunt or too femme to meet a bullet or get stabbed or beat to death. We die in particularly gruesome ways, when i read the reports it’s never like one stab wound or one gun shot, there’s multiple. Our deaths have a hint of seedy and even in so called respectable victims, there always seems to be a focus on the tragic, fucked up intersections of our lives that keep us meeting violent ends. I wonder everyday about safety. Think about as a concept it’s never truly been actualized by any part of my collective. Think about how alone and ostracized black transwomen are. The sum of it is Blacks are never “real women” and transgender women ain’t “real women” and it leaves us at the mercy of a society vested in killing us off. The only ” real women” are white and cis gender. Everybody else is female bodied other. That othering has real life effects that translates to needing to be harder and tougher to survive. Transwomen have it even tougher because we’re not divorced ever from our male origins. That’s why when they insult us , when men beat us up , when we’re spooked, it’s endorsed and condoned by a society that needs to oppress. That needs a target. That needs a dysfunction to project onto. We don’t matter less we become a victim, less you wanna talk about sports and bathrooms.

It is all of the above and then some why my faith in this society, in this country and world will never be worth shit. The hierarchies of people are too entrenched to ever think that you truly matter, that you can put faith in anything other than yourself. I think of my sister CeCe McDonald who survived a hate crime and was charged for it. That’s how it be . The “victims” ain’t posed to fight back. We posed to be corpses and headlines. I’m sure we all as Black transwomen have that CeCe spirit in us and we gotta channel that to survive. Kill or be kill. It’s that real. And I hate them for who they make me. Who they make us. This same world have you feeling crazy and beating ya self up when you down. But who the fuck can be up with constant attacks leveraged at ya head? Who the fuck can smile at the sun and the birds chirping and feel patriotic and consider one’s self part of a community, a city , a family when all you do is attack us. Practice some fucking empathy. Put ya selves in our shoes for one fucking minute and ask yourselves ,if you were us would you still endorse and support our alienations, our brutal murders, our lockout of general society at large? Do you know how many landmines we fight to survive?

I don’t write in jest when I think of my time coming. My interest in Black men who keep our alliances secret puts me in that prime victim group. I gotta screen mothafuckas for potential savage traits. I gotta make sure I don’t step out of line. I gotta make sure I don’t like or love a killer. You’re willing to keep them a secret. Willing to uphold the toxicity, attracted to it even. But they don’t give a fuck about you like everyone else. And get them mad enough ,you become a hashtag. I hope the day comes when one day we can be people like everyone else. Being an other is killing us.

Don’t expect too much

Least of all from one person to you. Time and time again you put your belief in someone , you hope that you are to them what they are to you. And it doesn’t take long to realize that is not the case. And interest and investment is fleeting. And all your gifts and all your flaws which were once magnets come back to be used against you. You cry out, you want like hell to appeal, to startle , to touch ,to be held, to get baby cooed and soothed . And in that moment you get harder, you fucking punk, take it , take all of it and never stop. Opening yourself wider, and gape longer and thrusts are stronger taking the wind away, leaving you wordless. You smile with these inedible sensations fed by poison raisins and flexing and hating . They’ve taught you well, made you the most porculent glutton , the pious addict for that magic. It ravishes shiny and blinds white to its dirt, its rust , the hate and the distrust is a must. Necessary ingredients for fools with blues looking for dreams to come true.

San Francisco, a review

I had the pleasure to continue my expeditions into the world most recently. Found myself in the Bay Area for the first time. Immediately off the plane in a terminal plastered with Gay icon Harvey Milk, you get the sense that the town bleeds a liberalism that is tantamount to its’ existence. On the ride from the airport, I was eye fucked with the wide expanses of pretty houses and mountains that capped the houses like a fortress. The houses had a pastel color generally adding to the kaleidoscope of nearby bodies of water and the vast expanse of trees. This was beautiful country, I thought and I stand by. Reaching the city limits proper showed me the grittiness that didn’t accompany the Full House snippets or Rice A Roni commercials. Of course I was used to this having visited LA three years ago. California’s poverty and homelessness while not unique has a flavor, a look and a smell that differs from what I am used to in the NY area. It’s a stark indifference about it, its pervasive enough to be noticeable and yet the city gleams at every corner with vestiges of wealth and power and influence. I can definitely say San Francisco is a sister of NYC for real. Both places have made it clear that they are bastions of capital and elitism and liberalism on an international scale. And concurrently with this powerhouse image and in practices, it sends a big fuck you to all who are not comfortably aligned with the White and Asian elites. San Francisco like NYC has the grand patent for gentrification ,redlining, racism and a blood savage marginalization that perpetrates real harm to people. I pre-researched like I always do about the Black and LGBT populations in a particular place. With a special emphasis on Blackness because the Castro and the LGBT flava is well known, I focused on finding and supporting the people who looked like me. This led me to the Bayview area in the southeastern part of the city and some delicious soul food from Frisco Fried. I knew that the area has a reputation but I’ve come to take those reps with a grain of salt cause I know they are always laced with bases of white supremacy. I found in Bayview the same beautiful mountainous backdrops and hills endemic to the city and the vast stretches of water. It was a beautiful neighborhood to me. I imagined it back in the days when more Blacks lived there, before the scourges of drugs and incarceration, back when Black men and women from the South brought all their down home good ness to them mountains and hills and near the water . Clustering for protection, necessity and by decree of larger forces always pushing us to the margins. My last day would find me inadvertently ending up in the Fillmore which was once known as the Harlem of the West. I was skeptical of course of finding a Black presence there because I knew that there has been ongoing pushes of Blacks from areas in San Francisco. But it filled me with pride when I walked down Fillmore and I saw Black men and Black women and Baptist churches and murals with our faces on it. When I saw dudes hanging out listening to hip hop in front of the hair braiding shop, when I stopped by the Soul food spot ,all of it made me grin like a fool. Because I knew that we were holding on. I knew that in the super elite, expensive ass hell, Vegan /non Gluten ,pronouns first mindfuck that is San Francisco, Black folks had lived and survived and keep surviving in spite of the attempts to remove us. Much like the ongoing displacement and stagnation we face in the NY metro area, we hold on. And we keep being Black.

I went to the Castro district on my second night and it was one of the hilliest areas I visited. I was not aware that Castro street itself was this dark, quiet street with houses that the real life of the area was centered on Market street, itself kinda a lifeline of San Fran. It reminded me of the neighborhood from Queer As Folk just in California. It had the same Sam, Paul and James vibe and Black trans me did not really expect to run into kin folk. But I did have a playful exchange with a Black bartender who teased me about my accent. Rainbow flags everywhere aside and its historical significance, I hate to say it reminds me of how I look at the West Village now. At one point in history ,it probably really served dominance in the psyche and culture for LGBT people. But now the dominance of wealth and elitism and displacement has all but vanquished the spirit of the place. It is just another neighborhood. One where any flag waving ally and her progressive husband and two kids and a dog can call home just as soon as they would any Victorian in Anysuburb, USA. So mentally I tried to imagine what it must’ve once been those hills of San Fran where gays and lesbians and trans people came out to play, where they lived , where they sought spirit of community. I tried to imagine seedier aspects of it, the whores, the drug addicts, the sex culture in general. Wondered how boys , girls and neithers from Bayview or Fillmore interacted if at all with the Castro. How did they consolidate their identity ? Were there opportunities for both sides to shine? Or was it all or nothing?

America is a vast land with immeasurable natural beauty. I always think about that when I travel in the country. All the different landscapes, all the waterways , trees, animals, phenomenon , architecture. I always think of how it once belonged to Native people and how they lost it. How it was stolen from them. How you can feel the crimes if you just imagine what was and what is. I cannot begin to imagine the amount of curses on a land borne of so much blood and so much pain, and to be so beautiful physically at least. San Francisco like NY , like LA, like Chicago, like Miami and every other municipality in this land are daughters of this system, this bloodlust culture. It’s a beautiful ,ugly thing applicable since at least 1619.

Coming soon a review of my day in Oakland, San Fran’s bout it sista with all the soul and the gold.

B-Boy Blues: Banjee love in the 90s

There are very few books or authors that have ever addressed love between two Black men. But of the few that do exist , none stand out more than the B-Boy Blues series written by James Earl Hardy. It follows the romance of Mitchell “Little Bit ” and Raheim ” Pooquie” and takes place over the course of the 90s and includes at least 7 books full of humor, sex, romance and commentary on being young, Black and gay in NYC. I am currently re-reading the series again just finishing the 2nd book. I am always struck by the commitment of Hardy to spin his tale with such vivid visuals and his being so in tune with the language, mannerisms and culture of his character. You can tell they are based on real people and that he dug deep into the lives of people in his tribe to make it come altogether so beautifully. I read his books finding times when I really get Mitchell and times I truly feel for Raheim. All the while able to relate to having that “wrong” type of love. I find Black love to be so incredible when it’s real. Two people who have everything against them and daring in spite of all the requisite pain, all the lingering trauma of identity in being a Black gay man and seeing another Black gay man and loving him for who he is . I’d love to see it in it film one day although I know they’d probably fuck up the story, butcher the aesthetic , take away the 90’s Brooklyn based flava of the story and do Little Bit and Pooquie no justice. So I can only hope like I do with so many Black stories and Gay stories hope that it’s made by its’ people for its’ people. What a beautiful act of resistance on the part of Mr. Hardy. May he inspire more “jood” works from other unsung unicorns.

On touching privilege sometimes…

I always remark that I am never sure about how I’m read in the world. It’s something that I never rid myself of, wondering. Wondering how I’m being perceived , am I being spooked, what will I deal with as a result or not of being known. It’s such an enormous load of rubbish at the end of the day. It’s built on the backs of tons of residuals superficial markers bound to be interpreted in millions of different ways by millions of pairs of eyes and experiences. In short, passing and being read or spooked is very individual experience baked into a collective psyche. That said there are moments and with people that I have been acutely aware of not being read as trans. And it has been fascinating to be aware of that fact. When someone doesn’t know and you don’t have to wear that ready made armor of needing to defend or explain your womanhood and your adjoining personhood. It’s when you’re around a bunch of straight men laughing and talking shit totally non p.c. and the moments when you’re around some cis woman and she’s giving you the t as if ya’ ll on the same cycle. It’s in experiences when the person who isn’t trans is themselves not on guard and not monitoring all of their language, when they let you glimpse the realness of who they are. In contrast ,when it’s established that you’re trans I find people much more watchful, much more conscious of language, topic and level of relating with you. I find less of an inquiry into you as a person and they ask less questions because you become that weirdo that they have to watch out for. Those straight men won’t laugh and talk shit with you and that cis woman or women won’t kick it with you like any other woman. Any trans person who has any level of privilege , who has been stealth , who knows what it’s like when it doesn’t come up can relate. You’re acutely aware that the way you’re treated would be different if all your cards were on the table.

The thing I’ve realized about this privilege is that eventually it hurts. On one hand you love not fielding your gender all day , not needing to be actively aware of your variance but on the other you realize that whole life experiences and norms and feelings and truths aren’t allowed the time or space to be out in the world. People never really get to know you all the way. You lose the ability to speak and exist without a gnawing anxiety that it’s all gon go to shit and any feeble attempts made to just be an individual will get lost. I can imagine that I paint such a shit view of cis Hets in relation to trans people. But I’m just being real. For most people, a nice neat alignment is the only thing their brain is able to handle. When that alignment ceases to be or is no longer as nice as once thought, disbelief and a feeling of betrayal arises. I had a homegirl who once said she doesn’t tell men off the rip that she is trans. That she wants them to get to know her, that she is more than being trans. And I understand because I want the same thing. And I understand cause I too have let myself have those ciswoman experiences without disclosure. But what I know and what she knew but wouldn’t acknowledge was how rough that road is. How hard it is to keep yourself hidden and how futile an effort it is cause if he’s only able to see woman as one thing , then what chance in hell do you think you’ll have if you’re different? I write as a hypocrite and an offender but it sure is good to touch those cis privilege experiences sometimes.

Loss of my Village

I struggle with letting go of people, places and things. When they have meant something ,it is so challenging to accept that it will never be for me what it once was. There is no truer case of this for me than Greenwich Village and the Piers. As a New Yorker born and bred, I’ve always looked at the whole city as a big ass playground to explore, to be apart of , to claim even if my claims are really in another zip code. The Village served for a huge chunk of my young life as like a second neighborhood of mine. I took myself there for the first time at age 12 and learned about the Piers as a hangout for Queer people especially us Black ones. It was a marvelous place and idea for young closeted me to know of a place that reeked of gayness, that was meant for me, that seemed to be where I’d belong. I reflect on that time with the amazement I do sometimes of looking back on younger me and wondering how so many bad endings were spared for me. To be young and usually always alone exploring and looking and wanting all the adult things. To be a young gay Black boy is to always be on your own in so many respects. You have no one to really turn to about sex, about identity , there is no safety in expressing one’s self and you realize “kid” or “teenage” spaces are not for you.

In the Village I saw hordes of young Black gays out having fun, meeting lovers and friends, I saw voguing and learned lingo. I absorbed the style and the attitude and the culture of Black queerness. It was in the Village that I had my first kiss, the first time a guy picked me up and introduced me to love making. It was being desired and chased and loving it . It was the antidote to all the dates I never had and the proms I never went to. In the Village, I didn’t wear any of the straight caricature that I needed to navigate my Harlem and Stamford worlds. It was in the Village that I got in touch with my femininity and accepted the burgeoning young woman that I couldn’t run from. It was all of these things and the masses of Black gay men and lesbians and black transwomen who dominated Christopher street and made me feel in the chaos of NYC that I had a place of my own. It became the place where ideas about gayness and transness and Black gayness and Black transness were honed and nurtured. I look back on it now with this realization that our “community” while centered in a place only existed for the people who all lived outside of the Village. But somehow down there away from the mean Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn streets we became our Black rainbow.

A recent trip down there has solidified for me what I’d known for a while but that I hated to accept. The Village for my community and the Village of my youth is gone. I blame at once gentrification, the influx and expansion of NYU, GRINDR and all these other apps and the accompanying heavy police presence that has always threatened our community. I was shocked walking down Christopher how dark the streets had gotten and how whiter and straighter it got. The Pier’s legendary Saturday ki-kis were gone. There was no voguing. There was no trade. There were no transwomen or drag queens. I hadn’t seen a fem agress or AG in sight. Instead it was mostly white and mostly NYU esque and there were families with small kids. And I felt terribly alone and old because the Vill that I thought I’d see. The Vill I held on to in spirit and whose memory still propels me everyday to be the proudest, fiercest Black transwoman I can be was no longer there in the flesh. My Village died. It’s one of those things about gentrification that I don’t think the newcomers get or even care to. It’s that when they come into a space they always colonize it, they always change it and destroy what already was. They make the space uninhabitable and through force and power push people out and away. It never exists peacefully. Two neighborhoods in one is a farce. A place has to reflect its people. The history and culture of these areas serve as a bloodline in certain extents. I find as a Black transgender woman in NYC that I have no physical spaces. I have no areas of the city where my kind congregate in culture and for support. I find that there will always be this colonization that happens for our spaces. It makes you wonder though what’s supposed to happen to the conquered people? Where are we to go when you come in and take what little we have? And I realize that while the Village wasn’t ours from a residential or property right’s perspective it was ours in a historical , social and cultural perspective. Much the same, like my native Harlem another conquered community that once proudly boasted and enriched our Black American culture.

I’m gonna work on acknowledging and accepting change. After all such is life and things have to change, evolve , be reborn. That doesn’t mean I have to like it or even respect it. It just means a more purposeful remembering, it means honoring the history through memory. It’s by seeing the rainbow flags and the the benches and the beautiful NYC and NJ skyline and irrespective all the newcomers ,knowing this place was once mine. And who I was and am owes credit to my Village. They can never take away what it once was for me and I’ll never ever forget.

MAD AS FUCK

My Uber driver made me cry today. I self flagellate sometimes because of my inability to be a “nice person”. I’m not the one who is going to make small talk and look for friends everywhere I go. I work hard at being aloof and not engaging with people often. And I realized today what gets me to that point. People are fucking assholes. And one would be wise to be weary and prepare one’s self for someone else’s bullshit especially if you’re trans or part of some other marginalized group. I won’t get into the nitty gritty of the incident but I will say it started off being a very nice at least on surface interaction. We made light talk and laughter about my large food shopping order and he kept making comments about ” He must be real happy with that cooking you’re gonna do”. And knowing the rules of casual light banter and being hip to flirtatious inklings of men, I said at one point,” How do you know there’s a he?” And he flipped it on me and said “well a she, or whatever, I know who you are”. And I responded , ” it would be a he” and laughed. But he followed up with a comment that really turned the light mood very ugly real fast. He switched up pronouns and said something to the effect of ” You need help bro?” when he dropped me off.

What gets me most upset about this situation honestly is how lighthearted it began at least I thought. The sun was shining, the Uber driver was a pleasant looking older Black man, his car was very nice and the conversation that he elicited was just regular. I did not detect malice or any transphobia or nothing. He just seemed to be a nice man. And then to flip on me and mis-gender me for no reason, it hurts. Cause if he was a dick from rip then I wouldn’t be upset. I’d already know to play my position and be my usual quiet self. But when someone seems nice and then shows their whole ass it really sucks. I can imagine people saying things like ” Don’t prejudge everyone” or “give people a chance” but there’s a part of me that says fuck that. I need for cisgender straight men and women to stop attacking trans people. I need if ya’ll are assholes to not fake niceness, not hold bullshit conversations and not cause situations that forces me to rate you as a 1 and report you to your agency. As a rule ,I hate cancel culture and I do find so much of it insidious. But people have to do better especially in a service industry. I don’t believe anybody should be treated anyway but I will say I did not find myself to be at fault in this situation. I did not attempt to flirt or call him out his name or none of that. My go to is to be quiet cause I never know who I am going to encounter. I have no allusions that everyone will love me or accept me or make me feel welcome. But what you won’t do is disrespect me. I won’t question my tendency to be aloof anymore cause I see how much of a protective coat it is. How necessary it is. But I will side eye or maybe not participate in a light banter with an Uber driver who seems nice but is really an ignorant jerk who probably wants some of this and couldn’t handle what a fly bitch that I am.

I tire of em. I tire of cis straights feeling threatened by the presence of queer people. Of making fun of us and being disrespectful as a default. I’m tired of fake smiles and disclaimers and talks of “gay friends and gay cousins”. I’m tired of having to feel like I have to always be ready to fight the world to not get pummeled by it. I’m tired of good days being ruined by motherfuckers who want to make it bad. This is not an easy time. It takes a lot everyday just to try to navigate this bitch with any shred of stability cause nothing makes sense and everything and everyone is exhausting on some levels. I hated even reporting him cause as a fellow Black person I never want to take money out his pocket. And here I am of the age to possibly be your daughter and you disrespect me. You don’t stop to consider all that I may go through and all the ways you and I struggle as two Black people in this racist ass country. Instead you beat up someone as beaten down as you. Smh.

Senses

You saw my titties and

did not touch them

I did not take it personal

I smiled at your refusal

and enticed you with my eyes

hoping to warm your ice

You heard my brain

but asked no questions

I continued to spill but

it was never mopped up

You felt my pleas

and turned your back

I reached out and massaged your feet

and foolishly thought you’d return the favor

You tasted my love

it never digested in your system

I seasoned it with jokes, with soft blond

inspired verbiage

Made you the man but you never saw me as girl

I smelled your indifference

but thought it rightful resignation that needed

to be mollified, pacified and won over

You could not know for me no flame burned

“Don’t throw it in face ” and other shit cis-hets need to stop saying

I’ve found that revealing one’s self is one of the most challenging tasks someone can perform sometimes. Cause at the heart of revelations people want to be seen, to be accepted, to have their truth recognized as valid. Having lived my life a member of the Rainbow tribe, I’ve long dealt with closets and coming out. Identifying as trans has in many ways pushed me into closets that I didn’t realize I lived in. That all said, I recently told someone in my life that I was trans. And as per usual, I heard ,” I accept everyone’s lifestyle” and “I’m ok with them as long as its not shoved in my face”. My listener said all this almost like a rehearsal , a disclaimer for their obvious homo and trans phobias. Deeming someone’s identity, their gender as a lifestyle is a very intentional method used by cis gendered straight people to denigrate someone. It makes a mockery of my lived experience, trivializes it to the point of being akin to someone who likes winter sports or someone who happens to go to clubs . The point being imagine if a Queer person said ” I’m ok with straight people but don’t shove your straightness in my face”. Or “I accept everyone including those with straight lifestyles”. A bunch of bullshit , no?

As the standard, as the default cis gender straight people never have to interrogate or take stock in their immense privilege. And then when asked to merely consider or recognize that people just happen to be different and it becomes an affront to their identities. They are threatened by the idea that the presence of a Queer person will somehow subvert their cis straight privilege. It’s a force that has larger ramification than one person’s prejudice or ignorance. It is the reason trans people are not as valued as cis people and queers in general remain tethered to a system of being less than straights. It remains the reason legislation continues to merely debate our existence and nobody cares if trans people live or die. It is the reason that trans women consider whether it is safe to disclose her identity. And I think on some level you realize it’s never truly safe but you hope people aren’t as ignorant as you imagine them to be.

People by and large do not like to be called ignorant. Most people will consider themselves to have at least half a brain even if they know nothing at all. I think it goes in deaf ears en masse when queer people ask for straight people to not be as shitty as they are. And while queerness is having a moment, there’s a part of me that feels like it follows contemporary Western culture of being primitive on the inside and performative on the out. People consider Queerness nasty especially for trans women and Gay men. The idea that we have anal sex grosses out the same straight people who eagerly fuck their own partner in the ass or who delight in being pegged. But somehow it becomes so much worse when the parties involved have penises. In 2021 ,folks who take so called moral and /or religious umbrage with queerness should just shove their hypocritical self righteous ass head in the toilet. You’re as shitty as your views. Google has so many thousands upon thousands of links to education for people so invested in holding up archaic forms of oppression. Interrogate what it is about Queerness that disgusts you so much. Learn about that “lifestyle” you provide disclaimers for. Or better yet stop shoving your detritus filled lifestyle in my face and those of my Queer siblings. We are fucking over it!