Racialicious

Karnythia of the Angry Black Woman blog had an interesting post I ran across entitled How To Write About Black Women in which she slammed all the tropes, memes and blanket statements aimed at Black women when others outside our community write about us.

One group she didn’t mention is Black trans women, and here’s where I was inspired to pick up the baton and happily run with it where Karnythia left off.

(Moni cracks knuckles)

Let’s get started with this post, shall we?

Only acknowledge the existence of Black transwomen when we are murdered or the victim of a crime, salaciously involved in some scandal or news story you wish to highlight, during the November 20 Transgender Day of Remembrance, you wish to pump up your Nielsen ratings during sweeps week or you wish to use us to insult Black cis women you hate.

Ignore the African descended trans activists who have toiled for decades to represent our community or have eloquently written about those issues for years because only white transwomen do that. Don’t bother quoting Black transwomen on issues of importance to the rainbow community at large, write positive stories about them speaking on trans issues or believe there are engaged Black transfeminine leaders involved in fighting for the human rights of their community and others. .

Use a sellout Black gay male drag queen, white trans activists at inside the beltway Gay, Inc organizations or local rainbow community orgs to speak as ‘experts’ on Black trans lives.

Violate the AP Stylebook guidelines on covering transgender people by misgendering Black transwomen at every opportunity. When known, mention their old male names even if it isn’t germane to the story in order to other them and reinforce the point they weren’t originally born female.

If you’re a cis female or radical feminist do all of the above, flaunt your ability to menstruate, birth them babies and add misogynist to your list of charges. If you’re a white transsexual separatist, obsess about surgical status in addition to doing all of the above.

— Friend of the R Monica Roberts, How (Not) To Write About Black Trans Women, on her award-winning blog TransGriot. Read the rest of this great post!

Tags: Black trans women Monica Roberts how not to write cissexism transmisogyny

guerrillamamamedicine:

“In order to understand why transphobia and cissexism persist and are continually perpetuated throughout feminist communities, particularly the vegetarian-ecofeminist community, it is important to consider the origins of anti-trans advocacy as a conscious project of prominent, elite White feminists in the 1970s. In the late sixties and early seventies, trans people were very active in the women’s and queer liberation movements. The Compton’s Cafeteria and Stonewall rebellions of the sixties are evidence of that, as are women like Beth Elliot of the Daughters of Bilitis, Sandy Stone of Olivia Records, and Stonewall veteran Silvia Rivera who was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activist Alliance. So it’s important to keep in mind that trans women, and trans people more generally, were an integral part of the early women’s liberation movement. But in the mid- to late-seventies, there was a transphobic backlash within feminism to systematically remove and exclude trans people, explicitly transsexual women, from the women’s and queer movements. For example, Rivera was targeted and physically attacked by cissexist women separatists at a gay rights rally. Elliot was targeted by Robin Morgan and separatists at a lesbian women’s conference. Stone was targeted by Janice Raymond and forced out of Olivia Records with threats of a boycott. And Gloria Steinem of Ms. magazine openly attacked trans women. Over the last couple decades, there has been an increase in organizing and activism by trans people, yet we continue to be the targets of a systematic backlash from elite feminists. So-called ‘women-born women’ policies are still used to exclude transsexual women from participating in our own movement. And while trans women are disproportionately targeted by homelessness, prisons, and sexual and physical violence, an alliance between anti-trans feminists and the state has been used to circumvent human rights laws in order to bar us from many vital women’s facilities and services. Trans women have even been forced out of women’s services organizations they helped create.”

—

Ida Hammer, in an interview with Bitch Magazine (via mikroblogolas)

(Source: kiriamaya)

Tags: transphobia cissexism feminism Gloria Steinem Robin Morgan Silvia Rivera history trans women trans people