Being trans (and being disabled for that matter) gives you almost a push to look for a sense of community so you can find people who you can relate to and find some form of friendship amongst some of the issues that we often face. This however is quite difficult as, and I’m speaking from personal experience here, we are often the most shy and isolated people you will ever come across. But we do manage to carve out our small little areas to get support.
However these are not always the greatest places for us to be in.
Often the community we love is really fucking toxic and can cause so many issues for us. We are all trying to find our own paths and we all have different needs of care and support that we require and that is fine but there is often bitchiness, back stabbing and a failure to recognise that there is a vast amount of intersectionality in trans spaces. There is often racism, ablism and even trans and homophobia in trans spaces. Our community is still just as volatile and corrupt as every other space out there. The difference being is that we often do not check in on our behaviors and they are often justified by other community members because we are a marginalised community.
Racism , homophobia, transphobia and ablism is not justified fullstop.
We need to unpick all of the bullshit that we do and that does mean calling out a lot of the behaviours that are around us. There are a lot of trans people in our community that are problematic and I’ve mentioned that in posts previously on here, I would tag a few, but honestly I’ve mentioned LGBT community bullshit so much you will probably stumble on something pretty quickly.
As someone who is trans and disabled I can tell you that intersectionality is forgotten about constantly. So can my black and trans friends, my disabled and bi friends, ect, ect, people will often think that we will fit in small boxes and that box will fit all the care and support everyone who experiences that one marginal part of their existence but it won’t. As an example I will need support on access to venues and electricity ports, but because I am white and I “pass as male” I will not experience the trans misogyny that women will experience and especially trans women of colour who will need a higher level of support when it comes to violence in society. Everyone is entirely different but we are forced into a one size fits all package.
We need to destroy this concept and start working on more individual care and support basis. We also should be carving spaces so more of our marginalized members get the spaces they deserve to have and the members of the community that already have good platforms need to step aside and allow others to have a louder voice. We are often wrapped in the same few (white and able bodied) trans people taking spaces and their experience, whilst giving platform to the voice of transness, also is silencing the voices of trans people who NEED to be heard.
I hope that in the next couple of years that we can start making serious headway into making community spaces and voices much more intersectional and fair, the support needs to be given to those who need it.
Tyler Charles Austen 