3. August 2020

Beyond Trans Visibility

from ALOK

2017: https://www.alokvmenon.com/blog/2017/7/14/beyond-trans-visibility

Originally written on Trans Day of Visibility 2015

1) “Trans” “Visibility” is an oxymoron. Trans is who we are, not what we we look like. We shouldn’t have to look like anything in particular in order to be believed for who we are. Visibility often is a form of (nonconsensual) labor that we have to in order to make our experiences coherent to others.

2) Trans Visibility is a cis framework. Who are we becoming visible for? Why do we have to become visible in order to be taken seriously? Non-trans people will congratulate themselves for our visibility but will not mention how they are the ones were responsible for erasing us in the first place. The trans movement isn’t about trans people moving forward, it’s about cis people catching up with us.

3) Invisibility is not the problem, transmisogyny is the problem. Trans people are harassed precisely because we ARE visible. Mandating visibility increases violence against the most vulnerable among us. The same system that will require trans people to be visible will not give institutional support to us when we are harassed precisely because we are visible.

4) Visibility often means incorporation. Often the only way we are respected as “legitimately” trans is if we appeal to dominant norms of beauty, gender, race, and establishment politics. Trans people should not have to be patriotic, change what we wear, undergo medical or legal transition, really should not have to do anything in order to be respected. We were and already are enough.

5) Visibility is easy. Organizing is hard. Sharing photos of trans people and calling us “resilient” and “beautiful” does little to address the persecution so many of us face. We cannot love ourselves out of structural oppression alone. How come media visibility of trans people has not resulted in the funding and support of our organizations, campaigns, and struggles?

Let’s push harder and demand more.

My Gender Is My Race Is My Gender

from ALOK

2018: https://www.alokvmenon.com/blog/2018/9/3/my-gender-is-my-race-is-my-gender

shuffling between family dinners & queer parties, disparate spaces & paradigms, where often it feels like all the indian people are cis & all the queer people are white. the collapse of history & language & memory that engenders this moment. the relentless & exhaustive ritual of asserting that we have always been — to the white queers who call their genders new, and the indians who call heteronormativity home. but i know my gender is my race is my gender is my family is my queers is my soiled makeup wipes in the car on the way to my mother is my lipstick, fecund, ready to bloom on the way back.

They Extract From Us To Become Themselves

from ALOK – “what are you doing to stop it?” and perhaps: “how are you engendering it?”

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Statement on Pride 2019

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