Meditation on Trans Visibility
Originally published to Cohost on Trans Day of Visibility 2022. CW gun violence, transphobia.
They hate us so much that they grieved for the first time. That is, when the latest in a long line of school shooters happened to be trans, the anti-trans population's sudden grief response wasn't all performative. The bigots grew numb to the realities of constant killing just like the rest of us-- but lucky them, we shocked them out of it for a second.
Trans people have always been precariously useful. Liberals often rejoice that our existence has given them the "gift" of decoupling sex, sexuality, gender, and gender expression. Of course even this newfound freedom, they claim, is best in moderation, particularly when it butts heads with the so-called necessary evils of capitalism, so we don't benefit much from this relationship.
We're useful to conservatives, too, it seems. Not just in the obvious way, as an affecting rhetorical device for Rowling hagiomaniacs. The existence of trans people has shepherded conservatives into realizing and/or showing that they care about people dying. Not that they're going to do anything generative about it, mind you-- I'm sure the only result of this will be hate crimes against us. But they're showing their emotions and voicing a grief that the kyriarchy has muffled, which is good not in a political way but in a moral-of-a-children's-cartoon way. Not liberating for us-- but at least it's liberating for them.
I'm thinking about gift embodiment as a mode of visibility. The strangest interaction a cis person can have with me is to thank me. And they often do, on behalf of cis women with mustaches, pregnant cis teenagers, Black women who get demonized by being masculinized-- the people whose struggles they just noticed are linked with ours. I'm genuinely glad they see those connections, but it's always a shock to realize that's the majority of their interfacing with transness-- a class of people whose existence is necessary to teach them the complexities of gender. A "let's say, hypothetically" with the added rhetorical impact of being real and occasionally hot. An embodied gift.
With all this in mind, a benediction for this TDOV:
May we recognize ourselves as more than shepherds.
May we recognize one another as more than political truths.
May we make outsiders recognize us as more than gifts.
May they see our pain, art, and brilliance.
May they see our joy, fury, and beauty.
May they see us as friends, lovers, and coworkers.
May we, trans and cis and otherwise, seek out modes of visibility beyond gift embodiment.