Avris

Alejandra Caraballo posted a video of a powerful testimony by Lola Smith, a 12-year-old nonbinary person forced to beg for their rights in front of the Florida Medical Board. This video is both terrifying and empowering. Indeed, everyone should see it.

But transphobes transphobing and trans people being forced to defend their dignity is just a part of the struggle. Another one is how our “allies” are pretending to ally…

DWH Delft organised a letter writing campaign to advocate for the passage of the trans ID bill in the Netherlands.

As much as I'd personally prefer to remove gender markers from official documents entirely, I believe that if it has to be there, it should at least be reasonably easy for trans people to make it reflect their real gender. So here's my letter:

It’s sad, being a member of a minoritised community and seeing some of its members turn against the others. Like in case of that twitter discussion on whether or not “weird looking” people and drag queens should be allowed to represent us, or even mention publicly that they are queer, for fear of giving us a bad reputation.

I used to be that asshole who answers “no” to this question.

At first I didn’t really think about it. It was yet another thing that my parents taught me and I just accepted. Boys and girls need to have separate toilets and locker rooms, so that the boys wouldn’t do nasty things to the girls. Simple.

But one day a cleaning lady came in to the boys’ locker room. And one day a female teacher come in. How come? Why can they see half-naked boys, while our female classmates cannot? That got me thinking and trying to find any sense in that.