Trans love starts with you
an ongoing collaboration for all of us
This is a re-post of last week’s collaboration with Pavini Moray from Glitter Joyride, but now your comments are part of the collective voice.
Because our voices are beautiful.
If you would like to contribute to this piece, all you have to do is leave a comment. I’ll add it to the growing collection of words here so that all of us can return to this whenever we need to feel that love and support that our community so desperately needs. All voices are welcome here.
Trans people love you
We have always loved you. Many of us came from you, were born through you, grew up with you, trusted you.
We know ourselves because we knew you first, and we see ourselves reflected in you.
We want to be your allies. We want to be intersectional in our liberation work. But we will not tolerate abuse.
My plea to us all - no more name calling, abuse, simple derogatory slang, an either with us or against mentality - so binary??? - it achieves nothing, it demeans us all and our inherent equal value and worth - we all lose, life and love the first casualties. Let's focus on the fact we all want to be the best version of ourselves without fear or favour.
Love u 4 what u do. What u write. What u uncover and glow.
Trans people love ourselves
There is no greater act of self-love than to be ourselves for ourselves, which is precisely what our collective becoming embodies.
No one is coming to save us. It's us, for us.
We don’t really know how to make inclusive spaces, even as we need them so desperately. We can’t meet our belonging needs at the cost of one another.
You don’t need me to welcome you because you already are welcome.
Trans people love ourselves when we embrace that self love looks different, feels different for each of us. Like so much of our experience, the path is followed as it is forged, and that strength is the delightful surprise residing within each of us.
Loving myself through transition was a love I didn’t know I had. I could love myself enough to listen to my truth and my authentic experience even if it would make other people uncomfortable, angry or frightened. I could love myself enough to trust the mystery of what I was here to learn in this lifetime. I could love myself enough to trust that I would find others who would love me too.
Trans love is beautiful
It is the first kind of self-love I have known, and I want to shout it from the top of the world!
We belong with each other.
This community is bright with love. Let's celebrate it together.
My hope is that you will hear many tiny voices rising up to support you and call out the beauty in your gifts to humanity; the beauty in our collective humanity. I even dare to hope that those voices will bring you some rest, some peace, even if only for a moment. 💐
Self love for me last night looked like painting my transAF nails while watching the debate with a friend.
Trans people are sacred
Across time, trans and gender creative people have always existed.
In every culture, every religion, every place on Earth. We are a holy part of creation, often tasked with ritual roles of ceremony, of weaving the sacred in community.
My partner who is also trans recently asked, "I don't understand, why do they pick on the trans people?" But I understand.
Outside of norms of society such as gender roles and gender assigned at birth is an immense freedom. We are powerful beyond measure, and oppressors know that intuitively.
Control the freest people to have control over society. Oh, that and that we aren't always doing our procreation job in capitalism. (But some of us are!)
The magical space of gender liminality produces a human who cannot be easily controlled, but beyond that, trans people often have a deep connection with the holy mystery.
There are NOT two sides to 'the argument' of whether trans folk should exist! You are here. Thank you for being here. Thank you for enriching the world.
You're you. That's enough.
My husband was trans. It was one of my favorite things about him! That he had the courage to radically transform until he felt like himself! His daily mantra was: "Surprise me." I never met a braver human. I was with him in his hospital bed while he passed away in 2020. As with everything else, he met the transition at the end with grace and dignity.
Trans love is for you
This beautiful trans love of mine is too big, too powerful, too important not to give it to you. Will you welcome it?
As a nonbinary person who presents as a woman, I often feel erased— in public, in discourse; in most places. But I felt visible here, in your words, and I'm grateful for having read this so I can remember that I belong to such a loving community.
You are part of that "we," and you enrich the world with your love.
Trans labor ain't free
My love may be vast, but I am not inexhaustible. And I am worthy of the time and energy my body and my spirit provide, but that worth is mine to spend where I see fit.
It is such a kindness in this world when my cis friends and family engage in their own labor or learning and doing better without asking me to lift that burden or make it lighter for them.
As a transfemme person, I have been burned a lot of times by spaces that purported to be refuges, but weren't. They were refuges for other queer and trans folx, but not for folx like me.
Your trans friend,
Robin
Thank you for your curation and care, love the list, love the love. Here's an offering for the "sacred" bucket: The wisest part of each of us recognizes that all the weaponized words aimed at us every day are just projections of the wounding all humans have incurred under the violence of the binary. It also knows that we are not abominations, but exaltations. Sacred to the core.
Our differences shrink within the Cosmos