Dear Tiffany,
Non-binary self, trans but not trans enough to feel the effects of visibility, trans but lucky enough not to feel dysphoria most of the time when walking into a “women’s” washroom, trans but with enough financial privilege to buy reusable menstrual hygiene products and most of the time it doesn’t trip any big Gender Feels, trans but not brave enough to *really* change your pronouns, trans but…
You’re not a traitor to your community, even with all of those buts.
You are trans enough.
I love you in your transness.
The world is a horrible, violent, ugly place.
It is getting worse.
It is getting scarier.
It feels hopeless.
I love you as part of this community that is under so much attack.
I love you, trans self.
We will work – continue to work – for trans visibility and safety, and to try and provide resources for trans folks to develop sustainable-ish self-care in unsustainable contexts, to develop wholehearted narratives in contexts that offer only narratives of loss and lack and less-than. We will keep doing this work.
Do what you do.
Share what you can.
Know that your own narrative is also valid.
Fuck the system, it was built broken and it has stayed broken and it deserves to be broken down.
Community care is self-care, and you are part of this trans community, and you will build, through a subversive network of transgenerosity (thank you, Nathan Fawaz), as many resources to save as many of us as we can.
It won’t work, it won’t be enough, we will lose too many people to the hopelessness and violence of this horrible world and this horrible time we’re in, but it will not be nothing and that is worth the effort.
Dear trans self, dear trans community –
I love you.
– Me