On the part of Trans folks right now.

So, let’s talk about Trans rights.

That is, the human rights of trans people.

They are under assault right now in a more organized, targeted way than ever before.

Those who seek to do us harm have been empowered by the gang of thieves in Washington DC.

Now, the question is what can we do about it? What efforts are going to provide the most bang for the buck?

Some have, will, and go nuts with the idea that those trans folks in flyover country should move, migrate to California or Chicago or New York City.

That is not helping, though. That is surrendering, and letting those to come suffer more.

Some will say work on your legislators. This isn’t bad, and can have some results in the short term, but they will often be limited in cope.

Because the real issue is the federal level stuff. The real issue, politically, is that Congress and the White House are using us as targets of opportunity. It doesn’t mean ignore local stuff, mind you.

So, in terms of political change, there is a need to focus there.

But the simple truth is that for the next three years, there isn’t much that we can do. It isn’t a happy truth. It isn’t a pleasing truth. Many will say it isn’t even a truth.

And yet, we are talking about bang for the buck.

And no matter what you may think of political parties or how other things are more important, the thing you need to understand is that the full brunt of political trans activism should, right now, be devoted to three things:

  • Figuring out how to get eligible voters registered and to the polls.
      • Finding and supporting Democratic Party Candidates who are openly and unequivocally supportive of trans people.
        • Remembering that this isn’t about how one party or idea is better than others, but about removing all Republicans from elected positions.

        We can have the whole Green or Dem, socialist Dem or Moderate Dem, etc fight later. To get lost in that morass is to enable those who oppose human rights to keep stripping us bare.

        No, I don’t give a shit how much better your side of the left is than anyone else’s left. We are under attack. This is open warfare against us and you want to fight about how to do shit when we don’t even have the power to do shit yet?

        Are you daft?

        Now, not all of us are good with that kind of protest ready, camera loving, self outing political shit.

        So, what can those of us like that do? Besides vote for a Dem, of course, because none of us who can vote can afford to not do so in 2018 and 2020.

        Because we are under attack, the social systems and economy of our separated and scattered community are being broken.

        Thanks to medical and related issues, an enormous amount of our collective economic power is shunted away from the community.

        This is why social services for us are so hard to come by. Why it takes so much effort to build and sustain them.

        So there is something we can look to doing while we are under attack. Create, build, and sustain medical and social services for us.

        For ourselves.

        That means holding our service providers to a different standard than we have historically. It means telling our therapists and doctors that although we love them, we need them to step up, step out, and both contribute to our community and fight for our community.

        Or we will create, build, and develop providers who will do such things.

        We can take a little longer in our timelines and donate a bit not to individual people, but to organizations, who can use that money more effectively.

        We can develop ethics and standards for our organizations that place the work as a priority over the people doing it, so we have fewer cults of personality in local areas, where someone more intent on fame blocks good work.

        We can stop seeking to judge those in the community who don’t meet the standards set by the cis world.

        We can recognize that communities do not need to like each other. That they are not big families, but big groups.

        We can operate more together instead of separately, in groups, for safety and socialization.

        We can share history and develop better tools for advocating.

        That is what we need.

        Because if we have learned nothing else in the hundred plus years of trans activism, it is that if we want those things, we need to build them.

        And we need to support them.