The Basics

For reasons that I've decided to omit from this , I wanted to write a quick little missive about some of my positions regarding queer and trans liberation.

• There cannot be any queer liberation without trans liberation. Trans people - in particular, trans women of color - have been some of the fiercest and most effective advocates for both our own rights and the rights of others historically and in the present. Disregarding this is both ethically suspect and tactically foolish.
• Trans people should be permitted to transition legally, socially, and medically without gatekeeping. In particular, systems that serve to delay and obstruct access to the aforementioned - the UK's gender identity clinics are an egregious example - should be dismantled and replaced with services that are based on informed consent and free at the point of use.
• Queer people of all stripes should be free to live our lives without molestation or intrusion, especially by the government and heteronormative society. There is an extreme amount of unjustified and misaimed scrutiny of - including, but by no means limited to - how we present ourselves, what we do in our bedrooms, and the art we create. This can and must be stopped by defanging legal and social avenues that are available to hurt us.
  • In particular, the oncoming witch hunt of trans children, and resulting utterly reprehensible damage to -all- children which would be caused by the institutionalization of sexual assault by American conservatives, is nothing but a baseless moral panic.
• Acceptance and assistance by non-queer people is obviously ideal and helpful, but it is not and cannot be the only consideration. In cases where such individuals would stymie any of the above such as by personal political power, concentration in a geographic area, etc, going around them to secure liberation is acceptable - and expected of anyone who wants to call themselves an ally. (Personally, I would prefer accomplices.)
• Until the above points are achieved and while we still live in a world that is inherently violent to people who step outside the default conceptions of gender, sex, and so on, queer people generally and especially trans people are by default constantly acting in self-defense. Facilitating this is a moral good, even (and especially!) when it includes acting in defiance of existing power structures which are trying very, very hard to make us miserable or dead.

There is a lot more detail you could go into here - you might make a persuasive argument you can't have true queer liberation without dismantling capitalism, for example. Point #2 is inherently anticapitalist in its remedy. However, I'm not a theorist, so I'm not going to try and tie all that up in an elegant bow.

I tried to constrain my points above into either concrete measurably goals (widely available transition, an end to legal attacks) or emphasizing the need for a diversity of tactics. In terms of How to secure the above - I am also not a capital-a Activist and have not been politically active in a meaningful sense near as long as I'd like. What I do engage in is offline and not something I think is relevant. Regardless, I'm not a good source on strategic advice.

That said, I hope at least one person finds this useful. None of my thoughts are novel, but I wanted to write them out anyway. It has been and is going to be rough going for a while longer, but as the alternative is to take the doompill, I do sincerely believe we at can least win a world where we have the autonomy and dignity to lead our lives as we choose. Some unreachable people will probably still be bellyaching about us as they descend into the very pits of Tartarus.

That's their problem. Best of luck, kindred!