On Oppression & Identity - Load-Bearing

Image credit: “Let the Oppressed Go Free” by Timothy Schmaltz, photo by Tommy Crouch. Original here

This post started out as a way to get spicy and light up some conflict but I think ended with trying to explore how we all find a way to come together and be honest about how we hurt others and ourselves when we think we’re protecting ourselves.

You tell me!!

I want to open this piece that ha sbeen bouncing around my head for a while with some facts (as I understand them) and then an observation from my own experience, and then my analysis of why this happens and what is to be done.

The facts

FACT: binary trans women face significant violence and oppression today for simply trying to live as themselves
FACT: being a trans woman when you are white does not erase your white privilege
FACT: nonbinary people are also trans. whether they choose to claim that identity is up to them, but it is their right to do so.
FACT: nonbinary trans people also suffer severe violence and oppression today for simply trying to live as themselves.
FACT: some studies have shown that nonbinary trans people have even higher rates of suicide attempts & homelessness that binary trans people.
FACT: ALL trans people, binary or nonbinary, face similar & often identical patterns of violence, oppression, and harm attempting to access healthcare, housing, employment, and general community services.

The Observation

Despite all of the above being true, factual, and verifiable, the single most abusive attacks I have experienced and witnessed on Bluesky have been from binary white trans women towards nonbinary trans people. This abuse has come in the form of the following(non-exhaustive):

asserting nonbinary trans people are privileged because they “pass”
saying nonbinary trans people are not real trans people if they haven’t had or don’t want gender reassignment surgery
saying nonbinary trans people do not deserve to feel oppressed because they don’t need hormones to align with their identities
asserting gender euphoria is false or an invalid reason to explore or realign one’s own identity
perhaps most disturbingly, but least surprisingly, denying nonbinary trans people their identities by actively misgendering them, or also harassing or abusing nonbinary trans people through targeted attacks on their other identities, such as racial or ethnic identities.

The analysis & remedy

From where I sit, my analysis says this comes from the same pattern we see from white cis women towards non-white women & men - the use of womanhood as a shield by which to both demand a seat at the table of those historically oppressed while also refusing to sever ties with the constructs of white supremacy that serve them & protect them conditionally - that condition being to undermine the solidarity of oppressed groups. And yet, if one dares to name this directly during a conflict, one will be subject to a targeted harassment action that will leave one feeling deeply unsafe as those of us who have been subject to violence at the hands of those wielding whiteness know overwhelming force is their weapon of choice. In fact, I am likely risking a significant amount of harassment just naming this today, because those who wish to assert to supremacy of whiteness and binary identity will surely find this post a failed critique of the complexities of the oppression of binary white trans people, and binary trans people in general. But I ask you all: when, since the time society began to acknowledge the importance of the conversation on equal rights for trans people, has there been a lack of binary trans people as the primary spokespeople for trans rights?

I name this today not to shame any binary (white) trans woman who has engaged in this practice, but to bring it to the attention of those who have either not witnessed it or chosen to be silent bystanders: Your silence is complicitness. You ask nonbinary trans people to stand in solidarity with you, and we willingly do so to almost a uniform and unbroken degree, but when we ask for the same recognition and care you ask for, you throw us under the bus. This is a profound betrayal and aligns with the ultimate goals of the white cisheteropatriarchy which we all wish to destroy. Or are you only interested in cracking it so you can be allowed in?

I call on you to be fearlessly self-reflective and self-implicative; to complicate your own existence inside the narrative and not hold yourself apart from it; none of us are free from failure and harm-doing, and when we understand and acknowledge the ways in which we reinforce and enact systems of oppression against ourselves and others, only then can we can truly begin to do the work of dismantling those systems by starting within ourselves.

To cis allies(of all stripes, whatever your sexual orientation or identity): you do no one any favors by watching one group of trans people harm and oppress another and keeping your mouths shut. Speak up. Speak up because it is right, but also because speaking up is also how you become better about identifying where you are also reinscribing systems of oppression onto yourselves and those around you. None of us is safe from a system which seeks to dominate every one of us, even the cishet men.

You will get it wrong. You will make mistakes. Be bold. Be brave. Mistakes are the engine by which we learn, and we should not feel shame as long as we truly work towards justice. Listen more than you speak, but be bold in the speaking and the doing to protect others from harm. You offer great protection and security because you have the ability to turn your privilege into an asset for those who cannot access it by lending it to them in moments where they are bereft or particularly vulnerable. Again, you’ll get this wrong, too. You’ll support someone and find out that maybe you took the “wrong” side. Weigh that against your moral compass and settle it for yourself, but do things to try to be better to the people that people who are like you often don’t care about, and you’ll be on the right track.

We are all victims and also beneficiaries of a system that is built to lock us in struggle against each other instead of those very few who believe they dit outside of it, and who look to us all like unassailable powers on high. They are not. They are people, caught in the same snare they think they simply control. This is not to ask you to have some misguided or deep empathy for them, but to understand where your focus for the conflict should be, and where it should not.

We have all been taught that on social media or in public or around our own peer groups we must be perfect and show only strength or we will be attacked, torn to shreds, and left for dead. Belligerence and bellicosity have become our shields. I propose that we let vulnerability and empathy become our flexible protectors; bending where brittle fury & defensiveness break, opening and welcoming without losing distinctiveness where other shapes cannot reform to hold both the collective and preserve & celebrate the uniqueness of each person or community. Let us try to be soft with each other, not hard, and find care and understanding where there has often only been anger and disdain.

We have so much possibility in front of us, if only we will reach out and grab it, and lift those far below us up to us before we try and leave them behind so we can climb ever higher.

To solidarity.