Trans Day of Visibility 2025

Thanks to @inerati on twitter for letting me know about the date format fiasco.

Another year, another TDoV -- 2022's TDoV when Jamie Willis came out feels like yesterday. Rather than trying subjecting my readers' minds to intellectual gavage with my garbage, I will try something different this time.

People like us are under a renewed attack from people who wish to push us to the sidelines. We've been let down by the general populace 〈and allies〉, who pay lip service to our concerns while engaging in harmful talking points. It has never been a worse time to be a trans person 〈especially a trans kid〉. Waitlists for surgery are getting longer, access to hormone replacement therapy is becoming sketchier. Cis people are infatuated with the most stupid transphobic talking points, which essentially involve the most harebrained, selfish claims 〈I'm looking at you, cis LGB people and cis women.

The infighting must stop. We must come together in this time, be stronger, wiser and better than those who seek to curtail our rights. Let us reject factionalism in favour of uniting and meting out the correct treatment to unaccepting and unsupportive cis people. Although we must prioritise optics over visibility, we must keep in mind that we are dealing with people who will settle for nothing less than our death -- no one cares if you were a straight youngshit passoid pickme, a clocky cinderhon agp transbian or a gayden with a cishet boyfriend. Let's usher in a new era where people can be transgender without having to justify themselves.

Growing up, I was a big fan of the Indiana Jones franchise – what's not to love: Spielberg's direction, Williams's score, and a rugged Harrison Ford recovering antiquities in exotic locations and fighting with villains 〈the Lego Indiana Jones games were the cherry on top〉. A line which has stayed particularly close to my heart is from The Last Crusade: "Only the penitent man shall pass."

As a trans woman, this line has a profound meaning – transitioning is very similar to being shackled in a penitentiary, with your hands and legs cuffed to the prison cell of your body. Once you 'complete' your transition 〈re: your rehabilitation as your affirmed gender〉, you're treated like an ex-offender, your genitalia being the albatross used to charge you for straying from the societal codes of gender conformity. I don't think that being born as the wrong sex at birth should entail me to repent for the fact that I did not ask to be born.

Let us take solace in the fact that one day we shall pass and blend into the world of cis people, who treat us unfairly – and win at their game of unrealistic beauty standards and selfishness. Let us stop conservatives from rigidly defining the word 'man', and adding the word 'away' at the very end of this line -- only the penitent person shall pass 🙂