transcreature:

[TW warning: anti-trans bigotry and violence]
The following is a piece I wrote for a zine, QUAC , about the topic of Queer Violence

Queer People Not My People

I expected to lose a lot transitioning from a gay identified boy to a trans woman. I’ve lost family, once-called “best friends”, and the ability to find a man on A4A for some anonymous one night stands. What I didn’t expect was the loss of queer communities as a safe space for me. I once idolized queer spaces, now I always enter them in trepidation, even the ones I’ve helped build and maintain. I write this piece still reeling at how much anger I felt last night, still picking out the tear-dried clumps of mascara from my eyes. It’s the slow realization that I am often the only trans woman in the room, and that queer people love throw around my identity as part of their little acronym, but would rather not hear from me.

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This is a powerful, yet painful account of transmisogyny in queer spaces, and well worth the read.

It’s also very personally frustrating to learn that at a screening with a scene I was in there was an audience member who missed the point so badly to complain about there being no dykes right after watching us.  I tracked down the incident and learned that she later back-peddled and re-phrased her complaint as a lack of “bio/cis females.”  

I always encourage criticism about under-representation of a minority group, but that’s not what was happening here.  It shows an incredibly amount of entitlement to complain about one of the few instances when the most represented group in queer porn is not over-represented. Especially when you can’t voice your complaint without using transphobia.