Hey Everyone!

I know that we have not been doing much recently, but things have been pretty hectic. Is there any tips or anything that you would like us to start addressing as we begin summer? 

I would really like to start continuing on The Table of Contents. Are there any pages you guys want done first?

Please let us know!

Have a good night!

~Tiegen

Top 10 Ways to Overcome Dysphoria

ladofthewildeknight:

1. Listen to Music    -     create a playlist that you know will help you feel better. Whether it’s music that distracts you, empowers you, or that you can sympathize with it, just stop and listen for a while.

2. Watch Something    -    funny, distracting, a mystery; whatever will hold your focus and take you away for long enough for you to try and gain your footing again

3. Eat Something    -    make yourself a treat. Or buy something delicious. No matter how odd or sugary or anything, so long as it doesn’t pose you immediate danger, savor it.

4. Take it Out    -    take a pillow, leash, belt or something similar in both hands and attack something sturdy. It could be your bed or a table or a tree, but yell whatever you’re feeling and beat the daylights out of that inanimate object until you’re too tired to continue.

5. Activate!     -    do research, write a post, make a video; do something to contribute to getting to where you want to be and/or helping the community.

6. Art    -    create something unique and powerful. It could relate to your dysphoria or not – just design something and focus on creating it until it’s done.  The good thing about art is that you can never run out of ideas, and it never has to get old.

7. Read    -    whether queer graphic novels, classic literature, or trans* fanfiction is your pleasure, find something and start reading, and don’t worry about how long you stay absorbed in it

8. Write a Letter    -    or a journal entry about how you feel. Perhaps write it to your future self, or to that person or part of society that manages to trigger you every time. Keep it, burn it, or stick it on your wall.

9. Write on Your Body    -    whether you want to draw a moustache on your face in eyeliner or put on full makeup, or write quotes, lyrics, symbols, images, or phrases on your body, do so. You can take the makeup off whenever you want, and you can write on a part of your body no one else will be seeing. Or you can leave it on/write on your face or arms or hands for the world to see.  If possible, it might help to write on a particular body part that is making you feel dysphoric. Then, when you look at it, you can remember that you’re in control of your body, and see whatever reminder you left for yourself.

10. Change it Up    -    get a piercing, cut and/or die your hair, choose to shave as little or as much as you’d like, get a tattoo, wear something new and different, put on dramatic makeup. Do something to your body that you can control, that does show who you are (or who you want to be or someone else entirely) on the outside.

Disclaimer: Not all of these will work for everyone! Some will work wonders, some will work a little, some will do nothing, and some may actually make it worse. As always when coping with this sort of thing, know your triggers, and make choices based around those. Other than that, do whatever it takes to keep yourself relatively safe and make yourself feel better.

note: If you have other ideas/suggestions, feel free to send them to me! (I’m trying to keep a running list on this permalink that people can easily access.) Also, I didn’t include talking because a. not everyone has that resource b. it’s the only regular suggestion I’ve seen online for dealing with dysphoria.

Also, I dislike using the word dysphoria because it is so…inadequate to cover all that it does. But it’s the best-known word, so I’ve chosen to use it here.

More ideas, whether for you or your boyfriend or girlfriend. There are several here that I know we have not posted when the question has come up before. Do be sure to read the disclaimer and have a discussion with your boyfriend about things he’d like to try/things he has done before and try to be aware of some of his triggers before you suggest doing anything in particular. Communication is key.

‘Ey, there, trans*folk!

ladofthewildeknight:

I would like your help.

I’ve decided to compile a list of coping strategies to deal with dysphoria.

Obviously, different things do and don’t work for different people. But I’ve had a pretty hard time finding a good resource on even suggestions on ways to deal with it. And the scattered answers I’ve seen to anon questions on trans* topics blogs are typically very specific to the person answering and very few.

So.

If you feel comfortable doing so, send over your (minimally harmful, if possible…but I realize that self care can be a wide range of things, and will try to include all submissions) coping/distraction/whatever strategies to my ask.  And, maybe (if I get enough suggestions) I’ll write up a little zine about dysphoria and coping. Or at least publish a list.

Thanks! Have a great day/night/morning/twilight zone!

Signal boost! Once this list is compiled, I’ll be sure to provide a link for it here.

A question was recently submitted….

…that deals very explicitly with biosex topics. I did not want to censor it completely by only answering privately, but a proper trigger warning was needed, and it is not possible to place one above the asked question from the askbox format.

[TW: Explicit Biosex Topics]

Read More

14 Reasons Why It’s Not Okay to Out Someone as Trans – A Public Service Announcement From Your Friendly, Neighborhood Trans Person

transqueery:

Recently, a well-meaning friend of mine disclosed my trans status to a friend of his, someone I hadn’t known previously.  I don’t know that I ever would have found out that he had done so if his friend hadn’t slipped up and referred to me as “she” in front of a group of people.

He quickly corrected himself and moved on with whatever he had been saying, but for me, the damage had been done.

That one little pronoun ripped away my confidence and left me stunned and confused. Although it still happens once in a while, being seen as female has been a rare occurrence for me over the past six months, so I asked myself why this person whom I had just met would confuse me with a woman?  Was it obvious that I was trans?  Was I kidding myself, walking around in the world thinking that I no longer appeared female to most people?

Unsure as to whether the guy had read me as female/trans all on his own or whether someone had told him, I took my friend aside and asked him.  He seemed genuinely confused as to why I would have an issue with his disclosure of my trans status when he has been one of my most thoughtful, supportive friends and he was trying to be helpful.

This situation has me thinking that just because a person might be a relative, friend or ally of the trans community, or even a trans person themselves, that doesn’t mean that they know and understand the possible consequences that could result from disclosing someone’s trans status, so I am offering some information here that I hope will be helpful regarding this topic.

I thought I would start with a page from The Gender Booklet at thegenderbook.com(which I actually found at the transbeautiful blog) because it gives a handy summation of issues to consider when being an ally (or even friend or relative) of people in the trans community.


A number of blog posts could be written about the statements on this simple yet informative document page (and probably already have been by others), but today we’ll just focus on, “Please don’t out me as trans without my permission.”

In listing the reasons behind this statement, I am presenting them in no particular order or priority and I am writing them as though directed toward readers who might not understand why it’s problematic to out people as trans.

When I refer to trans folks in this post, I basically stay within the man/woman binary, but there are trans people who do not identify within the gender binary.  I think that what I have written here would, in principal, still apply, with the exception of some of the references I make to people identifying as men or women.

I should also mention that pretty much everything you’ll read here is my opinion.  Your mileage may vary.

1.  Safety first
In April of 2010, Colle Carpenter, a 27-year-old trans man, was physically assaulted in a men’s room at Cal State University Long Beach, the attacker using a knife to carve the word “it” into his chest.  Two months later, a man attacked trans man Lance Reyna in a Houston Community College men’s room, putting a knife to his throat, then beating and robbing him and giving him a concussion by kicking him in the head.  In April of 2011,Chrissy Lee Polis, a 22-year-old transgender woman, was brutally attacked by two women in a Baltimore-suburb McDonald’s while employees stood by and watched, one of them filming a video of the assault that went viral after being posted on-line.  The attackers beat Chrissy so severely, she went into an epileptic seizure on the floor of the restaurant.

I provide these examples here to highlight the threat of violence that trans people face simply for being themselves, and to illustrate that outing someone as trans compromises their safety. Granted, these are high-profile incidents, but don’t think that these are isolated cases.  Aggressions against trans people occur at various levels of severity on a fairly regular basis.  I know a number of trans men and women who have been harassed and/or physically assaulted by people they had come out to or by people, including complete strangers, who had somehow learned of their trans status.  Trust me on this one;you cannot predict how anyone will react to this information, so it’s best not to disclose it.

2.  It’s private, medical information
Steps that a trans person may take to transition are recognized by the American Medical Association, other health-care organizations, the U.S. Tax Court and by many trans people as medical treatments for the misalignment of their physical sex and gender identity.  Information about a trans person’s status and/or transition should therefore be held in confidence just like any other person’s private medical issues and treatments and should not be disclosed.

3.  Not all trans people are activists and those who are might not want to be all the time
Some trans people don’t mind being in the public eye.  Trans people involved in activism may be fully and publicly out as trans, such as community activists and educators Matt KaileyJamison Green,  Kate Bornstein or Donna Rose.  However, not all trans folks want to be involved in activism – they just want to live their lives with a level  of anonymity that’s no different from that of non-trans people – and those who are involved as activists might not wish to wear that hat all the time.  Maybe in the corner of their world where you happen to be, a trans activist might want to be incognito. It’s best to leave it up to the trans person as to when and where they care to disclose their trans status, if they care to do so at all.

4.  Match making or un-making
Let’s say that a non-trans person you know has met your trans friend/relative, finds them attractive and would like to get to know them better.  Your first knee-jerk reaction might be to inform the individual about the trans status of your friend/relative, but please consider why you might be having that reaction.

Perhaps you think that the trans person’s body might not be what the other person expects, but unless you have seen the trans person naked, you do not know what their body looks like, and even if you have, how can you know with certainty that the potential suitor won’t find their body appealing?

Or maybe you decide that you will out your trans friend/relative so you can spare them the negative reaction that you’re sure they’ll receive once they disclose their trans status to the interested party.  That’s your own opinion, however.  In other words, what you might consider to be a deal breaker (i.e. someone’s trans status) might not be an issue for another person.  People are rejected in the dating scene for all sorts of reasons and these two potential love birds might not ever make it past the first date for reasons that have nothing to do with the trans status of one of them.

Ultimately, whether a trans person and a non-trans person are a match for each other should be left for them to discover.  Don’t be a match un-maker by disclosing someone’s trans status.

5.  Admirers, chasers and other people attracted to trans folks
In point number 4 above, I talk about people who might become attracted to a trans person they have just met but are unaware of their trans status.  For the issue I discuss here, I refer to certain people, non-trans men and women, who have a significant attraction to trans people in general.  Sometimes these individuals can be easily spotted vying for the attention of (or maybe even harassing or groping) trans people at transgender conferences or at public community functions, and some of them post ads on Craigslist looking for sexual hook ups and/or dates with trans men and women.

These particular folks might be classified as “chasers” or “admirers.”  While some of them objectify, sexualize and fetishize trans people, some do not.  Personally, I sometimes find it hard to tell the difference.  (Matt Kailey has written a couple of posts about people with trans attractions and the fine line between preference versus fetish, where trans people can be either sexualized or considered sexy.)

And so if someone tells you that they are attracted to trans people and/or would like to meet a trans person for dating and/or sex, the proper response would not be to tell them about any trans people whom you might know personally.  Some trans people don’t want anything to do with a person who has trans attractions, whether that individual happens to be an admirer/chaser or not.  If you feel that you must do anything at all, it’s best to ask the trans person(s) you know whether they would be interested in being introduced to such a person.

6. When trans people don’t look male or female “enough” (to you)
If you know a transitioning trans person, the sex they were assigned at birth might be imprinted in your mind, especially if you’ve known them since an early point in their process or before they started transitioning.  Consequently, you might not have really noticed their slow physical transformation and/or you might think that despite their physical changes, they don’t really look like their true gender.  And so when you introduce the trans person to others, you might think that you have to out them as trans as a way to provide an explanation for their androgynous or gender-variant appearance.  You might think that outing them would be helpful, so people don’t get confused.

However, you’re making an assumption that everyone else sees the trans person the same way that you do and you might be wrong.  You might actually create confusion if  you out the trans person to people who already see the trans person as their true self.

And even if someone is confused about a trans person’s gender, so what?  A person’s confusion should not supersede a trans person’s privacy.  Personally, I can’t imagine an individual suffering harm from their confusion over the appearance of someone else, but outing a trans person can be harmful to them, so let the confused person muddle through. More than likely they’ll manage just fine.

7.  Because being trans is not necessarily who we are
Many trans people simply see themselves as men and women.  Being trans is not who they are – being a man or a woman is who they are.  The trans piece is a medical condition and not a definition of them as a person, so they shouldn’t be identified by it.

8.  Education, enlightenment, diversity training and the “poster child excuse”
Very early in my process a (former) friend of mine outed me to her college-aged children without my permission and then tried to justify it by making me the poster boy for her kids’ diversity training.  Since then, I have been surprised at the number of people who have wanted to do the same after I have come out to them (but at least they asked me first).

So if you have an urge to teach someone about diversity and you want to enlighten and educate them in order to help them be a better citizen and a more accepting human being, and to do it, you are going to tell them all about the trans person you know, stifle that thought.  Unless you have asked the trans person involved whether they would mind being the subject of someone’s education on humanity, it would be best to leave the trans person out of the lesson.

9.  It doesn’t matter that a trans person is out to some people
A trans person you know might seem to be out to a lot of people, and that might lead you topresume that they don’t mind being out as trans, and so that might let you assume that it would be okay to disclose their trans status to someone else, but as with other assumptions, it’s best not to make this one because you might be wrong.

10.  Outing a trans person to another trans person
On the surface, it might seem okay to tell one trans person about another trans person you know, but that would be another assumption that might be incorrect.  Each trans person should be asked whether they wish to be a subject of discussion between you and another trans person or whether they want to be introduced to the other as trans.  Believe it or not, some trans folks don’t even want other trans folks to know that they’re trans.

11.  Outing a trans person sets them up for discrimination
I don’t think that I have to convince anyone reading this blog about the existence of rampant discrimination against trans people in jobs, housing, education, health care, social services, etc.  It stands to reason, then, that outing a trans person can set them up for discrimination.  I can think of several trans men I know who lost their jobs when their trans status was revealed to the wrong people.  Once you release that information, you lose control of it and you can’t track where it goes, which might be to someone who can discriminate against the outed trans person.  Keeping their personal information safe and discreet helps the trans people you know avoid becoming the victims of discrimination.

12.  Outing a trans person can erase who they are in the eyes of others
If you disclose a trans person’s status, you can render them invisible.  It’s like magic.  One minute, the trans person is no different than any other man or woman, then they’re outed and poof, in the minds of some people, they’re immediately transformed into the gender they were assigned as birth, or they may be seen as a non-person or a fake person or someone who’s trying to fool everyone around them.  The trans person’s true self disappears and they become, in the eyes of others, someone who doesn’t even really exist.  Speaking from experience, that feels like crap.  Please don’t put people in that position by outing them as trans.

13.  Disclosing the birth names of trans people
This point is a bit different from the others because it’s about outing one thing about a trans person, but it fits into the topic of disclosure. I have decided to add it here because a number of non-trans people over the past few years have nonchalantly disclosed to me the birth names of other trans people that they know.

What they likely did not realize was that some trans people fiercely guard the name they were given at birth and would consider its disclosure to be embarrassing, hurtful and/or offensive.  For some trans folks, their birth name represents a person who they are not and a period of their life they would like to leave behind them.

All that aside, what is the point of revealing a trans person’s birth name anyway?  A trans person’s real name is the one they have chosen that matches their gender and true self and that’s the only name that people need to know.

Therefore, unless a trans person has specifically and directly asked you to please disperse their birth name about with wild abandon, the polite and respectful thing to do would be to keep it to yourself if you happen to know it.

14.  Whose business is it anyway?
Ultimately, the bottom line is that a person’s trans status is their personal information,their history, their story, their life, and it’s not anyone else’s place to disclose it.

The only instances I can think of when it would be okay to out someone as trans would be if the trans person specifically requested it, say, for example, during their coming out process and they asked a trusted friend or relative to help inform people, or if they were involved in some sort of medical emergency and couldn’t speak for themselves, and for the latter I’d still be hesitant.

And with that, we come to the end of 14 reasons why outing a trans person is not okay.  I hope that this little public service announcement has helped to shed some light on this topic for readers who previously might not have realized these issues.  Some readers might disagree with some of my points or might have points of their own to add. I invite everyone to join the discussion.

Source: http://americantransman.com/2012/04/18/14-reasons-why-its-not-okay-to-out-someone-as-trans-a-public-service-announcement-from-your-friendly-neighborhood-trans-person/

Contrary to popular belief, gender and sexuality labels are worth more than just standing there and looking wordy.

theraptorwhomurderedlove:

Or, better titled: If the phrase “WE’RE ALL HUMAN” is about to come out of your mouth as a reason why no one should be allowed to label their gender or sexuality, do me a solid and shut the fuck up.

Here’s the thing: Being able to label your gender and sexuality is an important thing for a lot of people. It’s something that’s useful and it’s worth a lot, too.

Being able to put a name to our sexualities and genders can make us feel more secure with ourselves and it can make it easier for us to discuss them as they apply to us; it makes it easier for us to find other people who share the same identity and it allows us to discuss shared experiences and feelings and practices with our own words, and being able to do this makes it easier for us (if we want) to created communities or safe spaces where—at the very least—we can feel like the people around us are less likely to laugh at us or call us frauds because we know that they understand what we’re going through. Being able to put a name to our sexualities and genders also helps us put a name to the prejudices we may face due to them and that can help us try to find ways to end those prejudices and if we want to, inform others about our sexual orientation or gender identity.

“We’re all human!” is all well and good, but the fact is that just because we’re both humans doesn’t mean that we’re the same and it doesn’t mean that you can understand what it is other people who identify differently than you do experience.

If you’re straight, you don’t know what it is not to be straight. If you’re cisgender, you don’t know what it’s like to be trans*. If you’re sexual, if you’re monosexual, if you’re monoromantic, if you’re binary identified…so on and so forth. You can say that we’re all humans until you’re blue in the face, but that does not mean that you share the same experiences and feelings that everyone else does.

And the thing is that when you try to take the labels away from someone, you’re not making this big fondue bowl of rainbows and kittens and wonderful things like you think you are. What you’re doing is taking away our ability to discuss those experiences and feelings with people who do share them. You’re taking away our ability to put a name to the prejudices and oppression we face. You’re taking away our ability to feel content in our own bodies and our own minds.

And, really, what’s it for? What are your reasons? “This word is too weird!” or “this word is new!” and “this word is made up!”. Gods, just fuck that, because it’s bullshit. It’s absolute and complete bullshit.

Moist and discharge and baste are words that exist. Over one-hundred-and-fifty words were added to the dictionary just last year. No words would exist at all if they weren’t made up in the first place. There are hundreds—if not thousands—of synonyms for penis, probably even more synonyms for what happens when semen comes out of them. Fictional cocks can weep tears and those tears can feel emotions, but you think it’s out of line and weird for me and people like me to say that the handful of words that you deign to be “normal” and “acceptable” to describe gender and sexuality don’t fit what we feel and that we’d like words that did?

And it’s crap, because from what I’ve seen most of the members of “We’re All Douchebags Humans Club” don’t apply their no labels policy to themselves. You can call yourself what you’d like all you want, but it’s different for us, right? You can be a man or a woman, but none of us can be anything else. You can be straight or you can be gay, but to you nothing else exists. There’s no other than that, not to you, because you get to decide what genders and sexualities are valid and which aren’t, right? We have to be just humans, but you don’t. We have to be label-free and without the words to define our feelings, but you get to keep your words. You get to keep your words because you think that ours aren’t worthy of being kept.

And, just really, fuck you. Fuck you so fucking much, because I like my words. I like not feeling lost and detached and not knowing what the hell my sexuality or gender is, because I didn’t think words existed to describe them. I like knowing that there are other people out there that feel the same way that I do and who get it. I like my labels, because they’ve done a fuck of a lot for me and I don’t like people saying that I’m not allowed to have them for some completely useless reason while they sit with their own words and definitions and don’t make a single move to get rid of them like they want me to do with mine. 

Cis women who pull this “bathroom panic” bullshit need to start being held accountable by other cis women.

thecurvature:

Obviously the police officer who questioned and ticketed Paula Witherspoon represents a real structural problem. The idea that an agent of the state got to decide a woman’s gender for her and call her “disorderly” for abiding by her actual gender is not only ludicrous, but also structural violence.

But the cis lady who looked at another woman and decided she “looked like a man” on the basis of whatever transphobic bullshit criteria is the one who called that officer and started the police interaction. That is FAR from a neutral act in a world where trans* interactions with police so often turn discriminatory and even violent. And it is an overtly discriminatory act that she decided she got to be the Arbitrator of Womanhood and literally police who was and was not considered female. This, too, is cissupremacy. And it, too, is systemic and far from isolated.

Transphobia and cissupremacy are far from the sole domain of men. Cis women, we, too, are a part of it. We have an incredible ability to do harm to our trans sisters. It is our responsibility to keep each other from doing so.

Self-Defense and the Criminalization of Survival

transfeminism:

It was just announced that CeCe McDonald, who was being charged with two counts of second-degree murder in an incident of self-defense, has just taken a plea-deal—second degree manslaughter with a recommended 41 month sentence. CeCe McDonald’s sentencing hearing will be in a month.

But Ms. McDonald isn’t the first young Black trans woman to be thrown in jail and aggressively prosecuted for surviving a violent attack on her life. Unfortunately, without real systematic change, she isn’t likely to be the last either.

It should be no secret that young trans women of color (TWOC) are being murdered at alarming rates. This is a social problem largely ignored by most people, including the media, the service/nonprofit sector and government. But this is something people in the affected communities can’t afford to ignore.

But attacks on the lives of TWOC don’t go without resistance, and when TWOC resist sometimes their attackers end up dead. This was the case with Ms. McDonald, but it was also the case last year with Akira Jackson, a Black trans woman currently serving a four-year sentence for “manslaughter” for stabbing her boyfriend in self-defense when he beat her with a baseball bat.

Jackson, a Detroit native, moved to the California Bay Area where she became an advocate for young TWOC. She was a Program Specialist from TLISH (Transgender Ladies Initiating Sisterhood), a transgender youth program where she spent her time counseling young women about housing, government assistance, and employment.

If Ms. McDonald and Ms. Jackson weren’t Black trans women it is likely that their cases might not have ended up differently. By being criminalized for their survival, these two women share something in common with many other women of color, including the New Jersey 4, a group of Black lesbian women who were attacked in the New York City’s West Village and later aggressively prosecuted for defending themselves. The attacker fully recovered, but the women were forced to serve time.

It’s a sad irony that we promote self-defense classes as a way of combating violence against women, yet many of the women of color, trans and cis alike, are currently imprisoned precisely because they fought back against violence in their homes and in the streets.

Too often trans and queer women of color survive violence in their homes and on the streets only to have the police, courts and prison-industrial complex come after them for having the audacity to survive in a world where, as Audre Lorde said in her poem “A Litany For Survival,” they “were never meant to survive.”

Remember the importance of intentionality and awareness in discussion of rights and experience.

Anonymous asked:
Hi! My partner has been experiencing a lot of bruising from their binder lately and I wanted to get them something to help with the pain/bruising. Do you know of anything that is soothing to that particular type of bruising/anything that might help with the pain. Thank you so much!

This is a fairly difficult question to answer. Many sites offer ideas for soothing pain, but it really is up to your partner what he is comfortable with. This is what I would personally recommend: 

If he is comfortable enough to do it, have him keep his binder off for a day or two, the longer he can keep it off the better. (Maybe just have a relaxing movies in bed weekend) The bruising may be being caused because he is wearing the binder for too long or too often.
I would also have him take some tylenol, ibuprofen, or aspring for the pain (AS RECOMMENDED ON THE BOTTLE). This will help alleviate any immediate pain he is experiencing. 
Have him take a warm bath, maybe even add some soothing bath salts, this can also help with pain and help relax his muscles that have the bruising.
You could also try buying some pain rubs, or the hot/cold patches. You don’t necessarily have to go with name brand, some stores like Walmart or Walgreens often ave store brand pain rubs and appliques.

The most important thing is taking the binder off. It may be very difficult and uncomfortable, but his body may just need a break for a few days.

If the bruising does not get better or go away completely within a few days (approximately 5) SEE A DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY!!!! The binder may have caused some other problems, especially if he is wearing it for too long.

Remember: Always take the warning label into consideration when wearing a binder!  They can become very dangerous if warn for long periods of time! If at all possible try wearing it for a max of 8 hours, and take it off whenever possible. Never double up on binders, this can cause other problems!

Advice from others is always welcome! If anyone has any tips please feel free to let us know so we can post them for everyone else! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask!

Have a good night everyone!

~Tiegen


Outcry to Free Trans Woman, CeCe McDonald, Grows Nationwide

[TW for transphobia]

blackenedbutterfly:

Ms. CeCe McDonald Photo credit: Free CeCe Support Committee

On June 5, 2011, a young African American, transgender woman survived a violent attack motivated by racism and transphobia in South Minneapolis, Minnesota. After one of the attackers was stabbed and died at the scene, CeCe McDonald now stands falsely accused of two counts of felony murder. CeCe fought back in self-defense, yet today the only person arrested and sitting behind bars is the victim, CeCe McDonald. First the target of a racist, transphobic assault and since, the hostage of a legal system incapable of fairly serving transgender people and people of color, CeCe needs support from the community in order to achieve justice.

Trans author and activist Leslie Feinberg has asked me to help organize for CeCe’s release from prison, and I am asking you to do the same. I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Leslie on this, and heart-to-heart with CeCe McDonald.

Individual and organizational endorsement of a letter of support calling for the charges against CeCe to be dropped could free CeCe and end this tragedy.

While there are varied accounts of what happened that night, CeCe and her companions all agree on the following details. Late at night, CeCe was walking to a grocery store with some friends, all young African Americans, and queer or allies. As they passed a local bar, a group of older white people standing outside the bar’s side door started hurling racist and transphobic slurs at them without provocation. These slurs included the “n” word, “faggot,” “chick with a dick,” and “Go back to Africa.” One of the white women smashed her glass into CeCe’s face, puncturing her cheek all the way through and lacerating her salivary gland. One of the group even said that Ms. McDonald was dressed as a woman in order to rape Dean Schmitz, one of the attackers. During the incident, Mr. Schmitz was fatally stabbed. CeCe was unarmed, but she saved her own life with a sharp tool that she carried in her purse needed for one of her classes. If she hadn’t defended herself, CeCe McDonald would be just another statistic in the horrible accounting of trans women of color murdered – nearly one each day – and a name on the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance list.

CeCe continues to prepare for trial set for April 30, and her supporters across the nation and throughout the world continue to demand that CeCe be freed and the injustices against her be stopped. The CeCe McDonald Support Committee and I are asking you to sign a letter addressed to Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman, requesting that charges against CeCe be dropped.

To review a copy of the letter, to endorse with your name and organizational affiliation, or if you have questions, please email Billy Navarro Jr., at: mntranspr@gmail.com. In addition to the letter demanding that charges be dropped, there is a petition you may sign on Change.org and, for more information, a FreeCeCe Mcdonald Facebook page. To endorse, sign the petition, donate, write to CeCe in jail, and for more ways to help, go to: supportcece.wordpress.com.

On April 30, a rally and civil disobedience are planned outside the Hennepin County Courthouse.

Please join with CeCe and her supporters to bring an end to this tragic injustice, which began months ago with an unprovoked hate crime that resulted in the death of Dean Schmitz and has only continued to worsen as 23-year-old CeCe has been denied the opportunity to pursue her education, heal, and move on with her life.

Your organization’s endorsement of the letter insisting that Hennepin County Attorney Michael Freeman drop the charges against CeCe is essential to achieving justice in this case and to creating a Minneapolis that is safe for trans people of color. Free CeCe!

* Bet Power is the President of the Sexual Minorities Educational Foundation, Inc. and the Executive Director/Curator of the Sexual Minorities Archives, a national collection of LGBTIQ literature, history, and art located in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Nationwide? I haven’t seen it…

(Source: transfeminism)

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