No, not a woman. Yes, a Black woman.
Identity and existence is complex. Things are not always what they seem.
I’m going to preface this with something that I’ve said a lot before. I haven’t been able to survive this long on my own without adapting a lot, and one of the biggest ways I’ve adapted is learning to communicate effectively no matter what my own physical or mental state is, or what I'm hoping to communicate. I don’t insult people, I do not “dunk on” others, I do not pick on pithy inconsistencies. I approach calmly, with full honesty and nothing but good intention. I do not enter into conversations with anyone who doesn’t meet two essential criteria: 1) I have to want community with them on some level within my lifetime and 2) I can foresee a satisfying resolution or outcome coming from the discussion. If I don’t want community with someone on any level - I block and leave it alone. I do not have the spoons or the time. If I do not see a way we can have that conversation and come to a satisfying conclusion, I do not engage. I leave a ton of things up to differences in perspective and opinion. I do not talk about everything that ever bothers me when it comes to how I operate on social media. I do not respond to everything I ever see anyone, trans or cis alike, say on the internet that upsets me or others. I respond when the criteria listed above is met and also if and when I see a discussion happening that is reinforcing things I, or others like me or around me, have absolutely felt the negative effects of in real life. There’s this weird assumption that if I say something is harmful online I mean “you hurt my/this person's feelings, so therefore you did harm” - no, that's unreasonable. I am constantly met with the assumption that I don’t understand that. Even when I explain the ways in which rhetoric we spread as absolute truth absolutely does leave the internet and really sink into the minds of people, who then carry these biases with them and evade reflecting on them because these things are positioned as the truth that keeps people safe. So, what I’m saying here in this preface is that I am fighting against multiple layers of doubt and lenses of bias that people refuse to check before they have even engaged with me. The assumption that I do it for fun, the assumption that I do it to hurt people and make them feel bad, the assumption that I want them to be exiled and chastised into oblivion. I want you to know before you continue to read the rest of this, that I stand by the way I communicate. I work hard on it. It’s kept me safe in a lot of situations I could have ended up a goner. I engage because I care, and I want to feel that things are getting better in any way, not worse all the time. I don’t want to believe that we’ve been so poisoned toward each other that there is no way to digest this and be better to each other. I want us closer together. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. You were conditioned to believe the fights against transphobia, transmisogyny, puritanism, ableism and everything else is separate from the fight against white supremacy. It’s not. And with that said, I’ll start the actual essay now.
In quite a few conversations, both direct and indirect (thanks to the beautiful nature of the subtweet) I’ve been accused of doing something called “degendering”, but of myself. If you don’t know what that is, it’s a specific tactic used against someone to obscure their gender in order to remove any connotation or connection that can be created by someone else through their gendering, or to dehumanize or debase someone generally by taking away their agency of gender. I’ve been accused of degendering myself in very specific ways in order to appeal to a wider audience as an “afab trans person” ( I have literally never called myself that) to evade being seen as someone who can perpetrate harm. I took this at value, for what was being told to me, as I do with all criticism of my communication and behavior and I analyzed it. Though I have had a long struggle my entire life with feeling like a very bad and scary person, It’s funny that being treated like a bad and scary person led to a fear of being a bad and scary person which leads me to now taking every accusation of wrongdoing very seriously because I am so afraid to be a hurtful person. I’ve realized lately that people don’t generally feel the same way. I’ve realized that I definitely take accusations of wrongdoing or misconduct much more seriously than the average twitter user, in spite of being used to false and egregious allegations. I’m fine with that. I want to be better. I don’t want to become blind to the fact that I am a person capable of as much harm as I am capable of good. I talk a lot about my masculinity and what it means to me and how I perform it. I talk a lot about the ways I’ve been treated throughout my life being born as an intersex kid with a terribly transphobic mother and little support structure. I talk a lot about the ways that I take these things and I turn them into good. I talk a lot about how my masculinity must keep its teeth. I do not want to be defanged, I do not desire it. But still - when I express vulnerabilities and sincerity specific to who I am as a man, I am accused of degendering myself and “retreating into the safety of my femininity when trying to be seen as a victim”.
This puts me off for a lot of reasons. I am going to use this time here, and the space in this essay to outline to you the specifics of my gender identity and then I’lll break down why the assertion that I have the ability to retreat into safety of any kind is absolutely preposterous.
I am a Black man. I am a man. I am not a woman. I am a Black woman.
I am transmasculine. I am a trans man. I am intersex. I am trans.
I am a guy. I am not a girl. I am a boy. I am not a woman. I am a Black woman.
I am not a woman. I am a Black woman. I am not a woman. I am a Black woman.
I am a Black man. I am a man. I am a Black woman. I am a man. I am a Black woman.
I think I said it enough times for that to be clear before I dive into specifics.
You see - living under white supremacist cishetero patriarchy means that I was born into an antiblack world that has forcibly gendered and degendered and ungendered me from the very beginning of my little infant life. As much as I hate what my mother put me through as an intersex born child, I also must acknowledge that part of why she did what she did is because she thought it would give me a better shot at surviving in a relentlessly antiblack system. Back to the point, I started my life with an event that would affect me for the entirety of it - aggressive gendering to the point of medical intervention. Living in an antiblack world and being able to become perceptive of this from a fairly young age is not a blessing of any sort. I almost wish I could be colorblind, so I didn’t have to notice all the small inconsistencies of the way people look at me and speak to me. But, I don’t live in that world and never have. My experience as a woman has been primarily informed by my positionality as a BLACK woman. Black trans women were the people in my earlier adolescent life that set me on the path of ethics and understanding of human connection that I still carry with me to this day.
I will never renounce Black womanhood. I will NEVER renounce my Black womanhood. Everything I am and everything I ever will be is inextricable from my positionality as a Black woman. Everything I am and ever will be is inextricable from the rage and the exhaustion from trans/misogynoir we have suffered. Everything I am and ever will be is inextricable from my love of Black women and Black femininity.
Every single time I've been accused of “retreating into the safety of my femininity/afabness(again, never claimed that)'' has been by a nonblack person. Trans and cis alike. I was recently told a few months ago that saying “I am largely perceived as a Black woman” in a conversation about my wealth or lack of patriarchal privilege is retreating into femininity, smol bean complex or whatever the fuck.
I’m writing this so you know that if you’re a nonblack queer and/or trans person who has ever said something like this to a Black queer/trans person - you’re dead wrong, and also have racism to unpack. White supremacy is ingrained into everything. Prejudices of white supremacy have been studied and confirmed in children as young as 3 years old. You are not immune to propaganda, you are not immune to believing that the way that you see and perceive and explain and define things is the most valuable and correct way, especially when it comes to assigning these things to people whose experiences you don’t have a genuine frame of reference for.
I am whatever gender anyone and everyone wants me to be at the time, according to what serves them. I am a man when I am angry, when I am advocating for myself, when I am asking to be centered, when I am criticizing someone's behavior, when I need help and support. I am a woman when I am angry, when I am sexual, when I am vulnerable, when I am emotional, when I openly hurt, when I break down. Whenever I am angry I can be either, I can be nothing at all. I am often ungendered and spoken to and about like I'm not a human at all. And yet nonblack people tell me that I am capable of retreating into the safety of my Black femininity? It doesn’t work like that. Things don’;t work like that. It’s not a thing that happens. Megan Thee Stallion is far more popular and entertaining than I and she isn’t capable of retreating into her Black femininity for safety - so what makes you think that I’m capable of doing such besides the concept that I am claiming womanhood as a whole and not keeping hold and honoring the Black womanhood that I always have, and always will? If Black women were capable of weaponizing our identities we would have taken over this world already.
We do not have to pick and choose. Not for you, or anyone. Black women, Black men, Black people of all marginalized genders are freed people. We are not under your control. We do not have to bend to the demand that we subscribe to the framework you create for us. We are freed people. I am a Black trans man. I am not a woman. I am a Black woman.
If you don’t understand it, it’s not for you. Coming for me and mine, demanding we rearrange and change our language and reframe it to your understanding of the world is antithetical to what we should all be after, which is movement away from white supremacist cishetero patriarchy, which is the reason so many nonblack people are hell bent on finding strict dichotomies and ways to compartmentalize others, and especially those they view as potential danger. There is no way for Black women to retreat into safe womanhood. If you’re finding yourself feeling the urge to bring up Black TERFS and TIRFS, I want you to understand that they are not retreating into safe femininity they are retreating into the safety of making themselves agents of the patriarchy. They are not defending themselves and Black womanhood, they are defending the parody of freedom that the patriarchy has convinced them is true womanhood. The existence of Black TERFS doesn’t mean that Black womanhood is safe. It’s not. There isn’t a way for me to use “afab status” (never claimed this!) as a Black trans person to evade persecution in any general way. I have been taught by Black transfems in my earlier life that I can absolutely leverage this and wield myself as an agent of the patriarchy using my afab status to draw attention to me, and away from those who did not have that ability to wield it in such a way. That’s interpersonal and specific. You cannot flatten this. This is why it’s wrong to say that calling me “girl” as a white trans person is acceptable because its just “gay slang” - it's not. Its misappropriate rate AAE. I will accept a “girl” from my Black trans siblings and nobody else, because it's interpersonal and specific. I won’t flatten it.
I am a trans man. I am a man. I am a Black trans man. I am a Black man. I am not a woman. I am a Black woman. I am far from the only person who perceives the world and conceives of my own gender this way. There are thousands and thousands of Black fems who have had our experiences so deeply shaped by white supremacist cishetero patriarchy that Black womanhood is baked into us, and we don’t want to give it up - and we don’t have to. Not for you, not for anyone.