Trans Girl Death Drive
content note: suicide, assault
I think about death a lot. Well, I think about the end of suffering a lot and death is the easiest thing I can conceptualise about that. I'd like to say that the end of structural discrimination and social dysphoria would be easier to imagine but to be honest they're not, so instead I think about death.
Trauma is material. It collects in our bodies and binds itself to our nerves and stuffs up our synapses. Then you get stuffed up and what can you do? The system is working very well because it kills us silently. We internalise the shame. We internalise the hurt. We become overwhelmed and we need to rest but we're not allowed to so instead we think about death.
How can we be surprised that us trans girls have a suicide culture? You have infected us with suicidality. The rate of trans people attempting suicide is 41%, which jumps to 55% if you've lost a job due to bias (check), 61% if you're the victim of a physical assult (check), and 64% if you're the victim of sexual assault (check). You are killing us daily and telling us it's our own fault. You are making sure we are traumatised enough.
I want to make it clear that what happens to us is a refined, careful and clinical process to ensure the murder of trans femmes through the mechanics of suicide. Who taught these men the same script? Who taught my employers? My doctors? My apparent lovers? How did everyone know who to hurt and how?
Before the transition was the dysphoria and the disassociation. The disassociation wasn't easier, but I was much much angrier then and I was frozen and people thought I was a man. It's normal for men to feel nothing. With the understanding of myself, then the hormones, the dysphoria lifted and the social punishment began, with such a fervour that I couldn't have believed before.
I know I'm happy. I was a happy kid. I'm a happy adult. I love my partner and they love me. I love my friends. I love my sisters. I love how my body is changing. I love being alive. But the daily pressure, the struggle, is so wearing that I often think of death as a way to calm down because it is a space where I feel in control. And I don't think that's normal.
I sometimes wonder if it's the hormones rewriting my brain chemistry, making me feel way more than I can handle. It's a weird syncretic thing, transitioning. Where do my feelings start and the hormones end? This ambiguity is very beautiful and should be seen as such. My changes are beautiful and should be seen as such. They should not be used as weapons against me.
I don't believe in passing. I don't believe in gender. I reject, in my heart, the confines that cisness has put on me. But I want them very badly, because it will make me safe and because I want people to see that I'm beautiful. I cannot imagine a crueller thing, to take that simple desire and to kill me with it.
We only survive through each other’s love and care (I love all my sisters and siblings). We only survive because we know we are right and they are wrong. We must survive and we must end this violence, this system of colonial capitalism that feeds itself on the bodies of trans women and femmes. One group among many. I insist that we survive. I say that in our survival we thrive and your system is coming to an end.