Designing a new sticker/flyer/thingy.I’m not sure about the text on the second version.
I want to get the point across that trans people are being presented by the liberal assimilationist transgender movement in a way that’s as desexualized as possible and as far removed as possible from the sex workers that make up a significant portion of trans people. This is meant to make trans people easier to accept and assimilate by mainstream culture but it directly hurts trans people.
Trans people’s sexual lives are not talked about in an honest open way and as a result the only narratives about trans sex lives that are hugely transphobic and fetishistic ones. Consequently many trans people’s sexual lives and feelings about their body as a sexual body are wrapped in silence, shame and doubt, full of questions like “am I still real if this turns me on? will people still believe that I am real?”.
This disconnects trans people from their desires, needs and boundaries and directly contributes to many trans people’s inability to assert desires, needs and boundaries which directly contributes to the already staggering rates of sexual violence against trans people. Oh and by the way, the desexualization of trans people also contributes directly to the lack of conversations about the staggering rates of sexual violence against trans people.
For asexual trans people being desexualized by society can mean not being able to identify and name their asexuality because the narrative that trans people should not have or express a sexuality anyway is so present.
And last but defenitely not least this creates a trans movement that does not feel connected to trans sex workers and does not feel a need to include them in their activism in a meaningful way beyond ‘silent victim at TDOR to be mourned but never allowed to speak’.
So for fuck’s sake, fuck all the fucking people who don’t wanna acknowledge that a lot of us fucking fuck.
I agree with this, though I get that desexualizing trans people is also meant to defetishize our identity, and can help trans youth access the community (instead of it being labeled as “mature content”). But there’s a definite balance to it, I think.
True, but I would add that:
Defetishizing trans identity must involve rewritting trans sexuality on our own terms. If the only represententation of trans people as sexual beings is fetish porn, that image will continue to reach a lot of people and will continue to limit how many of us imagine our abilityies to be sexual.
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While it is important to create websites that do not get labelled ‘mature content’ and spaces that do not require age limits, it is just as important to have open conversations about sexuality in those spaces. Trans youth have or are in the process of having sexual feelings and desires. They’re also at an extremely high risk of sexual violence, more so than trans adults. Trans youth need language to talk about their own sexual desires, boundaries and experiences. They need to feel free to speak about their sexuality without shame. We put them at terrible risk if we deny them this.
QueerAnarchism 