queeranarchism:

I’m starting to notice that when white trans people talk about decolonizing transgender they mostly talk about the many pre-colonial genders that once existed, describing them in a fascinated-but-unemotional anthropological style and engaging very little with the modern reality of trans people of color aroound the world. 

Whereas when trans people of color talk about decolonizing transgender they talk about the personal struggle of finding your identity in a world where 99.9% of the material that’s supposed to be for you is written assuming a white western gender identity and every time someone asks you how you identify you’re forced to choose between doing hours of education work or naming a white western gender identity and if you try to explain yourself to your family they may start seeing you as a westernized other because the knowledge they once had to accept and honor you has been destroyed by the white man. 

So I feel a bit queezy when I see a lot of those anthropological style “did you know some cultures have 5 genders!” articles that do not acknowledge the pain and trauma of colonialism in any way. There’s something there that turns the lives and genders of people of color into entertainment, amusing ‘did you knows’ with the pretence of progressiveness.