A Conversation About Trans People Getting Old Friend: You're amazing Cait (she/her/elle) Why is that? I'm just a trans girl who got old. Friend: Because that rarely happens Cait (she/her/elle) Not true at all. There are plenty out there. But when we transitioned, the rule - like, if you break it you're out of the clinic entirely - was that you MUST be stealth. It was strongly recommended that you move cities, and cut ties with everyone you knew. So we did what we had to. We hid from the world. We pretended to be cis women. Some of us married men, and adopted kids because we were infertile cis women. And never told them our past. And they got old. But they're still stealth, only now they have a second life built up. They have spouses and kids and friends and jobs and everything. And if they come out, they fear losing it all, as they already did once. Believe me, having lost it all? I would never do it again, for anyone. They're not "not there". They just can't afford to be out. Some few of us can, for various reasons. I have been for 20-odd years. But it's not been easy, and I pay for it. I can't resent my sisters who choose not to pay a second time. So we exist. There are many of us. I know a few, a very few. And they're super careful about even talking to me, the green-haired widely-known activist trans woman. We talk on Signal only, and they use burner phones. I'm their only contact with trans community, because they're terrified. We exist. We just can't all be out about it. So I try extra hard to be super out. To help make up for their necessary absence. We do get old, dear. You will too. The present bullshit will pass, in time, and we will live openly and happily again. It has before, and it will again. That's why we fight against it, those of us who can. Because we know we can and will win, in the end. We have before. Hold strong, my friend. We're not doomed. ==== If you're moved, help me do activism if you can:

GoGetFunding

Help Zara Reach Safety

Hi! We’re raising money for my friend Zara X, she’s a wonderful young Black trans woman, trying to achieve asylum as a US citizen under...

Not me, just chilling waiting for my cheque from the mysterious dark ((((funders)))) of my left-wing activism. It's odd, though. Because I've been told all of the 30+ years of activism I've done, that we're all paid agitators, people who hate our country, and so on. And yet my cheque has never arrived. No crisp-packets full of cash, either. I guess I'm not much of an activist, because I've never met anyone yet who was being paid to be an activist on the left. I guess we must just be that incompetent and bumbling, right? Because at the same time as we're all highly trained antifa super-soldiers with high Sorosalaries, we're also incapable of accomplishing anything of value to society. It's a dilemma kind of like being trans, really. I'm assured repeatedly that I must have dominated the women's sport that I played for 20 years. I don't recall that happening at all, so I asked my old teammates, and some of my opponents. Unkindly, they laughed at me suggesting I must have been dominant because of my inherent male supremacy. But let's take it as true. It's odd, then, that I was *also* kicked out of the military for being trans, because of my inherent weakness and unsuitabillity to kill for my country. I contain multitudes, apparently. I am concurrently broke as a one-legged parrot with a speech impediment, but also a highly-paid professional activist for the left. And an antifa super-soldier, but too weak to serve my country. I have astonishingly wide ranges of powers.

It's a very interesting thing to me that when we see people use images of Suffragettes fighting for the right for women to vote...the women pictured are pretty much exclusively white women. And yet we know that women of colour, particularly Black women, fought three times as hard to be part of that movement, to help bring about their own rights as well as others', fighting the racism of their fellow campaigners as much as the sexism of the men holding power. It's just interesting how over time, we've slowly whitewashed that image, erasing the contributions of Black women, while also failing to note that Black women effectively *didn't* get the vote until much later than white women. Just one of those subtle ways white supremacy works. Resist it. When you see a media outlet do this, call it to their attention. Demand they show the real movement, in all its beauty and diversity, rather than just the largely rich white women who "led" it.

Had a friend pop up on Discord this morning from Australia. She'd a friend who's going to her first rally tomorrow, and the friend is scared. So she asked me to give them a good coach's halftime speech. I spoke of how they live in terror, how they're driven by it, how their uniform dress makes them feel strong, and that sort of thing. And they had already learned Bella Ciao on the recorder for leading a song or two. So I suggested one more song. This is an old one, from the War Against the Fash, and it's not very...correct anymore. But it's a fun one, and I've found it really bothers Nazis when they hear you sing it. 🎶 Hitler, that man had just one ball Goering, had two but very small Himmler, had something similar, And poor Goebbels, had no balls, at all. 🎶 It's a very familiar old tune, sometimes known as the River Kwai March, or the Colonel Bogey March (searching either will give you an example of the tune). I've used it to great effect against wannabe Nazis when they march up, all proud and brave in their black clothes and their masks. Because it has a marching tune, it can be very funny to start off whistling it, to get them whistling it themselves, and then to start the crowd singing the words. Anyway, just for a little lightening of your day. And...really, pass the thread by if your only contribution is to say it's not very progressive. It isn't. But it's VERY antifascist, and I think that matters more right now. Also, my German friends, I know the rhymes don't actually work in German; they do in an English accent, though. Treat Goering as Goring, use similar to rhyme with Himmler, and Goebbels as "go-balls". Then it works just fine. Oh, and if anyone gets the idea to reword it for the fascist USA: *please* tag me on that post? I *must* hear your version. I'm thinking Donald, Hegseth, Miller, and Marco, for the two-syllable name portion. Two of them will want rhymes if you can.

Something I need to get off my chest here. I have been an activist for more than 30 years. Often working alone, sometimes with a partner, but working nonetheless. The basis of everything I have done or attempted was hope. Is hope. If I don't hope I can make a change, then why am I fighting for change? If it's hopeless, why not give up and do something more fun with my time and energy? I'm disabled. I have limited time and energy already. But I'm willing to give them in service of my community. But I need - NEED - to have hope that it can succeed. Not that it must. My first ever action failed completely. Publicly humiliatingly. Same with my second action. Again, a total failure, the legislation not passed, no help for the community. So I know failure. My third action? It worked. And I had a string of successes. And then some failure. And more success. And so on. Obviously, I know that not every time I take on a project, that I will win. I'm good at what I do, and I win more than I lose, but it's close. But in order to keep doing that, to keep being who I am, I *need* hope. Without it, I'm nothing. So when I see people whose only goal is to spread defeatist propaganda - which is to say, fascist propaganda, since if you're telling me I can't win, then you're doing their job for them - I can't spend time around them. This is too big a fight for that. We're playing with literal lives this time. The stakes are WAY too high to be around people who think we're all going to lose. So if you can't stop yourself from writing it...can you at least CW the ones that are going to be doomerist? I don't even care if you use the CW feature to do it, keep it open if you want, but write that CW at the top. Because I don't need to take psychic damage from my own side. I'm taking enough from the other side, with their threats and so on. I've faced those for 30 years. I can hack it. But I can't hack fascist agitprop from our people. Please. This isn't a game.