i wanna draw attention to a new tactic in terfs' playbook to claim that medical transition is a colonial import (thus mask transphobia as legitimate "concern") and that no one trans/gnc before modernity utilized/sought it. to be clear, this is 100% not true.
more terfs now realize that believing that being trans is a new phenomenon is an absurd position to hold so they're trying to demarcate a hard line between gender non-conformity and being trans, claiming that the latter refers to surgical transition and didn't exist historically.
also wanna note that this line of reasoning requires dismissing historical _expressions_ of such desires for medical transition as well as narrative depictions in storytelling/mythmaking that are suppressed through Western epistimes of sex.
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so the thing about that buffalo soldier shirt is that the text deliberately downplays the antiBlackness of their situation and it originates from a 1966 book written by a white man that was repeated piecemeal in other places that then was scraped by AI.
the shirt's text is not designed to reflect true "nuance", it is a piece of propaganda that intentionally leaves out that the buffalo soldiers were specifically protecting white settlers who directly owned slaves and/or explicitly believed in the institution of slavery.
the shirt's fifth paragraph is reminiscent of the Declaration of Independence's statement of "merciless Indian Savages", but notably, this neglects it's similar reference to "domestic insurrections", i.e. slave revolts. these two are understood as america's principle enemies.
the idea that east asians aren't aware of race is funny because Korean nation-building during the 19th century involved taking up Western race science placing Black people and nonblack Natives in America as being inferior via the first major Korean newspaper, Hanseongsunbo.
in November 30, 1883, the Korean newspaper Hanseongsunbo declared that Black Africans were "escape from the category of savage" and "the word savage is for these people." funny enough, white people were placed *above* them in the racial hierarchy they took up.
within the racial taxonomy proliferated through 19th century Korea, Hanseongsunbo and later work Seoyugyonmun argued whites were civilized, "yellows" were "capable" of civilization, but Black people and American Indians were "hopeless" and incapable of civilization.
everytime something like the transphobe gym happens, ppl immediately jump to talking about how it'll affect everyone else other than trans ppl. it's not helping, and it isn't how you show solidarity.
this is truly the limit of empathy-first politics. solidarity is uniting despite not sharing the positionality of another. you shouldn't need to imagine yourself in their place to care. if we accept that premise, we are doomed.
transphobic c!s Black women in the first place do not believe any downstream affects will happen to them because they are aspiring to wield patriarchal power. they believe in and firmly invest in the state for that very reason: to leverage its violence against "lessers".
why do people keep saying that solidarity is about finding shared struggle? it isn't, it's about struggling together /despite/ not sharing a struggle.
the word you are looking for to describe finding shared struggle is empathy. empathy does not address antiBlackness because in order to empathize with Black people, white people have to appropriate Blackness which reifies it as a thing to be owned and enjoyed.
i've mentioned this several times before, but one of the worst cases of empathy being used wrt antiBlackness was when white "abolitionists" would put on Blackface and engage in minstrelsy to try to get people to empathize with Black slaves.
i know plenty Black people are still angry over the latest example of white trans people being antiBlack, but i think y'all should take this as an opportunity to move beyond anger/rage and enter pessimism. Black rage has its place and is necessary, but it can be co-opted.
unfortunately, theft of Black struggle is necessary for white trans people because they don't carry any revolutionary potential which is why they have to appeal to white supremacists. Black rage can be more easily be commodified but Black pessimism can't.
Black rage encourages us to do /something/, and we end up compromising because we feel powerless. but that isn't really true. a popular white trans account used Tyre Nichols death to promote herself and her partner who works for the state. they openly admit they need our slogans.