Thread by @howunseelieofme

As it's #TransAwarenessWeek, I wanted to highlight something important. A common refrain people come back round to in any discussion of oppression is 'Oh but you want to keep people liking you, because how will you have rights otherwise?' or a similarly expressed notion.

This ignores something fundamentally important, marginalised people don't suddenly exist because majority society deems us worthy. We will exist with censure or with approval. We literally always find a way.

When you look throughout history you see examples of people living their lives, aiming to be as untroubled as possible, because it is normal and natural for all humans to seek liberation and freedom. Escaped slaves did it, various other racial communities have done it.

LGBTQ people have also been doing it forever. If anything, the only group that haven't in quite as great a number are disabled people, but a major reason for that is because disability often requires assistance from others.

With that said, when you flip the perspective on disability as a condition (state of being) rather a hindrance, we see that Deaf culture has been flourishing for at least a couple of hundred years if not longer.

The point is, it's natural to seek a state where you are not chained by limited expectations, resentment and so on. On top this however, this sentiment also misses a further important point. It's not actually about majority power.

That's just a story people tell themselves to remain comfortable. Yes, every system of oppression in mainstream society (as opposed to people just setting up their own societies) has been overcome by joint effort,

but that doesn't mean the majority group benevolently handed out rights. It means the minority educated. We coached people through *decades* of showing that we could be safe, regular people. This isn't pro assimilation by the way, this is just about human rights.

And in a lot of cases, we continue to do it, even when we continue to be set back by society insisting in the case of some oppression that we don't actually have the mental capacity to understand ourselves. We make our own rights.

We didn't just educate, we protested too, that's important to remember. We were scared and often physically hurt, but we made a display to remind people in charge that we wouldn't be cowed. So, when people say that 'you should be nice to allies' stop and think about that.

When you take the entirety of any oppressed group of people into account and realise that The Cause is bigger than right now, it's decades even centuries of work, do you understand why people might not want to keep answering questions?

Can you understand that when these same questions have been being asked since the 60s and 70s openly, 'How do hormones work?' 'What do these surgieries entail?' (and you can find evidence of all of this online) that we might collectively be a little tired?

This isn't meant to shame anyone, if you ask sincerely people often want to tell their stories. If you just want to window shop about the trans experience though, all of the basic information that reduces a person down to xyz medical procedure, that's online.

Once again, we are not given our rights, we have always made them happen, even if the inalienable right to freedom has meant living outside the law, we make it work.

The whole notion of 'allyship' is a political nicety anyway. Either you're a decent person, albeit perhaps one who needs to be educated, or you're not. We should affirm people for learning and encourage dialogue, but if the bar is basic respect, that bar is on the floor.