Good Advice

One of the things about the trans community is we are not a homogenous community, we have a number of subgroups within the community. The umbrella has holes in it.

Trans Activists' Advice To Transgender Youth: 'We Have To Stop Fighting With Each Other'
Several activists from the transgender community have come together to encourage marginalised members of society to unite against those who attempt to undermine their human rights
Mirror UK
By Katie O'Malley
November 22, 2016

American trans activists Buck Angel and Janet Mock have come out to encourage the young transgender community not to be afraid in the face of persecution, following weeks of unease since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States of America.

At a recent screening of The Trans List – a multi-media project from artist Timothy Greenfield-Sanders that highlights activists in the trans community – adult film star and activist Angel began a call to action for the trans community, to not let fear get in their way of standing up for what is right.

Buck Angel told The Cut: 'Fear is how we ended up here.'

Amen to that. Fear is dividing us again.

Director Greenfield-Sanders said: 'The trans community has been so attacked and discriminated against, and there are still no laws protecting trans people in most states. So as the LGB movement has become mainstream, the T in the LGBT is finally finding its moment.'

But we are once again being pushed aside by Gay Inc. that wants us to push public accommodations aside and just work on employment and housing. But we have seen that before and it doesn’t work, they never come back for us, just look at New York state and SONA.

'I think right now, what we need to do is ensure that anyone who is considered other — trans folk, queer folk, people of color, poor folk, disabled people — that they band together and form coalitions in order to fight back against a lot of the things that go on or could possibly go on in this new administration,' she said.

'If all the people who were considered marginalized banded together, we would be considered the majority. Hopefully, this specific election season has woken us all up to be able to connect in ways that we can enact change,' she added.

We cannot let Martin Niemöller poem become true, “Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”