Today is Trans Day of Visibility and we are just past Ostara. Here, clouds loom overhead, things of gloom and shade that bring water for flowers. Here, it is overcast and mist obscures the depths of sight, but the mist hides many things. Yesterday we shivered outside—today it is warmer and it is darker. Flowers do not yet bloom here.
Today is Trans Day of Visibility and mist ensnares us to only know our immediate vicinity. On the outside, we are heading into a dark winter after a brief harvest. It will be cold; we can either huddle and build fires separately, exhausting wood and tinder till we freeze, or we can take these fires and burn our oppressors in a glorious blaze. We can take their wood, take their stoves, and burn torches in this night.
Today is Trans Day of Visibility and to be trans in our horrid world entails acknowledging the darkest parts of reality: I am not—I could be. The scariest part is that you will be. By being alive right now you are a disastrous failure of fascism. Those who seek to kill us all and forget about us inherently cannot face the darkest parts of reality: they are not—they never will be. They like to pretend that they’re the end of history, the biggest, the strongest, above all other humans in grandeur and majesty—but, in reality, they are the smallest of us all. They are whiners who throw tantrum after tantrum that the people they degrade just keep living and don’t bow and lick their boots.
Today is Trans Day of Visibility and by being trans today, tomorrow, now and onwards, you are more at peace with what it is like to be a human. A core part of humanity is that though they are inherently linked and support each other, there is a stark disconnect between our bodies and minds to varying degrees. We can dream of anything at all, our minds can do such wondrous things, and yet when we try to run into the mist, it recedes just as fast as we go. When our minds know with more clarity than anything else that I am trans, we realize that our bodies do not yet match the picture of what we are, and we change them in whatever ways we see fit. We will never, ever reach a final self just as we will never, ever reach a final Ostara. Acknowledging that time, minds, bodies and the world are cyclical while at the same time some things truly do change forever allows you to be further at peace; it is no different for our bodies.
Today is Trans Day of Visibility and there will be another one next year. Do not give into the lies of fascism—you really are trans, you deserve to live, and it’s the fascists who are the truly backwards ones. Someday there will come the last trans person to die for any reason except old age or sickness; someday, our sisters, siblings and brothers will no longer live in fear and will have the ultimate freedom to decide what, who and how they are and will be. Your contribution to this good world will not be remembered but will be pivotal in bringing it about. You must keep living and keep fighting, if not for the sake of yourself then for the sake of all our trans sisters, siblings in brothers that would have thrived and been cherished in a better world but were cruelly abandoned, killed and forgotten in this one. We must not forget even a single one of us.
Today is Trans Day of Visibility and trans people have existed and will exist for as long as humans exist.
Today is Trans Day of Visibility. Internally, we have each already faced cold, harsh winters, alone and shivering, and survived to tell the tale. Some of our siblings have not survived, and not all who live now will continue at our sides to see the change of winter to spring. We must know them, weep over their graves, and stand up and fight for their memory because the death of trans people is manufactured, it is artificial and it is not our doom. Trans joy is irreplaceable and precious and must be defended to our last breath.