By: M.R. Framboise
EDIT: This speech was supposed to be given at a rally for New Orleans’ Queer Trans Community Action Project, but personal matters interrupted its delivery. The full speech is archived here.
EDIT: It will now be give at the Trans Day of Remembrance Vigil in New Orleans, La. on 20 Nov.
Hello everybody, Bonjou toulemoun!! Today, I am here speaking not just as a representative of some of Loyola’s Students for a Democratic Society, but as a transgender person who sees the beauty that our community has to offer the world.
I. Firstly, I understand that by this point people who may be slightly familiar with my speeches may expect something incendiary or full of passion and fire—as has typically been my style—but I must articulate to you all today that there is more to our movement, to our community, than suffering. To confine our experiences to simple suffering—whether under dystopia or under the fascist government of the United States and the Republican Party—would be to resign ourselves to the transphobic ideal that we are a coalition of the mentally disturbed. Let’s say this fundamentally—and I want you all to say this with me: “My trans is beautiful!!” — I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you […] One more time […] That’s it!! We have to declare first and foremost that our transness is beautiful, and that nothing and no one can or will take that from us. Now, that is not to say that our fight is over or that that is all we have to offer as resistance or rebuttal to the pending genocide. It is to say that we are a community upon whom has been bestowed a gift of creation.
II. Secondly, in a time where we have officially been labeled by the White House to be “violent, nihilistic extremists,” it is of paramount importance that our community unify behind the character of creation and liberation. It’s gotta be said loud and clear that we were never going to get true liberation and freedom from cisgender and heterosexual people by simply asking or waiting for the far-right Supreme Court to declare us valid. Our internal validity is innate and axiomatic. It cannot be taken away; our legal validity, however, must be fought and bled for. As trans and queer people we have got to organize ourselves into mass movements just like QTCAP. We have got to stand up and fight back against the vilification of trans people that is done solely for the sake of dividing the nation while the capitalists rob us blind. We’ve already got community; we’ve already got the power of creation, and we’ve got something resembling an American Dream, and everybody best believe that we are going to fight like hell for our right to exist!!
III. So what’s gonna happen? We’ve gotta get some community systems in place. We’ve gotta get out there and start feeding people; we’ve gotta get out there and start housing people; we’ve gotta get up there and start standing up for all the people. When we—wrapped in our blue, white, and pink—start feeding each other, when we build dual systems of governance, when we support each other and each other’s lives and transitions, we will have that unit that can and will take on these reactionary invaders.
IV. And this part is for all of the trans youth who may see this, so I’ll look down the camera and say to you all: Yes, you get to be old!! Yes, you get to grow up!! Yes, you are worthy of love, and yes, you are who you say you are. Because you have got to listen to me now when I say that our community has been fighting this fight for a long damn time and we are not about to let you go. So f—k whatever you saw on the internet; f—k whatever those ignorant and hateful people around you or on television told you, I love you, because we love you, and believe you me, we’re gonna fight like hell for you.
V. Lastly, for all of those communities marginalized by the wildly reactionary right-wing government of the United States. I’m talking not just the Queer nation, but the Black and Brown, the disabled, immigrants, and the foremost marginalized, the working class. We are America. You think that Donald Trump and his merry band of fascists is America? You think those bombs that capitalists drop in Venezuela, and Yemen, and Iran, and Palestine are America? Let me tell you something. Everything is positive and negative at the same time, and do you know what makes America positive? You do!! You do; I do; the workers do!! The trans, queer, Black, Brown, disabled, the working and unable to work!! All of you make America great. We are not nihilistic, violent extremists; we are beautiful, caring, significant, popular, and fucking revolutionary. We are going to build a new America. We are going to build a new union in the 21st century. And in that union we are all going to be free. We’re gonna have democracy, we’re gonna have liberation, and we will be free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, free at last.
