Trans Positivity
With all the negativity in current events, politics, you name it, it’s more important than ever that we all seek out intentionally positive messaging about trans people. Here are some songs and books to start with if you need reminders that trans people are sacred and being trans is worth celebrating.
Music
Nonfiction Books (and some of my favorite quotes from them)
All the Things They Said We Couldn’t Have by T.C. Oakes-Monger
“Joy is integral to my trans experience; it is the part of me that believed my life could be different…”
“My aunt Kate once told me that we are pioneering. My first thought when she said that was that we are not new, we are not the first, we could not be pioneers. But perhaps it can all be true. We are history and the future, we are ahead of this time and yet we are returning to something ancient, something that generations of fearful people have tried to repress, something as inevitable as the turn of the season.”
“I have found queerness to be a form of magic. It can be powerful, something to treasure, a gift.”
“They call us a ‘phase’ because they think it makes us weak. But a phase isn’t weak, it is change. A phase is a stage in a time of change, a moment of development. We are evolution.”
“Being trans is not something I need to diminish; it is what pushes me to imagine, to create, to build. We are dreamers and makers because that is how we forged ourselves.”
“And so it always continues, our ancestry, our pain and our joy, passed on with a solidarity like nothing I have known.”
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community by Laura Erickson-Schroth
“The wide range of opinions and insights on trans experience can also be seen as a sign of health, the mark of a gender culture that is flourishing, abounding in a variety of ways of being.”
How to Fuck Like a Girl by Vera Blossom
“Being trans is a prayer for and belief in something better. —Carta Monir”
“You'll feel like no one wants you. The truth is you're a god, a miracle.”
“People wish they could be anything, and you have shown them that they could if they were brave. It's natural to love you.”
“To every girl who came before, I pray to your audacity, your laughter, your beauty, your pain, your friends, your existence, when I need to keep going. To every girl who has yet to arrive, I pray to your audacity, your laughter, your pain, your friends, your existence, when I need to keep going.”
“When house mothers in the ball scene built families around their children, when Sylvia Rivera stood in front of a mob in New York and yelled at them about caring for trans girls, it was coming from this place of vision.”
Something that May Shock and Discredit You by Daniel M. Lavery
“I don’t believe that a shifting sense of identity is wrong, or a sign of unwellness. I do not have to do anything I do not want or do not feel ready for.”
“...all things spiritual originate in the goodness of the flesh, that our bodies might come to reflect both where we have been and where we are going. As my friend Julian puts it, only half winkingly: “God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation.”