Why Marriage Equality Is No Longer My Cause

Yesterday, I posted the following status:

"Dear Civil Rights Movement,

Please. Guide me in the right direction this summer while I work for HRC. Help me to reconcile my disillusionment with the neoliberal/albelist/classist/racially unjust/trans exclusive LGB"T" movement and its emphasis on assimilation as a determinant of respectability and equal protection with my faith that the same pragmatic approaches and principles that worked so many years ago will once again motivate genuine social reform. I am torn between promoting change from the inside slowly but surely and the knowledge that I will be enabling an agenda which focuses on the privileged majority and ignores those whose very existence obfuscates its image to the masses..."

That status was triggered by my escalating resentment with a nearly seven year long career in queer activism that has seen one issue beaten to death, and, well...to be perfectly blunt, queer (mostly trans friends) actually beaten and their access to justice occluded by the lack of visibility that is perpetuated by the umbrella LGB movement.

A few weeks ago, one of my closest friends attempted suicide. A lot of his distress resulted from his status as a trans person. To receive the news was nothing short of devastating. I realized to my chagrin not long after that he had joined what I like to call the "How The Other Half Lives" club. Since 50% of trans individuals attempt suicide by their 20th birthday, I use this term to denote those of us who incredulously ask our trans brothers and sisters who do not try to take their lives, "Really? How does the other half actually live? How do they do it when this world is so inhospitable to our existence?!"

Today, I received a Facebook message that did it for me. This message was sent by a trans friend who has already been severely taken advantage of by the system in regards to his trans related health care. He is commenting about Rainbow Perspectives at Rutgers and how invaluable it is, since he faced many difficulties at his old school due to his trans status:

"I would have had a much higher chance of being able to graduate living in that situation. I feel like such a failure dropping out but I just can't live like this anymore. I'm really happy that situations like your exist and I really hope that more students are given that option. I'm so happy that you are where you are. I'm sure you'll use your education to do great things and I hope to see you this weekend."

It made me cry. It still makes me cry that HRC employees made trans activists remove the trans flag from the view of cameras at a protest in Washington D.C. that had been organized by those who wanted to see DOMA and Prop 8 rescinded.

What moves me so much about the Freedom Rides of 1961 is that both black and white people were willing to die so that all Americans could have rights.

But it is 2013 and I feel like I am watching my trans family drop like flies around me. I am sick of feeling as though there is something so egregiously wrong with our identity that those in power are ashamed to expand legislation in our name.

They hone in on our protection-worthy status without even bothering to know us as people, and by focusing only on our vulnerability, and not the damaging perceptions that cause others to target us in the first place, we become this burden, a Scarlet Letter facing a situation so grave that the LGB group begrudgingly adopts our cause in the name of purported fairness.

But they are not really willing to die for us, and with us, as I undoubtedly would have been willing to do for my black brothers and sisters, provided that I had been born in the 1960's and able to participate in the Freedom Rides.

At this point, we remain a knob of disenfranchised and severely disadvantaged nerve endings that are easier for those in power to amputate than repair.

This post is for every trans person I have met who has has attempted suicide (nearly all of them), who has been homeless for who they are, who has been physically or sexually injured because of who they are, who has turned to sex work or lives in poverty due to employment discrimination, and who has cried in despondency before Google search results that yield no promise of conditions improving for trans individuals anytime soon.

And this is why I have pretty much stopped giving a shit about marriage equality.