Praise the Fallen


~Shall I stand as a total stranger? On this day in this stone chamber?~

Counting the dead… nay, counting the dead who have been murdered… no, counting the dead who have been murdered because of who they fundamentally were is sadly a yearly tradition for trans* people. It shouldn’t be. I mean, given how small of a community we are and how specific that situation is, it shouldn’t really be a thing, much less an annual thing. Much less an annual thing that involves a list of dozens and often hundreds of names, all snuffed out in hate crime after hate crime, striking home like the deaths of unarmed black men and boys by cops. The Transgender Day of Remembrance that we hold vigil for every year in the trans* community shouldn’t exist. In an ideal world, it wouldn’t. But instead, we live here, so we gather and refuse to let those so casually erased be forgotten.

You can see part of the list of names for this last year on the TDOR website and see the appalling truncation of so many men, women, and non-binary individuals lives (especially in Brazil. WTF Brazil. W. T. F.) for the dumbest and most senseless of reasons. And what makes this year strange is that the name I’m mourning most is not a name that’s even on that list. In fact, it’s probably the closest to an antithesis of the usual end for trans* individuals you can get (dying in old age, after a long disease, cared for in final days by a long-term romantic partner, and fondly eulogized).

That name being Leslie Feinberg, author of Stone Butch Blues and Transgender Warriors and long term trans*, queer, and anti-racist activist, who died after a long life and long struggle with various illnesses.

And it’s hitting me like a freight train, because Leslie’s books and more specifically “Stone Butch Blues” was the first trans*-related book I ever read. And while I was sadly too young to make the connection, I was still deeply invested, making an impulse purchase and not sleeping until I had read the whole thing. It was my awakening, though my natural inclination to hit the snooze alarm required a few extra over the years.

And beyond the writings, there was that wonderful activism that Leslie did, leading the fight for transgender rights during times when we had close to zero people willing to stand up for us, serving as a critical voice for the non-binary and trans-masculine individuals in our community, constantly battling for queer rights and anti-racism even during times when that was very much not a thing well supported or liked, and ballsiest of all, Leslie was a proud and out communist until death during times when that very much was not something it was safe to admit being.

Which is why Leslie’s final words were “Remember me as a revolutionary communist”. Because Leslie did not ever give a fuck about the assholes of the world and that beyond anything else is what I carry most in their passing.

Which is about the time that it hits me what site I write for and… 3… 2… 1…

V the Kapo, Wasn’t there a Gay Guy Writing for this Site Once?:
Death of the Ultimate SJW

I absolutely unironically love the way the collective assholes of the world have collapsed on “social justice warr~iors (come out to pla~aay!) as their catch-all insult for those damn dirty commie liberal hippie bastards*.

And it’s not just because I’m a lover of campy 70s action flicks (though I am [CAAAAN YOUUU DIG IT?!?]). Nor is it because it is the most honest any of these fuckers have ever been in their goddamn life (rambling on like a Captain Planet villain about how they are against those glorious do-gooders and their caring about justice).

But also because it is one of those glorious reflexive hatreds that just serve to encapsulate everything wrong with conservative philosophy in a very similar way to how during the Sotomayor confirmation, the same fucks were ragging on empathy like it was the One Ring.

And that really sums up the main fuckhole we are all stuck in. That a motivated group of bitter psychotics, angry and violent over the mere concept that they will no longer be the be-all, end-all of all culture anymore, are willing to go to war against basic humanity concepts like empathy and justice if it will mean shoving someone weaker further down the hole. And that they will be so dedicated to this that they won’t even care that they are doing this even when it is spelled out and public and without any real filters at all. That it doesn’t matter being caught out on this reflexive hatred, because those others are thinking they are people and MUST BE PUT IN THEIR PLACE!

Except… these chuckleheads really suck at putting us “in our place” as it were.

The radical left is going to have an empty seat at their next annual Vegan Potluck and Shaming Conference. [Hat Tip: Weasel Zips]

Leslie Feinberg, who identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist, died on November 15. She succumbed to complications from multiple tick-borne co-infections, including Lyme disease, babeisiosis, and protomyxzoa rheumatica, after decades of illness.

She died at home in Syracuse, NY, with her partner and spouse of 22 years, Minnie Bruce Pratt, at her side. Her last words were: “Remember me as a revolutionary communist.”

Remember you as someone who supported a system that slaughtered over 100,000,000 human beings in the 20th Century and enslaved millions more. Your proposal is acceptable.

Speaking of revealing we have digs like this, meant to belittle us, that really just show how terrified these overgrown man-children are of the notion of the world being bigger than their tiny little illiterate hole. Ooh, vegan, transgender, anti-racist, Jews, grr argh, respond to these aspects of the Other like the trained attack dogs you are.

And it just seems so small. Especially when we open with unnngh, vegans, waaaah, sharing, and a sad pathetic dig at “shaming” as if the worst a “real” person could suffer is being called out on one’s bullshit and made to feel like a right idiot.

So small, that little Vlad the Klansman here needed to end with that rragh communism, bloody murder, bit at the end just to look like he had a point beyond how dare this person not fit my tiny imprisoning box.

Which… V? Do you really want to get into blaming people for all the wrong those who claim to belong to an economic system perform, because I don’t think capitalism can withstand that what with you know, the Atlantic Slave Trade and well… fascism in its wheelhouse.

But hey, whatever floats your dirigible full of nazis, right?

But hey, that’s a little bit of ghoulishness. Let’s get darker. November 20th is the Transgender Day of Remembrance, every year like clockwork.

Here’s V the K on that day:

V the fucK, Seriously, did the Bruce Brigade slip out the back when they realized the money was about to dry up in the self-hating gay man market?:
So Have You Heard About Michael Phelps

So, Olympian Pothead Michael Phelps has been dating a woman who used to be a dude.

And yes, it’s a link. Where to?

Heh. Heheheheh… [flee]

No! You won’t make me go back! You can’t make me go back! I refuse! Noooooooooooo!

Chris Spargo, Daily… Bob Damn You All, it’s the Daily Fucking Mail:
Michael Phelps’ blahdeblah do I really need to transcribe this shit?

… I protest… ugh, fine…

Yes, it’s our good buddies the Daily Fail who are just as loathsome as when we last left them, trading a bit of vileness with a hit piece on a woman named Taylor Chandler who briefly dated swimmer Michael Phelps. Long story of it, there was a woman named Taylor Chandler who probably dated Phelps around the time of his DUI. She recently had a Facebook post about being intersex and assigned male at birth and all the bubbling scum of the gossip rags exploded in exactly the level of sensitivity one would expect. And which is aptly demonstrated by the Daily Fail, ultra lengthy title BS.

Michael Phelps’ self-proclaimed ‘girlfriend’, 41, reveals she was born a male as she describes her ‘amazing intimacy’ with Olympic swimmer
Michael Phelps’ self-proclaimed girlfriend Taylor Lianne Chandler has revealed she was born [fuck you, but no, I’m not interested in perpetuating this birth name=real name bullshit, especially when it seems like the person involved does not have a safe relationship with her family and may have been put in danger by this vulture swarm]
Chandler is intersex, meaning she has male genitalia but no testicles, and a uterus but no ovaries
She is revealing her ‘amazing sex life’ with Phelps in a new interview, claiming the two had sex at a Baltimore Ravens football game
She began taking testosterone blockers as a teenager and had corrective surgery in her early twenties to get rid of her male genitalia
Chandler is now concerned that after this admission Phelps may no longer want to be with her when he leaves rehab
Phelps is out of rehab now according to Chandler

And yes, this is all in the headline.

The rest of the bullshit is a bunch of photographs of the woman and dismissive comments about the very notion that such a creature could ever have bedded anyone other than the most worthless piece of trash imaginable and various digs at Phelps’s sexuality and masculinity and mental state to ever consider dating what actually sounds like a pretty cool lady when you strip away all the Failization they heap on top of it.

And the sad fact of it is that a quick google search of Chandler and Phelps will reveal that the Fail is not alone in this mocking parade of disbelieving chuckleheads teasing Phelps’s very manhood for ever falling for a “trap”…

And that right there is the connection point to that fleet of bodies we mourn every year.

In this country and so many like it, it is inconceivable that anyone could ever be attracted to a transwoman, could see them as anything other than a sad joke, a mockery of the natural order. And when someone does, that person is belittled, assumed to be less manly and by the rules of toxic masculinity is encouraged to lash out, get violent, show that they are not some “fag” by any means necessary.

And that is the origin of so many of these guns pointed at once living breathing hopeful beautiful women. The reclamation of “masculinity”, the escape from the joke by “punishing” that which “deceived” you. It’s the origin of the first and so far only time I’ve had someone casually consider my murder when his brief fantasy of lesbians on the corner was intruding on by what a “blow” to his masculinity my trans* state would serve. We must die to assert the natural order.

It’s why so few of us expect to live to be Leslie Feinberg. Especially those of us who happen to be transwomen of color who are attracted to men. Even before you factor in all the other abuse and discrimination and suicide and common violence.

And it comes from that reflexive panic by these little pencil-dicks who continue to support a system where the “us” are the outsiders, are the jokes, are the invaders trying to rob something from “them”.

And it’s why we sit and mourn every November… like clockwork.

*Yes, I understand the intra-tumblr origins of the term. Honestly, this is a much more fitting place for the term as an insult.

 

Comments: 8

 
 
 

Remember you as someone who supported a system that slaughtered over 100,000,000 human beings in the 20th Century and enslaved millions more. Your proposal is acceptable.

And here we run into the Brick Wall of Wingeian™ innumeracy and its aHistorical equivalent, which make this a harder job than it might appear especially when aligned with the confluence of mexed mitaphor and sanctimonious prattle.

The first question is where does one start? 100,000,000 million? ‘Cause (and I may be wrong) that seems a bit of a stretch, but if we take the number at face value, I can certainly imagine another system (one might call it the yang to the Yin) that racked up similar numbers and more convincingly during the same timeframe and lets not even get started with the pre 20th century numbers this particular system can claim.

Also, too, has there ever been anything resembling a communist or marxist government in the history of civilization? So can we blame an ideology that has never possessed anything resembling real power except in the nym-jack by ruthless authoritarian dictatorships (of which ironically, the author of the screed is secretly jealous.)

At long last how in any way shape or form could a singular civil rights activist with a focus on transgender rights be conflated with the above and done so with a straight face.

(I really need some headfones, this fucking xmas music at the ‘bucks across the way is killing me.)

Glad to see you back in the saddle Cerb. WoooooooHoooooo!!!

 
 

Well, if murderous adherents discredit an entire institution, I look forward to people everywhere renouncing organized religion in protest.

 
 

Mao probably was directly or indirectly responsible for 40-70 million deaths, a lot of those due to starvation.

Stalin probably gets credit for 15-20 million counting executions and starvation.

Hitler of course killed 6 million Jews but you also have to count 20 million Russians killed during his invasion. In fact all European dead in WWII can be laid at his feet since the whole thing was his idea. He also had a lot less time to work with than Mao or Stalin. There’s that German efficiency for you.

 
 

It wasn’t all that long ago that intersex babies were routinely assigned female. Now, I believe, sex assignment surgery is deferred until the child expresses its gender or in some cases after additional testing that gives strong indication of likely gender. So I guess that’s progress.

 
 

Mmmmm, still has that “new thread” smell in here.

Not to diminish transgender martyrs, but re the previous thread, this Tom Tomorrow cartoon knocks it out of the park…

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/01/1348341/-Cartoon-Black-and-white

 
 

Brazilians are murdering about one per WEEK! I’m guessing it happens so much because there is little fear of prosecution…?

 
Jeffraham Chili P.
 

More scenes from New Boston, OH.
.

 
 

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