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Hello.
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Hey.
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(Laughter)
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As you just heard,
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my name is D-L Stewart
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and I'm a faculty member here on campus
at Colorado State University.
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But what's most important
for you to understand about me right now
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is that I identify as both Black
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and as transgender, or trans.
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And yes, I'm going to talk to you today
about how Black trans lives matter.
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As I do so,
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I'm going to share
a few scenes from my own life,
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mixed in with the ways
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that race and gender have historically
and currently intersected
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to shape the lives of Black trans people.
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Ready?
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Audience: Ready.
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Scene one.
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I am at home with myself.
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My body, a sovereign country.
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Sovereign meaning
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it is superlative in quality.
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Of the most exalted kind.
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Having generalized curative powers
of an unqualified nature,
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unmitigated,
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paramount,
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possessed of supreme power,
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unlimited in extent, absolute.
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Enjoying autonomy,
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independent,
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royal.
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My body defies the restrictions
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of a society consumed
by boxes and binaries
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and "are you a boy or a girl?"
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Independent of such conventions,
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my body clings instead
to the long ago lore
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that understood its magic.
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I contain multitudes.
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From this supreme power to name myself,
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define myself and be myself,
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I stake a claim to myself
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and organize my resistance.
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A resistance that boldly proclaims
that Black trans lives matter.
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My body is a sovereign country
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and my first site of resistance.
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End scene.
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To say that Black trans lives matter
is a claim to sovereignty.
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As much as Black Girl Magic,
and #transisbrilliant,
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Black Trans Lives Matter
is also a chorus of resistance.
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Because Black trans lives begin
by defining our bodies
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as sovereign countries
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from which we first begin
to resist the messages
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that we have no place here.
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We push whole movements forward
on the strength of our vision.
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We set trends and create new worlds.
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We are the vanguard.
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Black trans lives have always mattered.
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And yet,
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caught at the time-traveling intersection
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of Juneteenth emancipation celebration
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and Stonewall's emancipation declaration,
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Black trans lives
are both seen but yet unseen.
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Unseen by the antiblackness
of queer and trans movements.
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Unseen by the transphobia
and trans-antagonism of Black movements.
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Our sovereignty and resistance are blocked
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by layers of systems and structures
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that have always sought
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to contain, define and erase
Black trans bodies.
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Scene two.
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I am with my therapist.
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The one whose testimony I must rely on
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to declare me man enough
to have my documents changed.
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The one who is to be believed.
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Despite my own declarations
that I am not this body,
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that this body is neither hers
nor yours to define,
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I sit with this doctor.
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And she fills out a form for me.
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And when concerning what all I've done
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to affirm my gender,
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"Has the patient's gender presentation
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aligned with their gender identity?"
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She decides that my gender presentation
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is more neutral, really.
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While I sit there, mind you,
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head to toe in clothing
from the section of the store
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where the dress buttons
go down the right side,
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and my pants give away
the number of inches around my waist,
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and my hair is cut
like Denzel's "Man on Fire,"
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but I'm still more neutral.
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Really?
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Because she still sees,
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and you see,
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a Black woman.
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And Black women's bodies
are always already made genderless.
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End scene.
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From mammy and Sapphire,
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to Mandingo and Sambo,
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Black bodies and our genders
have been caught in the White imagination.
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And the imagination
of whiteness is fanciful,
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and powerful enough
to turn its fancies into realities.
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Imagined as a thing,
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we were made to become that thing
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and so we have been bred like horses,
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fed like turtles to alligators,
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branded like cattle,
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milked like [unclear],
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made into oxen to plow.
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Gender did not matter,
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so long as our body parts,
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our arms and legs and backs,
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our breasts and genitalia
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could be turned into profit.
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The Black body was made not White
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and therefore not worthy of gender.
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And under the weight of the gentile tool
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and virginal lace that dressed
plantation mistresses,
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Black femininity has always been denied.
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Instead, she is either beast or porn star.
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Neither a proper gender, dehumanized.
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Made a social threat
that endangers civility.
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That puts civilization in danger.
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The angry Black woman cannot be escaped.
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Not even by a first lady
of these United States.
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Likewise, ill-suited for chivalry,
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and outmatched as masters
and captains of fate,
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Black manhood lays flaccid
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in the hands of White man's dominance.
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Body measurements taken,
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speed measured,
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draft pick forecasted.
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This is the NFL combine.
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Body measurements taken,
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teeth and body cavities inspected,
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number assigned.
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This is the prison intake room.
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Body measurements taken,
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talents and abilities advertised,
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teeth and body cavities inspected,
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name and value assigned.
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This is a slave's bill of sale.
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Made either stud or farcy
is not for his own pleasure,
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but rather for profit and jest.
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Athletes and comics
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contained.
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Made not a threat.
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"My gender is Black," said Hari Ziyad,
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because Black bodies
and our genders have been caught
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in the White imagination,
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and we have always been transgressive.
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Transgressive meaning
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a violation of accepted and imposed
boundaries of social acceptability.
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Blackness is transgressive.
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And once set free
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from social acceptability,
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blackness challenges the limitations
of what gender can be.
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We have always been fugitives here.
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Escaping from gender surveillance
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to claim our sovereignty
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and right to exist and to live free,
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to proclaim as beautiful
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that which was made ugly,
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to defy convention,
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Black lives and trans lives
and Black trans lives.
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And yet, in this world, that fact
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that Black trans lives make a difference,
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make differences,
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and make a matter of mattering
is doused by the fire hoses
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of past and current denials
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of our rights to exist and resist.
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We must fight to be seen
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as we see through fences
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into the play yards
that we are kept out of.
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Scene three.
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I am at school.
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The bell rings, it's recess.
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We line up to go outside.
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Those made boys on one side,
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those made girls on the other.
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We file out of the doors.
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The boys stopping
to fill in the closed off street.
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The girls and I,
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walking across the street.
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"Keep your eyes
straight ahead," we are told.
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Because there's a park across the street.
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But there is a wrought iron fence
that encloses that park.
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This is where the girls and I play.
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Mostly, I stand at the fence and watch,
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as my fellows play ball in the street,
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and be loud,
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and be rough,
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and be sweaty,
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and I am behind the fence.
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Accused of thinking naughty thoughts.
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They have no idea.
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End scene.
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Sissified and bulldaggered,
we are all made up.
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Just boys in dresses and girls in suits,
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the Black transgressive body
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caught in fantasies of boxes and binaries
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that make our genitalia
representative of our gender,
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and our mannerisms our sexuality.
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Black trans lives are therefore
written off as merely gay effeminate
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or lesbian butch.
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And the overlay of femininity
on bodies marked as male,
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and therefore as man,
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adheres like a "kick me" sign,
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except the consequences
are much more deadly.
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The majority of trans people murdered
in this country are Black trans women.
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Because when manhood
is located between one's legs,
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and defined in opposition to womanhood,
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what's between one's legs
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cannot be seen as having anything
in common with womanhood.
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And this same acidic wash
serves to blanch trans masculinity,
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making it fade into nothingness.
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Black trans men
become illusions of manhood,
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women merely playing at being men
because you can't get a real man.
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Forever put in our place,
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we are indelibly marked as "woman."
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And at best, the looming threat
of Black trans manhood
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is contained, inoculated,
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made more neutral, really.
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Scene four.
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I am with my therapist.
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I tell her what I think about,
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as my body begins to slowly morph
into another version of itself.
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What will happen as I move
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from the social threat
of angry Black womanhood
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to the physical threat
of looming Black manhood?
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When will my neighbors
forget to recognize me and my pit bull?
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They've seen us nearly every day,
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predawn or after twilight,
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for what will have been
over two years by then?
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When and how soon
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after I am no longer misgendered woman
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will the cops be called
to come and contain
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and erase my presence?
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How soon before the purse clutching,
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the sidewalk crossing?
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What does it mean to become a brute?
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To turn my body
into another kind of threat?
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She's stunned that I'm already
recognizing this.
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I can't afford not to.
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End scene.
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Who can see me and my Black trans kin
in the skin we are in?
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Who dares to love us,
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who holds us close?
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To whom do we matter other to ourselves?
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We're not looking for saviors.
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We have each other.
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As Lilla Watson said,
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"If you have come here to help me,
you are wasting your time.
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But if you have come because you recognize
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your liberation is bound up in mine,
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then let us work together."
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Let us work together
to make Black trans lives matter.
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The lived experience of Black trans people
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out into the world.
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And if you believe that your liberation
is bound up with mine,
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then I invite you
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to make Black Trans Lives Matter
your personal ethic
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by being transformative,
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loudly and mindfully.
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You can do that in three ways.
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Transform your thinking
about blackness and gender.
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Be loud by taking the risk
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to confront false assumptions
and other's fears and biases.
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Be mindful and pay attention and believe
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what Black trans people say
about our own lives.
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Being transformative loudly and mindfully
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takes practice.
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Just like getting
someone's pronouns right.
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Mine are they, them, their,
and he, him, his, by the way.
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And getting someone's pronouns right
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and being transformative loudly
and mindfully matters.
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Because Black trans lives matter.
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My life matters.
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My body is a sovereign country,
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and my first site of resistance.
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(Applause)