Centering Material Reality

A Plea for Empathy and Good Faith Engagement With Positionality

!!!Trigger Warning!!! This article will contain talk of race based violence, sexual assault, rape, trafficking, gender based violence, eating, and fatphobia.

A foreword: I will be writing about material reality and the material reality for many in so called “America” right now is that they are being kidnapped off the streets of and sent to concentration camps. We have always killed and sent people to concentration camps but now we’re doing it at an unprecedented rate. So consider this your reminder to spend time supporting those on the front lines protecting America’s vulnerable populations from abduction and torture! Sign up for your local ICE watch and get involved. Offer what you can!

In this article I will be interrogating my own positionality and marginalizations in relation to my various identities as well as the privileges that I have which exist alongside them. I will be outlining exactly where I stand and my thought process surrounding each part of my identity. I will be sharing why I think everyone needs to do the same in a similar manner which considers the material reality of others in relation to themselves as well. As always this article will be free and paid subscriptions are optional. Thank you so much for supporting my work either way <3

THIS INCREDIBLY BEAUTIFUL ART IS BY @creaturetooth_ on Instagram!!!!

On Race

I am a person who has been racialized intermittently. How do I know this? The ways in which I will be interrogated on primarily white gate kept interests in any white space. The way people will straight up ask me where I’m from. The way I’ve always felt so disappointed in the lack of characters that look like me without being portrayed as evil, overly emotional, or flat out masculine. The ways my parents taught me to hate myself, to painfully straighten my hair, to never tan, to not use my hands when I talk. The way my grandfathers last name was changed to sound more white. The way I have been fetishized in past relationships and treated as strong, fiery, masculine, and independent. The way I’ve learned to hate myself so much I thought a nose job, dying my hair blonde, and wearing blue eye contacts would make me happy.

Yet, I would not consider myself a person of color. Why? I have benefitted from and continue to benefit from systemic white supremacy. While my family may have a long history of poverty and immigrant trauma I watched my father go from poor and homeless to working “middle” class. I see how despite his background he was given endless second chances and opportunities to redeem himself. I see how I was given many similar opportunities. Opportunities many people of color just wouldn’t have access too.

I do not experience immediate violence or suspicion or hostility when entering a room because of my race. When people see me, they might question if I’m “ethnic”, or “different”, but this doesn’t immediately come out through exclusion or violence the way it does for people of color. It comes out through questioning, a test, a way to check if I belong. I do not have to fear for my life because of my skin color when law enforcement is around. Many people of color are not even given this test because it is assumed they don’t belong from the start.

My material conditions have not been structurally impacted to the extent that people of colors have because of their race. I have not been denied housing or credit or employment or education opportunities because of my race. These are very tangible real outcomes of systemic racism and they have not affected me the way they do people of color. Ignoring this and calling myself a person of color because I’m frequently racialized interpersonally when I don’t experience systemic racism would be unempathetic and cruel at best.

This kind of understanding of positionality in regards to any marginalization is extremely important. What level are you materially impacted by systemic discrimination related to an identity you hold and how does that affect who you are? This is an internal exploration that must be done in complete good faith and empathy towards how people are materially impacted more than you. You cannot even begin to engage with this concept in a productive way if you are not engaging from a place of empathy and care.

Lastly, I have addressed race first as I believe that at the very least within America when people see me their judgement about my race which is usually that I’m white is what first impacts how they see me and every other bit of bias they may have about my identity. It’s why I believe white trans people are white before they are trans. If they see me as white their initial assumption will be that my womanhood is pure, not a threat. My lesbianness is confusion, not a threat. My disability is pitiful and sad, maybe fake, but not a threat. People of color are not afforded this opportunity. That is a key takeaway from understanding your racial positionality as well.

On Trauma

I am a child sex trafficking survivor. When people talk about trauma, they often either only focus on cases as severe as mine or erase me completely. Neither of these are humanizing. My journey of surviving and healing from this abuse is an important part of who I am but it’s not all of me. In fact, most of the time it’s something I would never bring up because of how painful and uncomfortable thinking about it is. When people minimize my trauma by suggesting that their trauma (which is very real and I’m not denying it) gives them the same amount of right to speak on topics that concern people like myself as me it is incredibly harmful. With the context of the Epstein files being partially released this is more important than ever.

I have known most rich people are pedophiles and sadists for as long as I’ve been alive. My body knows it, that’s why I freeze and go into fight or flight around every older white man I see. They all look like my abusers, white, wealthy, and deeply evil. I have also known that there likely will never be any real consequences for any of these people. That is white supremacy, that’s how it works.

I quite literally cannot handle reading the files without breaking down completely. It ruins my entire day seeing even just parts of what was done to those poor victims. This is not learned helplessness or me being soft this is a wound that has not fully healed being re opened in one of the most violent ways possible. Your experiences with trauma do not give you more of a right to speak on this than me. Especially if you are not a trafficking survivor yourself. Frankly, I find the vast majority of the ways people have been speaking about these files to be vile and insensitive to victims. These same people will often highlight how they are traumatized in some way so we’re just too sensitive. An excellent example of a lack of empathy and care when interrogating ones own personal Identity.

My complex trauma has left me with complex PTSD among other diagnoses such as OCD, anorexia, and a dissociative disorder which shall not be named. It has left me permanently disabled and even caused issues with addiction through the entirety of my teenage years. It has caused me direct harm and made me struggle in almost every aspect of my life. Still though, my proximity to whiteness and the ways white supremacy has benefited me have allowed me to heal and access therapy in ways people of color are often gatekept from through finances or through racial bias suggesting they are being difficult or hard to work with for exhibiting the same symptoms of trauma I have.

This is deeply important because it allows me an opportunity to help. The things I’ve learned from therapy can be shared. The coping mechanisms and knowledge about boundaries and self help can be given to all the trans people of color in my life for free. It is a way for me to give back to my community with emotional labor. It is crucial for me because I am unable to commit to large amounts of physical labor.

On Geography

While I am a trafficking survivor, I’m not from a historically exploited and colonized country. My Grandparents are but I’m not. For white folks especially living in what is essentially the imperial core is a huge privilege compared to those living in countries that the imperial core is invading. This is not to say that those people are poor perpetual victims (they are vast and multi faceted human beings) but it is to say that there are many struggles they have that I won’t know.

I will never know what it’s like to live in a community generationally affected by agent orange. I will never know what it’s like to grow up and accept as a reality that sometimes colonizers just disappear your friends. I will never fully understand how horrific it is seeing American soldiers in your town and knowing that they’ve been raping and killing your community members. I will never fully grasp the oppression of being a low caste queer person in India and how that affects every aspect of your life. I will never know entirely what it’s like to be a trans woman from South East Asia and living with the orientalist reality of being forced into survival sex work where white men travel across the world to fetishize and fuck you before going back to their friends and lying about it. Let’s not forget how much one’s status as a person from a country historically colonized by America affects how likely they are to be sex trafficked, after all.

It is so important that all people around the world question the American (and white European) centric propaganda fed to them and how it’s affected their mind. Western culture is not the only thing that exists. For many people “America” or Turtle Island is a far off place that’s kind of embarrassing but doesn’t concern them all too much. For others it’s an oppressor country full of people who have killed their community members directly or indirectly or are sympathetic to those who have. We have a responsibility to interrogate our relationship with how we may see ourselves as the center of the world and a moral imperative to challenge ourselves to consider ways in which we’re privileged compared to others. We cannot do this without seeking out and engaging with others experiences in good faith and without ego. We cannot understand our privilege and positionally or contribute to anything remotely revolutionary without empathy on a global scale.

On Immigration Status

I left America around a year ago. I did so because I was fleeing persecution both from the government as a trans woman and potential retribution or further control from some of the people responsible in my trafficking and abuse. However this does not make me an immigrant or a refugee. I am moving from what is essentially the imperial core, a country that has only extracted and stolen resources from others, to a country that has been victimized by that country and white westerners in general. I am still in a position of immense privilege compared to even my grandparents who left Sicily for America many years ago. I have a savings (although it is dwindling) and I have a plan. I know that because I pass as white or white adjacent unlike my grandparents I will be often catered too.

I feel using the term immigrant or refugee at this point and time to describe myself would be disrespectful, but in the very near future I think there will be no term more apt than refugee for trans women fleeing America. I have heard and seen some white trans Americans who left America crying and breaking down over how hard things have been for them and while I agree things are hard we need to take an empathetic and understanding approach to our positionally. We have it so much easier than immigrants in America. Especially right now of all times. It is incomparable. In fact even from abroad we should be doing whatever we can to support them.

Art by @creaturetooth_ on Instagram

On Gender and Sex

When I speak of transmisogyny, cissexism, and materialist transfeminism, I do so because I understand that my transsexuality as a trans woman places me in the most materially impacted gender category. I HAVE experienced every form of systemic discrimination because of my trans womanhood. I have lost housing, employment, education, friends, and family. I’ve faced violence, exclusion, suspicion, and even daily hate crimes while I was less passing. I live in constant fear of violence because of transmisogyny.

I know many trans women who have faced the exact same thing. Our entire existence is directly tied with survival sex work for this very reason. In the mid to late 1900’s Trans women who couldn’t go outside during the day without being hate crimed or thrown in prison would turn tricks by night until they could afford enough surgery and underground hormones to pass well enough as a cis woman. This was of course largely during the aids crisis and often spearheaded by Black trans women and trans women of color.

Those women are why we have rights today, and to think that that kind of discrimination has entirely disappeared is ignorant and silly. Outside of blue bubbles within cities which are largely gentrified and insulated by wealth trans women are being raped, murdered, and hate crimed every single day. Many of the black trans women and trans women of color in said cities have literally been pushed out of their own communities resources by white gentrifiers. To not analyze this in your conceptualization of your own trans identity and privilege is a very short sighted mistake at best.

Further, If we are engaging in good faith and with an empathetic understanding of all trans identities we can quickly understand that my positionally in relation to gender alone is one typically not shared by anyone who isn’t a transsexual woman. Needing hormones and surgeries adds multiple extra levels of discrimination to transmisogyny and one of the main focuses of the government’s anti trans policies is denying us medical transition. No further statistics, citations, or immediate and repeated examples and emotional labor should be needed.

I am a woman. Not only am I a woman I’m a woman who spent a fair portion of her life occupying the positionality of “man”. There is maybe nobody who knows more than transsexual women who live fully as women the vast and absolute scale and impact of misogyny. I faced almost no gender based struggles whatsoever as a man. As a woman my gender is a factor in quite literally every decision I make. Not because I want it to be because it HAS to be. Women are so globally exploited, assaulted, and victimized we need to constantly be on guard. We are gaslit and erased and disbelieved about our own abuse ten times more than any mens rights activist claims men are. Being groped has become a semi regular part of my life. Being catcalled in real life and sexually harassed online have become borderline daily occurrences, particularly in America and from westerners.

Many women say they hate men or men are evil. This is a natural response to being forced to survive in a world that systemically hates women. Men who know better and who truly are concerned with fighting misogyny and protecting women understand that when women say they hate men it’s not about them. It’s a survival mechanism and a reaction to living in a world where 7/10 men would assault them and the rest would stand around and watch if given the chance.

If I had 3 cups of water and I poisoned two of them but you didn’t know which two I poisoned would you drink from one of them? Of course not. It would be reasonable to assume that all the cups are poisoned. How does that apply here? Think about it and engage with good faith.

Ultimately while I occupy the most marginalized position in terms of gender and sex the amount of marginalization I experience will never be as much as trans women of color, especially black trans women. I can use this to my advantage by sharing what I’m able to learn about transition and my access to hormones and doctors with the trans women of color in my community who may not have the time or energy to complete these tasks on their own. I believe white and white adjacent trans women are the most dangerous people for trans women of color as the positionality of both of these groups often places them in extremely close proximity with almost no other lifelines or people who truly get it. It is absolutely imperative that other white and white adjacent transsexual women do everything we can to share our resources with trans women of color and spend time decolonizing and unlearning racism. We must be active accomplices rather than allies.

On Disability

In disability justice there is a principle called “leadership of the most impacted”. This principle exists because not all disabilities affect everyone the same. When we’re talking about disabled leadership and creating spaces for disabled people first we need to understand that every disabled person is impacted differently by their disability and has different needs. I might be able to give some fantastic input about how to create spaces for immunocompromised and chronically ill people but I don’t know what’s best for people disabled in ways that I am not.

As a multiply disabled person who was not visibly disabled until later in life I can firmly say that being visibly disabled impacts you socially on a level and to an extreme extent that invisible disabilities usually do not. I may have been picked on or bullied because I was an anxious autistic kid but now I am entirely and completely othered. Whether people have good intentions or not I have gone from being included until people can clock that I’m autistic to being permanently and always excluded because I now use mobility aids, braces, and compression socks in my daily life. I am no longer a person, I am a thing in need of help, an annoyance, or an outright monster.

In spite of all of this in many ways and at many times I am NOT “the most impacted” disabled person in the room. I am still able to perform functions of daily life with moderate success. I am still able to write and post online. I am still able to house myself and feed myself in an ableist world that would rather disabled people starve. One thing my disability worsening so drastically has taught me is how many daily functions everyone takes for granted are actually huge privileges. Not only that but those functions could be made so much easier for everyone if we didn’t live in ableist world that refuses to accommodate for disabled people. That world however is not possible without disability justice. Disability justice REQUIRES a good faith and empathetic understanding of one’s material reality and positionality in relation to not just their disability but all aspects of their identity.

Not only am I often not the most impacted in terms of disability alone but I am not read as a threat the same way Disabled women of color are. I am treated with pity and faux compassion rather than with hostility and hatred. A fact that gets even more concerning when you consider how disabling systemic racism actually is. Disabled white and white adjacent people absolutely need to share our resources with disabled women of color.

Art by @creaturetooth_ on Instagram

On Sexuality

The erasure of lesbians and lesbophobia is problematic largely BECAUSE lesbian women are the most materially impacted by their sexuality. Lesbophobia is the intersection of homophobia and misogyny of course and what other queer folks experience in terms of sexuality based oppression is horrific but it is not as bad as lesbophobia. When lesbians are being shot in the face in broad daylight, when women in queer spaces are being attacked while gay men make excuses for the attackers, while every aspect of lesbian identity is scrutinized and put up for debate as if lesbians are some kind of topic and not whole human beings it becomes very clear who is being harmed the most. The L comes first in LGBT for a reason and that reason isn’t just how much lesbians have contributed to our community it’s how much they’ve contributed in spite of how hard it’s been for them.

I moved through the world with the positionality of a gay man for half of my life. I can tell you right now that while it was scary to be perceived as gay it paled in comparison to the nonstop constant fear of harassment and violence I experience being perceived as a lesbian woman. It is NOT minimizing the experiences of gay men to point this out. The idea that it is is a perversion of truth driven by ego, ignorance, and bad faith. Highlighting the oppression and material reality of lesbian women is absolutely necessary in a world where one of the main mechanisms of lesbophobia is erasure. Listen to lesbians!!! And not just lesbians you agree with either.

My positionality as a transsexual woman also opens me up to a new vector of oppression, translesbophobia. This is the intersection of transmisogyny and lesbophobia. The two things the patriarchy hates the most, aside from women of color, are women who don’t need men and women who chose not to be men. I’m both of these things which means I get exposed to lesbophobia from trans women and transmisogyny from lesbians all the time. My material reality is such that I cannot trust anyone from either camp unless they are both a trans woman and a lesbian. I do not trust that lesbian women are not fetishizing me. I do not trust that you have done any work unlearning transmisogyny. I do not trust that trans women don’t see me as some agp sexed up freak. I don’t believe you’ve done any work to unlearn lesbophobia until you prove it to me.

Further, it is widely known that the lesbian community has a problem with whiteness. White exclusive venues, white exclusive culture, white exclusive everything. Our mainstream lesbian icons always tend to be white. For black trans women and trans women of color who are lesbians experiencing the intersection of racism, transmisogyny, and lesbophobia it’s hard to encapsulate how marginalized our community members are with words. Creating a space for trans women who are lesbians that doesn’t center trans women of color is actively violent. Full stop.

On Fatphobia

I am skinny. While it might be hard to find representation of myself in media for other reasons I’ve never had to consider looking for people who aren’t skinny because skinniness is treated as the default. I’ve had my fair share of struggles finding clothes in my size as a trans woman but never as a fat or plus sized trans woman. I’ve struggled immensely with an eating disorder but so do many fat and plus sized trans women. It is undeniable that in a world catered to skinny people and centering skinniness in all aspects of life that fatness is it’s own marginalization and being a fat woman in a world that tells women we aren’t women unless we’re starving ourselves is undeniably a radical act.

Our plus sized community members deserve all of our love and support and care. We owe it to ourselves to understand that fatphobia is it’s own axis of oppression and unlearn all of our own internalized fatphobia. As women, we can’t fight the patriarchy without being fueled and full. As people we can’t stop anywhere short of complete and total fat liberation.

Conclusion

As a multiply disabled transsexual lesbian woman and sex trafficking survivor I experience violence on a daily basis. Refusing to mask is a violent act. Refusing to make your space accessible is a violent act. Excluding trans women because of whatever reason you can think of in your head is violent. Erasing lesbian women is violent. Disregarding and ignoring survivors asking for at the very least a trigger warning is VIOLENT!!! And these are all passive acts of violence rather than physical active hate crimes, yet they still result in death all the same. For the rest of my life I will be housing insecure, likely unable to work, unable to access most spaces for transsexual women and/or lesbians, and generally stuck in a constant loop of trauma and triggers.

However on the other hand as a white or white adjacent skinny woman from the imperial core I still have many privileges other women don’t. There will always be women more marginalized then me and as long as I’m alive I can fight for them. Their liberation is my liberation and there is no community without them. Knowing how I can best use my privileges to fight for them is so important and I can only arrive at that knowledge by engaging with my own positionality and points of privilege through an empathetic and care centered model. I really hope others can follow in my lead and learn how to best help liberate those more marginalized than them through antagonizing their own privileges and marginalizations and understanding their material conditions. I also want to briefly touch on that it should not be a race to find the most marginalized woman so you can and tokenize her. You should be putting effort and care into listening to and loving all women more marginalized than yourself. Those women should do the same.

Every time I bring any of these points up or god forbid mention how they are all intersecting I am told I’m playing oppression olympics. I just want to be oppressed so bad, I’m causing infighting, I’m a fed, I hate men, I’m terminally online, etc. But this is foundational intersectionality. All of us have points of privilege and points of oppression within our identities. Additionally our material reality is shaped by our identities and being marginalized in multiple ways affects your material reality on a multiplicative or exponential rather than additive scale. Ignoring this is class reductionist and oppressive.

Building any kind of community without interrogating your own positionality in good faith is violent. Especially when that gets extrapolated into talking over others, arguing with others, and justifying their oppression and exclusion at your or your community members hands. When a marginalized person speaks about a way they are materially affected that you are not you LISTEN. You do not talk over them or pick apart what they’re saying or treat it like a debate. You engage with it in a productive manner. You challenge your own discomfort around what they’re saying. You ask yourself how you can be a better ally and how you can support them better. This does not mean you unquestionably believe them. It does not mean they are incapable of harm. It does not mean everything they do is automatically justified. But it does mean examining your own bias is necessary to support them and everyone else.

Art by @creaturetooth_ on Instagram

Thank you for reading!