Stagecraft

3 great trans orators of our age, and their greatest performances, word for word

This last week I are bin busy being heducated and learning all about how marginalised and oppressed these poor trans people are

Abigail Thorne addresses the crowd

“You know they say, that we can’t change sex. I say WATCH ME!

They say, that we need to be cured

(crowd voices “No! No!”)

I say that WE ARE THE CURE!

The patriarchy has a system, that says that gender roles are written into your blood.

I say that MY blood, MY genes, and MY body do not belong to the state, does not belong to god, it belongs to ME!

They say that it’s ‘legally complicated’, they say that they want to look at ‘all angles’, and that they want to have a ‘respectful’ debate.

They say ‘oh, trans representation’, ‘trans decency’, ‘trans politeness’, ‘trans patience’.

I say TRANS POWER!”

(cue loud cheering & applause)

Abigail Thorne (Philosophy Tube) at a public protest rally, in association with The Trevor Project

Jamie Windust @ Tedx:

“The current climate of transphobia in the UK is being pedalled by a heavily-organised minority, by using their status to stand hand in hand with fascists. All because of their fictional belief that trans and gender nonconforming people are going to endanger their safety, in public spaces.

Their gender neutrality is going to cause them harm, when it is in fact the opposite.

Even within our rainbow-cladded walls, the cisgender community (which is those that don’t identify as trans), as well as white members of our community, by turning a blind eye to this homicidal epidemic that we are in.

I wish I could make you all, really care. When you leave your seats, today, and go about your days, I wish I could make you all consistently care. Like REALLY REALLY Care.

I don’t want this to be my job; the only thing I talk about. Trans and gender non-conforming people do not and should not exist, to just be mouthpieces of our oppression. But we have to talk about it. Because we need you to hear it. And Feel it.  We need you to stand up, and show up. Because if we’re honest, for so long, no-one has.

We need you now more than ever, because now we are in a time when the fight against us is so strategic and planned, that we need you to stand with us, as we organise ourselves to counter this movement.

It might not feel like it, but this will impact everybody.

Anti-trans rhetoric hits trans people first and everybody else second - because of its roots in white supremacy and fascism. We need action. We need your help.

The joy that I once had as a 16-yr-old is now a distant memory BUT a reminder, that it is possible to feel joyous.

A reminder that non-binary people are capable of Joy.

A reminder that being non-binary is one of the most affirming and nourishing aspects of our lives.”

Reece Lyons, The Last Word 2018, from Youtube

“I am a woman and I have a penis.

The correct terminology is

Transgender Woman, although nowadays I usually just go by ‘tranny’.

And every time that happens I think to myself - what was it about me that gave me away?

Was it my height?

Because I forget you’re not used to being confronted with that many 6-foot tall women in real life, are you?

I mean aside from supermodels who you see on runways, but they don’t exist in your everyday-to-day

Or maybe now that I’m speaking, it’s my voice?

Does she have a cold?

Did she lose it?

It’s the up-down glances from people staring at my throat as I speak as if my Adam’s apple is a piece of forbidden fruit

I think to myself

Maybe it’s my hands or

Maybe it’s my body hair

Maybe it’s my eyebrows.

Maybe it’s my jawline.

Maybe it’s my aquiline nose

Maybe it’s just my sheer lack of tits

Or maybe it’s my flawlessly applied makeup because let’s be honest.

None of your exes looked as good as this

(applaue & laughter)

Because I’m only ever going to be beautiful when I am convincing to you

When I have successfully made myself small enough

Quieter enough and acceptable enough for you to perceive me as a quote-unquote “real woman”

I refuse to be small

Instead I would take up space in between the staring and the polite smiles

The mother who when she sees me stops me coming near her child

Because she is infected with fear because of journalists like Germaine Greer

I will fill the silence in between what is thought and what is said.

The right-wing press who convinced this society that I am a rapist in a dress because I am a liar, an imitation, a fraud, a parasite feasting off my own flesh.

I will represent the distance between the first brick being thrown and a riot out breaking.

All the women who have come before me who laid down their lives for taking:

Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson.

And with bloodshed hands you now use to identify me as a culprit and as the tranny that I am.

The future is not female.

The future is intersectional.

The future is black.

The future is trans.

The future is non-binary.

The future is lesbian women.

The future is disabled women.

The future is Muslim women.

The future are sex workers.

We are the future.

Support women who you don’t know.

Support women who you aren’t sexually attracted to.

Support women who you aren’t related to.

Support women who don’t meet or match your expectations or ideals of what a woman is or what a woman should be.

I am a woman. And I have a penis.”

(wild applause and cheering)

Reece took to the road again, some time later. This time, with a full choir - venerating mens rights to women’s and children’s bodies. Gaslighting and shaming us for not being kind enough - all wrapped up in ideological propaganda to educate us all for our erroneously bigoted belief in reality.

It’s a Cult.

How do they get away with it? Why do we let them? What is it that links them all together?