Status Updates From Trans and Gender Diverse Vo...

unfortunately, I read too slowly and the book had to go back to the library from whence it came, but I requested it for my library so hopefully it will come in soon

I [...] believe that genuine support looks like humane workloads, check-ins, follow through, and trust. Without these essential components, harm is caused and for those of us with a history of trauma, that harm is experienced much more intensely.

As a child, gender identity was not a topic of conversation. I only understood the distinction between comfort and discomfort.

Imagination is a realm of political struggle, and I think that carving out spaces where we can experience the impossible-feeling of showing up as our whole shelves is a key tool in the struggle.

Running away to the big city is an ever-present narrative that queer youth hear over and over as a solution to their impossible-feeling lives. Since survival was the goal, I knew that option wasn't the best one. Paying rent felt hard enough, and I knew a city would be worse Leaving whatever sparse safety net I had constructed for myself felt needlessly risky. And for what? Some hope of a liberal paradise?

As a child, I didn't really dream of my future. The now required so much tending, so much attention, so much energy, that I didn't really think about what kind of life grownup me wanted. At other times, I was certain there wouldn't be a grownup me. The child that made choices about my career, my home, my marriage, only had the context to understand survival.

For a long time, I didn't realize there was a difference between being something and pretending. [...] Presentation wise I was very femme. I understood gender was performative [...] the rationalization I was surviving on was, if gender is fake, then I can just fake it. -- well this just punched me in the gut

While the reality can be messy, the dream of the public library is a beautiful one. Communities making a space to share and learn and grow that anyone can come to? That's a big dream and one that can be hard to actualize. This is true everywhere, but especially in conservative communities.

Trans folks as a community were not born into the wrong bodies, we have been born into a wrong system that constrains and drains us -- a system of othering that seeks to make us a sideshow or topic rather than full human beings.

"We are made to subvert and skirt around structures that are built to exclude us, and it is exhausting work."

"It was particularly jarring to witness the disconnect between my positive experiences with these people and how I was talked about in my absence." (in regards to the wrong pronouns being used when they weren't there)

"I don't just want a rainbow sticker on the door or my pronouns to be respected; I want libraries to be at the forefront of the radical change we need everywhere."