Blog Against Racism Day

Racism, like transphobia, is an issue of people's bodies being used as an excuse to categorize them. This does not mean that it is well and good to say that transphobia is "the new racism" or any of that shit. Racism isn't over, for one thing, and for another, there are a lot of important differences— people of color don't usually stop looking like people of color after a course of hormones and surgery, for instance.

But race and transness certainly intersect— many white trans people may be ignorant of the way race affects us, but it certainly does still affect us, and there are many trans people of color who... Well, let's start with the fact that there are many trans people of color, if we must. This is a fact that comes as a shock to many of us. Trans people of color don't usually get on documentaries. Or there's the Black and/or Latina trans prostitute image, and that's all we think of— the low-income trans woman of color (inevitably a sex worker).

Overlapping stereotypes can trap people in really untenable positions.