While thinking more about what it means to uplift trans & nonbinary people who are unable to be visible (because of Trump & the racist transmisogyny that pre-dated and enabled him), I've been thinking about how this moment requires a re-calibration of what we think of as visibility and silence more generally. In moments of tragedy and crisis there is a collective impetus to "show up" which often gets conflated with "being visible." These *visible* (often social media shareable) displays of solidarity and political action are urgent and tremendously important but work that gets invisibilized (often due to ableism, racism, and misogyny) is just as essential. The work of bearing witness, helping people process grief and despair, thinking and art making, community building, cooking and healing...acts of softness, emotionality, and care can be just as militant, political, and real. Almost every (trans) femme in my life feels like they aren't doing *enough,* and certainly there is so much to do -- or rather undo -- but part of that doing is about re-considering and uplifting the private, the intimate, the invisible. Pushing back against the dismissal of art, of trauma, of care, of imagination. Recognizing that our tactics have to be as expansive and varied as we are -- encountering one another in our entirety, not just our oppressed identities, not just our political utility, not just our ability to critique and/or inspire. It's about rooting ourselves in empathy and interdependence and remembering that we fundamentally need each other -- desperately and completely. And it is from that recognition and our commitment to one another in all of paradox and complicatedness that we can draw strength. Because sometimes strength comes from quiet gestures, being held by the intangible, being seen in your invisibility.
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