GREETINGS FROM TRANS TEXAS

Trans-gressive: a Trans Texas Survival Guide is by and for trans and queer people in Texas, centering the voices and art of BIPOC trans people of color who make our work at TENT worthwhile and possible. We believe in and labor towards a world where Texas is a safe and affirming place to raise trans kids into trans adults in healthy communities. We recognize that health is achieved in community. Trans/queer wellness is neither a trait we can process singularly, nor a product we can buy. Trans/ queer health is something we must work on every day to make possible for our people.

We know far too well that what starts in Texas does not end in Texas – it spreads throughout the country. Call it what you want - a “frontline”, or “epicenter” of transphobic attacks. This zine is a space to spark reflections on our learnings, celebrate our resistance, and keeps us committed to each other and the space(s) we have built together.

The past years have been particularly painful for our communities, as violence springing from anti-black, anti-immigrat and anti-abortion policies have launched an overwhelming avalanche of attacks on bodily autonomy and self determination for those on the front lines of capitalist extraction. Ending up here is not a coincidence. We refuse the sanitization of “Texas history” and instead confront the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism and slavery. Naming and understanding these legacies helps us organize more effectively against homophobia and transphobia today. Attacks on trans and non-binary people, on queer and two spirit people, on trans women and trans feminine people are hardly a recent phenomena. We know that living our gender truths, that our creativity and liberation threatens the very foundations of the violence this state was built on. We refuse to give into it. We refuse to give into the bleak world of the racist and colonial gender binaries that conservative forces want to impose on our communities.

This zine is a call to action, to reflect, and a call to rest. Here, we shift our strategies and share snipits of art and wisdom from our communities to affirm trans life, uplift our narratives, and declare that we too have an agenda. This agenda is shared by our trancestors, those whom we often name and revere in difficult personal and political moments.

Let’s abolish gender. When we say “abolish gender”, we mean imposed gender. We mean abolish white supremacy and the transphobia upon which it depends to reproduce itself. We dream and labor for a world where there is room for all our many genders.