1. Not All Skinfolk, Not All Kinfolk, Not All Queerfolk Either
2. Chosen Family Still Chooses—And Often, Not You
3. The House Always Wins: How the Margins Recreate the Center
4. Community is a Surveillance State with Rainbow Flags
5. Accountability or Popularity Contest?
PART II: THE POLITICS OF ABANDONMENT
6. They Love Your Pain, Just Not Your Power
7. Every Time I Spoke, They Asked Me to Whisper
8. Inclusion Means Containment
9. Solidarity as a Performance Review
10. “Safe Spaces” Aren’t Safe for People Like Me
11. The Desert Is Better Than the Plantation
12. Your Name for Solitary Existence is My Term for Autonomy
13. We Were Never Meant to Survive— But We Do
14. Going Rogue as an Ethical Practice
15. The Future Is Not a Place We Will Arrive Together
1. Against Legibility, Toward Fire
3. T4T as a Spell, Not a Structure
A Diatribe
The truth I learned at a great cost reveals that being the same person does not mean you have solidarity. It is not safety. It is not kinship. It is not protection.
Before I lost everything I thought that being Black, trans, queer or poor with political awareness formed a sacred bond with others. Some secret vow. Some unspoken agreement which stated: I have your back, you have mine. Throughout my life I brought this notion to meetings that consumed me before delivering cheerful smiles to everyone.
They said “we got you,” but what they meant was: as long as you’re not too loud, not too angry, not too messy, not too critical of our favorite personalities, not too visibly poor, not too femme, not too different.
People who resemble us but betray us create deeper emotional wounds. It has layers. The experience suddenly interrupts moments of happiness to reveal that being close to someone does not guarantee safety. It stings because it shouldn’t happen, and yet it does. Over and over again.
The most destructive actions against me have originated from people who identify as radical.
The most devastating experiences of elimination emerged from people who shared my pronouns and maintained organizational abilities.
The truth about shared values is that they do not correlate with shared identity.
The world does not work that way. The same enemy does not unite people who oppose each other despite their common adversary. The enemy resides within the hearts of particular individuals.
The person who betrays me wears the appearance of a dashiki while displaying Pride pins thus making it simpler to doubt my perception than to acknowledge reality.
It’s simpler to doubt my own perception than to understand that some of your oppressors may appear identical to you.
When someone first said “sister” with genuine affection I remembered the experience. That word entered me with the same tenderness as a blossoming cut. I clung to it like I needed air to breathe. I had lost my identity completely because no one considered me their family member.
The idea of “chosen family” provided me with a sense of redemption.
Someone finally understood me. Chose me. Claimed me.
The basic reality of chosen family is that their selection process remains active. People show love to their chosen family through subtle restrictions they do not openly declare.
You can be chosen—until you say the wrong thing. Until you name the wrong harm. Until you call out the wrong person, love the wrong body, wear the wrong outfit, have the wrong kind of breakdown. The membership in their “we” ends when your emotional pain disrupts their appearance or your anger harms their public image or your actual presence makes another person visible in an unsettling manner.
I learned this the hard way. The rooms I experienced loved me intensely until I reached beyond their comfort limits. Until my pain made the group uncomfortable. Until I stopped performing gratitude and started asking questions. Then the warmth turned to frost. The group chat got quieter. The people from a distance expressed their affection towards me. And then not at all.
We tend to view chosen family as a superior type of familial bond. The change brings a fresh set of individuals who possess authority to exit relationships with us. And leave they do. Quietly. Loudly. Strategically.
I have stopped using the term “chosen family” because it no longer suits the reality. This is what the concept truly represents: a risk.
And I’m tired of losing.
Many people claim they are working to dismantle existing systems yet they often fail to do so. Many people proclaim their work on alternative systems while others declare their opposition to these systems. Our constructed systems duplicate existing systems while presenting themselves with fashionable design and inclusive mission statements and continuously using marginalized figures to maintain established power structures.
Every activist collective and radical bookstore and queer organization and mutual aid circle made me feel exactly the same freezing sensation which I had in corporate offices and academic spaces. The same gatekeeping. The same petty power grabs. The same petty cruelty, now dressed in the language of “care” and “accountability.”
We state “horizontal organizing” but hidden strings exist in every group. The same three people maintain control of all decision-making processes despite our claims of decentralized leadership. The term “community-led” represents leadership that belongs to those who possess high social standing and can effectively talk about social issues.
I notice the same decay in every collective group I join. The reason behind this situation stems from the fact that we are not all bad individuals. We did not eliminate the fundamental system while merely decorating its walls.
Capitalism instilled in us the lesson of scarcity which we never fully understood how to discard. Performance. Competition.
We brought that with us. Into our collectives. Into our friend groups. Into our dating lives. Into our definitions of liberation.
Using instincts of the master to destroy the master’s house proves ineffective.
But we keep trying. And the house keeps winning.
The experience of community for me resembles constant observation. It feels like being watched.
They monitor how I discuss my traumatic experiences. The system tracks my healing process to determine if I am progressing correctly. Watched for how my body shows up. Watched for how much space I take up in a conversation. Watched for whether I’m palatable. Watched for whether I’m monetizable.
The majority of communities lack any space for genuine being. A person must maintain a constant process of self-crafting. Your pain must present itself in a way that is visually appealing to others. You should reveal enough of your narrative to gain attention yet avoid revealing enough to cause discomfort among others.
You are always in the audience and the performer. The concept of being “witnessed” and “processed” and “held” exists only in name because others perform actual spiritual dissection of you.
The community desires your constructed image rather than your authentic self. The carefully edited and branded representation of yourself serves others as proof of their moral integrity for knowing you.
Each social media post and every choice of clothing and each emotional breakdown undergoes an assessment process. Your role as an unpaid performer exists in someone else’s theatrical production about morality.
I don’t want to be witnessed anymore. I want to disappear. I want to rest. I wish to remain invisible to others while avoiding both attention and evaluation.
But in “community,” there is no hiding. Only visibility, and the slow erosion of self that comes from being seen through the wrong eyes.
Accountability processes have transformed into combat zones which I have personally observed. Not for truth. Not for healing. But for clout. I have observed that people excuse harm when the person responsible is popular and funny or holds important connections. The pain of survivors becomes toxic and messy or “not doing the work” when their grief does not follow predetermined expectations.
We express opposition to the carceral state through the continuous repetition of its principles. We exile. We condemn. We whisper. We shame. The act of self-preservation leads us to engage in these practices most frequently instead of pursuing justice.
The fear of being incorrect makes us deeply anxious. Terrified to be associated with the “wrong” person. Terrified to be the one who believes the wrong person.
We defend ourselves through physical removal and deliberate avoidance of conversation as well as pretending to remain neutral.
We demonstrate zero tolerance toward the time-consuming process of genuine restoration. The awkward conversations. The repeated clarifications. The risk of sitting with discomfort without immediately naming a villain.
It’s easier to just unfollow. Block. Start a new group chat.
We confuse critical calls for awareness with true understanding. The act of banishment does not amount to genuine justice in our eyes. The fear we experience turns out to be unrelated to true accountability.
True accountability requires more than surface-level performance from people. It asks us to change. People generally prefer to rebrand themselves rather than make genuine changes.
Let’s talk about the currency of pain.
Many spaces that claim progressive values accept your traumatic experiences as their entry requirement. It serves as evidence to prove your importance. The credential they can’t deny. Your entrance into the room with wounded offerings earns you their attention. They nod. They snap their fingers. They inform you that your bravery is impressive.
The room becomes silent whenever you begin discussing your power instead of sharing your experiences of pain.
The people who used to admire your survival skills now show discomfort when you demonstrate independence. They label your autonomy as arrogance and also call it aggression and bitterness. Your power serves no purpose to them. Your suffering is. Your suffering provides them with meaning. This enables them to gather people together while offering relief through their efforts to solve problems. Your pain keeps you manageable. Your healing makes you inconvenient.
They desire a moving narrative instead of a transformational movement.
Many individuals do not wish survivors to recover from their experiences. These individuals do not want us to develop teeth or establish boundaries or form visions. Their objective is for you to express “I no longer need you.” The systems which provided comfort to them while we suffered from hunger become targets of our criticism. People desire us to maintain our broken state. Beautifully broken. Tragically inspiring. A soft thing they can project their guilt and savior fantasies onto.
I have witnessed multiple occasions where a Black trans woman transforms from painsharing victim to political speaker and becomes dangerous to those who claim protection over her. She stops being central to their identity because she moves beyond their need for protection.
They love your pain. They do not love your power.
Years of experience have taught me how to minimize myself.
My anger transformed into acceptable soundbites through my learning process. I learned how to transform my grief into beautiful words and my pain into something others could handle. I learned how to present my evaluations in terms of appreciation. My purpose was to occupy enough space for visibility but not enough to become problematic.
Every time I spoke using my natural raw and unapologetic voice which quivered with clarity I faced criticism that my delivery was “too intense.” “Too much.” “Not constructive.” “Not speaking from love.” “triggering.”
That word became a weapon. The purpose of this word protected those who felt at ease rather than the sensitive individuals. People have used the term “triggered” to suppress discussions about anti-Blackness together with transphobia classism and ableism. People use their softness as a weapon for confrontation. Discomfort received treatment as a violent act but genuine harm received protection through “conflict resolution” terminology.
People demand your voice yet they want it to remain free of any intense emotional expression. Only in a tone that reassures. Only in ways that preserve the weak social structure of their created social group.
I did not receive my birthright through whispered words. I exist for purposes other than giving comfort to those who use my silence to their advantage.
A Black trans woman’s unapologetic truthtelling remains unimportant to others because of her accurate statements. She will be called aggressive. Bitter. Mean. Dangerous. Through this label they extend an invitation to banish you from their presence. The reason for your removal exists because your new behavior made you unmanageable.
They do not desire your silence. The proper way for you to share your suffering is through whispering while smiling.
Progressive terminology contains numerous dishonest words but “inclusion” stands as one of the most deceptive.
The term enables you to enter but requires that you follow established rules for admission.
The invitation remains open until you try to alter the current layout of the room. The table remains open to you but only if you do not challenge who constructed it. Your voice is permitted yet you should not express yourself excessively. Your criticism must stay hidden when expressing it. Your cultural elements and strong personality can join the group but only your requests cannot enter.
Inclusion is not equity. Inclusion is not justice. Inclusion is not liberation. Most often it serves as assimilation that receives attractive branding.
The spaces that want to include me fail to develop proper methods for controlling my presence. Thus they attempt to reduce my size. To polish me. The process aims to enhance my accessibility to various audiences. You expect me to present myself in ways that match white observation patterns along with cis norms and male perspectives and neurotypical and middleclass and donor-friendly perspectives.
The inclusion practices I have experienced allow my image to be used but deny me access to necessary resources. The project used my words for content creation but refused to accept my actual voice. I received symbolic status in conversations yet my critical viewpoints were completely disregarded.
The current practice of inclusion functions primarily as controlled engagement that shines brighter.
I reject your claim of welcome when you refuse to change anything that affects me. That’s not inclusion. That’s entrapment.
Solidarity is a marketing tool.
The focus has shifted from love to visual appearances. About who shows up on Instagram. About who retweets the right hashtags. The room contains people when harm occurs and only certain individuals acquire the right to explain the situation to gain popularity.
Some individuals execute their solidarity performance so convincingly that they start believing they are actually performing good deeds. The request for power or money or unearned status exposure makes the situation unsafe according to these individuals. The request for more time becomes their immediate response. Your tone becomes too harsh in their eyes.
The concept of solidarity exists as a series of requirements to fulfill. Have you attended a workshop? Have you shared your land acknowledgement? Have you posted your antiracist reading list? You need to show public support for specific individuals.
It’s not about who you protect. It’s about who you’re seen protecting.
The moment you question this performed behavior? You express doubts about insufficient measures by saying “this is not enough” or “this seems empty” or “this provides only visibility without actual support”? Your anger becomes the main issue when you express your concerns.
The brand accepts solidarity only when it does not create any disruptions. solidarity does not interest me. The solidarity I want causes discomfort to those who have to deal with it. I want solidarity that is inconvenient. That is quiet. That is built in the shadows. That holds even when no one is watching.
Otherwise, it’s just marketing.
What makes a place unsafe to you? The assumption that it’s safe.
People stop listening after they believe they have created a “safe space.” They stop checking in. They stop being accountable. They assume the harm is outside the room. But the harm is here. The harm is always here.
I have experienced the worst harm in areas which were labeled “safe.” Their belief that their political views shielded them from their actions. Because they thought the presence of a land acknowledgment or a pronoun circle made the space immune.
I have been to “safe spaces” which were characterized by the use of tokenism, gaslighting, misgendering, unconsented touching and silenced for “tone” as well as retraumatized in the name of “healing.” And when I named it, I became the threat. Because to admit the harm would mean admitting the illusion.
Safe space often means: safe for them. Safe for people who already have social capital. Safe for the ones who talk the loudest about liberation but never interrogate how they move through the room.
Any declaration of safety that lacks a plan for when it fails is something I do not trust. Because it will fail. The question is: who is held when it does?
I do not need safe spaces. I need brave ones. Honest ones. Spaces that expect rupture, prepare for repair, and know that safety is not a static condition—it’s a living practice.
Let me speak clearly now: I didn’t leave. I was thrown out.
Not with a conversation. Not with care. Not with any of the buzzwords they built entire curricula around—“accountability,” “restorative justice,” “conflict transformation.” No. I was cast out the second I caused harm. And that harm was real. But the response was exile, not engagement. Silence, not healing. Punishment, not repair.
The same people who claimed abolitionist values suddenly had no imagination for me. The same people who facilitated workshops on transformative justice suddenly disappeared. I wasn’t offered a process. I was offered distance. I wasn’t seen as someone in need of repair—I was seen as a liability.
They didn’t ask why I was spiraling. They didn’t ask what I was carrying. They didn’t ask what shaped me, or broke me, or pushed me to that edge. They didn’t ask how I was hurting. They just needed me gone. Because my harm ruined the story they told about themselves.
And so I was removed. Without ceremony. Without clarity. Without care.
And now I am in the desert.
The desert hurts. It’s cold at night, scorching by day. It’s quiet in a way that humbles you. But it is honest. And that’s more than I can say for the rooms I was thrown out of.
Because the rooms didn’t want accountability. They wanted purity. They wanted the fantasy of a world without harm—not the labor of making harm survivable. Not the ugly, slow, painful work of facing someone and saying, “You fucked up—and I won’t abandon you.”
They say abolition is about the end of disposability. Until you are the one who fucks up.
The truth is: most communities don’t know what to do with people who harm. So they throw us away. And in doing so, they reveal the limits of their love. The limits of their theory. The limits of their so-called solidarity.
My life now takes place in the desert territory. The exile happened to me through no deliberate choice of mine. My existence here becomes superior to the plantation life because I face no illusions about freedom there.
The desert provides a better environment than the plantation even though I find myself isolated here.
The silence from being outside is more tolerable than the fake justice they would have forced upon me during my time at the plantation.
I accept solitude as my freedom since it enables me to maintain control over my life.
When they forced me to leave the plantation the surrounding silence became almost deafening.
I did not miss their voices because they had never granted me genuine understanding.
The space itself meant nothing to me because I spent most of my time in the periphery.
My disappearance happened so quickly in their eyes that it left a lasting impact on me.
I anticipated their initiative to reach out. Even just once. To check. To process. To process and express something which would have been similar to care. Once you experience being shut out of the door the door becomes permanently locked. None of the people who expressed love turned to look at me. They called it boundaries. Healing. Safety. This experience was a peaceful form of abandonment.
The experts warn that being isolated can be deadly. They fail to discuss the particular type of social isolation which affects people trapped among a group who do not provide support for emotional pain. The isolation that leads to exile receives no discussion from others.
Their decision to abandon me brought no descent into madness. I rose.
This experience is not about isolation. This is sovereignty.
I do not intend to seek readmission into any space. I’m not waiting for a process. I’m not waiting for forgiveness. I reject their attempt at performing reconciliation because it serves to boost their radical nature.
The practice of asking others to recognize me has ended. I stopped praying for spiritual connection at the church since no divine presence ever appeared. I do not desire their table. A field without fences represents what I truly desire.
Your term for this is withdrawal. I call it clarity.
You call it isolation. I call it mine.
Survival is not a victory lap.
It’s not glamorous. It’s not aesthetic.
Each morning you find your name on your lips as if blood was flowing from your mouth.
After they threw me out, I thought maybe I deserved it.
They instruct people to accept abandonment as their rightful fate according to their teachings.
The world teaches all people to expect abandonment and exile as their natural fate.
You become disposable when you have caused harm or used violence or experienced violent shaping that makes you difficult to love.
Survival has shown me I am not a thing to be discarded although they discarded me.
Survival taught me to unlearn shame.
The path to survival showed me how to let go of self-shame.
Survival taught me to carry my contradictions with teeth and tenderness.
They never predicted that I would maintain my existence. They believed I would fade into obscurity as I suffered beneath my perceived worthlessness. Their method of moral cleansing depends on this behavior.
But I kept going. Not because I was strong. Not because I was healed. The refusal of my internal forces to become numb kept me moving forward.
That’s what it means to go rogue:
To survive when they’ve already written your eulogy.
To grieve yourself and still breathe.
To become your own witness.
Since no one else recognizes your human nature you must believe in it yourself.
They’ll say I gave up. That I ran. That I couldn’t face what I’d done.
I rejected becoming a stereotypical redemption symbol.
I chose to leave instead of allowing them to use me as an example to teach others.
I declined to display accountability in a manner that pleased them yet destroyed my wellbeing.
Going rogue wasn’t cowardice. It was ethics.
Ethics enables a person to detect when an environment becomes harmful to breathe.
One must recognize when discussions will never produce authentic communication.
The practice of refusing dance performances becomes necessary when seeking conditional social acceptance.In exchange for your protection they force you to obey their commands.
The process of healing is used as a pretext to demand the disappearance of those who are affected.
Restorative justice serves as a scripted procedure while exiling people seems to bring about emotional cleansing to them.
But I say: fuck your closure.
The purpose of my existence is not reform. The purpose of my existence is not recycling.
The purpose of my existence is not to serve as a warning example for others.
I exist independently from all your attempts to portray me as your shadow puppet of a wrongdoer who evolved into an enlightened member of society.
I am me. Still sharp. Still flawed. Still here.
Becoming rogue means rejecting the false narrative which states that you must diminish yourself to obtain forgiveness.
The decision to become rogue means I will preserve my full self even if it means living a solitary life.
This is the part no one wants to say out loud.
We won’t all make it together.
Several people will end up abandoned—cut off and discarded from their communities. The reason people reject us stems from our ability to expose their fundamental illusions about their membership.
Several members of our group never obtained the chance to reach their destination.
They dress it up in theory. They hide it behind process. The writers dedicate their time to create detailed studies about the causes of damage and the methods of recovery. The fundamental reality that emerges from all these efforts reveals:
The reason they want us gone is to escape confronting their own selves.
And so: I leave.
Not in shame.
Not in defeat.
But in truth.
The future I envision will remain untidy instead of pure. It will not be utopic. The future I believe in is messy, half-feral, fugitive.
A future exists for those who were too intense for group norms and too vulnerable to stay gentle and too rebellious to fulfill others’ salvation stories.
The future provides me with the opportunity to breathe freely while needing no one’s authorization.
I might discover companions who share my condition in this abandoned area.
Maybe I won’t.
But either way, I’m not going back.
They threw me away.
They didn’t care where I landed.
They never looked back.
But I did not die.
I went rogue.
I discovered sovereignty and clarity and fire when I chose to go rogue.
I exist in a state of danger yet I possess complete freedom.
I exist without constraints while maintaining my completeness.
The story about me no longer belongs to them because I have started writing my own narrative.
You may discover this message one day in your place of exile: know this—
Life continues after the point of abandonment.
The self exists independently from feelings of shame.
And going rogue? This marks the beginning of your new life. Good luck.
I wrote this while mixing pregabalin and ketamine with my girlfriend. She was completely unaware while I was doing so and even more unaware I intended to publish it. So when you see this love ya babe.
We were never meant to be understood. T4T lesbians—trans women loving trans women—are not what the world asks for when it asks for visibility. We are too much and not enough. Too messy, too unmarketable, too intimate with the grotesque beauty of ourselves. Among the ruins of a community that monitors its members more than it demonstrates love we discovered each other. Not for redemption. For fire. For freedom.
Our desire is to be viewed as anything but the passive image they expect from us. We connect through the unrefined parts of our transformation because passion resides there like a living injury. Our love defies interpretation because it burns with an intense flame.
There are no audiences in our room. No community to clap when we say the right thing. No circle waiting to hold us when we rupture.
It’s just us. T4T is a mirror held up to another mirror. Our existence receives endless acknowledgment from a society that persistently tells us we were errors.
There’s no map for this. There exists no manual that teaches us how to love because all we are deemed too dangerous and sensual and unpredictable. But we find each other anyway. We create an alternative reality beyond the artificial staging of protection and danger. A world without applause. Just breath and blood and commitment.
We keep each other alive. We share moments of laughter while watching each other on our phones during late-night hours. We share the floor space to sit cross-legged while sharing the pipe without speaking. Sometimes it means holding her hair back as she leans over the toilet. Or holding her body still when the walls close in. We perform these actions without any observers yet we continue because of our deep love for each other.
What we have is not a community. It is not a movement. It is a spell. An invocation. A desire wrapped in defiance. Our goal is not to duplicate the family which abandoned us or the activist movement which exhausted us before discarding us. We refuse to construct yet another framework which would harden into an exclusionary system.
We are performing an ageless yet original practice. The kind of love that doesn’t beg for inclusion. This love affirms that I will cherish you when society deems you unworthy of love. Especially then.
We rest on dirty mattresses and folded blankets while exchanging comforting words and deceptive statements and exchanging credit and gentle sounds. We mix our sensual moments with destructive actions not to kill ourselves but because feeling this alive becomes unbearable at times. T4T is not identity politics. The erotic power of this practice refuses every rule.
By loving another trans woman you declare: You exist beyond the predetermined script. I see you outside the story they tried to cram you into. I see you—not just in your pleasure, but in your power. Your rage. Your ruin. Your resurrection.
Our sex is not sanitized. The intimacy we share remains hidden from public eyes. It is private. Sovereign. Revolutionary. We construct sacred spaces of worship inside each other’s lips. We pray with our hands. We express our grief through vocalizations that cause the air to vibrate because our unity makes us whole. Together.
When you love a tranny you give her the needle with the appropriate dosage. With trembling hands you distribute the right amount say to her without words that she should bloom. To share your last bump. To hold the foil for her. When you watch her pupils expand you will understand she feels safe in your presence. The act functions as both an act of worship and a blood oath. The act declares your wish to have you by my side. Your presence brings me great joy.
This love cannot be monetized. It cannot be reformed. It can only be felt.
T4T love exists to defy the efforts of the liberal conscience. The trauma mascot identity does not belong to us. Our purpose is not to deliver lectures about resilience to TED Talk audiences. Our existence serves to deeply feel and honestly rage while intensely making love as if the world is about to end and sometimes we choose to let it end.
They say we are toxic. Maybe. But only in the way wild mushrooms are. Only in the way venomous flowers bloom in poisoned soil. We are not palatable. We are potent.
The kisses we share come with parched mouths while our eyes expand. We construct our shelters inside dilapidated buildings along with bathroom facilities and the concealed areas of the world. In those brief instances our authenticity surpasses every nonprofit goal statement. Our beauty exceeds what pride floats show in their sanitized form. Our love reveals itself without the pretense of safety.
Our goal is not to achieve goodness. We are trying to be free. Our love exists beyond any attempt to gain world validation. Our bodies experience something authentic when we touch because it brings back genuine truth. Something wordless. The community denied us this essential gift of unconditional love without any expectations.
The need for forgiveness does not determine our worth for receiving love. The requirement for softness does not matter for obtaining adoration. The act of being productive does not determine the value of being held.
Our bond serves as mutual emergency plans while also acting as wake-up motivators for each other. The passion of T4T operates without any predetermined performance goals. It is codependence turned covenant. This love letter exists through powder and ash.
We are not coming back inside. Our community expelled us because we broke their rules and caused harm and exceeded their limits of support. We are not interested in reintegration. We have each other.
And that is enough.
The state of freedom does not require one to be by themselves. It is to be chosen. Again and again. In the raw, in the real, in the aftermath. That is the miracle. We did not merely survive because we discovered each other among the smoke and the high and the crash.
And chose to love anyway.