The most unexpected (and painful) transphobia I’ve experienced in recent times has come from spiritual and supposedly progressive spaces. It’s come from people and communities who present as being more evolved, more aware, ‘better’ than the mainstream.
Surprised?
I was.
I don’t often speak about my own spirituality online, but it has been a thread running through my entire adult life. I was introduced to shamanic practice by my late aunt when I was 17. Since then, I’ve learned from many faiths and traditions. These days my spirituality is rooted in nature, in the power of human connection, in love, kindness, consciousness and intention. A blend of a number of different beliefs and practices that enable me to feel connected and at peace with the universe.
I’m also a hippie at heart. I lived in the Australian bush for a little while in my youth and spent time in intentional and cooperative communities both in the UK and overseas.
These are my homes. These are my people. Which is why it has been such a deep and painful blow to encounter transphobia and outright hatred in these circles of late.
Let me give you some recent examples.
In one community centred for off-grid and nature-based living, I was told outright that people like me are “scum,” “dangerous,” and that I should be shot.
Others were less overt but still damning. The ‘its not natural’ brigade wading in. Because isn’t it just logic that in spaces where the natural world is revered, the exclusion of trans people is inevitable? Because gender diversity must somehow be a desecration of nature, right? (Side not, it’s not. We see it throughout nature.)
Honestly, I get this kind of commentary on my existence regularly. I can mostly thick-skin it. But when it happens in spaces that have been my home for decades, from people who profess to be more evolved and progressive, it hurts way more.
And then of course there are the more subtle forms of exclusion. The being blocked. The ‘change of direction’ that somehow doesn’t include me or folks like me any more.
As this year has ticked on by we have seen more viewpoints that demonise folks who are different – whether that be because they are trans or queer, or because of their skin colour, or faith, or nationality, or status.
Sometimes it’s not even because we are these things, but because we are these things and we speak out about the exclusion we experience. We are not palatable enough in the way we exist in our marginalisation.
We HAVE to start collectively standing up to these behaviours.
If you happen to be a person with privilege, someone who in any given space is perceived as the ‘right’ kind of human to be there, I’d like to ask you a favour.
Ask, in your spaces, whether trans folks are welcome there.
Ask if other marginalised groups are welcome there.
Ask why hasn’t this [insert specific relevant person] been invited to be part of this space?
Just ask the questions.
And then sit back, see who responds, and how.
Because in the places where we hold privilege, we don’t notice the prejudice that might exist there against others, because it doesn’t touch us. We get to assume that the spaces we are in are perfectly lovely. And for you, they may be. But they may not be for others.
I promise you, some of the spaces you currently feel really safe in may not be the havens of inclusion and accessibility you might think they are. Not all of them – hopefully some of them are! But the ones that are not? As an ally, then you probably want to know about that, so you can either help to carry the weight of educating others to make the space more inclusive, or choose to remove yourself because of the ethical misfit you’ve now identified.
As an ally, asking gives you the opportunity to act.
And that’s powerful.
Use that power for good, yeah? Help the rest of us know when a space is actually safe? Help make currently questionable spaces safe in the future by advocating for greater acceptance and tolerance now.
Thank you.