Trans Sex Workers Help People Transform Through Intimacy
I'm here to tell you that trans sex workers are in fact unrecognized therapists for some of the most powerful people in the world. By xoài phạm I was in a beautiful room at the W Hotel drinking a glass of
Black Youth Project 100 Launches Campaign Against Gender-Based Violence
Black women, girls, gender non conforming people and femme folk need options beyond the police when dealing with gender-based violence. This essay contains discussions of sexual violence. On April 8, the Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) launched “She Safe,
DYKES: Our Sexuality Pushes Beyond the Limits of Cisheteronormativity
In their piece for #BodyPositivityInColor, James Factora explores how societal perceptions of lesbianism are often boiled down to a single experience instead of a complex and varied tapestry, and how those perceptions are severely limited by heteronormativity and marred by
Post-Rape Resources Don’t Help Trans Women, But They Could
Listen to trans women who come forward and give us the resources we need to heal.
[TW: description and mention of r/pe, PTSD and transmisogyny.] The weekend of August 24th, 2018 marks 5 years since I was raped in my dorm room at Temple University in Philadelphia. My life was completely turned upside down by the assault, my dreams shattered and I’ll never get to achieve them. Everything I wanted to happen, won’t. Is it possible to reflect on something too much when it completely reshaped my life and the dreams and vision I had for it? No, I don’t think so. When I first reported what happened, it wasn’t by choice—no, a bureaucrat in Temple’s Residential Life office had forced me to tell that story. They caused me to go through something that was a violation in its own right, for me. They forced me to relive—multiple times—one of the most violent experiences of my life. I remember that day in the bureaucrat’s office like it was yesterday. It’s painful to be able to relive the experience, I relive the trauma that was dealing with reporting the rapes every day; although the rape itself has fortunately slightly faded from my memory. I still remember it, I still weep and mourn that day, yet I don’t feel its pangs as much anymore. I hope that, one day, I can even stop mourning. Is it possible that my life wouldn’t have been completely overturned by the rape if I was given the proper treatment? Yes. I don’t simply guess at the idea that my life would have turned out differently had I been given the proper resources, I know that it would have been. Colleges—despite their legal responsibility— aren’t equipped with the tools to provide adequate rape treatment and, trans women are not served as a population by rape counseling services. It’s known that rape survivors who get treatment, whatever that treatment may be, have better chances of recovering from their rape and have reduced PTSD outcomes. However, I didn’t receive that treatment. My school didn’t provide resources that actually met the needs I had post-rape, it also never provided the resources I needed to deal with unrelated stalking incidents either, it just didn’t have me on their radar. They made this clear when they told me that they didn’t provide services to survivors of rape and stalking with me later finding out that, in fact, they did. Another, more helpful, bureaucrat in the college let me know that they’ve helped people before.Related: DON’T BE A TERF: TRANSMISOGYNY 101
