Tbf, as with most of the writing in the game, there are valid criticisms to be made about how the railroad is written or implemented. I just hate seeing so many people’s criticisms centered on what amounts to a video-gamified version of the all lives matter rebuttal
Or is getting canned responses all we can really expect?
I like this song a lot and it has been stuck in my head all week even though i haven’t listened to it in probably a year. I waited all week to listen to it to savor the way it sounded in my memory and it was just as good when i listened to it again :)
Hey y’all, sorry if posts like this aren’t allowed here. If they’re not, mods please let me know and let me know how to edit the post so it can stay up!
To preface this, I am a black trans woman. She/her
As I am sure any one of us here that is gay, lesbian, bi, queer, trans, etc knows, spaces that we don’t create ourselves to cater to members of the BLACK lgbt community can be overwhelmingly white, and insidiously racist. I find fewer white lgbt members are running around using slurs, but as with the feminist movement, the white members are exceedingly adept at managing to find ways to police spaces and approach their movement in ways that exclude bipoc and often cause direct interpersonal and structural harm against them. We are left behind, time and again, and characterized as infighters, feds, or simply just angry for pointing this out. It is poo-pooed as a personal problem, not indicative of a larger structural issue that rears its head across the ways all white members of those communities act, and the complaint is hastily discarded.
How many of us have been told we are splitting the movement by bringing this issue forward? How many of us have been told we need to put our grievances aside, lest we destroy the “unity” of the community, as if a community that harbors racists or prioritizes their fragility is truly one of unity at all? How many of us have been saddled with unfair demands for “proof” so that our white queer and trans kin can see it exists, only to have whatever proof we provide deemed not to meet their unfair standards for legitimacy? How many of us have been told we would be listened to if we were simply kinder, ourselves knowing this is simply untrue, and ignorant of the fact that we, as black people, are seen as BASELINE angry by the world around us no matter HOW we speak or how we carry ourselves?
I am a black trans woman. Those members of the community I have been closest to have generally been other black trans women. I have seen first hand how the world at large and spaces that are SUPPOSED to be safe for us, as the white members of those spaces insist they are. I have seen my sisters succumb to the violence of the world, I have seen them die. I have seen my queer brothers in poverty die of AIDS related causes in the TWENTY TWENTIES!!! A treatable illness they were unable to access adequate treatment for due to structural racism. I have seen my kin drop like flies while those white members of the lgbt community ignore us and step on us to achieve their own liberation. It is not okay.
I speak about these things irl and online in the spaces I frequent. The complaint is never really addressed. People don’t want to listen. It is so very sad and so very upsetting. I have been speaking about this again a lot this last few weeks in both online communities and to the people I know irl, many of whom are white, and the topic is always dismissed. I am ignored by them but supported by the poc around me. The support is lovely, but the silence and dismissive behavior of those with the most power to harm and the most power to end that harm is louder than anything else possibly could be.
There is a very popular trans subreddit here, which I will blur the name of but I am sure it will be easy enough for those interested to gather. I had making posts over the course of the week looking to engender discussion about the racism that exists in the broader lgbt community as well as the racism I see and experience from other trans women, of course the most powerful of whom are white. The posts were systematically derailed by bad actors asking disingenuous questions and assuming ill intent, and the posts were systematically removed by the moderators. Posts created by others who were inspired by my efforts were removed as well.
Ultimately, I was given a permanent ban, citing that the posts were considered by the mods to be “hateful.” The second attached meme in this post is the one that they deemed “hate.” Hateful to whom? White people? When people care more about the feelings of whites and their supposed “safety” against “hate” than about people making a real attempt to put a fire under peoples asses to get them to be more inclusive and actively anti-racist, they maintain that default whiteness of the space and act as gleeful tentpoles for the broader system of white supremacy.
You would think people targeted so heavily with discrimination would understand this, but I think any of us who have spent more than two seconds around white people with marginalized intersectional identities know this is unfortunately not the case. I’m not shocked any of this happened, but I am saddened. It is depressing to see direct examples of those in power committing violence against me and my kin. It just isn’t okay.
I suppose I just wanted to say all of this to vent a bit and seek a bit of sympathy after so much abuse, as well as to warn my queer and trans siblings of the reality of lgbt spaces on this site that aren’t specifically for black people or other poc. Not that y’all need reminding, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to combat the lies about the supposed inclusivity of those spaces.
Thanks for reading.