We Are the Singing Darkness: Transphobia & an Affirmation
One night I burned the house I loved,
It lit a perfect ring
In which I saw some weeds and stone
Beyond — not anything.
Certain creatures of the air
Frightened by the night,
They came to see the world again
And perished in the light.
Now I sail from sky to sky
And all the blackness sings
Against the boat that I have made
Of mutilated wings.
-Leonard Cohen
I have many favorite Leonard Cohen poems and lyrics, but this is one that I hold especially dear and always comes to mind whenever I’m thinking about or otherwise dealing with gender stuff. So many trans people have to tear apart aspects of their lives and themselves (internal and external) in order to fully live as the people they know they are.
But enough preamble… Ordinarily I might share this with a few close friends or otherwise swallow it, let it burn to ash in my stomach, and carry on. But I have this blog space now, so let’s use it:
I want to preface this with both a content warning for transphobia and acknowledgment that, as far as the potential intensity and violence of transphobia are concerned, this is very tame.
Nevertheless, hate is hate. Bigotry is bigotry. And we shouldn’t have to shrug these things off because “it could be worse.” It’s sad that I’m sitting here trying to minimize my own feelings instead of getting to the point.
So let’s get to the point:
A few months ago at work, a perfectly ordinary and pleasant email exchange with someone in our audience took a turn for the transphobic when the person to whom I was responding decided to take issue with the presence of my pronouns in my email signature, suddenly including a signature of their own where there hadn’t been one before.
It was this: (te/rf)
Yeah.
I was honestly confused by this. I did have a terrible, rotten feeling in the pit of my stomach that I knew exactly what it meant. But I also thought (perhaps naively?) that TERFs seldom self-identify as such, preferring to claim that they are the “True Feminists” in a warped and ignorant worldview where they’ve decided to believe that trans people are actively doing them harm and not, you know, simply trying to live their lives and hopefully not get assaulted and/or murdered by bigots in the process. So maybe, just maaaaaybe I was mistaken.
I shared this puzzling signature with my boss, who is a fierce and magnificent LGBTQIA+ ally. In addition to expressing her own dismay and supporting me in however I wanted to proceed with this person, she suggested that, if I wanted to, I might reply by expressing curiosity about their sign-off: “I’ve never seen that one before! What does it signify?”
I thought it was a brilliant maneuver: using innocent curiosity to make someone say out loud the ugly parts they’re passive-aggressively NOT saying. The subtext on my part being, “OMG, are you actually that much of an ass? By all means, show me.”
So I did.
(Oh, and my boss quickly found them amongst our followers on social media and unceremoniously blocked them.)
And… they never replied.
Their silence felt like confirmation that their sign-off was exactly the sort of nastiness that I nauseously suspected it to be.
Until this morning, nearly three months later, they reappeared in my work inbox having discovered their blocked status and assumed that it was all my doing (you know, nefarious trans person that I am), and proceeded fully out themselves as a TERF, proclaiming themselves a “teller of truth” and attempting to shame me.
Right.
Like I said, as transphobia goes, this is like a small, itchy mosquito bite. Though I do wonder what else a self-identifying TERF is up to if they choose to derail an email exchange that they started by passive-aggressively conveying their bigotry in response to the presence of my pronouns in my email signature.
That they couldn’t let that be – that they apparently felt sufficiently provoked by the presence of my pronouns down at the very bottom of my response to their email inquiry – makes me wonder who else they’re going out of their way to torment.
BUT! That is NOT why I decided to write this blog post. Believe it or not, this is meant to be an affirmation and a thank you.
Because, while my interactions with this person were indeed upsetting and have taken up far more time and mental real estate than they deserve, I realized that they also make me even more gratified that the Liminal Flares podcast is now out in the world.
It may be early days yet, there may not be very many people listening yet, hell, no one may be reading this post yet, but while that hateful person is going out of their way to punch down, we are here striving to make trans and nonbinary people feel seen, valid, and included, and to normalize the use of gender-inclusive language by everyone.
I know that doing that, even if only for a handful of people, even if only for ONE person, is infinitely more meaningful and powerful than this TERF’s sad little efforts to make me feel like I’m somehow harming them by living openly as myself.
And for the record, also FAR more powerful than any niggling yet odious TERFdom are the affirming messages we’ve received and the reviews and ratings that have been posted for the show. Your support feels like a tremendous hug, thank you. (And let me tell you how much more I enjoy hugs post top surgery, wow.) Together we are all the part of the singing darkness, and we will not be silenced. 🖤
P.S. We don’t have comments enabled here on the website because spam bots are a pain in the arse, but you’re welcome to engage with comments, questions, etc. in our social media posts @liminalflares on Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok, Facebook, and now Mastodon too (but we’re only just beginning to dip our toes in over there).
