a few weeks ago i found this user on cohost who talked a lot about Black history and BIPOC issues. i thought their writing was cool and informative and was super pumped to find another Black sibling i felt i could learn from and maybe even reach out to. days later i see her shit talking a transfem friend of mine for daring to get righteously angry at her harrassers, and making a lot of additional comments that made it clear to me that, if push came to shove, they would not have my back when it comes to issues of transmisogyny.
the last thing i want to do is make this whole overarching issue about me, and i acknowledge that over the course of my life so far i've been pretty sheltered, dare i even say privileged, to have had extremely negligible transphobia and racism alike spewed my way. however, this week and that user in particular has been a microcosm of sorts that made me realize that for as long as i have been out as trans, my Blackness and my trans womanhood have constantly been at odds with eachother when it comes to finding community, in particular people who are like me and share the intersectionality of issues i face as a Black trans woman. everytime i've tried to find community in Black/POC spaces, i'm confronted with transmisogyny. and while i'm making a place for myself in transfem spaces, and my friend group is a lot better than most, at best there is still white ignorance simply due to the fact that there aren't many other voices to be shared (which in turn makes me feel wary to share my perspectives), and at worst in other groups and the general online transfem sphere, i still see a lot of anti-Black sentiments that have me raising my eyebrows.
i don't really have a satisfying conclusion to this. every week i feel like i ask myself where all the other Black transfem folk are, what happened to all of us? a small, pessimistic voice in my head tells me i know the answer to that question already. a smaller voice, maybe less pessimistic, asks if i really am the last one there is.
