A story of my friend, Cursed ℇ and the fight for one trans woman to be who she is.
Medium tells me to tell a story… but I’m really bad at talking about myself. I have tons of stories, I’ve experienced so much… and maybe one day I’ll even talk a little about it :p… but so much pressure, that first story, so I suppose I’ll look to someone I admire for my first story.
This story is filled with the elements of many good stories. There’s laughter, conflict, betrayal, and injustice. Adversity to overcome… and hope? The bad part about good stories like these in the world is they have to happen to someone…
I’ll start by saying, I’ve never met my friend. I got to know her on Twitter (and Discord), a place I hated until I started discovering there were people like her on it. People of like mind, and disposition. People who weren’t boring, who hadn’t closed their mind and become ideologues for this cause or that. I met Cursed as she made a joke at my expense, but made sure I could be in on the joke. We bantered and then followed each other.
If all I’d known of her is the exchanges she and I had, that would have been enough for me to admire the person I’d met. But I discovered Cursed was trans… and because she is trans on Twitter who advocates for trans rights… she has to deal with hate from people who would deny her gender.
I saw Cursed argue with these people, by the literal hundreds and maybe even thousands, and while I could at best have been called a passive supporter… how horrible these people were to her saw me joining this discussion… and soon becoming a big part of it in small spheres. I witnessed from close proximity a hate and fear I’d come to know as a bi man and saw it amplified. It seemed society always needed someone to hate, and while we know this on paper… it’s strange to see it in person. In social media we constantly fight to try to tell the world who we are, but trans people have to fight to be acknowledged as who they know themselves to be. It was heart breaking, and so I found myself in hours long arguments… but this isn’t my story…. just an understanding of the loyalty this person can inspire.
When she’d cross a line, and I called her on it it was never “Lol you got twelve followers and one is me” She had a couple thousand followers and I was new to Twitter, I expected to be brushed off, but she engaged me and often acknowledged that she had acted poorly. I dunno if any of you’ve been nobody on social media before but that shit will shock you every time.
As time goes on, the more I got to know her, the more kinship I felt… and as others dropped out or got tired of arguing with the hateful people she never bowed out.
These people wanted to take her voice, take her identity…. these people wanted to snuff her message of who she knew she was and silence it, and they failed… until Twitter decided enough bigots finding a target means hate could prevail. Automated censorship by mob rule.
Twitter banned her, then banned her again for calling people on their bigotry, then again…. Twitter is trying to take her voice, and she still finds a way to speak out, but in a world where a thousand bigots shouting her down couldn’t silence her voice, it was the platform she stood upon that took her voice, and stuffs her out of public sight. Took the presence she’d built up for so long casually for daring to defend herself and not silently endure the punishment of her would be tormentors.
In many ways, her’s is the battle we always have to fight. It was racial, then it was gay rights(though that one is far from over), now it’s trans rights… there’s always hate in the world to fight. It’s always there.
I don’t know if Cursed considers me a friend to be honest, maybe I’m just an acquaintance she knows online. I certainly don’t have the voice of some of her friends, but I know she’s one of the finest people I’ve ever met. Her daily bravery puts those of us who think we have courage to shame. I think maybe people like her are what keeps the world moving. They remind us not to take our lives for granted. They remind us nothing is certain… and that there’s always something in the world worth fighting for. And of course that if we care for anything, anything at all… whether it’s what we believe, or even just our right to exist and be who we know we are… we can never let them take our voice. Our voice matters and if we let it ring out with sound and fury, the echos will reach people, whether it’s entire movements, or just one person who felt alone in the crowd until an echo reminded them it’s not such a small world after all.
Her thunderclap to get unbanned… hers is a voice that has deserves to be heard, and I hope if this reaches anyone, that they’ll take the time to add theirs and not let bigotry stand unchallenged: https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/69883-freecursed