Baby Elephants

“Torrey Peters made a good point.” Kade muttered, pen moving rapidly across the page.

“What?” Olivia asked from across the room, sitting astride the armchair more bisexually than her lesbian self had any right to: “You mean in Detransition, Baby?”

“Yeah, just thinking about the whole…baby elephants thing.”

“Oh sure. Wisdom from a girl who thinks she can un-trans her gender by force of will cause she’s embarrassed. That’s worth taking on board, for sure.” Kade looked up, squinting at Olivia and allowing the pause to slowly bleed throughout the lounge room as she attempted to reverse engineer Olivia’s statement.

“Oh, you mean the character. Ames. I thought you were - “

“ - No, I’m sure Torrey is lovely or whatever. But Ames? God damn.”

“I thought Ames was lovely…” Kade shrugged, returning to her notepad.

“Of course you did. Twenty years of putting it off and now you yearn for the closet.”

“First? Fuck you. Second? No. Third? I like complexity. Ames was complex.”

“She fucking wasn’t…” Olivia snorted. “She got angry, acted on it, it made her feel like a man so she tried to go back to being one.”

“‘Hi, I’m Olivia, I drink because I’m sad’.” Kade looked up and over at Olivia, raising an eyebrow pointedly.

“Okay. Fine. Point taken, I’m being reductive. But still: she was annoying as fuck to read.”

“I thought Reese was annoying to read.”

“Oh. I liked Reese.”

“Of course you did.”

“Meaning…?”

“You know what it means you walking dumpster-fire.”

“Fuck off.” Olivia chuckled. “So…what about the baby elephant thing?”

“Well, you know…fractious community, few elders…toxicity, damage, random melodramatic bullshit. It’s fucked out there.”

“You’re not wrong. I don’t attribute it to a lack of elders, though. I mean, it’s true…we don’t have those but…”

“I guess. But we all bring so much of our trauma to the table. Point it at each other. The whole ‘Hell is other trans girls’ thing: part of it is that our social dynamics are just goddamn Russian Roulette, and…” Kade trailed off with a sigh. “I need a fucking drink.”

“It’s two in the afternoon.”

“And?”

“Yeah. Fair.” Olivia got to her feet with a dramatic groan, moving in the general direction of the fridge. “Okay so I can tell you’re trying to actually get something out here. I’ll make you a screwdriver. Talk it through.”

“Yeah, like…” Kade sighed: “It’s the whole…Sabre thing, y’know?”

“The ‘Mommy should seek employment’ chick?”

“Yeah, her.”

“What about her?”

“People are calling her racist.”

“Someone people idolise is a bad person? Fuck. Is it Tuesday already?”

“No, I’m just…not sure she did anything all that…wrong? The issue seems to be, from what I’ve been able to dig up, black trans women accusing her of being racist for not using her platform more responsibly and intersectionally. And like…let’s be real, here: is that an obligation, or a preference? Similarly, her…follower list is pretty…”

“Beige?”

“Exactly. Again: obligation, or preference? Pair that with a…yeah, it was a fucking tone deaf response, and I can see there are a lot of more detailed critiques happening, but overall what I’m seeing is someone who isn’t acting as others would prefer, as opposed to someone who is actually…I dunno, leveraging an ideologically supremacist position, or attempting to do harm guided by hate? She mostly talks about easy makeup options, from what's come across my feed.”

“I mean… you kinda have a vested interest in seeing it that way, no? You’re a white trans woman with…stratified privilege that allows you to bypass a lot of the struggles black trans women have to live with. So yeah. You would see it that way.”

“I know. That’s the problem. I can’t tell if my position is based in instinctive defensiveness around my own privilege, or actual logic.” Olivia shrugged, finishing up in the kitchen and walking by Kade, handing her a tumbler full of vodka and orange juice. Kade took a test-sip, eyes narrowing.

“You’re a fucking alcoholic.”

“At least I’m not a racist.”

“Aren’t you? Aren’t we all? There’s an ‘original sin’ type of scenario playing out here, I’m sure of it.”

“Oh fuck off, it’s not that deep. She didn’t engage with colour, or privilege; they called her out - privately, from the sounds of it - and she ignored them. Blocked them. No, actually, it might be worse than that: she's made content that comments on the politics of transness, and that’s where your whole ‘preference versus obligation’ framework falls over. Cause you can talk about being a sad white trans bitch all you want, but the second you wade into deeper waters? Start engaging with the actual politics of your positionality? Yeah, you gotta check that privilege and address the wider context - which heavily includes black trans women - or you’re just…only touching what affects you, personally. And yeah…that shit is worth calling out. None of us are free until all of us are free of whatever. We might be baby elephants, but not every point of contention is unjustified. I hate this bullshit position of ‘we shouldn’t be mean to other trans girls’, because the only girls I’ve ever seen use it are ones who other trans girls have justifiable beef with. You’re not a traitor, or a monster, or a drama queen for pointing out that someone did a shitty thing, especially when you tried to have the conversation behind closed doors first. So fuck Sabre. Drink your vodka.”

“You’re such a dick.” Kade muttered, taking a long sip of her screwdriver, wincing as it burned on the way down her throat.

“I’m right, though.”

“I dunno. Maybe? It doesn’t feel right.”

“Of course not. Because you relate to Sabre, and you don’t inherently associate that relateability with shared privilege.”

“Okay. So…privilege. Stratified, right? Trans women as a cohort are marginalised in general but there are stratifications within that dynamic. Our marginalisation isn’t flat, it’s tiered. By…like…geography, colour - "

“ - Passability, age, family acceptance, neurodiversity - "

“ - But that’s true within any cohort - "

“ - Exactly, and relative lack of social capital within a marginalised group tends to be invisible looking down, the same way white men tend to not see their relative privilege over…” Olivia paused, shrugging: “Fucking everyone else. Look at this ‘male loneliness epidemic bullshit’. When I first came out, I was so fucking lonely it was almost a tangible fucking presence. The recognition of their suffering is the privilege. The rest of us just have to suck it up and…I dunno, drink about it? Keep banging our heads against the wall until it’s finally the wall that gives out? Sometimes privilege is very much just…people giving a shit that something is bad for you, as opposed to…oh…say…blocking you and saying they don’t have the spoons to engage with your struggle despite furthering their platform by talking about the struggles of people who are marginalised for the same reason but have less fucking melanin. And that response? Referring to black trans women's struggles as 'hyper specific'? Repeatedly? Fuck.”

“I dunno, it just feels like we should…have someone to tell us how to do this. To moderate this kind of shit. Help us be better to each other.”

“God, you’re such a fucking bottom. If you’re gonna talk about things that include people, do your best to include them. Abigail Thorne managed it without breaking stride. Just like…listen when they tell you how they feel. Or…I dunno, shut up and stick to makeup tutorials. No one’s expecting perfection, but pretending you don’t have privilege helps no one. It’s really not that hard.”