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Trans Resurrection
This was written on April 20th, 2025, Easter.
Today is always a difficult holiday for me.
Today, I am thinking about resurrection.
But mostly I am thinking about death.
You must understand that trans people do not have a normal relationship with death.
We dance with it, skate the razor’s edge of life, and understand so much more for it.
Elderly trans people are a rare and elusive people. This is both a matter of practicality and trauma, but also a simple result of the fact that most out trans people, in most of the world today, as well as in the past, are brutalized from all directions and die young.
Trans organizers often quip to each other, “The trans agenda is an average life expectancy,” but it’s not really a joke.
It is gallows humor.
Every trans organizer I know in the US has been steeling themselves to die. Handling their affairs. Contingency planning. Love and goodbyes.
We are not planning to die, but we are accepting the risk meaningfully. Understanding more viscerally the weight of the work.
The term “deadname” originates from transfeminine communities dying in the AIDS crisis, from atrocities of violence and…
