They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name, Volume 8 - Run from the Darkness in the Night

Side A: Wake Up // Side B: Running to Stand Still

They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name — Miranda’s Mixtape Memoir

This post is Volume 8 in my memoir project They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name. Basically, I’m using my transition mixtape as a framework to write memoir pieces about my life as a trans woman. If you’d like to know more, thumb through the Liner Notes here:

They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name - Liner Notes

While you’re here, go check out some poems I wrote:

Miranda's Original Poems

Side A: Wake Up

You're distracted / That's their plan / Place blame on trans women / Not the man // There's no need for him to fake being a girl / Men are raping women dressed up as themselves -from “Wake Up” by Mallavora

It’s exhausting. Being a scapegoat that is.

On Sunday, President Trump again blamed the nation’s problems on immigrants and transgender people. Yesterday, his namesake son blamed trans people for the political assassinations in Minnesota instead of the actual assassin. He said, “It’s like the radical transgender movement is per capita the most violent domestic terror threat, if not in America, probably the entire world … because you have all these shooters and murderers or attempted murderers in such a tiny population."

It doesn’t matter if I recite the statistics that show transgender people are less likely to commit crimes than the general population. It doesn’t matter if I cite the statistics that show we’re astronomically more likely to be victims of violence and sexual violence than the general population. People either believe the propaganda or not. People either believe that we’re human or they don’t.

A couple weeks ago, the body of local trans woman Jax Gratton was found in an alley nearly two months after she went missing. The police are investigating her death as “suspicious.” When the news broke, the news agencies’ social media channels filled up with comments of intentional disrespect, gloating, and thanking G-d. Instead of grieving with those who grieve, good Christian folk celebrated—celebrated, G-d damn it—a transgender woman’s death.

The nation’s largest protestant Christian denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, held their annual meeting last week. No surprise, they spent the time bearing false witness against LGBTQ+ people and passed a resolution affirming their stance that we shouldn’t have secular rights. They chose not to address any reforms regarding their ongoing pastoral sexual assault and child predation crisis.

Being their scapegoat is exhausting.

People falling for the church’s loud and incessant lies about trans people exhausts me, too. I need people to wake up. I need people to see anti-trans propaganda for what it is. I need people to not give the moral high ground to people who wish us harm. Don’t fall for the witch hunt. Don’t let them burn me at the stake.

Not the nation’s sin. Not willing to be the nation’s sacrifice.

Running to Stand Still

And so she woke up / Woke up from where she was, lyin' still / Said I gotta do something / About where we're goin' -from “Running to Stand Still” by U2

Being trans isn’t a choice. My conscious memories of wanting to be a girl, a woman, go back to when I was three-years-old.

The choice trans people make isn’t whether or not to be trans, it’s whether or not to pursue transition. Transition can be as simple as changing one’s name, pronouns, and/or presentation, or it can also include medical interventions such as hormone replacement therapy and/or surgery(ies).

I know youth transition is a hot topic today because of the U.S. Supreme Court’s shameful Skrmetti decision, and I will only say here that anti-trans politicians lie every G-d damn day about what gender affirming care is. For minors, it doesn’t include sexual reassignment surgery. Medical organizations that specialize in transgender healthcare recommend that only consenting adults who’ve passed multiple psychological assessments undergo any surgery in that category.

But they love pushing the spectre of “genital mutilation.” I won’t link to it, but the nation’s top Christian news magazine celebrated this decision using those terms.

Today is my 607th day on HRT. For me, that has been life-saving medical care. Going through puberty a second time—in my 40s—is rough sometimes, but having the correct for me hormones coursing through my veins has given me inner peace that I never had before.

There was a recent TikTok trend of “The girl I used to be in 2017.” You can see the joy enter my eyes after I embraced my transness:

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTjWBFa9y/

I’ve said before that I waited to transition until my gender dysphoria almost killed me, and that is true, but I made the choice to transition because of gender euphoria. Pre-transition, I “crossdressed” off and on for years. People think that dressing like the opposite sex is inherently sexual, and for a long time, I did think it was about fetish for me, but my favorite part of the experience was getting dolled up and spending nonsexual bonding time with my wife as she helped me.

During my gender crisis and egg cracking phase, I dressed femme privately more and more. I also started wearing panties—and tucking—almost exclusively for about six months before my egg cracked. Hiding body parts I never felt comfortable with gave me wonderful gender euphoria (a term I knew but didn’t consciously apply to myself until my egg cracked). From the first time I ever stole my sister’s panties—I was four—that’s the underwear that felt correct for me.

I’ll tell y’all that story another time.

It’s not about garments, though. Whether I’m wearing a dress or wearing a men’s suit, whether I’m dressed to the nines or whether I’m nude, I am a woman. That’s who I am. That’s who I want to be. That’s who I’ve chosen to be. Waking up each morning as Miranda instead of [Deadname] is a salve for all the hatred, lies, abuse, and threats that come my way. Being me is worth the fight.