They Will Keep on Speaking Her Name, Volume 7 - We Are Beautiful People

Side A: Switch Off // Side B: The Freshmen / The Beautiful People

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

This post is Volume 7 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

Side A: Switch Off

inspire / você consegue / expire / este é um espaço seguro para você / just breathe -from “Switch Off” by Callie Thomas ft. raylana
The translation from Portuguese to English, courtesy of raylana is:
breathe in / you can do it / breathe out / this is a safe space for you / just breathe

I’m starting this single off with a song by a couple friends—a song that always fortifies me. But I’m going to go ahead and give you a trigger warning for Side B: I will be discussing a (probable) trans person’s suicide.

I know I write about a lot of trauma and about some of the challenges of being a transgender woman in a nation with leaders who despise my existence, and you saw the trigger warning, so you know you’re getting more of that. First, though, let me tell you about something I’m immensely grateful for: community. More specifically: my artistic community.

Callie and Raylana are two people who are part of that community, and when they released this song almost a year ago, I almost immediately added it to my transition mixtape. It’s not the only song on my mixtape from an artist I know.

When I was in grad school (2013-2016), I wrote nearly every day because I was part of a writing community, not just because I had assignments due. Some of the people who pushed my poetry (and other writing) forward then are still important members of my artistic community—people like poet Rivka Clifton and poet, fictioneer, and comics aficionado Blake Morgan.

Poetry has always meant a lot to me, starting when I read Shel Silverstein’s A Light in the Attic as a kid. In middle school, I started to write my own poems. My art allowed me to go deeper into my psyche, into my self-exploration, than anything else, but for a long time, it was a solo pursuit.

Forming community with fellow poets and other artists helped push me to continue writing, and helped push me toward finding myself—my true self. I’ve helped students explore their own writing, I’ve hosted a poetry reading series, I’ve finished my bachelors in English (after a long hiatus) and a masters in creative writing, all thanks in large part to my artistic community.

When things got bad with my gender dysphoria-driven depression, poetry saved my life. Poets, musicians, and visual artists saved my life multiple times, both with their arts and how that art touched my soul and with their friendship. I grew up admiring artists and what they could accomplish creatively, then I became one of them and became friends and colleagues with them.

Since I came out, the arts and my artistic community have only become more vital in my life. The Venn diagram of queer people and talented artists has a lot of overlap. Even when we aren’t making “queer art” that hate groups like Moms for Liberty wants to censor, our queer experience, our queer way of looking at life, our queer way of living life connects deeply to our wellsprings of creativity. When we connect with each other and form artistic communities, those wellsprings become geysers.

I’m still astonished by being a part of the artistic communities I’m in, to be able to message or text or call artists who’ve made me ugly cry with their beautiful creations—to tell a poet that certain lines they wrote affected me deeply only to have them turn around and tell me the same. Is this real life? It is, and I love it.

(Callie is fundraising to leave the US due to anti-trans policies and anti-trans violence here, go buy some stuff from her TikTok store or something. Link.)

Side B: The Freshmen

We tried to wash our hands of all of this / We never talk of our lacking relationships / And how we're guilt-stricken, sobbin', with our heads on the floor / We fell through the ice when we tried not to slip, we'd say // "Can't be held responsible / 'Cause she was touchin' her face / And I won't be held responsible / She fell in love in the first place" -from “The Freshmen” by The Verve Pipe

In the trans community, we refer to someone’s realization that they are a transgender person as their egg cracking. I was 39 when mine cracked. Leading up to the full cracking of my egg, I spent a year or two soul-searching and unlocking—finally—repressed memories.

Prior to that, I could tell you that hearing this song made me think about the suicide of a specific person I loved when I was younger (no, I won’t say when or where because I don’t want people I know to speculate about who I’m talking about), but I couldn’t tell you that person’s name or any details surrounding her death.

She was one of the first memories I unlocked.

I’m using she/her when talking about this person because I’ve had time to do more memory work and feel confident that she was a fellow transfeminine person—an egg smashed by the weight of the world instead of having a chance to crack and emerge herself.

I remembered the first time we met, her long fingers and gentle hands. I remembered her high cheekbones, a feminine feature that, like my eyelashes (see my coming out poem “You’d Look So Pretty”), the women we knew said was “wasted on a boy.”

"You'd Look So Pretty" a poem by Miranda

I remembered her eyes. I remembered bonding over music, over songs that we hoped conveyed parts of ourselves to the people around us. We both struggled to express ourselves without that kind of cypher. We bonded over struggle, too. I remembered our talks about trying to figure out who we really were. I remembered the rest of her face. I remembered her rare smiles.

I was at work (Demand Writer for a law firm) when the grief hit—grief like she had just died, grief I couldn’t express back when she did die.

This song came up on my playlist, and I remembered more.

I remembered her death, how the news of it spread attached to rumors that “he” had been caught crossdressing by his girlfriend. No one else around us seemed sad about her death. They just laughed about the “crossdressing” rumor and called her a freak and a pervert.

I sat at my desk and cried. I tried to cry quietly, discreetly. I kept putting my head in my hands and hoping that anyone who might walk by my cubicle assumed headache, or, better yet, deep thought.

I remembered burying my grief when she died because I knew that publicly acknowledging my mourning would expose me. It took months after that breakdown in my office—as well as digging up other memories—to piece together why I would feel exposed. Mourning her back then would’ve shown that I was just like her, a closeted trans woman.

I’ve tried to write about her before. The following are lines from my poem “Don’t Remember Me for My Resilience.”

I keep thinking about the poems I haven’t written.
I’ve spent six months trying to write an elegy
for an egg I knew–they say he killed himself
because his girlfriend caught him in her panties.

Craft note: should I strike through he/him above?

"Don't Remember Me for My Resilience" a poem by Miranda

I loved her and miss her, and I always will.

The Beautiful People

Hey, you, what do you see? / Something beautiful or something free? / Hey, you, are you trying to be mean? / If you live with apes, man, it's hard to be clean // There’s no time to discriminate / Hate every motherfucker that’s in your way // The beautiful people, the beautiful people (ah) / The beautiful people, the beautiful people (ah) / The beautiful people, the beautiful people (ah) / The beautiful people, the beautiful people (ah) -from “The Beautiful People” by Marilyn Manson

This was that lost egg’s favorite song, and I want you to remember that she was one of the beautiful people.

One statistic that the media spreads without context—and that the people who hate us revel in—is that a high percentage of transgender people have experienced suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, or completed suicide. The figure for suicidal ideation most commonly thrown out there is 41%.

And boy do bullies love having that statistic. I’ve probably been told hundreds of times to “join the 41%.” I wrote about this, and other threats, in this poem:

"Christmas 2024" a poem by Miranda

Now let me add the context: gender-affirming care (GAC) saves lives. Transgender people who pursue the GAC that fits their situation and who have a support system (parent(s), partner(s), other family, found family, etc.) rarely report suicidal ideation. Transgender people do not commit suicide because of an inherent brokenness within us; it happens because people treat us like shit.

Bullies like the Christian nationalists who’ve taken over the U.S. know this context. It’s why they bear false witness about us incessantly. It’s why they’ve passed 103 anti-trans bills so far in 2025 nationwide and are pushing for Medicaid and ACA plans to cut GAC. It’s why right-wing media and GOP campaigns have dumped billions into anti-trans propaganda.

They want us dead. Or at least sulking back to the closet. Frankly, most don’t care which option we choose. Every transgender suicide—every single one—is murder.

On an intellectual level, I understand what they aim to do by scapegoating and bullying us. I understand their hierarchies, power structures, and fragile faith. I understand why we don’t fit into their lily-white picture of American society.

But as someone who has never wanted to harm another person, I don’t understand. I don’t understand why they hate me. I don’t understand why they tell me to kill myself. I don’t understand why they publicly fantasize about hurting people like me. I truly cannot comprehend their hatred at all.

All I want is to be one of the beautiful people.

💜Miranda📚