Revolution runs inside out
When I was 16 I knew of 6 other trans folks under the age of 20 in the whole of the UK, because they were other young trans people who had taken it upon themselves to set up safe spaces (literally an email list for trans youth, or band forums for gender bending queer bands we were drawn to) through which young trans people could share information and look after each other.
Eventually we met up in person through student organising stuff. It turned out the same folks with the drive to meet others and look after each other were driven to student activism.
There were still only such a small number of us we could identify. My first year in NUS LGB campaign there were ten trans delegates at conference. We ran protests where only 5 people turned up. We talked to people incessantly, we demanded to be heard, we taught ourselves and each other how to do it.
5-10 years later from me getting started there was queer youth network and trans youth network. We had better ways of contacting each other and although I aged out of being a youth, what was left was enough for others to run with and teach each other too.
There's a lot of times it feels impossible to change anything because people talk about revolution in terms of overthrowing the government and who's going to overthrow a government with only five kids sharing stories of being chased down the street with bricks; or discriminated by educators?
But the revolution starts inside us at the point we know something has to change. First we take control of our own bodies, assert self determination of our future. Then the revolution happens through transforming ourselves from individuals in pain into a collective of shared understanding of the causes of pain, no longer alone, not tragic, but joined in our understanding that it has to end and to put it bluntly becoming co-conspirators hunting together for weak points in the existing order of oppression. And it happens through talking to friends, family, through surviving and persisting in our communities, through love and through care and sometimes through spite and petty acts of vengeance, but usually through care. 😅 And through realising the power to change starts in us and ends with us growing and thriving.
Trans folks, in particular trans youngsters (which I’m long past the point of being able to claim credit for this close to 40) have changed the United Kingdom radically and many other places since only a couple of decades ago just by being sick of it and daring to get started with the small things and that’s beautiful. I’m a revolutionary anarchist but mostly in the sense that I know that there’s no "new rulers" that would be worth fighting for to replace the current lot. Real structural change comes from below when we stop making excuses for our existence to power and start pushing back.
