#SayTheWord: genocide

To our last breaths, we will be asking you to save us from trans genocide, and most of you will still be afraid to #SayTheWord genocide.

Long after the dirt has settled over our graves, if we are afforded them, there will be many of you questioning whether the word genocide is semantically the correct way to describe our persecution and death.

The vast majority of people are more offended by usage of the word genocide to describe the mass persecution of trans people than by the oppression itself.

People tell me, of all people, "you must be careful with the word genocide because it has a very specific meaning within the context of international law, and experts in this field are very careful with this word."

The audacity. The craven words of privilege and ignorance.

I have every right to #SayTheWord genocide.

My so-called "credibility"

I actually am enough of an expert in this field by the sake of my:

• Academic experience: I hold a Master's Degree in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. What worth is an education, and the supposed "prestige" conveyed by the conferral of a degree from an institution of this caliber, if it does not instill the right for me to publicly apply this knowledge as I see it, after I have analyzed international law on the basis that I was taught– repeatedly. I have the same exact degree as the Dean of my school had when I was a student. If I cannot #SayTheWord genocide based on this education, who can?
• Professional experience: I have spent my entire career working in the field of humanitarian crisis, working with displaced people, international politics, in the field, risking my life, risking legal and political retribution for my work. I have walked in rubble, surrounded by death and destruction. I've survived 30 foot waves on an 80 foot boat with no keel and a broken GPS, in cocktail parties and a US Ambassador's 4th of July party by personal invite, conversations with war criminals, leaders of organized crime, and career politicians (who are often all the same) in sweaty dive bars and fancy ballrooms alike. I have shared whispered words and secrets, and I have yelled loudly so all can hear. I have experience working with resettled refugees. I have experience with the asylum process. I have experience dealing with evacuation and resettlement processes. I was accused by FRONTEX of human smuggling. I have experience documenting torture and targeted killing for a case to be brought to the International Criminal Court. I have experience speaking with, assisting, and sharing empathy with people who are in hiding as they are targeted. Throughout all of this, I have experience analyzing power and oppression, levers of control, violence, and authority. I have so much more, but this alone should be more than enough to give me a right to #SayTheWord genocide.

But I only repeat these things so someone will actually listen when I speak. In reality, none of my credentials or credibility matter for much of anything, and they certainly don't matter much for this, because when it comes to describing what you can see with your own eyes, and moreover, what you feel through your own experience, you are allowed to #SayTheWord which you already know describes it: genocide

I am trans. I will speak to my experience and the knowledge and perspective that comes from this.

We are the victims of genocide. This did not begin on January 20th, but it has been vastly amplified. We have been the victims of cycles of passive and active genocide for thousands of years through processes of colonization, and at minimum, a passive genocide is still present throughout every single corner of the world, but especially now, in this moment and in the place where I live, in the United States, I can speak to this experience when I #SayTheWord genocide. This genocide is active, explicit, and targeted on a grand scale, and it is only beginning to ramp up.

The source of genocide

Those outside of any targeted population have never felt comfortable using the word genocide. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish Lawyer, coined the term genocide to describe what was happening to Jewish people under Nazi Germany as well as the Armenian genocide among many other genocides, and yet there are still large numbers holocaust deniers that exist today and an even greater number who deny Armenian genocide. Conservatives in the US invariably refuse to acknowledge that the existence of the US is built upon genocide of people who already lived on this land I would prefer to call Turtle Island. Lemkin explicitly named the actions against Natives as genocide in his descriptions of genocide. Lemkin is the entire reason for the political push for the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Lemkin explicity linked genocide with the concept of colonization. This same colonization is what has made trans people invisible and oppressed for thousands of years. This same colonization has brutally slaughtered us over the course of millennia anytime we became visible, or were discovered when colonizers overtook new land and oppressed more people in new places they felt they deserved to own, consume, and exploit.

This same force of colonization is likely the source of all genocide, as they are all linked. The genocide in Palestine is linked with trans genocide, with the Jewish Holocaust, with the Belgian Congo, and with the Maori. It does not end there.

And make no mistake, the Palestinians have been the victims of genocide long before October 7th, but ever since then, and as these days bear out, my soul aches for them every day as their genocide increases. I have every ounce of solidarity, but from where I stand, I don't yet know what more to do, other than what I've already done, especially in the midst of our own crisis, that I know is linked to its core, but if there is something, they have me. And when I describe our genocide and theirs, I do not make comparison. I merely describe that they are linked.

What I do know is that by resisting both Palestinian and trans genocide, you are resisting against the same source of oppression, the same oppressors, the same systems that brutally enforce their will upon the world. Systems of Capitalism, Patriarchy, Racism, Eugenics, Sexism, and Queerphobia. They're all linked. They're all intersectional. They're all part of a vast web of Kyriarchy.

And furthermore, within this section of Turtle Island, we are still at the beginning moments of the active trans genocide that they are waging against us. Even when people finally #SayTheWord genocide, they only ever want use it when people are dead and buried in the ground, never in anticipation, never in warning, never in resistance.

Defining genocide

When it comes to international law, the resolution that pertains to genocide is the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Article II of the Convention states:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

I want you to sit with this.

I want you to think it through, line by line, word by word. I can tell you the ways that the genocidal campaign against us fits this description. Most people get really hung up on the words "national, ethnical, racial, or religious group" and I could even describe how trans people fit within these contexts. I also shouldn't have to remind you that this definition was written in 1948 and that when the Allies liberated the concentration camps, they took the queer and trans people from the camps and put them straight into prisons. The people who agreed to this resolution did not see our humanity.

I could describe the ways we fit into the context of the words of Article II, but I'm not going to do that for you, because this post isn't to convince you why this is genocide. This post is to convince you that you already have the tools, the information, the context to #SayTheWord genocide. Read it. Read it again if you have to, as many times as you need. And take the context of everything you know has happened, is currently happening, and what is planned. As things occur, every time you hear the news of trans oppression, think on these things.

You don't need my credentials or my "credibility." You don't need anyone else's. You don't need to be an academic or a lawyer. You have everything you need to make the decision for yourself to #SayTheWord genocide.

Law vs Politics

Moreover, as it applies to myself, I'm openly an anarchist. I recognize the violence that is wielded to enforce law, but I don't recognize the validity of authority itself. I am trans, so by law or, at least, by executive order, I do not exist, and yet here I am. The law does not define reality, it defines the parameters of violence to enforce the will of the state.

And furthermore, when speaking of International Law, it's not even fair to define it this way, because in a very important sense, International Law is a misnomer. Did I share a law with you which defines genocide? No, I shared a resolution. I shared an agreement, a handshake between states that they agree upon something. It is not enforceable by anyone. The UN itself holds no ability to enforce any of this. The UN is a diplomatic project, a forum for states to discuss and talk out issues rather than jumping immediately to war.

Law is not the issue when it comes to this word. Politics is the issue of this word. And politics are what drives the current genocide.

And the politics of trans people is that no one ever recognizes our oppression. The politics of genocide is that law and authority only ever recognizes it until after it is over.

And even within the context of criminal law, a person is not called a murderer when they pull out a knife and start stabbing people, no matter how many witnesses and evidence. Within the context of the law, they are only called a murderer after they have been convicted. But would that stop you from shouting a warning to people that there is a murderer in the building when you've just witnessed it with your own eyes? Perhaps you would be sure to use the word "alleged" as you shout a warning? No?

Then why hesitate now?

So, if you have the tools. If you have the knowledge. If you can see what is happening around you with your own eyes. If there is no relevant law and even if there were, it wouldn't define reality, then why don't you #SayTheWord?

What are you afraid of?

I don't need you to #SayTheWord to describe what has already happened. I need you to #SayTheWord to describe and warn and prevent what will happen if you don't collectively speak and take action to stop it.

Why are you more afraid of the word than what will happen to us, and what is happening already? Are you afraid you will be wrong? Why are you not afraid of what will happen if you don't say it? Why are you not more afraid of losing us than being wrong? I hope you say the word and you are wrong. With every fiber of my being, I want you to say it and be wrong. I want this to not be genocide. But I already know the truth, and so do you.

You already know this is trans genocide.

So fucking say it.

#SayTheWord genocide.

no ends, only means