What Is Trans Liberation?

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♪ Passive, past it, I've been thinking 'bout mad shit ♪

♪ Happened, action, baby we never lasted ♪

♪ Magic, madness, maybe you was just gassin' ♪

♪ But it was better than I imagined ♪

♪ Drastic acting, to you we was just practice ♪

All right. Well, they ate that.

[audience clapping]

Thank you, Ian.

Now, it is my absolutely undeniable pleasure

and honor to bring back to the stage

your curator of the evening.

Please welcome an organizer

with the Brooklyn Liberation Collective,

which led the march for Black Trans Lives in 2020 and 2021.

The woman who's got a book coming out

that everyone is going to be talking about.

Pre-order it now.

Please welcome back Raquel Willis.

[audience cheering]

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Wow. Okay, so...

I am just so excited to be here and I'm just,

I don't know, in awe of everyone who's performed.

And recently, I was having a conversation

with this like random cis man.

Don't advise it. [audience laughing]

And he was cishet too, so...

Anyway, I know, right?

But he was asking me, Oh well what do you do?

And I never have like an easy answer for that.

I'm like, I'm an activist, I'm a writer.

You know, I believe in trans liberation.

[Audience Member] I'm that girl.

[audience cheering]

I'm that girl.

And so he was like, So what is trans liberation?

And I was a bit gagged and gooped,

'cause I talk about this like all the time,

but it's so many things.

So I wrote something.

[Audience Member] Yeah!

Ah, so we'll see how this goes.

Trans liberation is

a battle cry from a flower crown goddess.

Darling, I want my gay rights now!

[audience cheering]

It's a middle finger from a sacred sex worker.

Y'all better quiet down.

[Audience Member] Right.

It's the Molotov myth and the brick

shattering expectations in the dead of night.

Trans liberation is the category, children.

[audience cheering]

It's the right to show your color.

It's the face and body from birth and the one made.

It's nasty dips and duck walks.

It's reclaiming royalty and opulence.

It's forging family by choice.

[audience cheering]

Trans liberation is a contraband swish and a twist.

It's dapper and swagger in an unlikely source.

It's contagious glitter.

The macho crying and prancing.

The femme flexing and shouting.

The sib demanding the blank canvas of their life.

Trans liberation is statues of this body-ody-ody.

[audience cheering]

It's melanin and muffin tops, coils and rolls,

big bellies and tight ones,

scars - intentional and accidental.

It's no diseases being a death sentence.

Trans liberation is the disabled, discarded,

disowned and displaced being divine.

It's a Gemini grin.

[Audience Member] That's right.

A Scorpio stare.

[audience cheering]

[Audience Member] Okay!

[audience laughing] It's...

[Raquel laughs]

[audience chattering]

Excuse... Child. See?

See how this is?

[audience laughing]

But I knew what I was getting into.

It's looking to the stars for salvation.

It's no guilt in your pleasure.

Trans liberation is rolled eyes and reverence.

Shady snarks, sweet sarcasm.

It's normal being abnormal.

A full, deep, anxious breath.

A brave and nervous flirt

and euphoria.

Trans liberation is more, more, more,

more dreams, more names, more labels, more pronouns.

It's abundance spilling over those two small boxes.

It's not having to leave a home that hurts.

It's fuck your cages, fuck your laws,

fuck your policies, fuck your policing that doesn't fit.

Trans liberation is knowing with just a look,

it's all the books.

It's a breathless benediction from the burned out.

It's a street sermon from a queen.

It's boundless, endless, ever expanding.

It's unbolt pride, uncontainable joy.

It's unapologetic. It's unfuckwithable.

[audience cheering]

Trans liberation is beyond the field of expectations.

It's no more wondering who you could have been.

It's generations of elders.

It's you and me living longer than we thought.

[Audience Member] Woo.

It's little girls reclaiming boyhoods and fresh air.

It's little boys reclaiming girlhoods and cool oceans.

It's all of us in sunshine, not living a life of either/or,

only one of yes/and.

[audience clapping]

Trans liberation is...

It is, it is...

Liberation is ours.

[audience applauding]

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