/soy/ - Soyjaks

The narrative goes: trans people are dissonant because a large number of us are backing Palestinian resistance, stereotypically characterized unflatteringly as a reactionary theocratic movement which would genocide queer people if given the chance. Not only is most of this incorrect, it's also irrelevant in the wake of our shared struggles.

For one, Palestinian liberation is not just Hamas, but a number of organizations, communities, and parties organizing generally in the direction of either the foundation and recognition of a Palestinian State, or towards decolonization of Palestine itself by pushing for the abolition of zionist power structures in the region. Most parties, including Hamas, have a platform based on a two-state solution from the 1967 borders. And while Hamas is right-wing and certainly queerphobic, for 1. It is the only organized force in Gaza resisting Israeli genocide, and 2. Not a monolith representing Palestinian liberation as a whole. Trans people supporting Palestine, possibly even Hamas isn't done out of any hypocritical affinity with their platform as a party, but out of solidarity for the struggle.

As trans people watch crippling legislation justified on an extremely religious basis in the United States and Europe, we can see parallels to our existing genocide here and to the generations of struggle felt by Palestinians. And like the Palestinians, we share one common form of oppression: erasure. Both Israeli policy and the Transphobic Agenda push to erase any recognition of Palestinian and Trans identities and expression in public life. The identity of trans folk is constantly under-question, forming the ideological spine held by the Transphobic Agenda fully embraced by western conservatism, either by masculinizing trans women/feminizing trans men (invoking biological sex to side-step recognition of identity, for example), isolation from the "identity gender" (emphasizing the differentiation between trans women and normal women by creating an argument on these two distinctions), or other forms of invisibilization/ostracization in media.

In the end, the most logical position a transgender individual can have reflecting on the genocide in Palestine is a pro-palestinian one, not only because of shared parallels between our erasure by the dominant culture, but because the same groups furthering the Transphobic Agenda in the west have supported Israel and specifically propped up its far-right fascist government under Benjamin Netanyahu, especially its most recent far-right cabinet of frothing-at-the-mouth zionist warhawks.