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A review by axmed
Miss Major Speaks: The Life and Times of a Black Trans Revolutionary by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
In ’69 we hoped things were gonna get better. Things didn’t get better. Not for us. I can’t give less of a shit about marrying some motherfucker at this goddamn point in my life, but fags are happy. “Yay!” Look at the money that those gay guys spent to get that marriage bill passed. All the millions of dollars that could’ve gone to giving a gurl on the streets a place to live. And for what? A marriage contract? “Well, the condo can’t just go to the heavens!”
[...]
A prison is a prison is a prison. That’s something the gurls know, and younger, radical people like yourself know—people who are out to try to change things and make them better.
So it becomes a matter of sorting out whether we are actually helping the system and ingratiating ourselves with it by making little changes, tinkering around the edges, or we are trying to get rid of it entirely. At TGIJP we decided that we were an abolitionist group of people who don’t need prisons at all. They weren’t built for our protection or safety. They are still not there for our protection and safety. When they close one prison, they go out and tell the world, “Ooh, look, we closed this prison because of the abuses.” Then why the hell are you building two more prisons on the other side of town, under the cover of darkness?
[...]
And how about let sex workers be sex workers, because whoever’s dick they have in their mouth is bound to be a whole lot cleaner than a hidden agenda of some obnoxious gay guy or lesbian who woke up in 2019 and saw a billboard for Pose and thought of calling up their minions: “Maybe we should put a Black person on a float during the Pride parade.”
It was really cute when they put Laverne Cox on the cover of Time magazine back in 2014, but I can’t help but think, what has that done for the average gurl on the street? Mainstream visibility hasn’t helped our community at large. It’s actually more to our detriment. The images that the cis people have of the community, they’re images that aren’t real to the gurls who are barely making a living. It’s not real life. It’s not keeping us alive. It hasn’t slowed the murders, or the abuses.
[...]
A prison is a prison is a prison. That’s something the gurls know, and younger, radical people like yourself know—people who are out to try to change things and make them better.
So it becomes a matter of sorting out whether we are actually helping the system and ingratiating ourselves with it by making little changes, tinkering around the edges, or we are trying to get rid of it entirely. At TGIJP we decided that we were an abolitionist group of people who don’t need prisons at all. They weren’t built for our protection or safety. They are still not there for our protection and safety. When they close one prison, they go out and tell the world, “Ooh, look, we closed this prison because of the abuses.” Then why the hell are you building two more prisons on the other side of town, under the cover of darkness?
[...]
And how about let sex workers be sex workers, because whoever’s dick they have in their mouth is bound to be a whole lot cleaner than a hidden agenda of some obnoxious gay guy or lesbian who woke up in 2019 and saw a billboard for Pose and thought of calling up their minions: “Maybe we should put a Black person on a float during the Pride parade.”
It was really cute when they put Laverne Cox on the cover of Time magazine back in 2014, but I can’t help but think, what has that done for the average gurl on the street? Mainstream visibility hasn’t helped our community at large. It’s actually more to our detriment. The images that the cis people have of the community, they’re images that aren’t real to the gurls who are barely making a living. It’s not real life. It’s not keeping us alive. It hasn’t slowed the murders, or the abuses.