Make no mistake. Trans people, especially trans women, are the canary in the coal mine. If the United States government manages to pass legislation making it essentially illegal to be trans again, mark my words it WILL continue on up to sending us right back into McCarthyism and the “kill or imprison anything you disagree with or dislike” policies of the 1950s (not that that hasn’t already been happening under the radar, but it’s going to be More).
There really are people out there who are acting like suggesting genetic testing to “confirm the identity” of a group of people isn’t a wildly dangerous thing for a government to start doing. This is not a door that should be opened.
listen i know you’d be shot for breaching security or whatever if you tried, but the fact that you can swim in those giant tanks of water they use to cool the spent fuel rods in nuclear power plants without suffering lethal levels of exposure to radiation makes them a temptation of biblical proportions
When she was 10, a white boy pushed Auntie Rosa,
and she pushed him back. Auntie Rosa’s grandmother told her, “You need
to be quiet, you need to stop being so vocal.” She was told, as black
people, we’re not allowed to do those things to whites. Her grandmother
was concerned that she’d get hurt, that she could even get lynched. But
Auntie Rosa told her grandmother, “Let them try to lynch me.” She was
that bold, even when she was young.
Sometimes I
struggle with social media because it seems there’s always somebody
belittling Auntie Rosa. I recently saw someone post that my aunt wasn’t
really black. Or people say that she was strategically placed on the bus
in Montgomery because she was lighter skinned. It’s amazing to me that
they would think that. Yes our family ancestry is part African American,
part white, and part Native American. Auntie Rosa considered herself
black and was treated as black. We have a lot of work to do in this
country regarding colorism, but whether you’re light or dark — and this
is still true today — you are black in America and you’re going to be
treated accordingly.
People also think that her not giving up her seat
was all a planned, staged thing for the media. Maybe you’ve seen that
famous picture of my aunt getting arrested and the man fingerprinting
her — well, that’s not even from December 1, 1955. It’s from the second
time she was arrested. (Yes, she got arrested more than once.) By the
time that photograph was taken, word had gotten out across the country
that Montgomery had started a bus boycott. So that’s when the media
showed up to take a picture.
My aunt wasn’t even paying attention that day she
got on the bus. She had been avoiding that driver’s bus for 12 years. He
would stop at her stop and she wouldn’t get on. That particular day she
wasn’t paying attention because she was thinking of Emmett Till, who
had been murdered that summer. She already paid her money when she
realized it was that driver, but then she figured she’d go ahead and sit
down. She didn’t stand up when the driver demanded that she stand up
because she kept thinking of him being killed. She was that angry. Keep
in mind, it was legal for bus drivers back then to carry handguns — my
aunt could have been shot and killed on that bus.
Once
word of mouth spread about what happened to my aunt, it helped people
have a little bit more courage than before. You have to understand, my
aunt was a known person in the community. She became the recording
secretary for the NAACP almost 15 years before she refused to give up
her seat on that bus. Everyone knew her based off of her writing down
stories like Recy Taylor’s: Oh, she was the lady who held my hand
when my uncle got beat up. She got my kid involved in a youth program to
read books. She was the one who came and tried to get me to register to
vote. They were shocked that something could happen to nice Mrs.
Parks. Before then, many black people were like, “Oh well, that person
should have not got arrested. They should have just gotten off the bus. ”
She
wrote in one of her journals about her feelings of hurt after she got
arrested. She worked in the department store where she was a seamstress
for the next five weeks after that and then they let her go. During that
time, her black coworkers didn’t speak to her — that whole five weeks.
She would say good morning and they wouldn’t say anything. It was very
disheartening. They looked at her like she was stirring up trouble for
them. My aunt explained to me that it was because Jim Crow was telling
them, “This is the best life you’re going to have, and you can get
killed if you resist.”
People also don’t know that my aunt went through a
lot of financial hardships after what happened. She had health issues
and developed ulcers and couldn’t afford the medication. She didn’t get
real, stable work until 1957 when her brother, my Grandfather McCauley,
convinced her to move to Detroit. She sacrificed her privacy, her job,
her marriage, her health. She never talked about that with people,
though. She just didn’t want to burden people or make them feel sorry
for her.
It still breaks my heart to remember my aunt
telling me how many times it took for her to get registered to vote.
Back then, they made black folks take a literacy test knowing that many
couldn’t read or write. It was a trickle down effect of the lack of
education for black people. But Auntie Rosa, she knew all the answers
backwards and forwards, but year after year they denied her. And
finally it was a white woman in the office who said, just let her
register to vote. My aunt had been persistent, showing up. “I’m here to
take the test so I can get registered to vote.” And then I think about
how, as soon as I turned 18, all I had to do is go sign a card.
Yes,
I’m glad that Oprah spoke up about Recy Taylor and about my aunt. I
know people might still try to belittle my Auntie Rosa by saying, “Oh
she was just a little seamstress.” But that “little seamstress” is proof
you can be anything out here and still make changes in your community.
My aunt felt passionate about civil rights — it was a passion she felt
in her soul, and we all have to tap into that. Whether it’s working with
children or with the elderly, or voting rights or women’s rights —
working at a homeless shelter or women’s shelter or getting trained to
volunteer on a suicide hotline on the weekends. We can all do a little
thing and the ripple effect of it can go a long way.
just two days ago, i was thinking, “you know what i haven’t done in a while? write a story about some stupid and embarrassing thing i’ve done. i wonder if this is because i’m twenty-seven and no longer a bumbling idiot who can’t make it through her day without bringing shame on her family?”
haha! said the universe. this bitch really thinks!!!!!
so this morning i was riding the bus to work, because i’m a grown up, who has a job, and i must take not one but two busses to get there. and i get off the first bus feeling a lot of hope for not just the day but the whole week. last week was cloudy and overcast, but this week! this week is going to be different. it’s sunny. i’m going to be productive. i’m going to be focused. i’m going to get things done.
spoiler: i’m going to abandon all these plans immediately.
i reach into my pocket to retrieve my wallet, which has my transit pass in it, and realize: it’s not there. it is also not in my other pocket. it is also not in my gym bag.
it is still on the bus.
you know that feeling when you’ve lost something where like, just before you go to see if you lost it you already know that you lost it?
it’s like how neo slows down time to dodge bullets in the matrix except instead of being that, it’s me realizing i have already done something incredibly stupid.
the problem with my wallet still being on the bus is that i myself am not still on the bus, which means that with every second, my wallet is getting farther away from me. this is distressing for many reasons but primarily i’d say that i don’t like it when my money and i are parted. i don’t have a lot of money, but what i do have i like to keep a very close eye on, because i need it to live, you see. still, there are lots of other things in that wallet that i don’t want to be parted from:
my drivers’ license, which i don’t use to drive anymore but is a nice picture of me and is also the world’s most ANNOYING thing to replace,
my work credit card and ID to get into the building,
my ventra transit card,
a wine punchcard on which i am only THREE WINES away from a $1 bottle of wine, and
a little post-it with the combination to my gym lock, which i am too dumb to remember but which i desperately need if i ever want to retrieve my running shoes from my gym locker.
i mean … y’all know that the only thing to do is chase that bus down. i’m not gonna cross my fingers and hope my wallet makes it to the lost and found. i don’t have that kind of luck.
my outfit for today was very, “90s straight girl meets her boyfriend’s sister and IMMEDIATELY becomes a lesbian,” so i was wearing 5-inch heels that weren’t conducive to running, which means i did the only sensible thing there was to do and kicked them off so that i could chase the bus in my bareass feet down the streets of chicago.
was this “safe”????? no.
but was it liberating???? also no.
did my foot my foot bleed and did it probably contract the black plague????? FOLKS IT DID!!!
anyway, there i went, sprinting down the sidewalk in my yellow floral romper and white jacket, heels in my hand, gym bag swinging behind me like a cartoonish ball & chain, and of course, because of who i am as a person, i almost immediately took a bad step.
friends, to say that i fell is to miss what happened, which is that i took an eight-foot vertical leap and did not land on my feet.
you know those cartoons where a cat gets scared and it jumps so far into the sky it touches the moon?
you know those videos of people with those water jetpacks where they can’t control them and they go rocketing through walls like the kool-aid man?
you know when a basketball player does that thing where they’re gonna dunk but they just absolutely whiff and end up lying dazed on the basketball court while whole stadiums of people laugh at them?
“oh my god,” someone yelled, maybe from their car, maybe from the bus stop, maybe literally god himself.
i looked up, dazed. there was a crowd of at least five people around me, all of them helping me to my feet, gathering my things. one very kind and very brave man ran out into traffic to retrieve my travel coffee mug, which – shoutout to my hometown’s endodontics practice, spilled not one single drop.
“are you all right?” one of the good samaritans asked. “holy shit you were – you were airborne for so long.”
you know when your brain has been scrambled and you know there’s some way you need to be reacting but you can’t make your body react that way?
i was like: “i have to catch that bus.”
“there are other buses coming,” Coffee Savior said. “like – in just a couple minutes.”
“no, i need that one,” i said, for some reason not realizing that i ought to clarify that my wallet was on that bus. one of the women, very kindly and warmly, stepped in close to me and put her arm around my shoulders and said, “between us girls, your boob is out.”
i looked down. the strap of my jumpsuit had popped off my shoulder, and indeed, my boob was out. i zipped up my white (WHITE. IT WAS WHITE. WHY DID I WEAR WHITE TODAY? YOU NEVER WEAR WHITE AFTER LABOR DAY!!!) jacket to hide this problem, which feels like a problem for Later Molly to deal with.
i took my things back from them, put my heels in my hand, and inexplicably left them with a cry of, “thanks, i love you,” before sprinting off again.
“THANKS, I LOVE YOU,” Shouts Bloodied Area Woman To Crowd Of Strangers While Running Barefoot Through Urban Center
i thought i’d become A Runner in the past few years by some weird fluky accident, but it turns out that i’d done it specifically so that i could chase this bus through not one but TWO intersections, because just as i reached it both times the light turned green. but when you’re already bleeding for a cause, giving up just feels like a waste.
this is called the fallacy of sunk cost, and it’s a stupid things human do that we shouldn’t.
i know this but i chased a bus for three blocks anyway and that just goes to show that the human mind is an enigma.
eventually, while turning a corner, the bus driver noticed me. he slowed down, looking perturbed by how far my fortunes had fallen since the last time we saw each other – which was less than five minutes ago – when i was, a) not bleeding, and b) not yelling at him.
he opened the door.
“i left my wallet,” i explained.
he blinked at me, but before i could get on, a man from the back row came running up to the front, holding my wallet in his hand. “you left your wallet,” he said, as if this would be news to me.
“you left your wallet?” asked the bus driver, in a tone that indicated what he meant was, why are you bleeding??????????
i took my wallet very gratefully from the other passenger.
i said, “thanks. i love you,” and the doors of the bus closed.
rip tumblr 