Miss Major Speaks: Conversations with a Black Trans Revolutionary

It's not wrong to feel like the world is fucked up being repair, but...you can try to repair what you can, using whatever skills you might have.

Why would someone want to assimilate into being something that was so hateful? Into this society that couldn’t care less if we went extinct? The hurt and horror that people were going through. I’m not ready to go back and hide inside a closet, and just get erased like that.

Why only spend money on our protection when it’s a cage?

most people don’t know what Pride is about. The anguish, and the hurt, and the reason why Pride started in the first place—it was an anti-cop event. Look, yes—I know there are trans police officers. You have Black people who are police officers, and women police officers. All that’s cute, but guess what: It’s blue first, your other allegiances second. Once you get on that blue, child, it goes straight through to your brain, dyes your brain blue, and you’re no longer whoever the fuck you were before. So no, they don’t need to be there. That’s where their loyalty lies. So stay the fuck away from me.

You have to give people who are new to this movement and to activism in general some way in.” For some people, that’s going to a protest, or seeing a documentary, or reading a book, that gets them thinking, “Maybe I can do something.” And so no, I don’t believe one person’s vote amounts to shit. But it can get people in the mindset of recognizing they can fight back against the Powers That Be in some way. Maybe next time, that leads them down the path of, they’ll join an organization or they’ll talk to their friends about the murders, or that George Washington had slaves, and how this country only exists because of slavery.

You can’t throw anybody under the bus. You can’t leave anybody behind. And that’s become my favorite thing to say to people: I won’t throw anybody under the bus, and I’m not leaving anybody. It has to include us all, or it’s not going to work.

You can kill a person, but you can’t kill an idea, and you can’t kill love or hurt.

We weren’t considered important enough to count before.

I would hope that someone would step away from this book recognising that "transgender" does not encompass just one type of person.

It’s not what they think about me, it’s what I think of myself that matters. It took forever to figure out who I was when I was younger. You don’t know who to talk to, and you feel as if you’re alone, and no one else in the world has the issues or the problems that you have. You don’t feel comfortable, but you don’t have the words or understanding of exactly where you fit in. Some older person would notice and say, well, “You’re different,” and that was enough justification to fuck with you. And then over time you realize it’s because they’re not comfortable with who they are. And lucky you, you get to be the person they fuck with, so they can make themselves feel better about not knowing where they fit in. And then as you get older and get out more, you realize, “Oh, there’s other people.” And so you may meet one person who’s transgender. “Ooh, there’s two of us.” Over time you learn that there’s three, and eventually, that there’s a community.

One of the things I hear with some younger trans people I know is they feel, “I’m gonna get this surgery, and I’m gonna learn that way of speaking, and I’m gonna be done.” You’re never done. If you’re a straight, cisgender person, you’re never done. Things are always happening that have the potential to change you. So all I am today is not who I’m gonna be tomorrow, because of the things that happened to me today and later tonight.

And if you pay attention, most monuments are for one person, or one thing that some person did in their life. I wouldn’t be here if not for my community, my friends, my comrades. And so to me, the ninety-nine percent of statues that celebrate one person, it’s bullshit. Regardless of whether they deserve a statue or not, those people didn’t get to do anything great without a damn crowd of people they worked with to get there.

If self-hatred was hammered into you when you were young, Major wants you to know that you're important - that being an outsider helps you develop skin that's both tough and pliable in social situations. You are a stronger person because of the shit you've gone through.

The Powers That Be: the corporate, government, and nonprofit actors who work to preserve the status quo, and the forces in the world who want us all to fit into our proper places in an established social hierarchy, from which they can look down on us and make sure we don't fuck with the money and privilege they hoard.