This world cruelly and unfairly puts down cis women at the behest of cis men. And trans women and trans men? We're not even broadly considered people. We don't have the same rights and acknowledgement in society as cis people. There are still a vast majority of states where we can get murdered and people can claim a panic defense. We don't get choice or autonomy in healthcare, instead we get discriminated against, outright denied what we need, and driven to suicide. And so I don't understand why when trans rights and cis women's reproductive rights are so inextricably linked together, and threatened, we get thrown under the bus.

Trans men need safe and unfettered access to abortion just like cis women. And when it comes to trans and cis women, the rhetoric and legislation focused on controlling women's bodies works directly to paint the idea that women are nothing more than their genitals, and less than human for it. It both essentializes cis women as objects only good for giving birth, and trans women as aberrations incapable of being women because they cannot give such births. It's entirely disgusting, and everyone gets hurt. And so we fight against anti-abortion laws, and contraceptive bans, and unanimously for better sex education and medical and bodily rights - for women everywhere, trans and cis, and for our trans brothers, and for those of us who aren't men or women, but have female anatomy. So when we unconditionally fight for progress, why then, are our rights conditional?

Why were (and are) people so okay and complacent with sitting back as a small scale genocide occurs in 3 states against trans youth and adults? Why were people so okay with the 119 pieces of legislation that mostly made their way through 32 states and eroded our rights? Why was that okay, and didn't spark mass outrage, but once cis women were the targets, that crossed the line? There shouldn't be a line for human rights. We should be fighting for them for each other, everywhere, all at once. It is a cascade effect, where eroding one group of peoples' rights paves the way to erode those of the next. We cannot sit by and let that happen.

I may not have two X chromosomes. But I'm no less of a woman. And despite that, I feel like society tries to tell me I am less than, every step of the way. Many cis women (and other types of people more generally) "respect my pronouns" and then act and talk to me as if I am not deserving of any kind of personhood and humanity, like I'm some alien they don't understand. I still get talked down on and talked over. I still get objectified and harassed. And maybe that's our plight. We're women that society does not understand. And so it's easier for people to draw lines in the sand than try and empathize or change our understanding of the world and people around us. It feels like everyone who suffers is made to be pitted against trans people. "Why bother taking down the ladder when you can comfortably step on a lower rung?" The abhorrent politicians and propagandists will say as they ramp up their genocidal language. How long can this continue? Will we keep being forgotten in the face of progress for some, but not for all? Are trans people doomed to be quietly erased and stamped out like in every society we've existed in throughout human history, save for the ones that were compassionate enough to try and understand us, and change their understandings of gender? I don't know. I want to have hope since we are more visible in society and since a good chunk of people have become fairly sympathetic to us, but things look really bleak right now. We don't want sympathy, we want meaningful change. That said I won't stop fighting. Even when one day (hopefully), abortion is unanimously legal and enshrined as a constitutional guarantee (whether in this current one or a new constitution), I won't stop fighting. Because there is so much to fight for, and too many people who get hurt if no one is fighting for them. The world may not be ready for us, it may forget us, but we can't forget ourselves. We can't forget the struggles we've gone through to make it to this point in history - the struggles we've shared with women and other people of all sorts.

I don't know what kinds of responses I'm looking for. Maybe none. I don't even think these questions have answers that would satisfy, because most answers are disgusting. I don't know why I didn't just delete all this after typing it out. Maybe deep down, I'm hoping a few people could be inspired by what I wrote - inspired to try and understand us and change. I just hope I am proven wrong, and that somehow the struggles we fight through will converge and culminate in rights for us all. And so all I can really ask for, is that while we're fighting for our rights across the board, while we're fighting for abortion, for women's rights, please do not let trans people be forgotten.