Cloudy with a chance of broken trans women

Here’s a metaphor: Abuse debates are, down to a tee, about warring angels in heaven.

(And, here, you’re going to have to forgive me massive errors in bible(and, tbh, varied religious texts) knowledge, and maybe give me what might be considered poetic licence. Don’t try and tie this closley to a single text, or any collection of texts, but maybe to a contemporary (uk, atheist-christian uprbinging) cultural understanding of the war(s) in heaven. )

Somewhere up among the clouds, they’re getting ready for war.

Weapons are being forged, of receipts and testimony, designed to take the most pure holy beings and return them to earth, to live out the rest of their days in the dirt. Battle plans are being drawn up, in secret, and it’s debated whether it’s safer to make the first move, to accuse, or whether this will become it’s own weakness.

The point is not which side will win- maybe one side has a legitimate grievance, maybe both do, maybe neither. It’s largely irrelevant to the war, and has little to no bearing on who will stand victorious. What matters is who can mass the greater army, fashion the same materials, chat logs and rumors, into greater weapons. What matters is who will fall, because in falling they allow the victor to rise.

Rise to what, is unclear. It is a good and holy place, a safe place, where none can harm you and we can live forever in the pure light. Rise away from, also an unknown- a terrible place where the broken and monstrous reside. No-one has explored it, no-one may go there and truly return.

It’s no co-incidence that trans women identify with lilith, who becomes satan, who in doing so becomes monstrous. To stand victorious, to not fall, is to hold at bay monstrosity.

Down on the ground, a few of us are sitting around the kitchen table, chopping onions(onions are good. Even vegans eat them) and rolling bandages for the women who will fall. The war doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that soon, a broken trans women will fall, surrounded by her armies, scared and battered, and will need a couch, some tea, and someone to talk to.

Maybe they were truly evil. Maybe they’re a danger to us. But evil is not something that can be divined by their fall, and we know how to protect ourselves.`