Rori Porter
2 min readMar 22, 2022

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I've faced similar experiences, and being tokenized is always an enormously frustrating experience. A few years back I had a job push me to become the face of Trans Day of Remembrance for the company, and the experience basically threw me into a crisis state.

Cis people / self-appointed allies like to demand our activism with complete disregard for how exhausting and often triggering trans activism can be for us. They see including us in anything as an educational opportunity for other cis people. Because we are so often politicized, they see our existence as inherently political, like we should be ready to debate or educate others about trans rights. They will often discuss our identities with other cis people, but fail to include us in the conversation in case we take offense to their undue focus on our transness. This is why I'm wary of anybody who calls themselves an ally without having other trans people to verify that designation. More often than not, self-designated allies are merely not trans-antagonistic, but they are not true allies.

It's all incredibly disrespectful, frustrating, and exhausting. I'm sorry that you had to experience being outed to so many people. As you say, trans people do not owe cis people trans activism. Sometimes we just want to be included in panels and other things like that because we're experts in things other than transness. But, unfortunately, cis people will always see our expertise through the lens of our transness and trans activism, because they prefer simple definitions to the reality that we are complicated beings with more interests than convincing cis people that we're worthy of respect

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Rori Porter
Rori Porter

Written by Rori Porter

Queer Transfemme writer & designer living in Los Angeles. She. Stage name: Thirstie Alley

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