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MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS is a campaign run by CUSU LGBT+ to increase awareness of gender and transgender issues and the little things people can do to make life easier for the trans people around them. Whenever we meet a new person, we subject them to our preconceptions about who they are - including about their gender. However if those preconceptions don't include an understanding of gender as something more complex that what is assigned at birth, it can make things really difficult for trans people. While most people mean well, lots of little misunderstandings can add up to become very wearing and disheartening. If you're new to all these concepts - don't panic! Like our page for updates, come along to events to find out more, and take a look at our campaign website: http://www.makenoassumptions.org.uk/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/cusutrans Ask FM: ask.fm/cusutrans
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MAKE NO
ASSUMPTIONS
MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS was launched in Lent term 2015 as CUSU LGBT+’s Trans Campaign.
We aim to work together towards the end of the oppression and othering of marginalised people based on the assumptions people make about us every day.
This zine is the product of the collective voice of people from many axes of marginalisation, denouncing the systems that box us without knowing,
understanding, or respecting us.
Photo by JESSI LLOYD
CONTRIBUTORS:
Rowland Goodbody
Dinosaurs for All
Charlie Otter
Jessi Lloyd
Sarah Gibson
Attic Party
Mel Berrill
Em Travis
MJ Black
Sarah Caulfield
Tabitha Kane
MNA Crafts Team
This zine has a general trigger warning for discussions of transphobia/cissexism and other oppressive systems. Specific trigger
warnings are at the top of each page.
ROWLAND GOODBODY
TW: misgendering, cissexism, sexism
CHARLIE OTTER
From ‘My Words to Victor Frankenstein’ by Susan Stryker
TW: biological essentialism, violent body imagery
TW: underwear, facial hair, implied transphobia
JESSI LLOYD
TW: transphobia, violence
ATTIC PARTY
CHARLIE OTTER
MEL BERRILL
TW: institutionalised classism, bullying, self-worth
MJ BLACK & SARAH CAULFIELD
TABITHA KANE
EM TRAVIS
Quotes from Darkmatter & Susan Stryker
TW: coercive gender assignment, violent body imagery, misgendering, cissexism, transmisogynistic slurs,
transphobia, tone policing, suffocation imagery, violence “perhaps if I move furiously enough, I can deform [the Law] in my passing to leave a trace of my rage.”
i am angry because the first words ever to be spoken over me were a lie. i am angry because you – they – the Law, and we who do not question it – made me a liar, too.
the air is thick with unspoken assumptions and we wade through it gasping. when honesty is oxygen, when authenticity gives us the impetus for survival, we have nowhere to breathe.
i am angry because no matter what i embody i am a lie to you. i can tattoo my transness in glitter across my forehead and you will still call me Miss. but when we change we are also liars, tricks, traps, dupes. i am angry because i cannot reconcile my lies to the world with its lies to me. i am angry because i cannot reconcile my lies to the world with my lies to myself.
“incoherence is resistance in a world where your representation is regarded more seriously than your reality.”
my anger is silence because it cannot be spoken. when it comes out in screams and choking sobs you only tell me to calm down, that i am not helping my Cause, that you will only accept my fury when i spell it out and package it up for you to consume.
yet without anger i am nothing. i am invisible. i move through the world as a phantom with an oxygen tank and soon i will run out of air.
how dare you expect me to live like this.
“may you discover the enlivening power of darkness within yourself. may it nourish your rage. may your rage inform your actions, and your actions transform you as you struggle to transform your world.”
i am angry because you tell me to be meek. i am bitter because you tell me to be palatable. you cannot swallow my sorrow and digest my disgust without burning your insides; it does not work that way. the truth rips its way out with teeth and claws and if you are still the same person after watching it disembowel the lies you live by then you have not been listening.
i am angry because it is the only way i have left to be honest.
i refuse to accept that my rage is not enough to raze this world to the ground.
JESSI LLOYD
TW: cissexism
TW: coercive gendering
TW: cissexism, erasure, classism
TW: disease imagery
EM TRAVIS
adapted from ‘punk is not a fashion statement’, anon
makenoassumptions.org.uk
facebook.com/makenoassumptions
twitter.com/cusutrans
ask.fm/cusutrans
