Blue Rose Society?

The Blue Rose Society is an organisation I'm founding. It is to be an organisation which dedicates itself to the safety and ability to thrive of trans and nonbinary people, or anyone who doesn't feel they belong under a cis umbrella.

The name has two sources, initially. One is that I was inspired by the White Rose Society, a group of Germans who dedicated and risked their lives to trying to rid the world of the mad little Austrian who did it himself in 1945. They ran dozens of plots against him, coming very close more than once, but in the end, most were captured, treated as you might expect, and murdered. Any group living under the heel of fascism which is able to rise up and stand against it, whether successful or not, deserves our respect. What matters is that they fought. They saw the danger, and they got involved. It cost them their lives. I expect few went down with regret for their choice.

The other source is from my own sense of multilingual play. I am a polyglot - a former professional translator of French, German, and Russian to English for a couple of decades, along with learning Spanish and Japanese along the way - and I adore word play, and cross-language word play is my favourite.

So. Blue rose. It's a phrase with two components. A blue component, a colour, and a rose component...a flower. But also, in French, a colour: pink. So "blue rose" can be read as a reference to the colours of the trans flag. The white reference was made above - the White Rose Society.

The name carries the trans flag embedded in itself.

Alright then, that's the name. What else do we need to know? How about who I am? It's gonna be a long paragraph or seventeen.

I am a white immigrant settler on stolen land of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe, and Chinonton peoples, the latter of whom were wiped out by settlers. I am disabled, physically and mentally, and survive on government-mandated poverty in Ontario, Canada. I am a trans woman, having transitioned at 26 years old in 1992, under the abusively restrictive gatekeeping at the time. I will be talking about this in this blog.

Due to transphobia at the time, and my thus-empty resume, I was unable to find work. So I started working as an editor of English for academics whose first language was not English, students and professors alike, teaching while editing. In time, I was able to gain translation work as well, and while I was a stay-at-home mother for my 3 stepkids, I worked several hours a day at my much-loved job.

When I transitioned, I was stealth, due to the requirements at the time to access medical transition. Also, it was three years before I could access HRT to even start it, so I was left on my natural good looks and a shit-tonne of makeup practice in my life. And I did it.

Being stealth, but wanting to continue being politically active, I joined a local Lesbian Avengers group. I participated in some fun ops we pulled off in the mid-90s. No details. I promised.

I began working publicly as a trans activist. In 1994, I approached the cities where I live, and asked each to simply declare that Pride Day was a thing. Just, an official polite version of "we're here, we're queer, get used to it."

All three cities declined to declare the day. One city ended the practice of naming days at all, a policy it maintains, rather than be forced into it by a human rights decision. And they blamed us, publicly.

The next year, we set up a Pride committee, me, two other lesbians, and about eight cis gay men. It was...disappointing. All the old gender power dynamics were in full force: our ideas were ignored and then stolen without credit, we were interrupted, talked over, talked around, talked about, but never allowed to just talk.

Somehow, we made it happen anyway. There should be a picture of me here somewhere, with my short shorts, because I was 29 and not all that smart. However...I did have great legs. And it turned out, I could talk good in front of people.

The event was held, in fact, in the central rotunda of the city hall where I had been denied the year before. We didn't ask permission. We just applied for a permit, gathered, and did our thing. 86 people, I believe, showed up, for the first Pride event in the region.

I moved on to other activist projects - getting same-gender couple benefits before we got marriage, fighting to reinstate trans surgery on our health insurance plan through the government, fighting to close the abusive Toronto clinic, and move to an informed consent model in Canada. Nothing big and flashy, just the grunt work of moving forward. Happy to do that, me.

Locally, I got some stuff done. I helped write a policy on naming schools locally, through my being the chair of a committee at the public school board. I snuck in a provision I loved: no naming schools for corporations or their products or services. It passed.

I got some services for trans folk instituted, like swims for our community, and helped build the queer community centre that now graces our region in a way only much larger cities in Canada have enjoyed before. Sat on many committees as a representative of the community, advocating for all queer folk, of all types and colours and religions and genders...educating myself on their needs, to be able to advocate better. I helped convince the local Catholic school board to be the first in the country to raise the Pride flag on June 1st, and keep it up for the month. None of it alone, I want to stress. I had help all along, from loads of people.

I've had some recognition, more recently. Named as 1 of 10 local Changemakers by a CBC station in town, they hung my giant portrait on the wall of the central library for a month, along with nine other people (several of whom are long-time friends - activism is a small community). And given a medal from the illegitimate pretender who calls himself "King" of the islands in which I was born. Since I do not recognise his authority or right to rule, I feel his medal is a rightful spoil of my enemy, mine to display at my leisure. Until he makes shift to apologise for Andrew, and Kenya, and colonialism generally, and several genocides, and gets off the pogey, and supports himself like a very wealthy man should support himself, without the need for public money or tax exemptions. He has no divine right to use our infrastructure without contributing to it anymore.

I support myself through working part-time to educate cis-het people on how to be nice to queer folk. Corporate work, pays nice. But it's only a few hours a month. And sometimes I get speaking gigs - more before the economy mysteriously took a nosedive last April - which would pay me pretty well.

But for the most part, I just live on my disability cheque. Which is sufficient, in one respect: it is more than my rent. Thankfully, rent control applies to my home, where I have lived for 20 years, and thus my disability cheque covers the rent and associated costs (water, hydro, heat, et c.). My phone and credit-card bill too. And if I'm lucky, just enough left to squeeze through the month for food. Toys and new stuff are generally not my lot in life. Clothes, for instance. I can't remember the last time I bought clothing that didn't come from a delivery van in large packages with multiple instances of the same piece of clothing, identified as fitting, comfortable, and within my limited budget, and re-ordered when they wear out.

Which brings me to my transparent reason to be here. I want to raise a bit of money for a more stable income. Activism is great - I love it, and I do it for the love of it - but I don't get paid for it. Despite what the right would insist, there are no billionaires on the left handing out packets of cash for radical anti-monarchist socialist feminist trans activists. Or if they are, I've been shamefully ignored.

Either way, I need cash. So my pitch is this. I'm gonna try and update every weekday, and maybe do a longer piece on the weekend (I don't consider this piece long). I'll be writing about trans issues. About geopolitics. About history. About racism. About activism. About just being trans. About people I know who are struggling, to see if any of y'all can help them at all.

The people in that category whom I bring to your attention will share several things.

They will be known to me, either personally or at one trusted degree of separation (I know well the person who knows them well). Their need will be real and verified. And there will be a goal, so you can decide if you want to keep contributing when the goal has been reached.

If you value my work as a trans- and queer-focused activist for 30+ years in Canada, anti-racist as a white person can strive to be, honest and (I hope) accurate writing about what's going on and what we can do to make it better...if you like my writing. Or if you just want to help someone dedicated to making the trans community and my country as a whole better for every trans and non-binary person, then I'm good for it.

When I reach my goal of 300 committed CAD per month income, I will accept further income as 50% in trust for Zara, whom I will introduce in my blog tomorrow, and 50% into my first-ever savings account for me. From which I will almost inevitably drain it quickly to cover mutual aid requests.

Who am I? I'm one of those radical trans Marxist socialist leftists your mother warned you about. When Karl said, "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need", he spoke to my heart. I live that principle. I'm okay with poverty, as long as I can survive on it. I'm not money-motivated, never have been. I work to live, not live to work.

But I will try never to deny someone else who's in need, especially if they're marginalised in some way. Sometimes I get scammed. I'm okay with that. Scammers are people who are trying desperately to stay afloat. Those kinds of scams - 10 dollars here or there - aren't making anyone rich. They're buying needs, whatever those are.

That's who I am. I can be blunt and circuitous, stern-sounding and joyful, laughing in bitter rage at the situation we are all in. I contain multitudes.

That's why I'm so fat.

Please note: fat is a descriptive adjective. It is objectively true that I am a fat person. Not all my life; I was an athlete running 50k a week until I was 47. But see above, re: disability. Now, I am fat. That's not an insult, it's a description. Same applies to old. I am old. Nearly 60. That's old by almost anyone's standard (shush, Mum, I'm writing).

Words won't hurt me. Bullies have tried, and I'm still here. Society and my family gaslit me for 38 years, insisting I was not the girl I knew myself to be. But there I was, at 39, still insisting. And finally winning that recognition.

How did I do it? Stubbornness. Sheer, bloody-minded, refusal to concede. I will have this, and you will not stop me. No matter who you are.

Y'all have a good day. Maybe now, it's a bit of a long post. 2000 words, it says. That's a comfortable amount of writing for a day, I'd say.

Tell you about Zara tomorrow. She's incredible, and is part of my biggest activism project ever. Well, she's the mainspring, let's be clear. Without her, I'd be getting nowhere. I don't want to come across as Ms. White Saviour here. She's the lead. I'm the support.