T4T means a lot more to me than just dating or fucking other trannies. It's a recognition of how fucking screwed we are, and a commitment to do what we can for each other, because who else is going to? I think it can be more than that; I think it can be a politics and a way of approaching the world. The big question I have: what do we (trans women in the united states of america) need right now? How do we build structures that ensure those things? The solution can't be a collection of individual one-offs, of knowledge shared through the grapevine and looking out for only those closest to you. It can't rely on total change, or winning some big political victory. It has to be material; it has to be something we can be excited about and that gives us hope; it has to be achievable within 5 years; it has to rely on nobody but ourselves. I'm fucking tired of reacting to the news. I'm fucking tired of seeing people die. What is the life we want to live? How do we realize it?
I want to live next door to my friends and loved ones. I want community to happen naturally, as a function of the space, instead of being something you have to go do. I want to cook for 40 people at once instead of just myself or maybe one or two other people. I want a goddamn salad bar. I want my physical environment to be filled with people making weird outsider art. I want to see people every single day. I want my own private space. I want it to be really hard to drop off the radar. I want us to start thinking of ourselves as a group in ourselves, for ourselves. I want us to stop worrying about housing security. I want I want I want.
My current thoughts are that this looks like buying an apartment building (I wanna live in the city, sorry. We can do a small garden outside maybe), renovating it slightly (big kitchen, dining room, bigass lobby area to host shows??), and doing something like a co-op. I don't know how we'll handle money/property; we could set up a rent-to-own scheme, or do a pay-what-you-can thing, but it's gotta be equitable and I don't really want to be a landlord. (Someone else will have a great model that we can use; I don't need to come up with this myself.) In my ideal world we will document everything, make a replicable model, and spawn sister branches in other cities. People will be able to travel freely between them if they want to live somewhere else, for a month or a year or forever. Maybe we will do a big homebrewing op or something; it would be cool if eventually we became more self-sustaining. I miss how in college I could just hang out in the lobby and end up having interesting conversations with people. It has to be bigger than a house or even a collection of houses. Everyone also needs personal space to retreat to; living on top of each other gives more room for things to grate.
I need to address the elephant in the room: as stated, this seems like a recipe for a dysfunctional mess. We are... not good with conflict resolution. We are largely traumatized, unwell, and unstable. We have a lot of big personalities and people clash often. I don't know how to fix this, but I know it's fixable. Fixing it is one of the goals, actually; I want our lives to be as good as possible, I want to enable us to go out and do good in the world. My current joke is that I need to invent therapy that works (I think that material changes may be upstream of mental ones). Maybe we start with a small group of very stable transsexuals and introduce new people slowly enough that they acclimate. Maybe we have a larger goal we're working towards that's enough to incentivize people to work through their differences. Maybe eating three healthy meals a day and feeling loved and not being scared you'll be homeless is enough. I don't know what works yet.
Something maybe worth mentioning is the overarching politics. My current thoughts are that it would be a mistake to tie this to anything too specific. From a couple people I've talked to, "leftist infighting" is a real problem, and I really don't want to deal with that. I am sorry US leftists but I don't think your stuff works. It burns people out and doesn't affect real change. I think a clean break from all that is a good idea. I might be wrong about this; all the thoughts shared here are a point-in-time snapshot, shared so they can be refined through conversation with others.
I am not the only one who wants this. Lately I keep talking to others who already want or are even planning something similar. It is in the air. I really believe we can do this. I think this, or something like it, is the next step we need to take.
What do I have? What do I want? How do I use the former to get the latter? This is all still so preliminary. My next step, I think, has to be talking to beings who've been part of other intentional communities, trans or not. I need to visit them and see what works, and what we can learn from. (Or, hear about the failures after the fact.) Maybe this has already been done! If you know of any, please please please message me. I will be asking all my friends as well.
This is the kind of project that will take a village. There is so much I do not know, so many blind spots I have. Finding others who can fill those in will be imperative.
I am one being and my wants and needs are not universal! Are you a trans woman who would consider living somewhere like this? Please write me with your pie-in-the-sky dreams for what you'd want it to look like. If you could have anything you want, what would it be? How can we support your flourishing?