Even though TGForum was a revolutionary development at the time, it also focused on some privileged, similar viewpoints on the astounding variety of the larger trans population. However, while that serves as a reliable shaft on which to evaluate the site’s tradition, it also serves to gauge how far our community has come, if at all. White people also frequently obstruct more various voices in LGBTQ+ spaces today, serving as a reminder that any struggle for queer liberation may also take implicit bias and white supremacy into account. Our society is not the only one struggling with this, but it’s also a concern that has existed in intra-communal trans press since the first online and earlier. Learning from our past is the only way for us to truly address the problem, which is why files like the TGForum ring, however disorganized they may be, are so crucial for the future health and expansion of the trans movement.
It’s almost certain that if you start this library, you’ll find something that really grabs you by the heart. Maybe it’ll be a political essay about something you were n’t there to witness, an open letter demonstrating how trans people have always been rather stingy when it comes to being made fun of on television, or some meme that makes you think of something your Discord friend sent you last week. Perhaps it’s just a representation of two transgender lovers. The lack of something, or a opening felt too keenly however, may instead be what you feel most highly.
Whatever you discover there, it will be a piece of transness history—a timeline that even those who care about it the most still do n’t fully comprehend. Since 1995, trans communities have undergone a great deal of extraordinary change, but some things are still incredibly relatable, such as how we look for fulfillment and belonging in an environment that is frequently hostile, the ways we quarrel and argue in search of new paths forth, and even the errors our own activist organizations make in doing so.
The founders of TGForum could not have imagined living in 2023, but without the foundations it established in those early years, the LGBTQ+ media scenery of today may appear much duller. Perhaps that’s just our own discrimination speaking, but Meredith Talusan, co-founder of Them, and the website you’re reading right now might not have transitioned without TGForum.
Talusan stated in a 2017 essay,” I did n’t personally know any trans women before TGForum.” ” I was able to escape a cage I did n’t even know I lived in, and yet I’ve never met any of them in person, thanks to these women online and the road they paved.”
Set aside some time and look back through the TGForum files if you want the interior scoop on transgender history and culture as the earth merged onto the information highway, warts and all. The more things change, the more they remain the same, even in a society as smooth as trans people. Get one’s Geocities website where you might have become ink pals. Skim through the hundreds of photos that all attest to” We were here.”
We guarantee that you’ll have a good time. After all, TGForum was completely kewl, bar none.
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