Gina

I have hands and mind and the will. If need be, I have guns and knives and boots and bricks and I know where to get torches and pitchforks. All of these things I have are for you, because I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

You are quiet and I have not heard enough from you lately. I hope you are ok. Are they mistreating you? Are you mistreating yourself? I have a comfortable couch and quiet conversation and a glass of brandy and a bowl of soup and a loud laugh. These things too are all for you, because. I insist.

It’s Transgender Day of Remembrance. Today we remember those lost in the last year to transphobic violence.

I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

I have hands and mind and the will. If need be, I have guns and knives and boots and bricks and I know where to get torches and pitchforks. All of these things I have are for you, because I refuse to remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

You are quiet and I have not heard enough from you lately. I hope you are ok. Are they mistreating you? Are you mistreating yourself? I have a comfortable couch and quiet conversation and a glass of brandy and a bowl of soup and a loud laugh. These things too are all for you, because. I insist.

I spend the time I can surrounded by boxes full of other people’s memories. I am nearly a professional rememberer. Whether you slip quietly away, surrounded by those who love you, or you fall in the fight against those who would see you suffer, I will collect the box of things that others can remember you by. I am not afraid to remember you, but I will not remember you next year. You will still be here. I insist.

Here’s where the art in my project will begin to become apparent. I will not be collecting the urine of pregnant mares. I will be collecting the urine of trans women on estrogen regimens. Otherwise, as far as applicable (lots of research to do here), I will be duplicating the isolation and purification processes developed in the 1930s for Premarin.

There are many independent pieces of this project that will be presented in various ways. There will be lab notebooks. There will be photo and film documentation of the various chemistry work. I am enlisting the help of a friend who is an analytical chemist, to determine the purity and composition of the final product. I will be asking the trans women who donate urine to write or otherwise express their thoughts and feelings about the whole endeavor (likely in a dedicated separate blog for the project). I might publish an instruction manual for anyone who would like to duplicate my work. In my wildest fantasies, I would be able to make enough pills that I could switch them for the pills I currently take for a week or a month or whatever. It might be even better to make pills that could be the first week or month worth of estrogen for a trans woman starting transition.

There are implications to all of these things. A trans woman starting transition by taking estrogen derived from the bodies of other trans women is an especially powerful possibility, with resonances in community and politics and biology.