I think it’s very strange that we deny agency to slave owners. I recognize the importance of historical and cultural contextualisation, but contextualization has to be legitimate and honest. One of the most powerful critiques of racism and slavery that I’ve ever read was not written or spoken by Malcom X, Martin Luther King, or Rosa Parks, but by the slave owner Thomas Jefferson.
"Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete reputation of the doubts I myself have entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding alotted to them (black people) by nature, and to find that they are on a par with ourselves...but whatever their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or persons of others"
—Thomas Jefferson in a letter written to Henry Gregoire.
Did this recognition prevent Jefferson raping, abusing, and treating black people like shit? Did that prevent Jefferson having slaves? No, and no. But did he recognize that those things were wrong? And indeed, did many other white people, including the rich and privileged, living at the same time as him recognize this also, and attempt to bring about the end of slavery? Yes, yes, and yes.
It is feasible that in fifty years time, whether you agree with it or not (I don’t care if you don’t), the rights of trans people will be fully protected in law, and that your children would be horrified to read what many of you write on the internet about trans people. Did you say, write, and argue these things without any agency whatsoever? I don’t think you did, just as the owners of the plantations of South Carolina, Texas, and Idaho didn’t have slaves without any agency.
