FTW MEANS SOMETHING.
FTW stands for
FEMMES! (Not “feminine”)
TRANS! (The whole Trans fam!)
WOMEN! (Trans and cis!)
FTW means NON BINARY and TWO SPIRIT!
FTW means people who are NOT cis-men-benefiting-from-cis-male-privilege.
FTW means we are intentionally NOT centering cis white hetero women, because all “women’s” spaces are places where they can feel safe and included.
FTW never ever ever ever means ladies! Fine if you like that term for yourself, but we recognize that it is transphobic to gender people in a space that claims to be for FTW, so we will never use it to define us as a group.
FTW is not something you use to make your event sound “cool” or because you think it will fix your “too straight, too cis, too hetero, too white” problem! FTW MEANS SOMETHING. It’s not a tagline or a marketing strategy.
Personally, I have come to define these terms after a lot of self-exploration, good intentions, messing up, unintentionally excluding and marginalizing myself and people in my own community, and then trying again. Language, like identity, is a beautiful and ever changing ocean. As we step into spaces as our full selves, as we claim our fair share, as we choose family and names and gender that hold us, we adapt and discover new language to describe the world we need and deserve.
FTW community,
Never stop questioning.
Never stop learning.
Never stop finding our commonalities and differences, as a way of truly getting to know ourselves.
Never stop exploring what FTW means to you.
