Raid at Casa Kuá: In full gear against 13 trans women

T he shock about the brutal raid on the “Dolls of Berlin” meeting place last Sunday is great. 38 police officers, some in full gear for 13 trans women. Their crimes: meeting, talking to each other, eating, being among themselves. To have created a place where they don't have to explain themselves, where they can find support and comfort and see themselves in the experiences of other women.

The meeting creates a space in which the cis-normative gaze does not rest on them and they can leave their internalized transmisogyny behind. Breathe out, relax, get up, be gentle with yourself. Together, the “Dolls” can gather courage in the eternal fight against a power relationship that propagates that assimilation is the only way.

With the “Dolls” shame, self-doubt and rejection give way and make room for joy, affection and self-love for yourself and the community. Trans women are the majority there and are reclaiming the narrative about their lives. When and where else is this available? The action of the Berlin police and public prosecutor's office makes it clear: they want to take this place away from them.

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They accuse the place of illegal drug trafficking. What a contradiction to reality. Every trans woman in Berlin knows the community meeting place. Non-white, refugee and poor trans women in particular are urgently dependent on food donations from the Tafel, free clothing, social advice and contact with others.

At the “Dolls” knowledge about all sorts of questions and resources is passed on and discussed – nothing more and nothing less. In a transphobic society, characterized by racism and capitalism, being trans becomes particularly difficult to live. It is part of this hostile system to deprive people of their knowledge and self-determination over their own bodies and to strictly regulate it by the state.

Places where the community can come together, like the “Dolls,” are literally essential for survival. The raid should therefore be strongly condemned as a targeted attack on trans women. Trans people should be afraid in their own space - and beyond. The police are spinning a narrative out of cash and pills lying around that are privately found in people's bags during bag checks in order to legitimize their perfidious actions in front of the bourgeois press.

Instead of creating low-threshold opportunities for trans people towards self-determination and health care, the state prefers to set up a rainbow bench after the CSD attack. And even they can't even protect them.

Trans women have long since figured out this system. The capitalist state never protects them and has no interest in doing so. If a bench set up by the district was attacked four times, what happens to trans women?

In this fascistic country, places like the “Dolls” are a thorn in the side of state power because they have recognized the inequality in the system - whether economic, racial, social or medical. In a liberal state logic, the “protection” of trans lives works without actually addressing the needs of trans people. And that's exactly what the officials took action against on Sunday, not against alleged illegal medication. The “Dolls” create what the state never wants to create: self-determination.