Over the last few years, I've been writing about the conviction among cis parents that being trans is a social contagion that has climbed to heights of pandemic proportion. I have dedicated myself to proving the fallacy of the suggestion. Writing these words, I firmly believe that they are wrong. But as I reflect on embodying t4t, I can't help but wonder whether fertile avenues of understanding may be opened up by thinking trans as contagious, as a sexually transmissible condition. Though I would never adopt it in my legal or bioethical scholarship, I suspect it holds the seeds of a poetic, affective truth. I fuck, date, and love trans girls. I fuck, date, and love trans girls even when neither of us knows we are. I love them before they come out, holding open the possibility that every cis person is at a stage of becoming towards transness.

I love them so much, I make trans girls. It may not be quite true, but I feel it in my bones.A tattoo on the back of my neck reads t4t. I had it drawn after reading Torrey Peters' Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones. Although I may eschew transbian separatism--the abuses of radical lesbianism and of bæddelism standing as warnings--Torrey's aspirational t4t philosophy spoke to me:You just promise to love trans girls above all else. The idea--although maybe not the practice--is that a girl could be your worst enemy, the girl you wouldn't piss on to put out a fire, but if she's trans, you're gonna offer her your bed, you're gonna share your last hormone shot. We aim high, trying to love each other and then we take what we can get. We settle for looking out for each other.

And even if we don't all love each other, we mostly all respect each other.There is both a promise and a danger to t4t. It carves a space for liberation outside of cisgender society, knowing that safety and self-worth are rarely attainable within its reaches. It posits that, however dangerous they can be, transfeminine arms will not misrecognize us. And it delights in ridiculing the transantagonistic claim that trans girls wouldn't date other trans girls and, thus, disprove themselves as proper subjects of lesbian lust. Yet too must the danger be emphasized. In our trauma, we are often quick to lash out at each other. In our trauma, we often refuse to let ourselves be lovable to cis people, not because we believe trans love is revolutionary but because we don't think we are good enough, lovable enough.

Trans love shouldn't be a consolation prize. Is what I brought to Dominique the same that Charlotte brought me? I longed for her touch. I delighted in how she knew my body-mind better than I did and unearthed the love I held for it. But I cannot resent her for turning away from me. By unfolding trans knowledges into my body, she felt like she made me as I am. She is connected to my fate; she began a pattern in it, tying herself to my future joys and pains. Like Charlotte to me, I to Dominique. I transmitted my transness to her.

If she rejoices, my heart may swell. But what if she does not. What if she, like too many of us, takes her own life? In poetry, being trans is a sexually transmissible condition. That may be too large a burden for us to bear.Do you remember when you were scared to wear nail polish to work? Do you remember how you told me you felt so badass? Do you remember when you sent me pictures with this pink nail polish on, and the little blue accent nail? Do you remember when you were still alive?.