In the wake of Donald Trump's time reversing politics, trans allies truly are coming out of the woodwork. If you don't know about some of the things affecting the trans community right now, I'll give you a quick overview.

On July 26, Donald Trump tweeted out (as he so famously does often) a drastic policy change regarding the military. Citing cost efficiency as the reason (which doesn't make a whole lot of sense considering the apparent abuse of prescription drugs by military personnel funded by the government), Trump prohibited transgender individuals from enlisting in the military (cite). No word on the already enlisted 15,000 active duty trans service people though; this is pretty characteristic of "the leader of the free world" though, not thinking his entire decision through to the end.

That is just one change Trump has made that has negatively impacted the queer community since taking office. Other's include calling National Pride Month "Great Outdoors Month" or "Ocean Month," and eliminating any trace of the queer and trans communities from future censuses, and legalizing discrimination towards trans and queer students in and from schools, and erasing any trace of queerness from the Whitehouse.gov website (cite). And with all of this happening at the same time, the queer community and even more so the trans community NEED their allies.

But here's the deal, to be an ally means to center the marginalized group that you are focusing on. Recently, an outpouring of support from the cis community has been entirely too misguided in my home of the greater Lansing area. Seen below, the popular gay dance club Spiral released this promotional flyer for an event in support of the trans community.

But let us talk about it for a second. It is called "Celebrate Our Trans Community," good! That is great; I would love to celebrate my fellow trans folks because you know, we deserve to celebrate our magical transness. Next.

"Hosted By Kathie Dunbar." Okay to be honest I didn't know who this woman was but after a quick look through her personal website and the perspectives of the commenters on the event, Kathie Dunbar is a more than problematic out-bisexual woman who has used her political platform to body shame individuals on more than one occasion. Not a win. I know that I personally would never want to a cisgender individual at the helm of what was supposed to be trans centering. Next.

Let's talk about drag performances. When drag started out, it pulled itself together from what was called the Ball Scene. Balls were places where everyone was allowed to be what they wanted; often the most enticing part was the ability to pretend to be something other than what society saw you as.

The populace of this culture were mostly young queer and trans people of color and sex workers of all backgrounds. If you want more information on that I encourage you to watch "Paris is Burning." Modern Drag, however, is not as accepting as it used to be.

Unfortunately with the mainstream culture picking up RuPaul's Drag Race and the intense straight and cis viewership of the show, for people who have no other avenues of learning about the complexities of gender many have equated transness with performing drag including drag performers themselves.

Now of course, "not all drag queens and kings" comes into play, but that doesn't matter. When drag cultures' biggest icons are caught being aggressively anti-trans in their inappropriate use of a slur historically used against the trans community, the whole culture is affected and has alienated the trans community.

It no longer feels like a place for us, it is a place for gay men and lesbian women to perform for their fellow cis gays and lesbians and very unfortunately for the straight eye as well. This time around, they did employ at least one trans drag queen, Candy Lipgloss Contour, which is definitely a win. Pay trans individuals for their talents.

With this criticism (and more) voiced by actual trans individuals that populate Lansing (resonating throughout the event Facebook page), the event scheduled for August third was canceled-- not without taking a few more punches at the community they are supposedly showing up for.

The host DJ for the planned event decided to take it upon himself to handle the curation of which comments were appropriate for the event page and which weren't, meaning he decided which comments to delete. All the comments deleted were the voiced criticisms of trans individuals.

And lastly, no statement was released as a result of this hard mistep by Spiral Dancebar. The closest thing that could be found is a public status by the DJ saying, "It sucks when you work so hard on something just to see it taken away. I wanted to do good and I was thrown to the wolves." Unfortunately I, as well as some other folks, just aren't here for this display of cis-fragility.

All I can say is do better. If you want to support the trans community then center us. Don't produce an event in support of the community without having the emcee as a trans individual. Don't offer entertainment in the form of something that has been historically alienating to the trans community. Don't limit the people welcome to the most binary version of the trans community. Not everyone transitions. Not everyone is man or woman. It is important to remember our most erased people in times like these, don't erase them even more.