The Importance of Subtlety as a Trans Ally

thecutestrobot:

liquidcoma:

PREFACE: I AM A TRANS WOMAN, THIS IS ADVICE FOR PEOPLE WHO WOULD CONSIDER THEMSELVES TRANS ALLIES

i was talking about this to my girlfriend just a few minutes ago and she said that it would be good to share this on tumblr, so i will. i will also do my best to make this post as legible and accessible as possible

the situation we were talking about is a personal example, when i was dating a trans man. i would talk about him a lot to my grandma, and she didn’t like the way he was treating me and would often misgender him just to make a point.

now, i tried reacting to that by explaining to her that just because someone has done bad things, that’s no excuse to misgender them. my grandmother reacted defensively, which is a common issue when correcting someone who has misgendered another person.

later on, i decided to try a more subtle approach. instead of correcting her every time she misgendered him, i would just unwaveringly refer to him by his appropriate pronouns and eventually out of context she would cease to misgender him to keep things from becoming confusing.

a bigger example than that is at my job. many of my coworkers do not misgender me, at least enough such that i could work an entire shift a few days a week with only the people who will not misgender me. i was told back in 2013 that i was not allowed to correct customers on my pronouns, by the way.

so this put me in a predicament. my coworkers who had supported me from the jump all would insist upon referring to me by my appropriate pronouns, such as, 

CUSTOMER: "excuse me sir i wanted to get a passport photo"
ASSOCIATE: “oh sure just step right over there and isel, she’ll help you”
CUSTOMER: (now done with order) Oh yeah he was a great help.
ASSOCIATE: “yes, she’s very good at passport photos”

at that juncture, the misgendering usually stops, because most people are either too afraid, too busy, or too apathetic to cause a scene when they are one against many others.

here, here’s another example

NEW PERSON AT FRIEND PARTY: Oh yeah, hey dude what’s your name?
TRANS WOMAN: (feeling very awkward) Uh, (gives name)
NEW PERSON: (turns to trans woman’s friends) He’s pretty cool!
FRIEND: (turns to trans woman) Yes, I love (name), SHE’S my best friend
OTHER FRIEND: Yeah we hang out with HER all the time.

so as a corollary to the whole, “just because trans people don’t  correct someone on their pronouns doesn’t mean they werent misgendered” notion, if you see that happening, as an ally, step in and do your part following the examples i gave in a way that wont make the trans person feel like a spectacle.

like i said, subtlety. treat it as entirely normal; do not get angry, do not change your tone of voice. i italicized and capitalized corrections in here just for a visual aid, but do not change your tone that much.

tl;dr if you’re an ally and your trans friend is being misgendered, most people will react defensively if you stop conversation to correct them, so if you feel that that is likely to happen, choose subtlety and just construct sentences in which you can use the person’s correct pronouns demonstratively.

NOTE: this is by no means a catch-all statement. there are many exceptions, but i beg of you please have the good sense to know when to and when not to use this approach. it can do more harm than good in a situation where the person doing the misgendering can become more violent beyond that, and subtlety in such a case would not be appropriate.

this is really good advice!! people I work who are good trans allies tend to emphasize pronouns when they’re introducing me and do this kind of thing when I get misgendered its really nice :3

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