being a gay trans woman in wlw fandoms is so weird because like, personally i want to just forget about all the terrible shit that every cis celeb or idol and enjoy the connection to other gay girls and not have to feel like an outside or alone. theres like the temptation to forget your politics and just try to enjoy the fandoms for what they are. i know i really try to just ignore the transmisogyny i see when i first enter a fandom
but like, you fucking cant at all. because there’s so much transmisogny embedded everywhere. and its in the shitty g!p fanfiction and the assumptions about how any lesbian couple might have sex. its in telling trans women to calm down and not fight all the time and just let things go. its in cis wlw assumptions that THEY’RE way of being gay/loving women is the standard and should be treated as such. its in describing women and female characters as soft/small/delicate and the fetishization of a girl with a dick. like i would just love not to have to think about it at all but its too big to be ignored at this point.
but it blows my mind when people accuse trans women of looking for mistakes and moments where their cis idols fucked up. like i fucking wish kate mckinnon didnt hold such terrible beliefs about trans people. that would make everything so much easier. i wish it for all the big names like aubrey plaza and gillian anderson but its too late. they revealed what they really think and we have to deal with it. otherwise you shouldnt have any “no twerfs” shit in your sidebar.
What Cis People Say To Trans People Vs. What We Hear
By Meredith Talusan and Rory Midhani
TRANSlator 3000: Amazing technology translates cissexist BS!
“Oh you’re trans but you look so good!”
“Trans people are ugly.”“I’ve never met a trans person before.”
“I assume I can identify any trans person.”“I would date a trans person.”
“Trans people are usually undateable so I deserve a prize.”“You look just like a real woman.”
“Trans women aren’t really women.”“I’m glad you’re being honest with me about being trans.”
“Trans people who don’t tell me they’re trans are deceivers and liars.”“I loooooove trans people!”
“I fetishize trans people.”“It’s so hard to switch pronouns.”
“Trans people are an inconvenience to me.”“I don’t have a problem with trans people.”
“I have a problem with trans people.”
what's wrong w/ saying "trans people"
ah that post was about cafabs saying “trans people” in order to portray violence committed against trans women as ‘violence committed against trans “people”’ in an attempt to profit of off it
for example it is so often that i see charities for ‘trans people’ pop up in response to an act of violence committed against a trans woman, and gain donations from well meaning people, only for all of the money to go towards trans men, and not to the people who’s suffering actually warranted the donations.opiumhug then commented that cis people also use the same term: ‘trans person’ to refer to a trans woman in a way that implies that they aren’t really a woman, but something else. which is also a good point
when writing transgender 101 guides directed towards cis people, please consider:
- NOT including intimate details of physical transition (including surgical and hormonal treatments, presentation techniques and devices used by some trans people to manage the appearance of their physical sex characteristics).
- Cis people are already obsessed with our bodies in a really unhealthy way that often comes out in fetishization, repulsion, tokenization or general inappropriate fascination. It’s not helping trans people’s interests to make one of the first things you tell cis people about us be all the gritty details about our physical bodies, when so much of transgender identity is already medicalized, pathologized and seen as a strictly physical thing.
- Also it’s none of their goddamn business what trans people do with their bodies. It’s not like you’re providing this information as a resource to people who will benefit from it, you’re literally just sating their curiosity and by extension alienating the group you’re attempting to speak for.
- It gives cis people a sense of knowledge of trans bodies, which reinforces their entitlement to demand intimate information from usabout our medical histories. (because they “get it”).
- It creates the expectation in cis people’s minds that transness is defined by these physical steps you’re describing, and delegitimizes the identities of trans people who make not take some or any of those steps.
- If you’re going to provide this information (which, to be entirely honest I can’t think of a legitimate reason why you would need to provide in-depth information about trans bodies to cis people who were not serving a health/care-providing roll to trans people) at least Do Not put it in the 101 “basic information” package. Because it is not 101, the information you provide will invariably be oversimplified and misguiding, it is not important to developing a basic understanding of trans people and issues, and if you’ve gotten to the point of describing the ins and outs of trans medical treatment within your first few sections than i guarantee you there’s probably a dozen more important and more relevant topics you haven’t covered.
I’m not saying avoid these topics all together if you want to talk about dysphoria and how some people get surgeries and/or take hormones and/or change their physical presentation to feel more comfortable.
I’m saying you don’t need to provide detailed, in-depth descriptions of trans medical treatment and the ways in which trans people relate to their physical bodies, because it’s not relevant, it’s none of their damn business, and we don’t need to have cis people any more fixated on trans people’s bodies and medical decisions than they already are.
France Now Recognizes a “Neutral Gender”—but It’s Just As Narrow As the First Two
Don’t get too excited when you read about legal “third genders” - they are usually based on rigid biological determinism to dictate “gender.” Really appreciate this article for pointing out these contradictions.
It’s Time For People to Stop Using the Social Construct of “Biological Sex” to Defend Their Transmisogyny
“If sex isn’t the All Mighty Binary Universal Constant that some people think it is, why do they place so much importance on it? The easy answer is that it gives them an excuse to misgender and exclude trans people, and specifically trans women. They can pretend they’re just standing up for science, but they’re really just saying that trans women aren’t fully women and that trans men aren’t fully men. People need to start learning about what sex really is and what social constructs really are. People need to stop misusing biology and spreading ignorance and misunderstanding.”
white nb people have a really fucked up definition of what binarism is lol
binarism is a feature of colonialism and western imperialism in which poc (namely black people) are forced to conform with the white gender binary system
its not the invisibility of nonbinary people in society, thats just called nonbinary erasure (like refusing to use gender neutral pronouns, say stuff like “both genders” etc)
before colonialism came in and enslaved poc, they were already expressing their genders in ways that european white people didnt understand and forced them to identify as either man or woman and entirely erased the genders specific to those cultures, wiping out a large part of individualism and expression in poc societies
More people need to know this
I’d also like to add that there’s a lot of misconception that non-binary people experience forms of oppression specific to them - which, other than erasure, they don’t.
The oppression non-binary people face is the same transphobia and cissexism other trans people face. Any intra-community hostility from other trans people that non-binary people sometimes falsely label as “binarism” is really just a form of horizontal aggression that does not consitute oppression, since “binary trans people” do not hold any institutional power over non-binary people, and they are both oppressed on the same axis.
It is extremely erroneous to assert that people of “binary genders” (both male and female, cis and trans) form any sort of cohesive social class or have any similarities in access to privilege, and that misconception is something that the non-binary community really needs to address and move away from in order to start having any meaningful discourse about where we fit into various privilege and oppression dynamics.
-Lane
@cis ppl who ask trans ppl things like “are you afab or amab” “are you transfeminine or transmasculine” “are you ftm or mtf”
the fact that you picked up on some trans lingo doesn’t change what you’re doing. you’re the same as any other asshole yelling “BUT ARE YOU REALLY A BOY OR A GIRL” “TELL ME ABOUT YOUR GENITALS”
