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.
