I’ve had a lot of thoughts about liberal LGBT culture and I wanna put it out there. I’ve slowly become more critical as a trans woman with how I view gender, and I’m an anarchist so my natural tendency is for a “let a thousand blossoms bloom” with gender. The more I look I realize that we can’t be integrated as we are into cis society, and if we are in any way its only as caricature. Transness has been softened so much because that is the only form of it that corporations and states can take advantage of - the smooth, frictionless queer. It’s been a concerted propaganda project and it’s really infested the minds of LGBT people.
In order to be trans to me, you don’t have to take hormones or act in a circumscribed way, but you do have to commit. Really consider HRT and surgery for if they’re right for you (and if it is DO IT), do the mental work of deconstructing your toxic inheritance of gender, give up the privilege of passing as your natal sex/never use it willingly if you can’t help having it, socially transition and stand up for yourself if you arent gonna get killed for it. If you’re a trans woman, man, NB, just transgender and not transsexual as well, whatever, I should be able to recognize it if I get to know you. Being trans requires process, it requires struggle by necessity.
What I’ve seen more and more is people (mostly they/he/anyfabs) either put on transness as an aesthetic/oppression olympics point, or they are dysphoric but are too attached to their privilege in the class of womanhood (and their ability to weaponize it) to sacrifice it. I’d love to say that this is a young person thing that waxes and wanes as generations age but it’s pretty prominent and has real social and material consequences. Afab only housing, I’ve had a friend groomed at 19 by a 40yo theyfab who was “found family”, my badly disabled housemate let her bff hefab live off her dime at a 20k cost (insurance settlement) only for her to dip out halfway through a lease to go live with her cis shithead bf and detrans. These aren’t people I ought to be in community with, they have no relation to my experience because they have not committed, and they make a mockery of me by wearing what I am and acting like they are the same as me (just like sissies and cds no less, albiet from a social power pov over a sexual one).
This is a consequence of the “anyone can be anything” mentality, which comes more from cowardice and a desire to co-opt and muddy the waters. When modes of being aren’t concrete, based in real social and material phenomenon, it’s really a recipe for disaster with social exclusion, intra-community sexual assault, and the rolling back of the concrete things that real trans people can need, medically, socially, etc. It makes everything upside-down, where we become allergic to tiny slights and microaggressions while letting macroagressions slide. There’s a real fear to believe in anything at all, to have positive prescriptions that apply to other people, and it’s silly. And of course, anyone can be anything except a REAL woman if you’re a trans girl
Ultimately, this is all a symptom of the contradiction between the radical nature of queerness and its innate attack on sex/sexuality and the capitalo-patriarcho-state-whatever system. Rape culture benefits the powers that be, they’re happy when we are tearing eachother apart and not developing a real social conscious as a community.
I’m a proud transsexual dyke, and although I wouldn’t consider myself as transfeminist only bc I see myself as an anarchist first, but it is an important critique. I want to be free, I want my brothers and sisters to be free, and somehow we will do it. Sleep tight <3
I’ve saved this too. This is really good… even though I do feel weird about the trans but not transsexual part of the post… I still think a lot of the stuff mentioned within it is really important.
hot take, but I don’t really give a shit either. it’s abitrary and self-centered (at least, in my view) to hate these people. Who cares? I need to mind my damn Ps and Qs anyhow. Like our darling OP said, it’s committing that counts. Don’t go running back to your privileges, and you’re alright in my book.
Honeslty that’s a really good point… I just fear that the “trans but not transsexual” crowd could be the very people who make it all more difficult for us by muddying the water because that’s kinda what has happened… but idk… you’re rigth
90% of the time they are those people, it’s almost a “every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square” situation. I do think that you can even be a transsexual and still not be transgender and do all the bad stuff theyfabs/mabs do, it’s just vanishingly rare or short lived. Transsexual is a modifier of transgender (99% of the time), and people can still have social dysphoria even if they don’t have any physically (or not enough dysphoria to weigh over the cons of hrt). I’ve met and dated NB people with whom it was apparent that they were nonbinary even without hrt, and I still respect them
Btw what are Ps and Qs?
An English idiom about minding your manners.
Oh okay… you’re sooooo smart 💖
No lesser or greater than anyone else, my friend. ( ◜‿◝ )♡
Still cool tho 🙂👉👉
> Don’t go running back to your privileges, and you’re alright in my book.
In all honesty, do you think boymoding is immoral then?
There’s boymoders and then there’s reppers, one is committing but is just ashamed about it 🤓
That’s not what I mean. Trans woman don’t WANT to boymode. they don’t WANT the privilege. They certainly don’t hold onto it as a crutch outside of survival situations. They don’t (if they’re moral) use it as a bludgeon as they see fit. It doesn’t get much more committed than this.
Let’s say I become a passoid and still continue boymoding because it nets me male privilege, does it become immoral then?
I think being a complete passoid and boymoding are mutually exclusive if we are talking abt privileges, even if you had M on your ID and did your best to correct pronouns and have a masculine name your body speaks for you and people would treat you as a woman
I mean, I can’t really imagine any trans woman doing that… but like… I suppose it’s hard to tell from a hypothetical. Probably? Purposely acting and presenting in a way to exert your privileges as a man without any good intentions whatsoever is totally cringe.
I don’t think I’d have bad intentions. I just don’t see how anybody benefits from me being discriminated like cis women are. Maybe I’m just mixing up “male privilege” and “avoiding discrimination”.
why would you want to be a man solely for the patriarchal privilege? what power would you be looking for? this is assuming you’re actually passing like a man and such. I think there may be a communication error here.
I think people just listen more to men while they ignore women. Men are respected more by default for no reason. I want my voice to be heard and if I have to use my yucky man voice to achieve that I’ll do it.
With androgynous clothes and male voice I guess I could still sell myself as a man post FFS (if I ever get it).