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