Intersections

A person who is both intersex and trans has written about the intersection and problems between the intersex and trans groups . The post listed why the person feels the groups could be able to work together, as well as the complaints both sides have about the other. The intersex complaints was a long explanation of how trans people dismiss the pain and problems intersex people face, fetishize them, appropriate intersex conditions, etc. About “Trans Complaints”, this is what was said:

More Cisfail

For some reason, some idiot keeps bringing up trans issues on the Penny & Aggie forums. (I don’t really advise reading it. Also, on the latest page, trigger warning: suicide, psychopathy, etc) some posts:

Our terms are NOT unreasonable

I don’t think we were “accidentally” screwed over anymore. Not after my more recent interactions with this person who seems to think trans people can’t do anything for themselves. And I now know a new reason for why this whole thing upset me.

When we were planning it- we were trans people in charge of how trans people educated other people. We had a set plan of how to do it, control over where it was done, and control over who was invited. When the cis people took over- they took charge of how we educate people. They controlled what we were and weren’t allowed to do, put it in a space where cis people were in control, and took over who was invited.

If you do want to educate people, you are allowed to set limits and boundaries. You are allowed to say that you won’t talk about certain issues, or that you will only talk about them on your terms. You are allowed to decide which people you will talk to about which issues. You are allowed to change these boundaries if you become uncomfortable educating people you were previously willing to educate.

That’s from my trans 101 for trans people, and the cis people completely stripped us of this. This is why this upset me so much. They removed from us the right to set our limits and boundaries and to control who and how we educated people. They changed this from trans people educating on their own terms to trans people being forced to educate people on cis peoples’ terms.

And they are not keen on letting this go, seeing as how the cisLeader of the cisCenter has given us permission to continue doing this “through the [cisCenter] and the [cissupremacist people who want to earn liberal brownie points group]“. Not “you can do this on your own terms the way you intended to do this in the first place before us cis people took over” but “you can do this- on our terms“.

Thanks a lot for that.

Not Your Mom’s Trans 101

Not Your Mom’s Trans 101.  Introduction below:

There is a huge problem with the way that people are taught about gender in this society. Children are indoctrinated early to believe that there are two sexes, corresponding with two genders, which are both immutable and non-voluntary and completely beyond our control. This worldview is called the gender binary, and it has no room in it for us.

Trying to teach a new perspective to the victims of this extremely aggressive brainwashing can be daunting. In fact, the task can seem downright impossible. The temptation, therefore, is to “dumb things down” for the benefit of a cisgender audience. This situation has given rise to a set of oversimplifications collectively known as “Trans 101.” These rather absurd tropes, such as “blank trapped in a blank’s body” cause confusion among even well-meaning cis folks, feed internalized transphobia among us trans people, and  provide endless straw-man fodder for transphobic ‘radical feminists,’ entitled cisgender academics, and other bigots.

Read this. It is awesome, and I love the way that Asher words things. One thing that I don’t like about how trans 101 works is that it dumbs it down, which means two things. 1. Trans people are too complicated to be explained without putting us in cis-acceptable (aka: transphobic) terminology 2. cis people are too stupid to understand trans people.

Obviously, this being a cis privileged world, the first is what’s believed. But I really don’t buy into the second one. Cis people are perfectly capable of understanding trans stuff- they just choose not to.

Also, “dumbing it down” is really code for “allowing trans experiences to be defined and controlled by cis people”. It isn’t dumbed down the way trans people feel is appropriate- it’s catered to the way that cis people demand that the information be presented to them, and way too many refuse to accept it any other way.

Non-Binary

I don’t really like the term non-binary. It’s defined by what it isn’t, and doesn’t make it clear that it’s talking about gender (how many other binaries do we have in this screwed up world of ours?). Defining it by what it isn’t bothers me, as if it’s normal to be in the binary. Most people don’t say “I have a binary gender”, they say “I’m a man” or “I’m a woman”. People with a non-binary gender can do the same, I can say “I’m neutrois”, but for people who either can’t or don’t want to label their gender easily, this can be a problem. It also is nice to have a term to talk about all people whose gender(s) doesn’t/don’t fully (or at all) fit into the binary when talking about such things.

I’m also not sure if it gives off the vibe that you can’t be partially but not completely in the binary- which isn’t true. There are plenty of people who are genderqueer or genderfluid men and/or women, as well as multigender people where at least one, but not all, of their genders is in the binary, and this can be defined by a wide range of things.

Now, yeah, there’s genderqueer- but it doesn’t mesh with me and I’ve seen other non-binary people say it doesn’t feel right either. Maybe it’s naive/over-simplistic, but I would like to have a word that can more or less encompass everyone who, when asked to define the entirety of their gender by checking either “M” or “F”, don’t feel quite right about it.

Safe

2 years ago I did a semester at university, before I started again here. I went into it very cocky, I’d gotten he’d a lot without realizing it was because people thought I was younger than I was. I thought I’d be able to pass without a problem. The first people I talked to there about being trans were people inc harge of housing, and they really didn’t care that I was trans beyond hoping that I’d work well with the  trans guy on campus who really wanted a roommate. It was kind of awkward, we got thrown into a room together and it was the first time I’d met another trans person in person and I started finding out and being disturbed by how much transphobia I’d really internalized. The person in charge of my residence hall was also very good. I definitely felt like there were people there that I could go to if I had problems. I also had friends who accepted me and who I could talk about stuff with.

It wasn’t perfect, it was painful the horrible looks I’d get from other people when I told them I wasn’t a girl. Their LGBT group didn’t seem to have much awareness of the T and something happened between me and a member to make me not want to go back*, but I didn’t have serious problems with it. I felt safer. I felt safe enough to dress in drag for Halloween. There were people I could hang out with and feel respected and not have to worry about anything.

And I have that to compare my current school to. My current school where there is no one I really feel comfortable or safe around and a host of people who I feel are not only dangerous but would likely undermine me if I ever faced problems. I’ve actually started getting severe anxiety when using the bathroom because I really am afraid that someone might hurt me here, and I’m more afraid that no one will care if they do.

*long damn story that I still don’t know quite what happened…

Social Dysphoria

For anyone who doesn’t know- there are 2 basic types of dysphoria that I know of (in terms of trans people). Social and Bodily. I had, and sometimes still have, pretty awful bodily dysphoria for my chest. Bad enough that I didn’t notice the social. Now that the chest is gone, I’m keenly aware of the social dysphoria.

I hate being seen as a girl, I’m sick of it. I’m sick of the pathetic excuses people give me for why it’s my fault they thought I was a girl. I’m sick of being afraid when I use the men’s room and hating myself when I use the women’s. I really don’t enjoy having to come out to get my pronouns even close to right (or at least not dead wrong). I don’t enjoy wondering if, because I had to come out to try and get people to stop thinking of me as a girl, they really still think of me as one and are just humoring me. I don’t enjoy being called a “lady” or “miss” by complete strangers- people laugh at me when I say “Hey– person with the [notable article of clothing/object/whatever]“, but that’s something I wouldn’t care about being called.

Trans 101

1. You are a person. You are worthy of respect. You deserve to be treated with the same dignity as anyone else. There is nothing inherently wrong with your gender. You are not broken, you are not disgusting, you do not deserve to be hurt.
2. You’ve been brought up and live in a world that’s designed to erase and demonize your existence, you’ve probably internalized a lot of that- and that’s not your fault. But it can be hard to deal with. But you aren’t alone in dealing with it. And sometimes you have to buy into it to be able to handle it (trigger warning: transphobic violence). And that’s okay.
3. Your gender is no more or less than anyone else’s. Your history doesn’t make you “not really” or “less” your gender than someone with a cis history, it just makes you a person of your gender with a different history.
4. You do not deserve to be held to higher standards than cis people. You do not have to “prove” your gender by forcing yourself into societal roles that may not fit. You are not “failing” anyone by fitting into societal roles that are comfortable. It is not your job to break down the binary/patriarchy/or anything else. If you want to, go for it, but you have no obligation to do anything for cis people just because you are trans.
5. Being yourself does not hurt trans rights (so long as you aren’t trying to do so while stopping others from being who they are) and is not a reason why people don’t have to treat you with respect. There is nothing wrong with being a feminine man or masculine woman, or being a person who’s comfortable in their body, or being a person who doesn’t transition all the way, or being out about having a non-binary or genderqueer gender. You have not “failed” anyone by doing this, you are not “less” of your gender than someone else. Being who you are is not a valid argument for why people can’t treat you as who you truly are.
6. No one else has the right to say your body needs to be changed. It only does if you need to change it. Or if you want to change it, that’s valid, too. Your body does not make you “less” your gender. It doesn’t make you “not really” your gender. It doesn’t mean you’re trapped in someone else’s body. You do not have to fix your body to “become” your gender- you already are your gender. All you need to do is what you need to do to be comfortable in your body. And if that includes reclaiming your right to label your own body, you are allowed to do that.
7. You have just as much of a right to privacy as anyone else. You do not need to tell anyone about your body, your medical history, or anything else. Whether or not your body needs to be changed for you to be comfortable, you do not have to change it to deserve to be treated as who you are. You do not owe anyone intimate details about your personal life before you can be treated as who you are.
8. You have no obligation to educate anyone. This includes trans people, but is most important with cis people. You are not a walking encyclopedia of transgender and/or transsexual information, you are a person. You do not have to answer every question any cis person comes up with, you do not have to represent trans people as a whole, (see 7) you do not have to bare the most personal and vulnerable parts of your soul to other people on demand.
9. Not educating people does not “hurt” trans rights. NEVER let anyone try to guilt you into educating people or doing something you don’t want to do by insisting that doing otherwise will “destroy trans rights/acceptance/whatever”. Trying to force trans people to become walking information desks or to put themselves in dangerous situations regardless of whether or not you’re even up for dealing with this destroys trans rights and shows a great deal of intolerance. Asserting that you don’t have to tell anyone anything you don’t want to? That really doesn’t.
10. If you do want to educate people, you are allowed to set limits and boundaries. You are allowed to say that you won’t talk about certain issues, or that you will only talk about them on your terms. You are allowed to decide which people you will talk to about which issues. You are allowed to change these boundaries if you become uncomfortable educating people you were previously willing to educate. You are not obligated to educate anyone just because you educated someone else.
11. You deserve to take care of yourself- whatever that means. You deserve to be comfortable and safe. You deserve not to be in dangerous situations. If you can’t handle something alone, you deserve to ask for- and get- help or, if you can, take a break from it until you can handle it. Or just stop doing it all together, that’s okay. Taking care of yourself does not make you weak, it does not make you an attention-grabber or overdramatic, it does not make you “less” your gender, it does not mean you betray other trans people by not being a full-time (or even part-time) activist. You’re human, you have limits, and that’s okay.
12. You deserve to have your boundaries respected. Any boundaries- how and where people can touch you, what information you give to who and when, what places you feel comfortable going or who you feel comfortable going with, what people can tell others about you.
13. You deserve to have the words you are and aren’t comfortable being referred to as respected. You deserve to have the proper pronouns used (and, if there are times when it’s unsafe for that to happen, you deserve to have your safety maintained by those around you), you deserve to be called the proper name, you deserve to have the words you want used to describe your body used, you deserve not to be called by any label, pronoun, word, or name that you don’t want to be called.
14. If you’re asking for something that you need to feel respected, comfortable, and safe- you are not asking for too much. Your identity is not “too complicated”. Your needs are not less important than anyone elses’.
15. You are a person. You are worthy of respect. You deserve to be treated with the same dignity as anyone else. There is nothing inherently wrong with your gender. You are not broken, you are not disgusting, you do not deserve to be hurt.

Politics

During the fiasco that was trying to get top surgery, the therapist who finally gave me the letter commented about my “politics”. By this I assume she meant my feelings on the importance of people being able to self-identify and how wanting or not wanting to demonize people for not wanting to transition.

The other day, during the conversation that “went well” (god, how bad have things gotten if I thought that went WELL?!) the cis leader of the cisCenter made a comment about call-outs, not knowing if I felt they were important due to my “politics or survival”.

I can’t help but feel like both times they were used- they were used dismissively. My opinion isn’t really valid, it’s just my “politics”. This is especially disturbing when you think that the term was used to dismiss the idea that people should have a right to self-identify and should only do what THEY need to do to be happy in THEIR bodies as well as dismissing the importance of being able to call out offensive and harmful supremacist behavior/terminology/etc. How screwed up is it when those are things that cis people are allowed to dismiss?

Privilege

I am white, able bodied enough (certainly nothing visible), neurotypical enough (I think), well-enough off, with access to education. I have privilege. All the things I don’t have privilege for can be hidden- I don’t have to bring up being asexual or trans if I don’t want to (although I prefer to) and I’m pretty damn bad at being out about this, no matter how vocal I am online.

I’m not good at coming out. It makes me nervous. This fiasco that this blog has documented is a bit of why, because often times cis people think it’s okay to flaunt their privilege at us in ways they don’t when they think we’re cis. There’s also the thing that when someone messes up my pronouns now, it’s because they don’t know. When someone messes up my pronouns after I come out, they’re either purposefully being hurtful or don’t care enough to get it right. I don’t really want to know who of the people I know are jerks like that.

It’s hard to give up privilege. I don’t even have the option of going stealth after transition- how? Even if I somehow manage to get the government to acknowledge a third legal gender, that still outs me. Even if I somehow manage to be fully androgynous to everyone I meet, people won’t look at me and think “neutrois”, they think “freak”. I get to choose between two closets.

I bring this up because I’m still not really sold one way or another on T, and this is part of why. If T makes me look like a cis guy, I’ll still legally be an “F” on some of my papers. I have no interest in getting the surgery that would let me change my birthcertificate for a good long while because, guess what, people who aren’t women can want to have kids with their genetics, too. (and I really doubt that a trans couple would be allowed to adopt, especially since we can’t bring ourselves to coercively assign a gender to a child and raise it as that. I don’t fucking care what cissupremacist people say- small children internalize this shit).

And… then what? Would I be able to get a job with mismatched documents? Will we have problems with immigration if the law decides not to acknowledge our marriage as valid anymore? I don’t even know if I’d be more comfortable being seen as male.