Alright, so the term “Lesbian[Gay/Bi] Until Graduation” exists. It seems a bit busted and biphobic, but I can see how it could be problematic.
Now, a lot of colleges are safe bubbles. You can “experiment” without serious risk of any problems compared to the “real world”. You’re unlikely to be fired or expelled at most schools, you can generally get a circle of friends who’re accepting, and you’re generally far enough from your parents that if there are familial risks there isn’t much danger. The real world generally isn’t so forgiving unless you live somewhere that’s cLG(b) accepting, and not everyone can. There are still camps for all-too-often-married cis guys to try and get rid of their homosexual desires, and they aren’t always bi, this is how strong homophobia and biphobia in the world still is. It’s not really surprising that people would take advantage of a safe bubble then revert back to presenting as straight afterwards.
This isn’t an inherently bad thing, it’s good that people have a safe space to be able to explore other parts of themselves even if they ultimately decide either that isn’t who they are or that it isn’t worth the risk to be out. But I can see how it’s hurtful to people who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual (and generally non-het). For the ones who were used as an “experiment”, if a proper relationship happened, they may feel that their feelings were being toyed with. It also can make the community as a whole look “less valid”, because it’s turning their sexualities into fads. It’s difficult.
Let me make something clear, though: I do not consider this to be the same as a bisexual person meeting someone of the opposite sex after college and getting married while still identifying as bi. Sometimes the term has been applied to people who do this, and I think that’s busted.
Now… trans until graduation. I found a post about it and it seems like it’s far more a touchy issue. Here’s the more relevant bit:
Being transgender has become a fad at Smith College. Yeah, I said it, a fucking fad. Women, especially lesbian women, have come to eroticize and fetishize the trans men in this community or really anyone who expresses masculine traits. I’ve had friends who have had strangers come up to them and ask if they were transitioning simply because they display traits that are not traditionally feminine. When they say they are not, the stranger will respond, “Well, you’d be hotter if you were.” What? Every week I hear of someone else who has changed their name, who’s taking T. Whatever, I guess, you’re choice. But here’s the question no one is asking, after college, will this still be your choice? Some may say, so what if it isn’t? And here’s my response: by co-opting trans identity and shucking it off when it’s no longer convenient or no longer useful, it trivializes the real struggles that transgendered and genderqueer folks have to go through because gender-variant folks can’t do that. They’re playing with oppression, an oppression that they do not have to experience and may not actually fully understand. For so many people, it’s a deeply personal and intensely difficult struggle. Also, it’s a highly politicized identity, which these kids are only playing with, without having to experience the real oppression or the real personal and political struggle.
I still don’t like the word gender-variant and this person is doing nothing to fix that, can’t believe a trans person would actually say “Isn’t transitioning just reinforcing the gender binary?”. That said, I think I know someone who was Trans Until Graduation. I don’t know if she identifies as such, but it seems to fit the bill. Now, I know trans people who don’t medically transition at all are out there, and they can’t always stay out after college, I won’t try to describe the differences as if they’re all-encompassing, but there are differences between that and this. Again, not what I’m talking about. This is much more related to cis appropriation of genderqueer identities.
This whole thing is complicated, obviously. Being too wary of cis appropriators could end up as a dangerous witchhunt of who’s “trans enough”, which we have enough problems with already. There’s no decent way to tell someone to stop identifying as they do, and it’s a slippery slope. But cis people appropriating our identities has its problems. It can end up with skewed ideas about trans people, make people who are trans doubt themselves more than they already do, make others more suspicious of people who only come out as trans after meeting trans people (even though this makes perfect sense) which limits the amount of support the people just coming out get, egg on the trans fetishists who can be very dangerous to our community, etc.
It can end up with skewed ideas about trans people, make people who are trans doubt themselves more than they already do, make others more suspicious of people who only come out as trans after meeting trans people (even though this makes perfect sense) which limits the amount of support the people just coming out get
I had/have this problem. I occasionally feel “not trans enough”, and feel ashamed of not having even been interested in trans issues until I realized I am genderqueer (cissexual privilege, I realize). It does make perfect sense that I wouldn’t realize a nonbinary gender was even an option until I met others of nonbinary gender, but still the little voice inside says “see, nobody will believe you weren’t just joining the bandwagon, if it were real, you’d have been loud and proud your entire life”. Plus, then I feel I have to prove I know exactly what defines “man” and “woman”, so that I can then define exactly what makes me neither. And if I can’t do that to their satisfaction, I’m wrong for being GQ, since “plenty of women act masculine and are still women” (and then they point out their wife/sister/old college roommate’s ex-girlfriend/etc. to prove their point).
I can’t tell who is appropriating other genders simply by looking at them, and I’m not interested in being the Trans Police. But the negative effects are real, and I do hope we can work this issue out responsibly and respectfully as a community.
I can’t tell who is appropriating other genders simply by looking at them, and I’m not interested in being the Trans Police. But the negative effects are real, and I do hope we can work this issue out responsibly and respectfully as a community.
The only way I can think of is to be aware of it, let cis people know it’s not okay to do this, and then try to accept everyone even with this knowledge. We can’t be the trans police, unless you really know someone’s appropriating, the risks of being wrong and accusing a person are huge and horrible.
“Well, you’d be hotter if you were.”
EWW. How can the author of that post witness that kind of fetishization and then go on to condemn certain self-identified trans* people. It sounds more like objectifying trans* men is the actual fad that ze’s observing, but of course it gets blamed on the trans* folks, not the openly cisgender people. D:
I also really appreciated your analysis of the “safe space” college phenomenon.
Yeah, the victim-blaming in that post is awesome. I’m currently in the same area as the author and am sorely tempted to track em down and give em a peace of my mind…
How do so many genderqueer people (or people otherwise outside the binary) manage to be that cissexist? (not just this person. I’ve seen genderqueer TERFs. As in more than one) I seriously don’t get it.
They’re playing with oppression, an oppression that they do not have to experience and may not actually fully understand
I wasn’t aware that people who engage in cissexist harassment can tell cis people who are just experimenting from real trans people.
TERFs?
Ugh, binary trans people can do it as well. Everyone can. It’s despicable how far people will go to force their own lifestyle on others. And I don’t mean the way cishets think we are, we’re forcing it on ourselves to our own detriment. It’s also great how this person knows for sure whether or not each individual who comes out as trans and starts testosterone (so they must’ve come out to their parents & family & old friends, or are separated from them) experiences oppression. There are cis people who do this, though, probably not very many, and as I said before we should treat them as they identify and not try to figure out who is doing this. It’s a part of privilege, playing with other oppressions- like white people in the US wearing “traditional garb” from other areas when people actually from those areas open themselves up to crap when they do because they aren’t “acting american”.
TERFs is trans-excluding “radical” feminists.
I’m not sure that experimenting with a trans identity is equivalent to, say, cultural appropriation. A cis person experimenting with transition doesn’t go through a whole lot different from a trans person doing the same thing, except that the cis person can back out from it.
Having a bunch of cis people trying to access trans-related body modification treatments for a period of time and then drop them might cause problems, in that if the number of trans* people that the average cis person knows is drowned out by the number of experimenters then that will change their image of us, and this might also cause us trouble with the gatekeepers (who see minimizing the number of accidentally-transitioned cis people as a greater priority than getting transition treatments to people who need it)
I wouldn’t want people to permanently modify their body as an experiment and then realize that that was the wrong path, but if someone wants to risk that, that’s their business.
Basically, except that switching one’s hormones over or getting these surgeries is a hugely political act, I don’t see any problem with someone who knows what they’re getting into doing any of it while experimenting to figure out their identity. And the reason it’s a political act is pretty much entirely cissexist stigma, so take that away and cis people experimenting with a trans* identity briefly, or for a few years, doesn’t harm anyone unless they do something stupid that leaves them with permanent dissonance (which is nobody else’s job to police aside from keeping them informed). As long as they aren’t using their transition to hurt others or propagate cissexism, experimentation is fine.
I don’t think enough people are out as trans* (or transitioned and stealth) yet; getting people who aren’t cis to realize that they don’t have to pretend to be is a good thing, and I don’t blame cis people who experiment with a trans* identity for other people’s reactions to them.
Not labeling one’s experiments as experiments might be bad, though. If a cis woman experimenting with identifying as a trans man doesn’t distinguish herself from a trans man who is certain of his identity and not going back, and, say, ends up being the stand-out visible trans person somewhere, her later detransition does bad things for trans visibility.
Maybe I’m overreacting to seeing cissexists call transition “trendy” too many times, but I’m more worried about getting people out than I am about protecting binary trans identities from appropriation. Non-binary identities are different, of course, since they are way more subject to dilution than binary identities
I guess what we need is a more acceptance of uncertainty and experimentation in identity, both in our community and in the wider culture.
My biggest thing is more for cis people to be aware of why they shouldn’t do this than to say that trans people should change anything we’ve been doing. (not that I expect that many cis people to listen) Although I do hate it when people call transition “trendy”.
I wouldn’t want people to permanently modify their body as an experiment and then realize that that was the wrong path, but if someone wants to risk that, that’s their business.
This. People should be allowed to. People are allowed to get tattoos and various modification surgeries that they may regret. Most of the arguments against these are very offensive, such as telling cafab people (even cis ones) that they can’t get a hysterectomy because “You might want to have a child later”. It’s based on the idea that all cafab people must want to have children at some point.
I was the victim of a gatekeeper (my therapist) over thirty years ago, which pushed me back into the closet for three decades and almost resulted in my suicide. Naturally, I’ve had a mistrust, even disdain, for gatekeepers ever since then, although my present therapist’s attitude is anything but that of a gatekeeper, thank God. This post and some of the responses (and by the way, I very much appreciate the OP and some responses for pointing out the danger of misgendering someone suspected of being a fetishist) have clearly shown why gatekeepers are a necessary evil when it comes to SRS.
My concern is two fold. Firstly, I’m concerned for the cis people (or any non-cis people who can’t yet accept their non-binary identity) who end up convincing themselves they really are transsexual, and then regret having the surgery. I hope that this phenonema doesn’t increase in frequency for the sake of those who make such a mistake. I can empathize with their self made plight, because (post surgery) they end up with a similar gender/body incongruece to what I have suffered with all my life – and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, not even cissexist bigots.
Secondly, it is precisely these (apparently confused) individuals who give more ammunition to transphobics, especially those in gatekeeper positions to clamp down even harder on who is allowed to transition via SRS and who is subjugated to permanent gender dysphoria. I understand that attemps to invalidate genderqueer people is a terrible problem that needs to be fought, and I’m not trying to make any comparitive assumptions about who suffers more, pre-op transsexuals or genderqueers. I’m just trying to point out that most transsexual suicides are committed because of either not being allowed to access SRS or having no finacial means to access it, and such irresponsible behavior by cis-trendists only makes matters worse for those of us who do have a less fluid gender identity and are gender incongruent.
Having said that, I still agree with the OP and some of the responders that there is no safe way to actually out the trans-trendies and trans-fetishists without possibly causing immeasurable damage to transsexuals who are going trough the questioning phaze and can be easily mistaken for someone on a trendy lark, etc. We must err on the side of caution, if we err at all, and realize that the damage we might cause in trying to protect our community may be irreperable to some of the individuals within our community who have yet to feel confident in pursuing gender congruence. And despite what some (hopefully a minority) genderqueers believe, or at least profess to believe, seeking SRS as a politicol statement or to try to reinforce gender as a binary is rarely or ever a transsexual’s motive. Virtually all of us seek gender congruence because incongruence is killing us a little bit more every day we have to put up with it. This doesn’t discount or minimize the reality that gender is fluid and diverse to an extent that the binary cis people cling to is a rediculously reductive construct. What it says is that upon the vast gender arena we identify most strongly within a narrow parameter that is inconsistent with our sexual anatomy and we need to correct it. It doesn’t mean we are “mutilating” our bodies in order to reinforce the binary delusion, and I wish that trans-phobics in both the cis and genderqueer camp would get a clue already. I identify as being far more feminine than I do as masculine, and my gender identity is fluid to a fairly limited extent so that presenting as masculine is painful , personally demeaning, and quite invalidating to me. That doesn’t mean I’m all for pretending the binary is right or real. That doesn’t mean I’m invalidating or disrespecting a greater fluidity experienced by any genderqueer person. It means I also have a right to who I am, even if that means I’m different than you.
Long live diversity in all of its beautiful forms!
Love always,
Christy
Ps Sorry if my little diatribe wasn’t completely on track, I didn’t mean to derail this conversation. My passions just got the better of me.
Like The Nerd, I have (am having) trans enough issues, and often (when it’s horribly strong) if I’m like the people in the post. I think what they are doing is wrong, expecially for people like me, who didn’t know, or didn’t get, or only figured out later on that there was more than the gender/sex that was pushed on you from birth. It’s already hard enough to feel not “trans enough” compared to the people who have known for what seems like forever.