“Marriage Equality is Not a Transgender Issue” – HRC’s repeated failure and why I hate that their symbol is becoming the symbol for marriage equality

HRC has a long history of contension with the transgender community. Because of this, it should come as no surprise that at what is, to date, probably the most important development for the fight for marriage equality, that contension once again arose.

At the Supreme Court hearings, where many gay rights supporters had gathered, a transgender pride flag was placed near the podium. HRC reps asked that the transgender flag be removed, claiming that “marriage equality is not a transgender issue”. HRC is claiming that this did not happen and it is not their policy, however people who were actually there say otherwise. (1, 2) One person even claims that the HRC reps continued harassing the person over this flag.

Anyone who thinks that marriage equality doesn’t effect transgender people has NOT been paying attention. Courts repeatedly rule that heterosexual marriages between a transgender and cisgender person are not legally valid, because the transgender person is “really” their birth sex. I’ve seen it claimed that in same-sex marriages that take place before the transgender partner transitions (by which I mean a trans woman marrying a cis woman, or trans man marrying a cis man) will still be valid after the partner’s transition- however I have not seen anything that makes it clear that they would not face problems. Also, when my financial aid department believed that I had legally changed my sex, I was told that I had to apply for financial aid as “single” as the federal government would not acknowledge my marriage- which suggests that legal transition does, in fact, impact your marital status.

The most heartwrenching thing about the marriage situation for transgender people is that these cases almost always come up only when the cisgender spouse dies and their family wants to deny the transgender person what any widow/er has a right to. Instead of being allowed to mourn the death of their loved ones in peace, transgender people are thrown into the public spotlight and have their entire lives and relationship torn apart by bigots. This has happened as recently as 2010 to Nikki Araguz, the appeal to that case is still ongoing. The exact argument against her is that she is “really” a man, and since same-sex marriage is not legal in Texas, their marriage is invalid.

But “marriage equality is not a transgender issue”.

I’m sure that some people would justify this by insisting that all of our problems will go away once same-sex marriage is legal, so transgender people should shut up, sit down, and stop trying to have our problems acknowledged. This is not an acceptable solution, though. Marriage law effects transgender people in ways that it does not and will never effect cis queers, and this needs to be acknowledged.

Marriage equality IS a transgender issue because it is an issue that effects transgender people.

Meanwhile, the HRC symbol is being spread far and wide across the internet as THE symbol for marriage equality. “Equality”? This is an organization that has repeatedly actively excluded transgender people, cutting us out of bills that would offer us protection from discrimination and acknowledge hate crimes against us. But their symbol stands for “equality”. That’s a laugh.

Why I don’t like coming out as trans

Anyone who’s been following this blog for a long time (and, well, I’m really impressed if you’re still around as it’s kind of dead) might know that I have/had horrible social dysphoria. I say have/had because it’s starting to chill down for the most part, but it’s still there with a vengeance in the wrong situations.

I don’t mind so much, now, getting misgendered by strangers, in part because I’ve gotten better at avoiding situations where people will gender me too much. It’s not always possible, but limiting it helps.. I’ve accepted that I do not pass as male at all, that I really don’t want to take testosterone so likely never will, and I’ve come to accept that being misgendered by people who don’t know better isn’t commentary about me. It isn’t saying a word about my body or genitals, they have no way of knowing about that, or that I fit XYZ gender roles, or anything else. I’m still not at the point where I’m comfortable dressing as feminine as I’d like to, I still feel pressure not to “justify” their misgendering, but I’m at least a bit better at being misgendered.

Our society really doesn’t allow strangers to do anything else, especially not employees who could get in trouble at work by doing something subversive like asking someone’s pronouns. Most people will get offended by that question, and that’s cissexist but it’s the case. Also, asking is so complicated even for trans people. A person who isn’t out trans being asked around family will have to either lie or risk being outted, or if the wrong person overhears the answer it may put the person in danger. Ideally we wouldn’t assume pronouns, but there are reasons that asking is difficult. So even people who may be trans friendly will be nervous asking about pronouns. Is that right? No, it sucks, I wish it would change, but I’m stuck with it and learning to deal with it.

(note that this doesn’t excuse society, trans people shouldn’t be put in danger by being outted and cis people shouldn’t get offended when someone doesn’t assume they’re definitely their gender, and it doesn’t mean that trans people who can’t deal with being misgendered should suddenly be fine with it. Each individual is in a different situation, there are so many reasons why being misgendered by strangers is deeply hurtful and even terrifying for many trans people, and that needs to be acknowledged and respected. It’s just why I, personally, can deal with it)

But after I tell someone, that changes. As soon as I come out to someone, and ask for pronouns, misgendering me becomes deeply hurtful. It hurts to reveal something very personal and risky about myself, to express a need to someone, and have that person ignore it. When they acknowledge they messed up and apologize, then it’s easier to deal with, but I’ve had a lot of people just not care, and the more that happens the less willing I am to tell people.

I’m able to give birth, that doesn’t make me a woman.

[this post may trigger dysphoria]

One thing that really bothers me about otherwise trans-friendly cis people is the way that they treat birth as a trans-free situation. I’ve seen cis people who try their best to point out in virtually every other situation that not all female perceived people ARE women, who try to use gender neutral language when talking about birth control and breast exams and other assumed “female-specific” situations, then speak about people who give birth by referring to them exclusively as women and mothers without a second thought. This isn’t malicious, I don’t think it’s intentional, but there seems to be a mental hang-up and it’s a big problem. Because trans people are people, so not all of us want to have children, but some of us do and with as much trouble as cis queer people have adopting- they aren’t going to be lining up to give us children any time soon. I now know too many people who are willing to treat a trans person with respect suddenly start saying “Well, are you still trans? Are you a woman now? How am I supposed to treat you?” after the trans person gets pregnant, when they had no problem accepting the person’s gender and treating them respectfully before.

Sometimes you will get cis people who will only acknowledge a trans person’s gender if they’ve “fully transitioned”, if they can believe that the trans person no longer has their original genitalia. But the same cis people who are willing to accept that there are trans people who may menstruate, indicating a potential for pregnancy, suddenly can’t accept their gender once that person becomes pregnant.

It feels like they, or maybe we as a society, are willing to accept that trans people exist, but aren’t willing to accept that we can be parents. It feels like they consider birth to be this sacred, womyn-born-womyn only space even when saying that they don’t support those spaces in any other situation.

Pregnancy and reproduction is virtually never discussed among or concerning transgender people. The closest I’ve seen is trans people objecting to sterilization being a requirement to legally transition, but no one really talks about the possibility of openly trans people or trans people who’ve started transitioning or trans people in any sense having children. No one talks about what resources pregnant trans people need, I’ve seen people object to the way that reproductive health information can alienate trans people but no one ever says “And, hey, we need obstetricians and midwives who are aware of trans issues, too!”. The only time I’ve seen the situation forced to come up, when Thomas Beatie got so (in)famous, and many trans peoplewere reacting horribly to it.

All of the talk about trans people as parents assumes that we’ve finished having children before we start transitioning or even coming out, that the child hasn’t grown up knowing their parents as their true genders and will have to adjust to the transition. There are no resources for “explaining that your dad gave birth to you”, only “your daddy wants to be a woman, your mommy wants to be a man”.

This needs to change, because there are trans people who’ve gotten pregnant after starting to transition, and there are trans people who are pregnant right now, and there will continue to be trans people who are pregnant and getting pregnant and who want to have children in the future. And these people need support, they need prenatal care from doctors who are understanding of their situation and who don’t trigger dysphoria, they need to know how and when they need to explain this to schools to make sure that their child doesn’t face undo discrimination, they need advice for explaining this to their kids and when to do it.

Instead? Our community treats pregnant trans people like the elephant in the room, the black sheep of our metaphorical family, a shameful secret to brush under the rug.

Gender isn’t that simple

It really bothers me when people object to the idea that people “just know” their gender. A lot of cis people try to turn gender into something diagnosable, getting annoyed at the idea that gender is just something you know, that a man is someone who knows himself to be a man.

It bothers me because I almost never see this argument for sexuality, or other similar things. Most people are willing to accept that a woman knows she’s a lesbian because she’s attracted to women, which is basically saying that she knows she’s attracted to women BECAUSE she’s attracted to women.

I realize that there’s the argument of physical response- but that’s not all there is to attraction. It’s possible to think “I would like to have sex with this person” without immediately getting physically aroused, or to be around someone you are attracted to without constantly being horny. Physical arousal is part of it, but it’s more than just that. You know you’re attracted to someone because you’re attracted to them, it’s tautological but true. It’s the same with other parts of identity.

There are indicators. Dysphoria or a lack thereof, what causes the dysphoria, what alleviates the dysphoria, etc. And, yes, it is based on social ideas of what a man and a woman is- however, it can be based on very broad ideas of what each gender is. Women who wear pants and play football and cut their hair short and do stereotypically male things are still women, men who wear skirts and bake and wear their hair long and do stereotypically female things are still men.

I see a lot of cis people who make this complaint seem to expect that the answer is “transgender men are just women who want to be more masculine, transgender women are just men who want to be more feminine”- which just isn’t true. Gender isn’t something that can be wrapped in a nice little bow because of the way we see it, it’s complicated primarily because we’ve set such narrow constraints on it and now that people are pushing against those constraints, our models and language for gender are just not enough.

I’ve seen some people from European Pagan religions talk about how much more spiritual trans people naturally are

(while hissing cissexist bullshit when a trans woman wants to join a “woman only” pagan event)

I haven’t seen it too much, but when I do it makes me uncomfortable. One time I’ve seen this was describing trans people as some “sacred third gender”. Now, I am not talking about indigenous cultures’ beliefs, because that’s very different. Most of the pagan religions I’m talking about are reconstructions based on our understandings of pre-Christian worship. Something that, you know, Christians generally went to great lengths to destroy & distort all evidence of. A lot of the writings are outsider’s versions of events.

Most of the US, Canada & West Europe aren’t incredibly trans friendly. Some are better than others, definitely, but they aren’t all super great harbors of trans awareness. So within a culture that already demonizes, objectifies, fetishizes, and otherwise dehumanizes trans people- seeing people treat us as some super special mystical ultra-intune-with-the-divine people is pretty disconcerting. Putting people who aren’t even seen as people onto a pedestal is not a step in the right direction. It’s just a fluffier version of saying “you aren’t a person”.

Swimsuit Season

There are a lot of people for whom swimsuit season sucks. Trans people are, more often than not, part of those people. Just for different reasons. Swimsuits, public showers, and swimming pools are a special brand of complicated for trans people.

For binary gender trans people- there are loads of concerns depending on how far/if you’re transitioning medically. A trans woman who is consistently read as a woman, has taken estrogen to grow breasts, but still has a penis- well, you can imagine how much fun crotch-tight swimsuits are for her. For a trans man who has breasts, he has to wear a binder and then likely wear a shirt that won’t show the binder over it. Also, finding a packer that works with water is fun-times.

And for non-binary people, it’s often just complicated.

I’m bringing this up as a person who’s gotten top surgery… but still has scars. They’re a lot better than they were, but one of my nipples looks really weird thanks to the #@$#@$@ surgeon. I’m right now staying with people who have a pool (being poor and staying with rich people is… really weird). My partner won’t be using it because of their own dysphoria. I want to… but. But I don’t know if it’d be okay for me to just wear my swim trunks. I don’t really want to have to wear a shirt in the pool, I’ve never liked that. It’s an awkward question to have to ask.

I give up.

I give up on trying to learn East Asian Languages at this school. I cannot take a class with that teacher, I’m not nearly neurotypical enough to, so Japanese is out. And the Chinese teacher…

Over the break before the semester started, I emailed him about pronouns. As I do with all my teachers. After an interaction that ended with him failing to get back to me, he decided that while he “understood my view” he wasn’t going to do it. In class, not only have the students used the incredibly triggering “she” for me, so did he. One girl picked up on all of it and corrected someone to “he” once. It should tell you the state of the world that that was probably the most heartfelt thank you anyone has gotten from me.

Mandarin, which is just spoken*, has a neutral 3rd-singular pronoun for all. “ta“, with a high flat tone. Should be ideal, right?

No. I know that the people using it think I’m a girl, so it’s now triggering. I’ve never been in favor of only one pronoun, but times like this remind me of why I want gender-implying pronouns. Or even if not gender implying, respect implying. And I don’t give a damn if cis people think they’re being respectful when they smash my identity under their heals and pour salt into wounds that may never heal- they aren’t. I don’t know how to fix this, I realized it one day and wanted to throw up.

I don’t have the spoons to try again with him. I’m finishing this semester, and that’s it.

The way the class is being taught, I should be able to teach myself well enough after it’s over. I have a few people I could get to know better who speak Mandarin Chinese way better than me. I would say natively, but I know one hasn’t been from birth and I don’t know when it counts as natively. Better than me, at least. I don’t know how well I can keep in contact if they go back to China over summer, but I’ll try.

This is upsetting for me. I would’ve liked to minor in one of them, I’m not very good at teaching myself (although at least with Japanese, my partner intends to become a Japanese teacher). This world doesn’t believe you can teach yourself. I’m going to try to get the school, specifically that teacher (apparently, for some reason, she’s allowed to make all decisions when people try to go to Japan), to let me go to a University that has a program specifically for people who have little to no knowledge of Japanese (and also teaches Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese) for my year abroad so my partner and I won’t be half a world away.

*the written Chinese language, if you can read it, can be read no matter what dialect is spoken by the writer. There are probably differences in writing style, but the words are the same because they’re characters. I think simplified vs traditional isn’t as easily understandable, although not all characters effect.

The Chinese language has 3 written 3rd-singular pronouns- one for men, one for women, one for inanimate objects. I am totally okay with being called the inanimate object one if it’s done with respect.

No Options

I have serious problems with social dysphoria. I would really like help with this, but there don’t seem to be any real options. The school counselor probably doesn’t really know enough to offer any really helpful suggestions. Most gender therapists, based both on my experiences and hearing from others, would end badly. I’d first have to find one who isn’t binarist or else face them trying to force me to decide if I’m a boy or a girl. Then I have to find one who has experience in this, because most of the time it seems like they only know how to help people transition because that’s the  main reason a lot of trans people see a gender therapist.

I’m trying to work on it myself, but it’s slow going. I don’t really know how to work on it.

Entertainment

One of the most annoying things, for me, of not having privileges is how hard it is to find entertainment that isn’t triggering. It’s next to impossible. I read a lot of webcomics, and a ton of them throw in random transphobia for the hell of it. Something Positive makes “tranny” jokes (I can not be bothered to find proof), and the author hasn’t gotten back to me about why. C’est La Vie just… ugh. Same with El Goonish Shive. I could go on, and on, and on, and on, and on.

And, most recently (for me), Scandinavia and the World failed. Twice. First: (both quotes are from the artist’s comments) “Denmark was the first country in the world to turn a transsexual man into a woman. … Sweden is not a fan of man-boobs” Second: “Denmark once invented man-breasts“

HAHAHAHA IT’S SO FUNNY BECAUSE, SEE, THE AUTHOR DOESN’T KNOW JACKSHIT ABOUT TRANSITION OR WHAT GOES INTO IT OR HOW THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE, REGARDLESS OF COERCIVELY ASSIGNED SEX, HAVE BREAST TISSUE OR HOW SOME CAMAB PEOPLE NATURALLY HAVE “BREASTS” AND BECAUSE TRANS WOMEN AREN’T REALLY WOMEN, THEY’RE MEN- HAHA, SILLY MEN WHO THINK THEY ARE WOMEN

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, really, I’ve got two options here:

1. Figure out how to be completely unphased by this, especially because there are no trigger warnings so I can’t be like “okay, this next bit contains transphobia, I’m ready”.

2. Stop trying to read things I enjoy because it may end up like this, which is seriously upsetting for me.

The Vagina Monologues

My school did the vagina monologues. I did not go. I don’t know if they did either of the two about trans women, but I sure as hell hope they didn’t because I’m pretty sure that, if they did, they were performed by cis women. I only know of one trans woman on this campus and I’m pretty sure she wasn’t in it. Maybe they did have trans women doing it if they did it, but I doubt it.

They’ve been advertising in part with posters that feature a line drawing of a person’s torso from roughly the hips to below the bust. It is clearly curvy, considerably more curvy than you’d expect someone perceived as male to be and even curvier than a good number of people perceived as female. Not to get into how people identify. It’s also thin. The poster features a microphone roughly in the area of this line art’s genitalia because, you know, the vagina is talking. Even though the play is people talking about their vaginas.

Only it isn’t. It’s Women talking about women’s vaginas. Well, vulvas. But anatomy fail aside, it’s just about women. Even though women aren’t the only one who have or even want vaginas or vulvas. And not all women have them. I will be okay wtih the monologues when and only when they feature a really burly, been on T 10+ years trans guy who you’d “never guess” isn’t cis go upthere and talk honestly about how much he loves his vagina. And a few other men as well, ones who never want to take T, ones who don’t look cis, ones who are really feminine. And, of course, non-binaries as well. But I want the stereotype of macho manliness to talk about how much he loves his vagina.

I don’t really care how much you love this play, it’s cis supremacist as hell because of the way it associates vaginas with women. The advertising in this specific case was horrific for the same reason. I don’t care for any apologist bullshit about how it’s okay to erase and degender all the non-women out there who have vaginas and/or who have curvy bodies because “but they help women feel good about their bodies!”. Yes, it is horrible the way that non-societally-accepted-as-male bodies are treated. But fixing that by adding to the oppression of people isn’t okay.

This really gets to me because, yeah, my body looks a bit like that poster. It is curvy. Too curvy to be perceived as male. It’s probably at least part of the reason people constantly mistake me for a woman. Associating my body type with “women-only” shit is to erase my gender, and the gender of all curvy people who aren’t women. It is to reinforce the very problem that makes it so that I, and a good number of those like me, will never be correctly perceived. That isn’t okay.