“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.

On Feminist Men

Part of the problem with men being part of feminism is that ‘community’ isn’t like it traditionally was used. In most things called ‘communities’, most people know everyone else or it’s run by people who try to be familiar with everyone. Even these days, in small towns, some people will hear about everyone else in town even if you dont’ meet face to face. But communities and movements like feminism- there are people in them that will never ever meet or hear about each other. A privileged person can’t be accepted into a community and have everyone know why and know that it’s because the person’s given signs that they deserve it and aren’t just abusing their privilege and trying to make yet another space all about them.

And a lot of people do abuse that, you get men who claim to be feminists because they think it’ll get them what they want from women or so they can use feminist key-words to attack women who speak against misogyny, you get various privileged people claim to support people they have privilege over so they can take over and get a power trip while getting back-pats from other privileged people.

Whether or not men ‘can’ be feminists, seeing a man who you don’t know claiming to be a feminist is going to be a red flag for a lot of people because of people who do that.

But, really, any man who’s calling himself a feminist really should be aware of his privilege enough to be aware of that and accept it.

Privilege 101 ish

(I’m not entirely sure I’m qualified to talk about this, but I’ll give it a go.)

Privilege doesn’t often come up around people who have it, and when it does it’s generally knocked down with privilege denying and people not bothering to find out what the terms mean before getting offended by it. If you start looking into people who talk about privilege, then you’ll probably see words like “supremacist” and “oppressed” that push quite a few buttons and make people want to deny. But most of the words aren’t quite as harsh as the kyriarchy wants you to believe. So, what is privilege?

First, you have to know that there are groups who are privileged by society and groups who are marginalized by it. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there are laws in place that support or even allow this to happen, but the way society is set up it does anyways. One example is that heterosexual people are privileged over people with any other sexual orientation. Even if all the laws were made so that you can’t fire or otherwise discriminate against someone for not being straight; if most relationships in the media are straight couples/only portray other sexualities as tokens and not people in their own right, straight people would still have privilege because their sexuality would still be treated as more normal and natural and acceptable. No one has to say anything against other sexualities, but subtle othering still makes it clear which one society feels is right. People who are privileged by society have privilege.

Next Post

The more you can accept the kyriarchy, the easier things are. It would be much easier for me if I could accept cis supremacy, if I could cower before the cis people who feel they deserve special treatment for taking spaces away from trans people. It would be easier if I could be happy with the support that takes little or no effort on the part of the people giving support. If I could tell myself that trans people are too complicated, that I deserve not to be treated as an equal, that I should be happy with the kind of transphobia that doesn’t involve spitting in my face. I’d have a lot more support, I’d be able to go through life feeling that things aren’t a horrible hideous mess.

One of the trans people at my school is like this. She can still go to the “trans” group and the “LGBTQ” center. She can talk to the cis supremacist asshole because she’s willing to bend to his will. But she isn’t really happier, not from what I can tell. I don’t want to sit there and smile and agree that cis people know best when around cis people, then lament to trans people that they aren’t doing what you need, that they’re disrespecting you, that it makes you so angry you want to throw a chair across the room. It would be easier. I would be able to delude myself, have the kind of support you get when you’re willing to swallow the poison they feed you. The kind that feels like strength in numbers but eats you up from the inside and and tells you that you deserve nothing more than to grovel at the feet of cis people in desperate hopes that they might toss you table scraps. You don’t even deserve the scraps, really, it’s pretty damn presumptive to expect them but you should grovel nonetheless because it pleases the cis people. And that’s all that really matters.

“LGBT”

As you may or may not know, this blog got started when a “LGBTQ” Center, specifically a “Trans Activism” group (run by a cis man), turned out to be spectacularly transphobic. Sadly, this is not terribly uncommon. Yes, it’s probably ignorance (which is transphobia)- but because the cis-privileged people I had to deal with responded to being told they were being offensive with either “you’re wrong” (and their proof of why was, of course, transphobic) and “it’s offensive to tell me I’m being offensive”, it is officially willful ignorance and not “innocent” misinformation. And while it isn’t my job to educate them, even if it were, I wouldn’t be able to do it and there’s absolutely no way to make this place trans friendly until they get over their privilege.

It bothers me to no end that this place is still called the “LGBTQ Center”. The “T” should indicate that it is a safe space for trans people. A group, club, organization,etc should never call itself “LGBT/Q” unless it backs that up by making sure it’s a safe space for every single letter. That means that if you’re doing activism, you do not drop trans issues to make it easier to make the changes. That means that you don’t stock books like “The Transsexual Empire” anywhere but in a section of “Know Your Enemy”. That means that if people are being biphobic or transphobic or anything else, you speak against it. And if you don’t, but someone else does- you let them and don’t let people bully them into silence. It means that you correct people who make a reference to “both” genders or sexes or being able to determine gender by genitals. That means making it clear that trans men are allowed to use the men’s room and trans women the women’s and trying to have a bathroom for non-binary genders and that anyone who has a problem with trans men using the men’s room or trans women using the women’s room is free to use the non-binary bathroom because you will not be othering trans people.

But that’s not usually what happens. It’s way too common for “LGBT” spaces and groups to be as transphobic as the most anti-gay church.  It can even got to the horrific extreme of a trans woman being beaten by cis gay men at a so-called “LGBT” place. And that is not the only time I’ve heard of it happening. I’ve seen cis lesbians bragging about ganging up on trans men who went to a LGBT night club. This is allowed to happen.

No place should ever be allowed to be called “LGBT” unless it is genuinely supportive of lesbian, gay, bisexual AND trans people. We should be able to know that places that have the “T” are actually safe for us. But there’s no way to make that actually happen.

Entitlement

I actually have a pretty big sense of entitlement. Actually, no, I don’t. I have a perfectly average sense of entitlement. I expect to be treated like a human, I expect people to be able to treat me with the same basic niceties they treat other people with, I expect those who love me to be able to treat me with respect, I expect people to be able to talk about me in a way that’s not inherently othering or demeaning or otherwise offensive. But because of how I am, wanting all of this is unacceptable. I’m being selfish. I expect too much from people. I need to be more patient (even if I’ve “been patient” for years).

I have a different view of coming out to, from what I can tell, most non-straight and non-cis people. I hate doing it. Not just because I hate dealing with cis supremacy and other bullshit, but because I shouldn’t have to. No straight people have to come out. Cis people certainly don’t. A cis person almost never has to ask for their pronouns to be respected. I want that, that thing that straight cis people get without ever thinking about it because it’s so natural. I want my gender and sexuality to be as acknowledged in society as the genders and sexualities of cis and straight people. I either want my gender and sexuality to be assumed correctly by other people, or never assumed for anyone. And wanting this is seen as unacceptable, yet straight cis people get to want it all they want.

I don’t mind people making a big deal out of getting my pronouns right. Doing so makes it obvious that a mistake has been both made and acknowledged. I was delighted when one of the professors I will sadly never be able to take a class with made a big deal at saying “she” and followed up with “He… Nin?*”. Maybe the people at the table didn’t get it, but that’s fine. I don’t mind people telling others that I’m trans and asexual, what my gender is (so long as they do so correctly and respectfully), and what pronouns to use. It saves me having to do so. It bugs me when people talk to others about me, but if they’re going to do so anyways I’d like them to at least be helpful when doing it.

This is a personal preference, of course. I definitely don’t want this to be seen as normal activities and for people in another situation than mine this would be incredibly dangerous for people to do, which is one reason that I don’t really express this preference too much. I do not want some straight/cis person getting into the habit of outting me because I want them to only for them to think it’s fine to for all non straight/cis people, hurting someone and possibly putting them in danger.

*A suggested german gender neutral pronoun. He’s a german teacher who I asked about gender neutrality for people (He knows a non-binary person and gets it) and I found this and he read it for me, hence that. I actually really like it…

Thinking about this more

I am an introvert. I don’t do well with people in person. I can’t keep up a conversation with any regularity, mishear things all the time, mess up my words, and only remember the gist of things rather than the exact words- so in a later conversation I always get the me: “you said _____” them:”No, I said ____” aggravation. I get overwhelmed in crowds and prefer to be able to control when I get faced with bullshit because my mental health isn’t good enough to be able to handle it on demand.

The internet is pretty much my home for those reasons. And I forgot that. I forgot that that’s okay. I forgot that, through the internet, I’ve helped a few multiple systems come to terms with themselves. I’ve helped people who never heard the term “asexual” feel less alone. For awhile I was a sort of vigilante on an incredibly binarist forum, saving non-binaries from their clutches by saying “Hey- it’s okay to be you, whatever that means”(before it got to be too much for me to handle). Which would have been damn helpful for me to hear before.

I don’t want to do this

I don’t want to email my teachers to ask for the correct pronouns

I don’t want to go to another class or room or place where everyone thinks I’m a girl

I don’t want to have to explain my gender to have any hope of getting it

I don’t want to deal with a world that refuses to acknowledge I exist except to attack me

I don’t want to feel like I have to take T even if I don’t want what it’ll do to my body

I don’t want to have to wonder if my friend’s room is actually a safe space or not or if it sort of is but she’d still vote against me having equal rights to her

I don’t want to have to wonder if I’ll ever have true friends in meatspace

I don’t want to take two tests tomorrow because on Thursday I threw up breakfast and probably had had the flu for a week so couldn’t take the test then and I haven’t been able to study well for either of them because of depression and exhaustian and still being sick.

I don’t want to continue living on this hall where I have to hear that asshole‘s voice because the walls are too thin and he practically lives here

I don’t want to have to move when he doesn’t

I don’t want the best place to move to be so far from everything else that on days like this it’ll be even more difficult to drag myself to class or food.

I don’t want to have to convince some cis guy that I’m depressed just to get medicine that may not even help

I don’t want to worry about money any more

I don’t want to deal with this

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.