#are sometimes only truly meant for cis passing conventionally attractive trans people

[this-user-is-always-bored]

recently, i had a conversation with my family about trump’s first executive orders. when we got to the parts targeting trans people, i’d expressed how worried i was over some online trans friends i had over in america (i’m closeted to everyone irl except the few queer friends i came out to years ago) that would be even further discriminated against by these policies; both my mother and grandfather then claimed that trans people in the us have nothing to worry about, actually, because they’ve been gaining more rights as time goes on & that they’ve popped up everywhere ever since the 2010s and has gained more power because of that.

i couldn’t really say anything in response to that. her words were so, so incredibly similar to the same rhetoric used by transphobes to justify their thinking that it genuinely shocked me to hear them— because neither my mother or my grandfather are transphobic (not in a stereotypical way, at the very least. i’ll try to explain this.) they support trans celebrities, they scoff at the thought of transphobia, they judge trans pop culture figures here the same way they judge cis ones. in their understanding of the term, they could even be considered ‘allies’. but they carry this distinct refusal to even acknowledge that trans people are oppressed, that even the thought of something they thought of as the ‘majority’ being a ‘minority’, and being so for a reason, is something to be denied. in that way, they also have to deny the thought of having a trans person even adjacent to their social circle (there was this transfem who called it ‘wine mom transphobia’ and i think that’s a pretty apt description.)

i remember being 15, coming out to my mother, not even daring to say the words “i’m trans” and handing her a letter instead, one i almost chickened out of writing. i remember her looking at me, then at the letter, and then folding it back in, telling me to ‘stay normal’. i remember casually talking to her years earlier, testing the waters with her on transness: how would she feel if i had a trans friend? she immediately freaked out, asking if i did. i changed the subject, and never asked about it again. she’s completely forgotten these incidents, but i remember them, and they creep up on me everytime i talk to her about anything relating to transness, or even queer adjacent. whenever i see her clap for trans celebrities on the big screen, i have to wonder if she would be so for them if they had been her colleague, her neighbor, or even her relative instead of an amorphous figure she can choose to disassociate from with little trouble.