#do not set out to derail a post about trans women

[lostryu]

@incorrectclassicbookquotes Hey I think you might just be talking about yourself here! I politely asked you not to derail a post about trans women and the specific oppression they face, and here you are. Derailing it.

Idk how to be polite about this so I’ll be blunt. No one has said on this post that trans men don’t matter. No one has said anything to indicate transphobia towards trans men. I politely asked you not to derail this post in favor of uplifting transwomen’s voices. You are ignoring them. You are being an active participant in transmisogyny. You are not being a trans ally, you are being a “pick me cis”. I think you need to sit down and reevaluate yourself, considering that you’re 25 years old and acting like this.

once again i am crawling out of my den to tell you all that if someone says “women” on a post, and your thoughts automatically jump to “they must be excluding trans women” you do not think trans women are women.

like just saying, your default of women clearly does not include trans women. otherwise you wouldn’t get so tilted if someone says ‘women’ and not ‘women and trans women’. you are acting like trans women are a subset of actual women and it’s disgusting.

and if you wanna cry terf psy-op or whatever, let me be very frank when i say that you need to grow up. its not people’s responsibility to have a huge disclaimer on every post to pander to your lack of critical thought.

[dysphoriaposting]

Hey there. I saw your replies from the post about a trans woman's comic about being rejected my lesbians, and I see how in the start you at least seemed willing to discuss it fairly. I'm hoping that's still the case, because I don't think the women replying to it were all that helpful, and I'd like to try my case respectfully. I'm a gender critical radfem, but actually gender critical, not transgender critical, meaning I can hold my beliefs without being transphobic. I'll be respectful and use gender based language here, I just ask that you maybe give me a listen :)

Not wanting to have sex with someone doesn't make that someone a victim. When we start thinking that, it very quickly derails into rape apologism. The women in the comic who have rejected the original author had every right to do so, after all, consent can be freely given or taken away at any point. It would also have been the right course of action for the comic's author to have told the women beforehand that she was a trans woman, presumably pre-surgery. Someone's genitals does very much affect the way sex happens. The lesbians in the comic have every right, at any point, to decide to not have sex with someone. That doesn't change if that someone is trans! And it does not make them a victim - withholding sex is not an act of aggression.

I also saw one reply where you said 'she's not male, she's trans' but she is absolutely male. That's precisely why she is trans. If she was a woman and female, then she wouldn't be a trans woman but a cis one. A huge part of transgender ideology (I use this word for lack of better one, what I mean is the set of beliefs that support the existence of transgender identities) is that sex is ultimately meaningless if one so desires. If that is so, then it holds no power to be a mislabeling. Someone's sex becomes just another characterist, like gender and sexuality. By calling the women in the comic lesbians I am not insulting them, because that's what they are. By calling the author a male we are not insulting her, because that's what she is.

Lesbians are absolutely being pressured to learn to be attracted to penises. That can be put in many ways, like 'unlearn their transphobia' or 'unpack their genital preference', but that is what lesbians are being told to do. To learn to like dick. But sexuality is inate, it cannot be changed or denied or altered, and it is sex based - if it is not in one's experience, if wether a person has a penis or a vagina has no effect on a person's attraction to them, then they are not monosexual, but bisexual or if preferred pansexual. Even when arguing for the fluidity of gender, it's not fair to ignore the importane of sex in attraction.

Denying someone sex is not aggression. Being solely attracted to female or male genitals is not aggression.

I hope I've explained myself well. Thank you for reading!

Hey, I appreciate the chill language! However, I quickly learned that the sick feeling I had in my gut wasn't that amab can't be women, or that clearly the women in the comic were being bad (in fact, go off queens, you don't gotta be attracted to penis), but rather the fact that when this person made a comic with the general vibe of "Damn bro, guess I gotta keep searching, these women gave mildly rude responses and I'm hoping not everyone is like that" and it was posted as some sort of example of men who are just sorta trying out new dating strategies.

This was a woman trying to find a hookup, if not love. I won't listen to people who point their fingers and hiss when someone makes their experiences known, because it feels like tripping someone you know shoplifted once. Maybe not the perfect analogy, but that general level of "none of your business per aggression" scale.

I've lived my whole, honestly short life around someone with a source of power who has infected me with faulty ideals. I don't blame them, because you don't blame a dog for how they're trained. That being said, I'm making sure I spend a life bringing joy and not striking down innocent people.

I understand that it's disgusting or scary when someone assigned male at birth who is a woman tries to date you. I understand that not everyone can give each new person a flawless clean slate to prove themselves on. I even, to a point, understand the hate when so many cis guys come up with fucking rancid schemes, all these new ways to trick a girl into having sex with them.

However, I don't judge others with that bias. Not without proper reason to.

I'm not mad that those women stood up for themselves. I'm mad that all the reblogs were harsh reflections of those user's darkest emotions and memories, lashed out on the internet and plopped down squarely on my dash. I also understand that it was none of my business to reblog and reply. I should've just blocked all the posters and moved on.

Try not to think about me anymore, I don't plan to be foolish enough to expect everyone in the world to be sapiosexual anytime soon. 👍

[thatspookyagent]

Since Tumblr needs a reminder, don’t derail, degrade, or gaslight trans men. Whether we’re discussing specific issues that we face or talking about how misogyny effects us, DON’T DO IT.

I feel like this site took folks analyzing how being a man comes with privilege, morphed it into men = bad, and just RAN with it. Cause holy shit, a lot of y’all fucking hate trans men and it shows. It really fucking does. A trans man discussing their trauma with facing misogyny? Y’all won’t hesitate to jump on our posts and call us women-lite.

Lord forbid a trans man be openly feminine on this site either, since apparently trans men being feminine is setting the trans male community back, just because bigots don’t understand that someone presenting a certain way that often attracts unwanted negative attention, DOESN'T equal lets suppress said group within this group and it’ll make the unwanted negative attention go away. (SPOLIER ALERT: IT WON’T.)

And the bullshit doesn't stop there because any time trans men start a discussion about what we go through, there’s always that group willing to use trans women, especially trans women of color, as a prop to silence trans male voices. Trans women are not y’all’s “gotchas” to use against trans men discussing issues we face as a group.

Trans men, specifically trans men of color, shouldn’t have the existence of trans women and transmisogyny used against us in order to prove who has it worse. Trans men literally going “This is what we go through as a group...” IS NOT an invitation for people to throw trans women under the bus for the sake of silencing us. Like holy shit, I don’t know how much clearer I can get with this.

Like this site is just so determined to shut trans men down at any cost and it’s infuriating to deal with. We shouldn’t have to face violence or misogyny for y’all to finally go “Hmm...maybe we SHOULD listen and stop stomping out trans male voices.” And honestly this is JUST the tip of the iceberg, because trans men do have a massive visibility problem, that again we’re not allowed to talk about because that makes us poor little misguided women begging for attention.

If Tumblr would pull its head out of its ass for once and stop acting like oppression doesn’t come with intersectionality, therefore let’s NOT treat trans men like cis men and let’s NOT treat trans men like misguided women, I honestly think a LOT of shit that trans men go through would be properly addressed on here WITHOUT the inclusion of people throwing another marginalized group under the bus.

[madame-peach]

Hi, I saw your post about transandrophobia, and I just wanted you to know that the creator of the term has a corrective rape/necrophilia fetish towards lesbians and trans women, which is even more reason no to use the term. Also while I can understand trans men feeling ashamed of being men because of how society speaks about men, ever time I see a post about “transandrophobia” I lose ten years of my life because it’s like misandry repackaged. Especially since the people who make those posts often derail the man-hating posts with “oh so you hate trans men too and if you say no to this question then it means you don’t see us as me and often act like trans women have any privilege over them whatsoever. And forget the fact that all men have male privilege over the women in their same communities. Transmisogyny is an infinitely bigger problem than “transandrophobia” in that it’s actually a problem to begin with. Not that trans men aren’t also oppressed but I’m so sick of people acting like they’re uniquely or more oppressed than trans women or that they’re oppressed because society hates men. I’m sick of it.

Yeah I've heard things about the person who coined the term but this is utterly reprehensible. It's unfortunate that that kind of behavior can be overlooked on this platform, and the term has been sanitized of any association with those evil ideas.

I engage with "transandrophobia" folks if and when I have the energy to expend, because it's laborious to do so for all of the reasons you mentioned and many more. I believe in stepping in and out of the struggle for liberation as my body and mind allows.

I wish that tumblr staff didn't platform the #"transandrophobia" hashtag as much as they do; the pervasiveness of the word and the accessibility of the hashtag makes it easy for random well-meaning TMEs to be deceived and tempted into the alluring transmisogyny of it all.

In an ideal setting where tumblr staff wasn't so transmisogynistic, the #transmisogyny hashtag wouldn't be considered "sensitive" material and hidden from the public view. Then, we could have more public and productive conversations about anti-transmasculinity and how it is a necessary requirement of transmisogyn(oir)-as-fulcrum theory, instead of framing the two in opposition to each other, in the fashion of a lot of prominent white transmasc users.

[cardentist]

I’ve been having a hard time figuring out how to word this, specifically because I don’t know how to get at the idea that’s specifically bothering me without opening a conversation about a dozen other interweaving issues. so please bare in mind that what I’m saying is in the context of a broader set of issues that I’m not specifically going to get into here (or at least I’m gonna try not to).

to rip the band aid off, I’m uncomfortable with the fact that trans men have been so minimized in discussions about transphobia and specifically pitted against trans women (as if recognizing their own oppression somehow takes oppression away from trans women) to the point that trans men can’t talk about their oppression in their own spaces without having to minimize themselves.

this isn’t unique to trans men nor is it one-sided, but the normalization of it not just in lgbt+ spaces but on tumblr in General is just mind-boggling.

like even taking the common justifications and logic behind this at face value it’s Blatantly clear that there’s a specific bias in play against trans men. like, it’s insisted that trans men don’t experience misogyny because they are men and therefor they are less oppressed. gay men are men and therefore don’t face misogyny, so it stands to reason that they are less oppressed than lesbians

how many posts about the generalized hatred of non-heterosexuality is specifically referred to as lesbophobia and nothing else. how many posts calling out lesbophobia reminds people that what’s being described could never happen to gay men. how often has a gay man had to derail a post talking about his experiences to clarify that he Knows lesbians are more oppressed than he is or else face the possibility of people getting angry at him for trying to insist that he’s more oppressed than them Because he’s speaking up at all.

recognizing the existence of gay men and their oppression is not treated like a threat to lesbians and their oppression. we all know that it’s important to recognize the differences in experiences between gay men and lesbians but we don’t use those differences as an excuse to speak over or silence gay men. (or rather, it’s called as being wrong when it Does happen.)

the constant minimization here isn’t being used to remind people of where we need to allocate our funds in non-profits or to remind people be Mindful of groups of people who face multiple axis’ of oppression, it’s being used to silence people and push them out of their spaces.

trans men are put in boxes and shaken Far More than their cis counterparts are in the wider community, and I wouldn’t be the first person to point out that it’s terf logic being applied to trans people with the caveat of believing the trans person is correct about their gender. I think that’s also why people jump to the opposite so quickly. people who’ve internalized Men Bad Horrible Invaders and cope with that by pointing it at another target would feel threatened by that target insisting that they’re wrong specifically Because they were already afraid of it being used against them. it’s understandable but it isn’t actually appropriate.

the fact that rowling’s terf manifesto explicitly targeted trans men (and specifically trans men’s reproductive health) while she’s Only been called out for transmisogyny is a problem. the fact that trans men have to grovel and minimize their experiences to be allowed to talk without incident is a problem. the fact that people are allowed to just Announce that specific experiences Exclude trans men without being challenged is a problem (and the fact that people who Do challenge it are painted as the ones doing the silencing is just fucking gross).

none of this is me saying that trans men are inherently more oppressed than trans women, but that at this point I think just asking the question is harmful to the conversation we’re trying to have. it isn’t useful when talking about individual experiences because individual people are going to have their experiences whether it’s more or less likely to happen to them or not. an individual trans woman isn’t “inherently” more or less oppressed than an individual trans man because their identities don’t dictate their lived experiences on their own.

all we’ve done is hurt and isolate people in our bid to “prove” that they’re the loser here. it is, for instance, A Lot More Difficult to have a nuanced discussion about trans men’s experiences with misogyny and how those experiences evolve over time and affect our relationship with our gender and ourselves when half of the live studio audience is angry that we’ve suggested that trans men have experiences with misogyny at all

[wingedkiare]

(Saved and reposting this image, because I don't wanna derail that original post)

[Image Description: Tweet from Louisa @LouisatheLast, posted on 7/2/21. "If your testosterone test is regularly flagging several cis women at the top of their game as "not female enough" for the Olympics, your test is the problem, not the women. Natural variation in bodies is praised as "talent" in men, while treated as a disqualifier for women."]

Now I know how to say what I tried to say last week. Not only is this some of the latest in a long line of Olympics/world competitions trying to find ways to hold Black women back as athletes, but they continue to do so in extremely dehumanizing, othering ways. When Caster Semenya ran into the same issue (being disqualified due to higher testosterone levels), she was outed as intersex and the bile that was spewed on the internet (which started as transphobic when the testosterone level was the first thing reported, then went into being misogynistic and hate against intersex people when everything else came out. It was just ugly and horrifying). But this goes back so far with regards to Black athletes, that this isn't anything new. Still horrifying, but this isn't new. At all.

When Black trans activists were saying that the laws and petitions to keep trans girls out of girl's/women's athletics would set precedents that wouldn't stop with trans athletes - this is exactly what they were talking about. They knew that these tests are already being used to hound any Black girl or woman who excels, upsetting white competitors. But that this could spread it from these top level competitions to anyone who is deemed not "female" enough.

The test they're using to disqualify these women is absolutely bullshit for a number of reasons. First, it's unlikely that a natural abundance of testosterone gives them any particular edge. Their bodies treat it as a normal setting - so it shouldn't be giving them the boost that someone else might get from adding those hormones. These are the bodies they trained with, too. (As the tweet above says, we celebrate men with genetic boosts - look at the conversations about Michael Phelps' body.)

Second, we don't even know medically what's actually normal for women - this is based off an arbitrary range. Why? Medicine focuses so much on men, and usually a narrow selection of women (mostly white women) - that we really have no idea what the hell is considered normal for women. I guarantee you there are white women with higher testosterone levels out there, and none of them would be kicked out of their respective sport.

This is a supremely horrible, but clear example of how pervasive racism and in particular misogynoir is. In this decision to ban Christine Mboma and Beatrice Masilingi from competition unless they take birth control to lower their testosterone levels, you have medical misogyny, medical racism, racism (specifically misogynoir), misogyny and transphobia (with the suggestion that with extra levels of testosterone, they aren't biologically women anymore) all at work. (We should also take a moment to acknowledge that white trans women are complicit in enforcing this. Johanna Harper, who is a white trans woman, helped craft the testosterone policy. Caitlin Jenner, who medaled in the Olympics before transitioning, has made it clear that she doesn't believe trans women should compete as women - that the higher levels of testosterone give them an advantage. Comments like that reinforce their notion of what makes an athlete be considered a woman, and excludes cis women with naturally higher testosterone levels. And pushes out intersex athletes like Semenya.)

And it's why fans of sports who are not Black need to be just as vocal as Black women have been about this - they should not have to shoulder this burden alone. When you speak up - you need to acknowledge that this is a lot of historical issues tangled into one... but the root of it is racism - specifically misognyoir, the double whammy of racism and sexism heaped on Black women. (And learn from me, take your time to be clear and get it right)

Other examples of the bias against Black female athletes from just the last couple months:

- The IOC said that Alice Dearing (the first Black swimmer to represent Great Britain) couldn't wear the soul cap, a swimming cap designed to accommodate natural hair and braids, saying that it's never been necessary before. When as it isn't as small of a profile, it wouldn't add any unfair performance benefit - it would just make her more comfortable.

- Simone Biles's vaults weren't given an appropriate difficulty level (as has happened in the past) in order to discourage other gymnasts from attempting what Biles can do. The end result is that it doesn't reflect how skilled Biles is, and gives her fellow competitors an advantage.

[intergalactic-zoo]

Whoopsie, went a whole year without posting.

I very much enjoy the Arrowverse shows, even though the only episodes of Arrow I've seen are the crossover tie-ins. Legends of Tomorrow is a constant delight, Black Lightning is incredible, The Flash is good superhero melodrama, and Supergirl is fine. It's fine. It's generally mostly fine. 

Look, Supergirl started out strong on CBS, but since it moved to CW, it's been plagued by recurring problems. The cast is stellar. I love every actor and character on that show. Dreamer is a revelation, and I want to see her ongoing comic series (where maybe her powers will be slightly more clearly developed). 

But the politics? The recent episode dealing with violence against trans women (and trans women of color in particular) was a welcome and refreshing shift in the show's usual tone of Peak Liberal White Feminism. For a show that has its heart so clearly in the right place, tackling real-world issues like internment camps for immigrants and the radicalization of cishet white men into fascist paramilitary organizations, it has also featured a hero who, up until last season, was consistently working with a government organization and adopting center-left approaches that openly demonized actual leftists and ignored intersectionality in favor of a lily-white worldview. 

Buckle in, comrades. This is an anarchist blog now. 

There are other problems as well. The way they derailed the Kara-Jimmy relationship to pair her with Mon-El for a season, then fumbled around to find something to do with his character until he left the show, feels more than a little casually racist. I think there are legitimate queerbaiting complaints to be had about how they've handled the Kara/Lena relationship. Alex's shifting desires and priorities have felt less like character development and more like trying to figure out where she fits in the show now.

There's a lot of good, too, especially with some of this most recent season's course corrections. Killing Dean Cain's character offscreen was a hilarious solution to that unfortunate problem. I appreciated Brainiac-5's evolution that gave him a more comics-accurate Coluan appearance and removed some of the played-out "smart guy doesn't understand emotions" character type. I like that every time Lena says "Non Nocere" it makes me think of standing in a Buffalo Stance.

And I've liked Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch as Superman and Lois Lane, on the occasions where they've appeared. Tulloch isn't my favorite Lois, and I wish Hoechlin's costume had the trunks, but they've been quite good when they've shown up. And, you know, this is the first live-action Superman show with tights and flights and the word "Superman" in the title since 1997. I am, unexepctedly, excited for that. 

Besides that, it's a different take on the characters. Lois gets second billing, but rather than being a will-they/won't-they romantic dramedy, it's centered on Clark and Lois as an established couple and experienced parents of teenagers. Personally, I'd prefer the kids to be younger—Crisis changed their single infant into two teenage boys—but I suppose there are some story and tone reasons to prefer teenage kids. Overall, I think a lot of the choices are really savvy: setting the story in Smallville immediately sets this show apart from urban Supergirl, and the teens who cut their sci-fi melodrama teeth on Clark and Lois and Lex in Smallville are now in their thirties, settling down and having kids of their own. This show has the potential of tapping into that 20-year nostalgia cycle for the mid-2000s.

But...well, my excitement has been dampened somewhat in the lead-up to the premiere. Naturally, there's the stories Nadria Tucker has told about experiences in the writers' room, how they dismissed concerns about racism and sexism, about "#metoo jokes" and the like. There's also the optics; Supergirl is coming to an end next season, and it's hard not to feel weird about the diverse, female-dominated show about found family being more-or-less replaced with the nuclear family show whose principal cast is four white people, three of them dudes. I never really watched the trailer, but the response to it on my social media feed was largely negative (though for whatever reason, my social media feed is heavy on people who apparently aren't happy if Superman's not snapping necks in a rubber suit). On the other hand, I've seen really positive responses from two of the Superman fans I respect the most, Charlotte Finn and David Mann. And that clip of Hoechlin in the Fleischer suit and the Action #1 pose? Yeah, that's pretty cool. 

So I'm not sure what to expect as I finally hit up the ol' TiVo and watch the two-hour Pilot. But I'm about to find out. 

[uncloseted]

tw: transphobia😭 hi I'm a radfem cisgirl (I hate using "cis" and "trans" words but here I need to for the sake of the story) I've got a friend from ny highschool (we're in college now) who's also a radfem and is always sharing great feminist stuff. Yesterday, she shared the comment of a girl saying "this fight for abortion (it is illegal in my country) is for men/people with vaginas too!" and mocked it. I preferred not to make up any opinions about her because of one single post. But today, she shared a picture of Miss Spain 2019 (a trans girl) who talked about her experience with sexism, and mocked her too. This time, it was obvious to me she was just being transphobic trash. She received lots of backlash and deleted the post, but instead made a new post complaining about people caring about transphobia but not about sexism (a very stupid post, if you ask me). This time, along with some comments from other girls respectfully telling her to stop being cruel and mocking towards trans women, she received a lot of support from other TERFS (although these TERFS said they hate being called TERFS just for being honest and brave lmmfao). They said that transwomen don't belong in radfem because they just suffer from discrimination, not oppression, and listed some reasons why: according to them, trans girls don't suffer: obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, feminicide, child marriage, genital femenine ablation, glass ceiling barriers, being implanted "maternal sense" while kids, getting their ears perfored while babies, among other stuff, and that differentiate ciswomen biological reality from trans women biological reality isn't transphobia. Other girls said they knew transwomen who were mean to them, using derogatory terms to refer to ciswomen and they were mean and cruel, using this argument to generalize about all transwomen smh.

I'm just so stoned that people could be so cruel to transwomen and set them aside from the feminist fight when they suffer from already being excluded from so many things. It sickens me that some people don't belive trans people exist and treat them that bad, specially trans girls. I wish I could debunk the info this TERFS are spreading because it's so dangerous and enables transphobics to keep harming transpeople and I find that unbearable, but I am not as informed as I should be to debute all their lies at once. Could you help me?

So starting with the question of transwomen in radfem spaces, I don’t think many (if any) transwomen would say that they experience the exact same type of discrimination that cis women do.  There’s often this idea that “trans people don’t believe in biology”, but that’s a bad faith argument.  Trans people understand biology very well, often more than their cis counterparts do, because it’s such a big part of their identity.

Yes, transwomen don’t suffer obstetrician violence, forced pregnancy, child marriage, genital feminine ablation, etc. (I can’t even find any articles on the ear thing).  They do experience femicide, at way higher rates that cis women do. Transwomen are women, and they’re discriminated against in their own way; sometimes that’s because they’re women, and sometimes that’s because they’re trans.  Transwomen are largely supportive of fighting with cis women to rid the world of discrimination for all women, cis and trans alike.  

By contrast, TERFs seem to think that because transwomen sometimes suffer a different type of discrimination than cis women, they can’t be “real women”.  But that argument makes no sense to me.  The vast majority of affluent, white, straight, cis women will never suffer the violence that is apparently so central to the cis female experience.  They’re extremely unlikely to experience femicide, child marriage, genital mutilation... and yet they can acknowledge that those issues are feminist issues, even though they’re not universal to all women.  Why shouldn’t the discrimination that transwomen face also fall under that umbrella?  And if they can accept that women who have had hysterectomies, or women who have chromosomal differences, or women who are intersex, or women who present butch are all women, why shouldn’t transwomen also fall under the umbrella of womanhood?

Further, is that really all that womanhood is to TERFs?  Experiencing the trauma and discrimination that so often accompanies being a cis women?  I don’t think inclusion to a group should be predicated on the amount that one has suffered or how many “oppression points” they’ve amassed. And I don’t think being a woman should be predicated solely on biology, especially given that we never really know what kind of biology a person has just by looking at them.  What “being a woman” is is a metaphysical question that derails the discussion of trans feminism, and it’s a question that I don’t think a lot of TERFs actually have a good answer to.  It’s just an easy way to put the burden of proof on trans people and trans allies and waste our time (but if you’re interested, I do have an opinion on this. I just think it’s best saved for a different time).

In terms of trans people being oppressed, there’s all sorts of data to suggest that trans oppression is very real.  In the US, trans people were banned from serving in the military under the Trump administration, a decision that was only overturned a few days ago, and the Trump administration also reversed the Obama- era Title VII policy that protected trans employees from discrimination.  Trans people are overwhelmingly lacking legal protections- there are no federal non-discrimination laws that include gender identity, and in some states, debates over limiting the rights of trans people to use public bathrooms are ongoing.  

About 57% of trans people faced some type of rejection from their family upon coming out.  Around 29% of trans people live in poverty (compared to 11% in the general population and about 22% in the lesbian and gay populations), and that number is higher for trans people who are Black (39%), Latinx (48%), or Indigenous (35%).  27% of trans people have been fired, not hired, or denied a promotion due to their trans identity.  90% of trans people report facing discrimination in their own jobs.  Trans people face double the rate of unemployment that cis people do (about 14%) and about 44% are underemployed. This is despite the fact that a reported 71% of trans people have some level of post-secondary education- actually higher than the general population, which is about 61%.  It’s often cited that women earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to men, but that statistic doesn’t even exist for trans women.

54% of trans people have experienced intimate partner violence (compared to about 24.3% of cis women), 47% of trans people have been sexually assaulted (compared to about 18% of cis women), and about 10% are physically assaulted in a given year. 

About 22% of trans people and 32% of trans people of color in the US have no health insurance (compared to about 11% of cis women), and 55% of trans people who do have insurance report being denied coverage for at least one gender affirming surgery.  29% of trans adults have been refused healthcare by a doctor or provider because of their gender identity.  In one study, 50% of trans people said that they had to teach their medical providers about trans care.  Trans people are four times as likely than the average population to be infected by HIV.  41% have attempted suicide at one point in their lives, compared to 1.6% of the general population.  

20% of trans people have been evicted or denied housing due to their gender identity, and trans people are four times more likely than cis people to be homeless.  Only 1/5 of trans people report that they have been able to update all of their identification documents, and 41% have a driver’s license that does not match their gender identity.  22% of trans people report that they have been denied equal treatment by a government agency or official, 29% reported police harassment, and 12% reported having been denied equal treatment or harassed by judges or court officials.

75% of transgender students feel unsafe at school because of their gender expression, 60% are forced to use a bathroom or locker room that does not match their gender, 50% were unable to use the name and pronouns that match their gender, and 70% of trans students say that they’ve avoided bathrooms because they feel unsafe.  78% of trans students report being harassed or assaulted at school.

And these are all statistics that focus on trans people at large.  The discrimination is worse for transwomen and especially transwomen of color.  All of that certainly sounds like systemic oppression to me.

Every person who chooses to be a TERF perpetuates this discrimination.  It’s just bigotry towards trans people, plain and simple.  And for what?  A reactionary fear that all transwomen are secretly sexual predators and all transmen are confused girls who don’t know better?  Unfortunately, men can be sexual predators just fine without having to jump through the convoluted hoops trans people go through to be recognized as their true gender identity, and transwomen are way more likely to be sexually assaulted than they are to be sexual predators.  There are no reported cases at all that transwomen are dressing up as men to assault women in bathrooms.  There aren’t even statistics on how frequently trans people are sexual predators. And transmen are just as capable of making informed, thoughtful decisions as cis women.  

TERFs shouldn’t be pitting themselves against trans people.  There’s just nothing to be gained from doing that.  They should be working alongside trans people to fight the patriarchy and the discrimination that cis and trans women both face, regardless of what that discrimination entails.

Last thought.  Not to be a stan or anything but if you’re interested in learning more about these issues, Contrapoints has a number of really good videos on the topic of TERFs (including one that just released today!). They delve a bit deeper into the actual questions that TERFs often bring up and provide some nuanced answers.

[butyouvealwaysbeenthecaretaker]

It’s also really important to like, be aware of the history of “divide and conquer using progressive-seeming language” as a way to defuse grassroots campaigns. That’s not just Leftie paranoia, I mean it is literally used as a conscious strategy.

I suppose some of what we’re seeing with transphobic feminism is an example of that, splitting cis women off from trans women, trans people off the rest of the acronym; or the recent UK election where tabloids who don’t give a shit about Jewish people (or anyone else), chose to amplify stories about Labour anti-semitism & anti-Hinduism to lever off some of the base + well-meaning centerist types, leading to five more years of right wing incompetence.

So like, you don’t want to dismiss important concerns out of hand; but at the same time, you don’t want to fall into the trap of amplifying them either, so it obscures your key message, or becomes a source of division. It’s never an easy one to get right, I think. You look at the narratives and have to think - is this helping get closer to our goals? Is this critique constructive, the first step to necessary change; or does it reify it, does it make that the story (if it wasn’t true before, it certainly is now!)? The critiques haven’t increased participation from black environmentalists in XR; nor has it produced a new movement created by & centering black people who want to take direct action on climate change. That makes them bad critiques (regardless of whether or not they were also true).: they didn’t work.

The only narrative I hear out of left wing, anarchist, progressive spaces is - this campaign is problematic, and it sucks. That’s divide and conquer in action, with nary a whiff of “we’re concerned about these problems, but we also share these goals”, or “I don’t like how they do things, but they’re right about the core issues”, or “we don’t like that group, so we’ve set up our own which is run the ‘right’ way, but we show up at their actions and they show up at ours” or most importantly, “we want you to succeed, but you’re getting these things wrong, so can we collaborate on fixing them”. And that’s how we lose the battle on climate, ultimately, if different groups with shared goals but different approaches (and which might not like each other all that much) can’t stay focused on collaborating, and presenting a unified front.

It’s exactly the same splintering as {leader of the Labour party} choosing to condemn attacks on statues, or rationalists getting sucked into debates about nazi punching ethics. Ultimately, none of this matters; critique of protest as an artform functions as a distraction tactic, and a way to derail campaigns, to hijck the news cycle or online discourse away from the issues and onto the “way” protest is done. I reserve the right to stay cynical on that.

Please stop talking about whether it’s right to change old statues or commit protest damage against property, stay focused on police violence (and black inequality more broadly). Please stop nitpicking about when it’s OK to use violence against humans in activism, stay focused on rising anti-semitism and dangerous right wing organising. Please stop using identity-politics to critique environmentalism on the basis of what kinds of people are and are not at protests, stay focused on the narrowing window of time we have to prevent catastrophic climate change. Please stop fighting over bathrooms, stay focused on a united LGBT front against rising right-wing strength to dismantle protections enjoyed by all of us.

It’s a tricky one to get right, because how you protest is important. And when the critiques are very serious ones, like the possibility that a Labour victory might be a threat to Jewish citizens, those can’t be treated lightly.

(but that’s why they’re used. Because they work.)

So like, you’re looking at the % coverage on looming environmental apocalypse on some of these sites or users or outlets, vs % coverage on what XR is doing wrong and why they are a unified monolith of bad, and a little noise goes off.

Just as when you’ve got tabloids who knowingly used anti-semetic dogwhistles in attacks on (previous Labour leader), and immediately drew attention to (new Labour leader)’s Jewish connections, suddenly declaring themselves concerned about (leader in the middle) as a racist threat, over and over again in headlines which don’t bother presenting the opposition manifesto even once in detail.

And you’ve got shitstain misogynists coming out of the woodwork to support radical feminism in the name of “protecting women”.

And “you can’t support Hilary Clinton, because she supported wars which devastated communities abroad”.

It’s like...

...I mean, it’s a lot of what organising a good campaign is, is successfully preventing these counter-narratives from gaining traction. But how can you, when you’re a grassroots campaign fighting against a wealthy, powerful media/system/business? And when the sorts of people you need on your side are also the kinds of people who quite rightly really care about these things, and can absolutely be demoralised, splintered and drained by a well-run splinter campaign? And when these issues are not trivial, they really are important, and you can’t push back on them without dismissing concerns, silencing good conversations, dismissing problems which need to be addressed...?

...while also not letting the same five wealthy blokes wreck the economy and planet while accumulating even more power while you’re distracted on that...

It’s not a problem that can easily be solved, but it has definitely impacted my slide towards feeling cynical and suspicious of a lot of this kind of activism, aimed at reflection/self-critique/becoming less problematic/rooting out bad people or perspectives. Not because the issues aren’t important, but it’s easy to get stuck on activism as individual self development and consciousness raising, rather than broad-based action and results.

But face to face activism is far more effective than trying to be accountable to the entire internet, hence the importance of...people coming to participate, and bringing their critiques with them. Once I’ve seen a woman glue herself to a lamp-post (or, always bring tea and biscuits to meetings), if she comes to me and says...there are these problems, we need to solve them...I can be pretty sure it’s not a deliberately amplified attack campaign. AND we can work together on looking at how we can fix this in what we’re doing, or, what needs to be done locally to improve on things. You can immediately contextualise it, start finding concrete solutions. You can’t be accountable to a Guardian columnist who has looked at some photos of your protest and has an Opinion.

A bit like Dan Savage says about there being no such thing as “the one” in relationships; you have to find your 0.8 and round it up to a one. Or, in this case I think it’s better to say, find your 0.8, and then try and make that other 0.2 happen.

[genderfluidkevinday]

genderfluid kevin day headcanons bc i can do what i want and also i have the perfect url to spread my “please representation” propaganda. 

“how did you know?”

because in the quiet of nights when kevin is supposed to be asleep but he cant, not really, when his heart is still pounding from practice and every breath riko makes him terrified of being caught, he reads what he stole from the public library and it says sometimes people do not fit into the gender they were assigned and

because by sneaking searches on the internet when he can, kevin finds words. dangerous, un-raven-like words for how to love someone and how to be yourself. he finds words that mean you are not alone. 

because he wakes up one day and demands to be the queen of exy, to be seen as what he is. the best. more powerful than the king. (not entirely cisgender?)

because it feels right. 

because in the quiet between exy and family, kevin day has the time and the love to have the quiet understanding that this is who kevin day is. 

it’s kinda a shitty realization process to go through- kevin starts questioning in the ravens, then immediately goes “No TM !” and internalizes all those feelings 

kevin internalizes All the feelings, always ! compartmentalizing!

bisexuality? put it in a box!

gender identity? put it in a box!

feeling crushing inferiority? put it in a box!

mom died tragically? put it in a box!

ur dad isnt here? put it-

jesus fuck these headcanons were supposed to be happy and it got SO derailed 2 points in

anyways 

post canon, kevin starts to become more comfortable w every aspect of himself, and finally takes the time to have a gender crisis

and then, immediately, decides it was all ridiculous and he was actually a cisgender all along !

he does the dumb thing i did. which is spend about a month going “lmao i’m cis but i wish i wasn’t, i don’t need a gender!” while badly ignoring his gender crisis

it’s renee who finally helps kevin out a little

kevin, dumbass: pfft, gender is stupid, but i’m cis so whatever! renee, nb lesbian icon: are you sure? kevin, having a crisis:

renee actually sends kevin a bunch of links to pages that have lots of words, and “what gender are you” quizes, and dumb memes about being trans/nonbinary and it shouldn’t help as much as it does. 

renee is the first person kevin quietly texts at like, 2 am, and goes, “uh, can you use they, i think?”

her response is, obviously, “of course!”

so they’re like, pretty sure they’re not cis, but they bounce around labels for about a week before they end up settling on genderfluid. 

sometimes kevin day is a boy, with loud opinions and soft hands. sometimes kevin day is a girl, with messy hair and a bright smile. sometimes kevin day is neither, with clumsy limbs and determined eyes

(however- kevin day can always outclass any striker on a court.) 

it just feels right, in a way nothing else did. 

theyre like,,, super nervous about coming out, like, they can’t even come up with the courage to tell their dad they’re bi, how the fuck are they gonna end up telling anyone else? solution! don’t.

except kevin is becoming more comfortable with every aspect of themself, and being casually bisexual around the foxes (nicky makes one too many jokes about kevin’s “”hetero guy crush”” on jeremy and they end up snapping “bitch i’m bi there’s nothing hetero about it.” and nicky is immediately like !!!!!!!!!!!!!) (but thats another post)

so kevin, with the growing comfort that yes, you can be non-heterosexual and non-cisgender and still be fucking amazing at exy, they start to come out

it’s a slow process because when they tried to do it all at once, they got tongue tied and just walked away without saying anything. so they end up doing it individually. 

allison first (because renee can be there and give support AND bc allison is also A Trans), and kevin whispers, “so, I’m genderfluid.”

allison, casually: what are your pronouns? kevin: she/her. i’m a girl today. allison, with all the softness of someone who has been there: do you want me to do your makeup? kevin, with all the softness of someone who’s new to this: maybe one day.

after allison is andrew+neil, because they spend so much time together at night practice it’s inevitable it comes up

and by that i mean kevin screams halfway through night practice “THIS IS GENDERFLUIDPHOBIA” because andrew keeps blocking her shots. 

andrew flips her off.

neil asks if thats an actual term.

kevin says to fuck off and keep practicing.

next is wymack. 

oh boy. 

so kevin isn’t even sure how to be a good son- she has no idea how to go about being a good daughter. she has no clue how to be a good child. 

she doesn’t know if wymack even wants that.

but she goes to him after practice and he snaps, “what is it?” in a voice thats maybe a little less gruff than usual

and she says, “i’m genderfluid.”

he stares at her for a while.

she continues, “i’m a girl today, actually, and i just thought you should know.”

wymack asks, “you’ll tell me when it changes, right?”

kevin nods and leaves. 

its a start.

telling jean feels like a really big deal, but in hindsight its about fifteen minutes of bad puns that follow an awkwardly worded coming out. 

kevin: so like... guys right jean: yes? kevin: what if... i wasn’t one jean: are you trying to come out to me? kevin: is it working?

the rest of the monsters follows after that- aaron obviously doesnt understand, but he doesnt say anything rude. (he looks into it later). nicky, immediately, takes a supportive role.

nicky: I’M GONNA STAPLE A GENDERFLUID FLAG TO MY FACE THATS HOW MUCH I SUPPORT YOU kevin, softly: please don’t how would you play exy.

matt and dan get a less official coming out, because kevin isn’t sure how to be friends with them at all. but they manage a “so, i’m not a guy, actually, i’m genderfluid, and right now i don’t have a gender.”

dan gives them a set of pronoun bracelets for their birthday and matt gives them a book about the history of the nonbinary community and yeah, maybe this is how to be friends.

the baby foxes don’t get to find out. kevin doesn’t trust them as much, and isn’t ready to be... out out. 

kevin has absolutely no desire to change their name, at all.

kevin: why would i change my name i’m an ICON.

WAIT i lied,,, they change their middle name to kayleigh. 

the first time kevin gets invited to a girls night, she cries

its a surprise, which is hard to plan- girls nights are always on tuesdays, so they have to wait for a tuesday where kevin is free and feels like a girl

renee casually mentions that they have a history book that kevin might like, so she should come pick it up

and then in the dorm, dan and allison are setting up a movie and popcorn and renee is getting her nails painted. dan waves kevin over and tells her to pick a movie, allison tells her to pick out a nail polish, and renee actually does have a history book for her.

kevin finally accepts a make over from allison. 

she cries like five times that night and tries to brush it off as nothing but... kevin can finally exist in a space, and feel welcome, and also feel... wanted.

it’s a good feeling

kevin, wearing a crop top with the genderfluid flag on it, painting renee’s nails as they watch the trojans game: lmao can you imagine thinking i was cis? what was i thinking? i was so dumb lol.  renee, sweetly: no it was a perfectly normal reaction to being raised in a cisnormative society, and i’m very proud of you for figuring out that it wasn’t right for you kevin: dammit renee why do you have to be so kind and supportive just let me make jokes about my moron-ness in PEACE 

kevin day is the fucking QUEEN of exy !!!!!!! she’s better than you and you know it. 

each and every day kevin day hears misogonistic comments towards female exy players and each and every day kevin day wants to scream B I T C H in their face

he wanted to do this even before he figured out he was genderfluid bc kevin day drank respect women juice before realizing he was also drinking sometimes i am women juice

kevin actually 100% hates dresses a lot bc they can never find any that are a good texture and its Sensory Hell, and also you cant play exy in them?? what the fuck??? 

they end up liking crop tops and short shorts, and a few kinds of makeup, but skirts and dresses are dumb and itchy actually 

kevin goes on an impassioned rant about this at LEAST once a month

you know that really good feeling when you wake up one day and you realize you’re happier knowing who you are and maybe it’s rough and maybe it’s not perfect but you get to know who you are and your friends respect and love you for who you are and you start to realize you love knowing you too????????

yeah.

kevin day is genderfluid and this is my hill to die on thank you and good night

[irenesfemme-blog]

Hey everyone,

I joined a server centered around the Star Wars franchise in late 2018, and I was a moderator there for a significant amount of time. Tonight I left it. And I’d like to explain why, and where that leaves this blog, going forward.

First of all, I must ask that you do not reblog this post, and I’m really going to ask that you refrain from commenting on it as well. Honestly, I need to heal from this experience. It’s been actively harmful for me for weeks because it’s been such an incredibly toxic environment.

I do want to thank the people who reached out to me, however, during all of this. Who expressed that they wish that they had done more for me, stood up, said something. I don’t blame any of you. I completely understand not wanting to make yourself a target. I love you, and I wish you nothing but the best.

This blog, as well as REVANSFEMME and BINALAARA, are going on hiatus. I don’t know for how long. I’d like to feel okay enough to come back one day, but that remains to be seen. Until then, I’ll keep on keeping on.

Cheers, -- Irene.

Here’s my letter to the community: 

Hey guys,

The original discussion began when a conversation about biphobia, and transgender woman’s contribution to that conversation, was interrupted and derailed. And honestly, guys? No one involved in that interruption and derailing, when confronted with the fact that it was harmful and hurtful, asked if their fellow community members, and in particular the transgender woman who was interrupted, were okay. No one has expressed any acknowledgement or regret for having been a part of that. It’s been completely ignored in favor of airing other grievances. And that’s not fair in particular to the transgender woman who was interrupted, who brought up with the mods that she had been feeling uncomfortable in this server for a long time, and who helped me identify the rhetoric used as trans-exclusionary radical feminist. And this entire conversation about the things I’ve done has come about right after I took a stand, as a mod and as a friend, to support this transgender woman in our community. That timing has not escaped my notice.

I hear that a lot of you have felt guilty, alienated, or angry by me speaking about my experiences and discomforts as a bisexual woman. I haven't meant to make you feel this way; it hasn't been an agenda of mine. I am sorry for bringing you pain. But I am also hurt in turn because it feels like so many of these accusations are in bad faith at best. To be honest, if I had known that sharing my negative experiences as a bisexual woman would have contributed to the difficult climate of this server, I would have kept them to myself. And that’s what’s getting me here: I shared these because I felt safe with the people in this server. I shared these because I considered so many of you friends. And knowing that being silent would have made me less of a target is really painful.

The idea isn't that "discussing solidarity and struggles as lesbians reminds bisexual women of their struggles and difficulties they themselves face, some of them caused by lesbians and lesbian communities, and therefore these discussions shouldn't be held." It's that these discussions can co-exist. You're allowed to express solidarity and support as lesbians. But I'm also allowed to feel hurt and discouraged because so often I and other bi women are excluded from queer spaces in particular, or invalidated as people or as a community, and yes, sometimes this is done by lesbians. The latter conversation isn't a rebuke of the first. It's just a part of the ongoing series of dialogues in the queer community.

What’s particularly difficult about many of the complaints is that they express a standard I cannot meet. I spoke about my discomfort with a conversation in the channel that it was held in, indicating that it’s a good conversation but one that I feel I can’t be a part of because of my personal experience, and that was objected to. I moved to a separate channel to express my sorrow at the biphobia in this server and how it’s made me feel hurt and uncomfortable, with the intent of having a separate space where I could talk without disrupting another conversation, and that was objected to. I silently left a third conversation and brought up my point of view a while later, in a different channel, in a conversation about biphobia, and that’s been objected to. I’ve been told that when and how I’ve been talking about my experiences is a definite part of what’s making people feel guilty and targeted, but in literally every way I’ve tried to talk about biphobia, someone has objected. It’s a losing game: the only winning move is not to play at all.

And these individual experiences – where a bisexual woman’s voiced experiences and feelings are objectionable, derailing, unnecessary – parallel a larger theme in queer communities where bisexual women are told, explicitly and implicitly, that we aren’t welcome. That we take up space intended for the more valid, more queer, members of the community, just by being here, and being hurt, and giving voice to our struggles.

And the concept, reiterated over and over again, that my pain as a bisexual woman was intended to make lesbian women feel guilty feels to me like so, so much more than an assumption of bad faith. It feels like a deliberate act of willful misunderstanding. It feels like silencing through shaming.

And all of this is so much of the reasons why I and so many other bisexual people don’t feel comfortable in queer spaces. Our discussions about our struggles with gay and lesbian members of the queer communities are turned against us as proof that we are dangerous, that we are harmful, that we do not belong. I’ve seen it over and over in IRL spaces. I just didn’t want to see it here. And I really see no way how I could ever talk about my experiences as a bisexual woman in this server again with any degree of safety or assumption of solidarity.

And this isn’t even getting into the long, chastising private message I received from a community member not so long ago about my personal failures. That was … above and beyond.

I had a long conversation with my spouse about these events. He brought up that, paraphrased, “You do realize that these people berating you publicly for miscommunication, when you’ve stated before that you are on multiple spectrums, comes off to me, at least, as ableist?” And I don’t want to realize that. That makes this all feel so much more targeted and horrifying.

As I said at the very beginning of this server, and on my tumblr, and earlier today, I am on both the autistic and the schizophrenic spectrums. I have severe ASD symptoms and Schizotypal Personality Disorder. I have a really hard time reading social cues, situations, and tones, especially over the internet, and that's been a constant struggle in my life. But participating in discussions has always been hard for me, and it's been hard for people who don't know how to deal with my particular neuroatypicality. It’s a wholly foreign concept to me that any of you would have read my expressions of my own struggles and interpreted that as me setting out to make you feel guilty. I just … don’t understand. I never have. It’s why I’ve always asked people to please talk to me at the time of the miscommunication, because it’s almost impossible for me to judge how someone is going to emotionally respond to anything I say.

And that brings me to my last point: I’m leaving. I’m leaving this server, and I’m leaving tumblr, and I’m leaving the Star Wars fandom as a whole, for now at least. Lal’s mother is right when she said, "If you were getting paid for this job I'd tell you to quit and get another job.” This has been an impossible job for a number of reasons, and I’ve stuck around because I loved Lal and Io, and I wanted very much to help them and this community. I’ve been trying to do this work as a mod atop work managing hospice care for my terminally ill mother, the full-time work of running and maintaining a household, and my personal work as a writer. And the longer I spend in this community, the worse I feel. All of this feels … horrifying, in a very visceral and targeted sense.

I am sorry that many of you felt hurt by me. I truly have never meant to cause any of you harm. But that’s accompanied by a very real and very painful sense of being physically ill right now.

I’m going to close the religious server that I moderate. The dungeons & dragons one, and the writing and worldbuilding one, will both remain open, but I’m going to ask that no one bring any of this discussion to those spaces. That’s a boundary that I’m going to have to insist on at this juncture.

I guess I’d like to close by saying that I’m not angry. I’m really not. I just feel really, really sad. I’d like to believe that the timing of this is just unfortunate, that the implications of ableism are an accident, that the pervasive biphobia in this server has been rooted in ignorance and not malice. But after today’s discussion, honestly? I’d always wonder, and I’d never feel good here again.

There’s a line that’s been crossed here into the grounds of active cruelty. Lal’s been hurt, Io’s been hurt, and you guys have just kept going and going and going at these two, who have really tried their all for you. And as I said to Lal and Io earlier, on a personal note, dragging out my admissions of pain and hurt as "receipts" is the point where there's no going back for any relationship.  

And that’s the time to move on.

[destroyyourbinder]

People who detransition have a wide range of experiences with transition, including those who claim to have not experienced much dysphoria and mostly a type of identity disturbance and who may have been prompted by a therapist to “try testosterone” or gotten treatment at an informed consent clinic, to people who had every stage of surgery available (including genital surgery) and/or who have been on hormones for a decade or more. There is no clear separation between detransitioned women’s dysphoria and the dysphoria of those who are “reidentified” (i.e. women who ceased seeing themselves as transgender and did not transition); on the average it is probably likely that those who were able to desist in identifying as transgender without first going through medical transition did not experience quite as severe symptoms but there are definitely women who “reidentified” who either were fully planning on medical transition but were delayed for some reason or who actually went through qualification steps but dropped out. I know at least two women who had a testosterone prescription who ended up not injecting it. In my case I consider it relatively coincidental to various aspects of my life that I didn’t transition, mostly that I was entirely resource dependent on my abusive and conservative family until I was 26 and there was almost no transgender health infrastructure in the rural area I lived in until probably the past 5 years. (Literally the only gender therapist in about a 35 mile radius that I could find, since I started looking at around 16 years old until probably until I was about 22 or 23, was an older trans woman who only did private practice and offered crystal therapy to boot.) When I tell my story I have to admit it was in part cowardice that led me to fail to transition-- I gave up, feeling utterly defeated, after a phone call and an e-mail to the recently established gender care wing of a regional LGBT clinic went unanswered. Transitioning was probably the single worst thing I could have done in my situation, and I would have likely been thrown out of my house. I was not brave enough to face that even though some trans people obviously are willing to do so. My dysphoria was clearly severe, however, and the fact that my other mental health issues and the abusive situation I was living in interfered with my ability to try to seek a solution to it (in any way) doesn’t mean that it wasn’t very life limiting. I have met women who did not transition who severely injured their bodies, who struggled to appear in public, who had never had a partner or could not bear basic health exams, etc. because of their dysphoria. The reason why I mention these stories isn’t just a personal sense of miffed-ness because of my “cred” being threatened or some such.  (One note before I continue to talk about “reidentification”: I personally don’t like this language. I never clearly identified as a girl or woman and did not return to some such state after being “derailed” somehow by transgenderism; my gender issues are unfortunately continuous with my childhood and adolescent self. I also do not consider my relationship to being female one of “identification” nor my healing from dysphoria or gender issues to merely consist in realigning my identity with my body.) But that being said, women who reconcile with being female without transition have a unique set of issues coming from the fact that their gender dysphoria never quite “resolves” in the sense that the option to transition is always looming and the results of transition can never be fully closed off so long as you don’t actually do it. This isn’t to compare our issues directly with detransitioned women, merely to point out that women who “reidentify” without transitioning (most detransitioned women also “reidentify”, but post-transition) face their own set of issues that are not often publicly discussed or recognized. Many laypeople watching these debates and invested trans people assume that “reidentified” people somehow just... fully stop the whole transgender thing somehow, and this leads to a false perception that we never shared anything in common with people who transition (whether or not they eventually detransition). The point is that we are often more like a trans man who is permanently stuck on the cusp of waiting to transition (rather than some weird girl who decided she was trans one day and gave it up a week later) which can be excruciating and unbearable even if we do not see our personal future life trajectory including transition. I have enormous compassion for and share a lot in common with trans people who once called themselves “non-op” or “noho”, people who often for medical reasons but sometimes personal ones could not have surgical operations or hormone treatment. This demographic is often completely ignored in debates about transgender healthcare and transgenderism more broadly and the trans community often is hostile to their existence or conveniently erases it. My gender issues no longer take the form of grieving the potential that I will not transition, but my early experience with reconciling with being female certainly did, and it is bizarre to still “feel” that potential of transition floating in my sense of goal-directedness towards the future and social expectations of someone “like me” despite the fact that I never likely will. This is all to say the first wave of public detransitioned people included mostly people with quote-unquote “serious” transitions (mostly women who had had mastectomies and who were on testosterone for over a year) and the narrative from so-called “transmeds” was precisely the same then, that these people were unfortunately misdiagnosed or maybe so deeply mentally ill that they faked the symptoms of transsexualism for unknown reasons, but that they were not “truly dysphoric” or “actually trans”. Those who accepted the stories of women like this-- that they were dysphoric and qualified as transgender-- insisted on claiming that these women were self-hating trans men or nonbinary people who had politically deluded themselves or fallen in with bigots. Women (and men) who find a way out of transgenderism besides transition, whether or not they transitioned first or came to it without transitioning, are inconvenient to the narrative that permits trans people to claim transition makes sense as a solution to their issues, and the idea that we can present some Ideal Detransitioned Person who would get them to finally listen is a farce. Trans people eat each other alive over whether or not their dysphoria is “fake” or whether their transition is justified or whether or not they make other trans people look bad and will get their transition opportunities revoked. Unless a trans person is sympathetic for whatever reason, there is no way to prevent them from blocking out whatever they don’t want to hear. Detransitioned people have unique issues and trauma as a result of transitioning and “reidentified” people-- those who never had to be subject to the transition apparatus or the effects of living as a transgender person-- ought to respect this. But it’s ultimately useless to segregate our stories strictly, as if “reidentified” folks are bad optics and detransitioned people are good optics. We’re all bad optics, especially us female people. Trans men are always on the threshold of not being believed, because they are female, and they work very very hard to tailor a narrative about their experiences that they think forces the people around them and those they must cooperate with to ensure their transition. This is why they are so threatened by detransition and reidentification more broadly. The thing I wish female trans people realized-- more than anything about “dysphoria” or solving it, really, because I can’t make that choice for anyone-- is that how they craft their narrative doesn’t ultimately matter, and us un-trans’d folks don’t matter all that much to whether or not they’re going to be allowed to Do It. What matters is that doctors and the legal and social apparatus permit trans men to transition because it is convenient to their power that certain female people do this. It’s a responsibility-abdicating fairytale that they let trans people of any sex or stripe believe, that trans people have to “convince” them to let them transition. And surely, yes, they let some people transition and they don’t let others, and they have stated reasons for this that have to do with Symptoms and Persistence and Experience. But presenting a certain picture to a doctor or a judge has always been more about compliance to authority and willingness to assimilate and compatibility with the status quo than it was about diagnostic criteria or “gatekeeping”. It’s more like a job interview at a retail joint or fast food, where the boss doesn’t care about who you are or even if you can do the job as written but more about whether you’ll do what you’re told and show up and not make a fuss. Whether you’ll work with the team. If you tell the gender manager the right story to get transition-hired you’re telling him not only that you qualify for the job but that you qualify because you’ll tell an authority what he wants to hear, you’ll show up in the right outfit for the gender interview because you care about gender propriety, because you want to prove yourself to someone who has more power than you. I don’t think detransitioned or desisted women should play the prove-your-dysphoria game because it shows the gender authorities that we’re still in their pocket. It’s a kind of gender dysphoria, honestly, to quit the trans thing but still be so invested in being labeled Really Dysphoric and Not Different Than the Trans People. This isn’t to say we aren’t dysphoric nor that we’re truly different, and I say this as someone who still does it myself. But it doesn’t model anything good about dysphoria recovery to the trans people out there listening to us, nor the questioning folks, if we’re still trying to prove to people hostile to us and those with more power than us that we’re Really, No Really, Still Gender Fuckups Who Need Help from Daddy. Being willing to separate from women who haven’t transitioned in order to prove your True Gender Fuckery to Someone Who Will Listen and Help ends up helping no one, especially those still vulnerable to choosing to transition, which includes both women who “reidentified” and those trans or questioning people who have not yet transitioned, as well as those trans people who are contemplating further transition steps. I don’t hesitate to say that it is ultimately nihilistic for the community to become so invested in dysphoria and proving our right to call ourselves dysphoric, because we are encouraging our listeners, whether detrans or trans, to respond with that one-up, with the double-down, with the closing of self introspection that is key to propping up gender dysphoria. I hope we can all move beyond our dysphoria, find a way of relating to each other not dependent on it. The silly thing, after all, is how much in common detransitioned and reidentified people have with trans people beyond simple gender problems. It’s life history, little foibles, facing discrimination for who we are and choose to be, the experiences of alienation, fear, and sometimes even our joys. We shouldn’t have to prove our dysphoria to each other as a qualification to speak about these things or to share community. That is the tragedy I see and the tragedy that having gender authorities involved in transgenderism inculcates, that their terms and value system infests our solidarity with each other. I reject that, and so far as trans people are invested in it then I guess I must withdraw from them. But it doesn’t have to be this way for either those who transition or those who stop transition or those who never do.

its so.... unfeeling, to me, when transmeds bring up detransitioners and talk about us as some nasty side effect from the Tucute Foolishness, say they're sympathetic to us poor mislead folks. They dismiss our dysphoria and our experiences because it doesn't fit their narrative and even fit it in to their little ideological war! sewing our mouths shut and tying our arms like puppets so we can dance in their song, because fuck how detransitioners actually feel, and fuck what detransitioners actually say. its heartless, to be quite honest. the false sympathy is sickening.