#gonna take the tumblr approach of 'posts with 60k notes energy

[possessesnightshift]

I don't usually respond to these kinds of posts beyond the realm of the tags but like... jesus christ people are you fucking serious??

like i don't even know where to start with this reblog chain alone, not to even getting into all of the replies. i guess chronological order? (in fitting tumblr fashion lol)

ok so the poll itself. this is fine. it is very interesting for the data to show a statistically significant difference in opinion between trans women and the rest of the queer community. i am not judging this poll itself. i totally empathize with trans women who are put off by drag bc of the reasons listed further down. you can not like something that's popular within the queer community. in fact, it is important to listen to people who don't like popular things lest we all succumb to groupthink.

HOWEVER, the moment someone dares to say in the most non-confrontational manner possible "huh its kinda disappointing trans women don't get to enjoy this artform like everyone else" all bets are off.

Now that post might not have been trying to be condescending but the way its written it kind of is. i reiterate that i think trans women are valid for saying they have more negative feelings than positive based on their life experience. maybe some of these women ARE educated and still hold a negative opinion and that is totally fine. but the pushback goes beyond just that

"i already know that cis people respect drag queens more than they do transfems"

um? which cis people? cis people within the queer community? cishets? those are already two wildly different groups to sample, but apparently it's just cis people.. fine ok whatever maybe there's a point to be made about how crossdressing (an important tradition that's been a thing in the queer community for a long ass time) is easier to accept in a temporary performance than as part of a permanent stable identity. the resentment isn't a constructive thing necessarily but i get why its there. fine let's move on

"but I fucking hate how any time some shit happens with trans femme people's rights the news bring in fucking drag queens to talk about it, and they accept. we are not drag queens..."

ok immediately im done being charitable. what the fuck. what the fuck is this nonsense? why? what the fuck are you saying? oh my god.

what is the point of this harsh anti-drag queen stance? are you on the side of the anti-drag bills in congress? this is fucking extreme. do you think these bills exclude drag queens and cisgender crossdressers? do you think the transphobic us govt will just give these people a pass? do you the most homophobic cishet legislators can even differentiate between a trans woman and a drag queen and a cisgender gay man and a bisexual man who happens to be a twink? ALL of these people fall under the umbrella of icky sinful queer. all of them. which is the entire reason we need solidarity in the first place. i can get being frustrated (which is all the original poll really measures) but this goes beyond that. this is about the question what do with we DO with our frustration.

this shit is bad. this is the textbook example of the queer community turning against itself instead against the actual cishet oppressors. while yes cishets are chided lightly in these reblog chains for being bad (what else is new?) the vast majority of the words and analysis in this thread go towards shitting on other queer people, either drag queens directly or cisgender queer people who don't differentiate enough between transfems and drag queens or whatever. however you slice it, this is the definition of infighting. that is what is happening on this post.

i think i've mostly made my point but i'll finish with the very last lines of the last response which is the closest to reasonable:

"And I guess it just frustrates me that the people who use the idea of "queer history" as a bludgeon to tell trans women to be quiet don't know what they're talking about."

Like... telling trans women to be quiet? the snarky post saying for trans women to educate themselves on the history of drag is not silencing trans women. it is literally inviting trans women to stay in this discussion and potentially find value in this artform. that is not just shutting trans women down entirely. in fact, it kinda feels like that is what is happening to the cis queer people and cishets who like drag.

i dont' have any pulitzer prize winning arguments to make the trans women who inevitably will disagree with me see what im so concerned about. i don't know what string of words to use to get people to understand why i find this so threatening to the future of the queer community's existence. we NEED to disagree with each other respectfully. we NEED to have constructive dialogues. but what i see in this post specifically is evidence of trans women being radicalized against the rest of the queer community in real time. and why? because of resentment. supposedly drag queens are making a mockery of transfeminitity by making drag into this big public display that's watering down the queer essence into something palatable for the straights. idk. maybe that's true.

but again. what is the response? what do we DO with this information? well apparently spend a lot of time shitting on drag queens ig. the saddest thing of all is that in a lot of ways i agree with the idea that being expected to just adore drag in an uncritical uncomplicated manner because you are a queer is very annoying at best and deeply hurtful and insulting at worst. i basically have no reason to like modern drag in and of itself save for its association with the queer liberation movement and that history. i have positive feelings of drag not because of any of the times i went to a drag show and enjoyed it (a grand total of zero times) but because of the importance in my heart to support any kind of intentional gender bending in society. whether that's gender bending like they do in the new york balls in paris is burning, gender bending by being born one gender and transitioning to the other later, or gender bending by being a man indiscernible from any other cisgender average joe but still preferring to want to be with another man, i NEED to support all of it because all of this makes me safer as a queer person. sadly, it seems the separatist movements have already taken root. it seems as though individual factions of the queer community are dividing against each other in a time when gay rights have become mainstream but QUEER rights on the whole are more threatened than ever, basically the perfect breeding grounds for resentment and infighting to get out of control.

i want to emphasize the need for queer solidarity. the need to accept people even if their queerness feels like its brushing up against yours. and then i want to ask every queer person on here alongside every straight ally to ponder deeply what the POINT of this rhetoric is.

no i mean it. do it. ask yourself what the point is in being this militant against drag queens? or ace people? or intersex people? or any other hypothetical group that isn't your neck of the queer woods? why is this group of queer people gaining rights a bad thing for you? why? can you say why? and if you can, is that a valid enough reason to go to war with the rest of the queer community?

i don't care if you agree with me.

i just want you to be brave enough to ask the question without any expectations and just listen. listen to yourself, to your internal biases, to other queer people, to straight people who support you, to people who don't, it does not matter in the end. i just ask you to pose the question:

what. is. the. point. of it all?

I've gotta admit I think about this one a lot for many reasons. I'd really love to see what others think