This is a deeply personal topic for me. This quote especially really stood out to me: I'm someone that still mostly identifies as a guy on estrogen, so when I hear about transfeminine care...
This is a deeply personal topic for me. This quote especially really stood out to me:
But any model of where trans people “come from” — any at all — is a model that by default calls into question the care of anyone who does not meet its etiological profile.
I'm someone that still mostly identifies as a guy on estrogen, so when I hear about transfeminine care excluding 'fetishists' I know that they're talking about me. It's something I've had trouble with being confident in even in leftist spaces, as lots of people on the left don't really understand being nonbinary or what the gender binary even is, not to mention lots of outdated ideas on gender essentialism. The idea of needing 'to be transgender enough' to be allowed the freedom to modify your own hormone profile is what this article attacks, and I think it does a great job of explaining the things I've had to struggle to from first principles.
I am sorry that you've had to deal with the discrimination and exclusion from people who should in fact be part of the family. You don't need the external validation, but I'd like to, as a...
I am sorry that you've had to deal with the discrimination and exclusion from people who should in fact be part of the family.
You don't need the external validation, but I'd like to, as a demi-gender, non-binary woman that pretty much never gets called "they" by people even in my university bubble confirm that you are, indeed, valid.
You get used to it eventually. I mostly just get angry at them for the benefit of the younger generation, now that I have a much stronger sense of self and much harder resolve. I still remember...
You get used to it eventually. I mostly just get angry at them for the benefit of the younger generation, now that I have a much stronger sense of self and much harder resolve.
I still remember reading a lot of very mean reddit comments about genderfluidity not even that long ago, from a lot of bisexual people at that. Love more than one gender, that's fine, but mixing and matching genders? A bridge too far. That made me really upset the first time I saw it, but now it just makes me laugh at the absurdity. Truly, online transphobia is a social club for a bunch of losers that are so addicted to hating that it's made them insufferable to almost everyone else.
Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ community has a long history of internal discrimination and acrimonious relations. Even before the term LGBT was coined, there were vocal groups in the gay community (the...
Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ community has a long history of internal discrimination and acrimonious relations. Even before the term LGBT was coined, there were vocal groups in the gay community (the term at the time) that didn't want to work together or take up common issues. It doesn't feel like that long ago that the big topic was bi people getting excluded or called out by the community.
I'll be the first to admit that despite being on the periphery of the community for a long time, and helping a friend transition long before it was even talked about, I didn't really keep up with the changes or fully understand it all. But I don't understand a great many personal things, not having experienced them myself. All I need to know is people have services and support to figure themselves out. I don't need to understand why people get a bunch of tattoos for me to support their right to get them, and have safe ways to do so.
Oh of course, I'm aware of the long history of internal backstabbing. I'm sure in an alternate reality where being transgender is accepted but not being bisexual the trans advocates tried to throw...
Oh of course, I'm aware of the long history of internal backstabbing. I'm sure in an alternate reality where being transgender is accepted but not being bisexual the trans advocates tried to throw the bisexuals under the bus. It's just basic human selfishness.
Especially in America. What's more American than going "fuck you, I got mine"?
As someone who is gay and has some genderfluidity about them AND works as anarchist activist/community organizer I can say with confidence the backstabbing is firmly just human nature. It...
As someone who is gay and has some genderfluidity about them AND works as anarchist activist/community organizer I can say with confidence the backstabbing is firmly just human nature. It transcends LGBT advocacy and extends into every single arena of human life. Our history is wrought with in group/out group fighting even amongst the marginalized and oppressed. sigh It can be mitigated with personal experience and exposure to people to share their stories but it is always arduous and not 100% so inevitably bad actors will enter the fray which complicates things with those that are simply misled.
On a side note, as someone who has modified their body to fit their image but maintains a hormone panel that contradicts those changes I feel your...discomfort and unease with many spaces. I'm sorry that the ones you've dealt with didn't have someone helming them that understood that the spectrum of human experience really has very few limits and it's the variety that makes us amazing. Keep your head up and keep fighting the fight if you can. Nothing but love from one to another. <3
Most transfeminine spaces I've found are extremely binary and obsess over passing, traditional standards of attractiveness, and respectability politics as though fascists give the slightest...
On a side note, as someone who has modified their body to fit their image but maintains a hormone panel that contradicts those changes I feel your...discomfort and unease with many spaces.
Most transfeminine spaces I've found are extremely binary and obsess over passing, traditional standards of attractiveness, and respectability politics as though fascists give the slightest solitary shit about how they're totally one of the good ones guys. Many general trans spaces are better about this but have a lot of conflict between (I'm cribbing a Contrapoints phrase here) 'old school transsexuals' and people for whom gender is simply a hat to wear, because their experiences are just simply different, so without a strong leader or leaders willing to do the work of bringing people together these spaces are inherently unstable. That's not even getting into how these spaces do trend towards those early in transition trying to find themselves, and bluntly a lot of those people are pretty emotionally unstable (I say, as someone who is DEFINITELY the model of emotional stability).
I think the best thing I ever did for myself for my mental health, transition, and just general self-actualization was go meet real queer people. None of this annoying weird shit survives a 5 minute conversation in the real. If you try to start kink at pride discourse around actual queer people they will yell at you until you stop being wrong or stop being at the event.
I do become quite the parental bear when my trans students are threatened, so I get that. But still you shouldn't have to be used to it. There isn't a single pride month where my queer/bi/pan ass...
I do become quite the parental bear when my trans students are threatened, so I get that. But still you shouldn't have to be used to it. There isn't a single pride month where my queer/bi/pan ass doesnt get told one of my labels is unacceptable. And this will be the first year I add non-binary woman/demi-gender is added. So we'll see how that goes.
A couple quotes I wanted to highlight because I thought they were on point This language, cribbed from the Democratic politicians that don't quite want to grant people full control of their own...
A couple quotes I wanted to highlight because I thought they were on point
the public was dimly prepared to accept that trans people were like gay people — that is, safe, legal, and rare.
This language, cribbed from the Democratic politicians that don't quite want to grant people full control of their own uteri is absolutely on point. What is the fight against trans existence but the fight against bodily autonomy and self determination?
The TARL’s primary concern, to hear him tell it, lies in protecting free speech and civil society from the illiberal forces of the woke left, which, by forcing the orthodoxy of gender down the public’s throat and viciously attacking anyone who dares to ask questions, is trafficking in censorship, intimidation, and quasi-religious fanaticism. On trans people themselves, the TARL claims to take no position other than to voice his general empathy for anyone suffering from psychological distress or civil-rights violations.
Never mind that this behavior directly violates civil rights and causes psychological distress. Incredibly well put.
At the same time, the paper consistently refuses to treat transition-related care the way it would any other health-care matter. Last year, the Times ran a story on a small Missouri gender clinic that had been overwhelmed by an “unrelenting surge in demand.” But the paper did not present this as an issue of access, as it has done with the national shortage in affordable home care or the inundation of abortion clinics with out-of-state patients post-Dobbs. Rather, the demand itself was suspect, a result of poorly explained psychological and social forces that had “bewildered” experts, whose warnings were as usual being drowned out by activists. Indeed, the average Times-reading liberal is left with the impression that, because politics obstructs the slow work of scientific consensus-building, trans people’s best shot at receiving health care is to stop asking for it.
YES. The idea that this isn't a medical supply side crisis but a crisis of "what about the children" is down to the Times and other "TARLs" buying into the gender critical rhetoric
what he means by this is that he does not think most kids are suicidal enough to be trans.
And when they are, it's proof that their trans identity was the psychological disorder. Following the news about Nex Benedict that hits particularly hard today. It's spring break on campus and I'm just hoping my students come back and ask for the support they need.
The real question is which sex can be affirmed — and why.
With the push to "save" IVF in Alabama they prove that gender affirming care is fine, when it's in line with conservative gender roles. It's only deviant and unsafe when trans people want to use it. And if those trans folks are, say, autistic even as adults, let's take away their autonomy even further.
This was well written and also incredibly frustrating because it's so correct.
Wow. I didn't follow 100% of everything in the body of the piece, but the entire conclusion (from "'what if we make freedom into the air we together breathe'" on) is incredibly well-put. Thanks...
Wow. I didn't follow 100% of everything in the body of the piece, but the entire conclusion (from "'what if we make freedom into the air we together breathe'" on) is incredibly well-put. Thanks for this.
This is a deeply personal topic for me. This quote especially really stood out to me:
I'm someone that still mostly identifies as a guy on estrogen, so when I hear about transfeminine care excluding 'fetishists' I know that they're talking about me. It's something I've had trouble with being confident in even in leftist spaces, as lots of people on the left don't really understand being nonbinary or what the gender binary even is, not to mention lots of outdated ideas on gender essentialism. The idea of needing 'to be transgender enough' to be allowed the freedom to modify your own hormone profile is what this article attacks, and I think it does a great job of explaining the things I've had to struggle to from first principles.
EDIT: archive link btw
I am sorry that you've had to deal with the discrimination and exclusion from people who should in fact be part of the family.
You don't need the external validation, but I'd like to, as a demi-gender, non-binary woman that pretty much never gets called "they" by people even in my university bubble confirm that you are, indeed, valid.
Thanks for the article!
You get used to it eventually. I mostly just get angry at them for the benefit of the younger generation, now that I have a much stronger sense of self and much harder resolve.
I still remember reading a lot of very mean reddit comments about genderfluidity not even that long ago, from a lot of bisexual people at that. Love more than one gender, that's fine, but mixing and matching genders? A bridge too far. That made me really upset the first time I saw it, but now it just makes me laugh at the absurdity. Truly, online transphobia is a social club for a bunch of losers that are so addicted to hating that it's made them insufferable to almost everyone else.
Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ community has a long history of internal discrimination and acrimonious relations. Even before the term LGBT was coined, there were vocal groups in the gay community (the term at the time) that didn't want to work together or take up common issues. It doesn't feel like that long ago that the big topic was bi people getting excluded or called out by the community.
I'll be the first to admit that despite being on the periphery of the community for a long time, and helping a friend transition long before it was even talked about, I didn't really keep up with the changes or fully understand it all. But I don't understand a great many personal things, not having experienced them myself. All I need to know is people have services and support to figure themselves out. I don't need to understand why people get a bunch of tattoos for me to support their right to get them, and have safe ways to do so.
Oh of course, I'm aware of the long history of internal backstabbing. I'm sure in an alternate reality where being transgender is accepted but not being bisexual the trans advocates tried to throw the bisexuals under the bus. It's just basic human selfishness.
Especially in America. What's more American than going "fuck you, I got mine"?
As someone who is gay and has some genderfluidity about them AND works as anarchist activist/community organizer I can say with confidence the backstabbing is firmly just human nature. It transcends LGBT advocacy and extends into every single arena of human life. Our history is wrought with in group/out group fighting even amongst the marginalized and oppressed. sigh It can be mitigated with personal experience and exposure to people to share their stories but it is always arduous and not 100% so inevitably bad actors will enter the fray which complicates things with those that are simply misled.
On a side note, as someone who has modified their body to fit their image but maintains a hormone panel that contradicts those changes I feel your...discomfort and unease with many spaces. I'm sorry that the ones you've dealt with didn't have someone helming them that understood that the spectrum of human experience really has very few limits and it's the variety that makes us amazing. Keep your head up and keep fighting the fight if you can. Nothing but love from one to another. <3
Most transfeminine spaces I've found are extremely binary and obsess over passing, traditional standards of attractiveness, and respectability politics as though fascists give the slightest solitary shit about how they're totally one of the good ones guys. Many general trans spaces are better about this but have a lot of conflict between (I'm cribbing a Contrapoints phrase here) 'old school transsexuals' and people for whom gender is simply a hat to wear, because their experiences are just simply different, so without a strong leader or leaders willing to do the work of bringing people together these spaces are inherently unstable. That's not even getting into how these spaces do trend towards those early in transition trying to find themselves, and bluntly a lot of those people are pretty emotionally unstable (I say, as someone who is DEFINITELY the model of emotional stability).
I think the best thing I ever did for myself for my mental health, transition, and just general self-actualization was go meet real queer people. None of this annoying weird shit survives a 5 minute conversation in the real. If you try to start kink at pride discourse around actual queer people they will yell at you until you stop being wrong or stop being at the event.
I do become quite the parental bear when my trans students are threatened, so I get that. But still you shouldn't have to be used to it. There isn't a single pride month where my queer/bi/pan ass doesnt get told one of my labels is unacceptable. And this will be the first year I add non-binary woman/demi-gender is added. So we'll see how that goes.
A couple quotes I wanted to highlight because I thought they were on point
This language, cribbed from the Democratic politicians that don't quite want to grant people full control of their own uteri is absolutely on point. What is the fight against trans existence but the fight against bodily autonomy and self determination?
Never mind that this behavior directly violates civil rights and causes psychological distress. Incredibly well put.
YES. The idea that this isn't a medical supply side crisis but a crisis of "what about the children" is down to the Times and other "TARLs" buying into the gender critical rhetoric
And when they are, it's proof that their trans identity was the psychological disorder. Following the news about Nex Benedict that hits particularly hard today. It's spring break on campus and I'm just hoping my students come back and ask for the support they need.
With the push to "save" IVF in Alabama they prove that gender affirming care is fine, when it's in line with conservative gender roles. It's only deviant and unsafe when trans people want to use it. And if those trans folks are, say, autistic even as adults, let's take away their autonomy even further.
This was well written and also incredibly frustrating because it's so correct.
What a wonderfully well-written article. It hits home on a large number of personal points. Thanks for sharing.
Wow. I didn't follow 100% of everything in the body of the piece, but the entire conclusion (from "'what if we make freedom into the air we together breathe'" on) is incredibly well-put. Thanks for this.