Kathee Muzin on the first time she fell in love with a woman, from The Montreal Gazette, 1991

Poetry published in Come Out, 1972

Two fluffy potatoes

Some of what’s going on there is just, well, talk is cheap, and it’s easier to get people to say the right slogans than to actually unlearn transphobia. But I think some of it is this:

A common form of transmisogyny is the idea that a trans woman, as a man pretending to be a woman, is something threatening pretending to be nonthreatening. (Julia Serano’s “deceptive transsexual” is basically this.) Now the people in these spaces don’t think trans women are men, oh no. They’ll say “trans women are women” and fully believe it. But it’s one thing to think that trans women are women in the abstract, when the word “women” is right there in the subject of the sentence to guide you. When you’re dealing with an actual trans woman in front of you… maybe she’s got masculine features and you kind of think of her as a man even if you wouldn’t say it. Maybe she’s half a foot taller than her partner and if there’s abuse going on there, there’s no question in your mind who’s abusing whom. Maybe she said something you disagree with and well, would she really have said that if she hadn’t spent most of her life being treated as a man? Maybe she’s taking up more space than you’d like her to and that feels pretty masculine to you. And you’re not saying that she’s faking her identity or anything, but it sure is convenient for her that she can accuse people of transphobia if they point out how she’s exhibiting toxic masculinity.

Hey, y'all in the notes: she wasn't asking you to call her beautiful or say she's adorable or "uwu she's so sweet i would die for her". She's asking you to interact with physically different creators regardless of if you think they're beautiful or not. Beauty standards are a farce and we need to stop implying that beautiful is the most important thing someone can be. Every person who says "oh she's so sweet I would die for her" or "anyone who calls her ugly is getting their kneecaps caved in": this is for you. You are being madly infantalising. It's like when you say to a fat person "oh you're not fat, you're cuddly" like, shut up! I thought we were past this by now. She is a PERSON and you are all scrambling to say just how beautiful you think she is, without even thinking about the message she is trying to send.