wanted to build off of that last post i reblogged by talking about how institutionalized trans women are under constant threat of punishment for literally anything that could be deemed inappropriate or sexual by nurses and doctors because of the fact that anything a trans woman does is deemed inherently an act of sexual deviance; this is because her existence is reduced to a fetish. If all we are is a fetish, then any attempt at socialization, any attempt at human connection, any attempt at friendship, any plea for solidarity, is seen as inherently obscene and inappropriate. It's not entirely relevant to the last reblog which is why i didnt write this in the reblog or in the tags but built off of it independently. Bare with me, it will tie in to that post more explicitly towards the end.
I'm gonna try to shorten down to a few words a horrible experience i had my first time being hospitalized for a ptsd-related aborted sui attempt, which made certain things very clear to me.
i was put into the PTSD treatment unit in a room with another doll, and we were both almost immediately vehemently scolded by nurses and sent to separate units for the horrible violation of sitting a few feet apart on the same bed and talking about godzilla movies and how badly we missed our respective partners. We weren't touching each other, and there was no intention of that from either of us. We were just chatting and mostly comforted by the fact that there was another doll and so we thought that meant we wouldnt have to worry ourselves sick over sharing a space with another person as a trans woman. Apparently it was sitting on the same bed that did the damage. but of course any kind of social existence or connection is deemed inherently inappropriate and sexual when you are a trans woman, and any sexual relationship (or frankly any meaningful social relationship) as an institutionalized person is considered a taboo, and this is tenfold true for an institutionalized trans woman. And when anything you do is a sex act because your existence is deemed a fetish, than any act of dehumanization and "othering" can be rationalized. We ended up trading contact info and talking a bit about the incident when we got out, and we both agreed that we were targeted and othered by the nurses.
the ultimate irony and what truly laid bare what was happening to us is that after I moved units, a white cisgender woman sat on my bed, right next to me, because I was bawling my eyes out, to rub my back and try to comfort me. She ended up making fetishistic transphobic comments toward me that I guess she thought were helpful and supportive. She was not moved or scolded. Because a cisgender person is allowed to initiate these interactions, it is only really acknowledged or considered deviance when a transgender woman does it. The next day and for 2 days after that, a cisgender white man made repeated sexual advances towards me, circled me like a vulture for days, made up a pet-name for me that he whispered to me every chance he got, and eventually threatened to sneak into my room and rxpe me in the middle of the night, after he ACTUALLY snuck into someone else's room and stole their handheld heart-rate monitor, and of course, was not immediately disciplined for either of these things, but was eventually disciplined for stealing the monitor but not for sexually harassing me for days and threatening to rxpe me.
Neither of these people were disciplined or even separated from me after explicitly fetishizing and targeting me. When I reported the man who threatened to rxpe me, the nurse who I reported to told me "being pretty is a double edged sword" and "we'll keep an eye out, we won't let him do anything." Blatant misogynistic victim blaming. It's worth noting it was a cisgender woman, not even a man, who said these things to me. And it's okay that she said these things to me because I'm not just another woman, I'm a lower class of woman who isn't worthy of the solidarity and protection she may have offered to another cisgender woman who just experienced the same thing. I have to be reminded that this is what womanhood looks like, as if I haven't been facing this treatment my entire life. And of course, no action was taken.
yes that is the condensed version of that story. anyway, this proved multiple things to me.
1. Cisgender people can get away with doing and saying anything, even outwardly sexual and fetishistic things to transgender women without repercussions, while at the same time:
2. Transgender women connecting with anyone or seeking out any kind of social relationship or comfort is considered inappropriate in cisgender society because transfemininity is considered an act of sexual deviance; a sexual violation.
3. On the other hand, TMEs, especially cisgender people, are allowed to, and go completely undisciplined for initiating even entirely nonconsensual sexual encounters with transgender women, with the small caveat of there being a chance of social stigma for being attracted to us, but that social stigma and the effect of it is not nearly as harmful to those fetishizing cisgender people as the harm inflicted on transgender women for even seeking friendship, or participating in any kind of socialization at all. And it is important to acknowledge that the condemnation of these fetishizing and predatory cisgender people by other cisgender people is not even motivated by the analysis of the misogynistic fetishization of us, it's motivated solely by the inherited and socially conditioned disgust many cis people feel about the idea of anyone being attracted to a trxnny, because there is a conscious or unconscious disgust that they have towards trans women. Attraction to trans women is of course not the harmful part about fetishizing and sexually harassing or assaulting a trans woman; it is the fact that our autonomy and our right to basic respect and decency is stripped from us, and we're reduced to sexual objects and nothing more than that. To acknowledge this, we must also recognize that those people reducing our existence and our participation in any kind of socialization or relationship to other people at all to a sexual deviation or perversion, are in fact themselves fetishizing us, are in fact themselves committing a sexual crime against us, akin to harassment. It is not the place of a third party to assign sexuality to two transgender women sitting and talking. To a transgender woman initiating a conversation with a cis woman. To a transgender woman seeking friendship or solidarity. Depriving trans women of any social relationships is always rooted in our fetishization.
4. cisgender people in positions of power over trans women will almost always take advantage of that position of power to ensure trans women are othered. are further alienated. are denied proper treatment. are denied social existence. Something we need to acknowledge is that frankly any cisgender person at all is inherently in a position of power over a transgender woman because of the how violently cisgenderism is enforced at every level of social development and society at large.
5. many of these "othered" people who are not even trans, are people who we can find solidarity among; are people we can possibly turn to for community and safety. While being moved units abruptly and punished for something so trivial was jarring, and while some of the people in the "other" unit targeted me, and while my time in the hospital probably would have been better if they kept me in the unit where I would be treated for PTSD, most of the people in the "other" unit became like my family and were much more helpful and healing to be around than any of the staff. At the same time, we have to be cautious and aware that any cisgender person at any time is capable of recognizing the power imbalance between us and them and using it to harm us just to relieve their own despair.
All of this, primarily the parts about cisgender people harassing and assaulting trans women under hospitalization, i think connects to the wider issue of how sexuality is viewed among the institutionalized because nonconsensual sexual encounters overall seem to be less frowned upon and taken less seriously at least by the medical establishment than consensual sexual encounters or even just relationships in general between any institutionalized people. And that rape culture has been built up to a far higher degree upon the people who are the most vulnerable to it, (the poor, the mentally vulnerable, the 'othered', and the intersection of all of this with trans womanhood) is just absolutely unforgivable and if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes and experienced it myself it would be unfathomable.
people deserve human connection. whether they're institutionalized or not. any kind of systemic stigmatization towards consensual relationships of any kind especially while that same system is simultaneously ignoring or even rewarding sexual assault, harassment, and fetishization, in an epidemic capacity, is horrific.
