transgirljoy

All people have a tendency to be unconsciously biased toward seeing trans women as untrustworthy, unsafe, lacking vulnerability, the problem to be solved rather than a person to be taken care of. And this is not less true in trans and queer and feminist communities. It’s just more unconscious, and more propped up with social justice, feminism, queer lib, leftist, and anti-oppression beliefs. This book is talking about this in context to a physical public situation of harassment, but this is true of social conflicts too, including on social media, in friend groups, in all kinds of situations. The unconscious bias also gets taken advantage of by people who know what they’re doing and hide behind that bias to make their mistreatment of transfems seem reasonable—again, often supported with social justice and anti-oppression rhetoric. TERFs aren’t the only people who do this! It felt so incredible to see this spelled out in print, plain as day, an actual book calling out a real thing I’ve experience more times than I can count, that all transfems I know go through, and that I still feel crazy for seeing because there’s so much gaslighting about it. You know how when you KNOW something is real, but you feel defensive about that knowledge, like you have to be ready to hold onto it, and then you see something confirming that knowledge for you in no uncertain terms and it feels like “wow maybe I wasn’t crazy all this time!” That’s how I felt seeing this.

Lemme tell you the story of this gun my wife showed me.

At first, I immediatly assumed it belonged to her grandfather who was a lieutenant in the french military. Not a fan of guns and didn't think much of it.

" No it belonged to my great-grandmother!"

She then told me the entire story of badass great grandmother Jeanne, that I need to share here.

Its important to note the time period it takes place in: Right smack in the middle of WWII.

Jeanne was of Jewish heritage but she immediatly realized things were starting to get ugly concerning Jews and took the decision to baptize herself and her children at the last minute so she had paperworks to show Nazi officials to lie about her jewish upbringing. This move saved her life and that of her children.

Some times later, another nazi official was investigating the weird deaths of his collegues in the area, and was suspecting resistance hideouts down the river because thats where they found the bodies So he knocked door to door, and asked if anyone noticed anything, under threats obviously.

Jeanne opened the door and told the Nazi official she didn't notice anything, playing the role of the frightened by everything going on, harmless young lady, living alone after her husband died. The guy immediatly dropped his guard , and Jeanne invited him inside for tea since it was already late and cold out.

The -moment- he stepped inside and his back was to her as he removed his coat. She took out this exact gun out of her dress and shot him point blank in the head.

-She- was the resistance member killing Nazis knocking on her door, dumping their body in the river, so the bodies would travel south to a region well know for resistance soldiers, and making the nazis think it was them killing officials patrolling the area. They -never- suspected her. Being a woman, living alone and "with a fragile constitution".

Absolute badass great grandmother Jeanne was shooting nazis daring to knock on her door with this very gun, avenging a large portion of her family, who didn't make the decision she did and were lost to the war.

There's a bit going around at the moment that's essentially a call-out post for a popular trans girl who has enjoyed such things as hormones, voice training, and bottom surgery.

I myself was criticised for assimilationism recently for objecting to the idea that "binary trans people cannot exist, because we are still viewed as a third "other" by many in society, and our experience is not and never will be completely the same as the cis experience of maleness or femaleness".

In my critics' eyes, I was "clinging to the gender binary" (derogatory), and...

Well, excuse me if I don't let the cis gaze define my gender.

Calling me non-binary would be like reducing an actually non-binary person to whatever binary gender the onlooker thinks is most appropriate. You can see how that's wrong, yes? The inverse is no better for me or other trans people with a binary gender.

I am a woman, and you can strip me of that when you can prise it from my cold dead beautifully nail-polished and oestrogen-enhanced fingers.

Same goes for wanting/getting such things as hormones, voice training, bottom surgery, or other things. If you don't want those things, great, but don't argue against me having them.

Same also goes for not wanting to be called certain slurs. If you want to reclaim certain slurs, great, but don't argue that I am being trans incorrectly if I don't want to.

I don't know how to explain to you that those of us who want these things want them for ourselves. In most cases, we wanted them for a very long time before we got them. We probably had to fight for them. We take joy in having them.

Yes, sometimes I'll do things in a way that helps me avoid getting misgendered, for that reason, because I don't like being misgendered. But also...

If I'm singing in a feminine range in the kitchen, it's not for fear that if my neighbour hears my erstwhile basso profundo singing voice they'll know I'm trans. They already know I'm trans. They don't care and neither do I. But I feel at my best prancing about in my cute apron singing alto-ish with bright resonance and a happy smile. "Trans women can have deep voices / dark resonance" does not mean that trans women are required to have deep voices / dark resonance or else we're being some kind of traitor to transness.

When I take my hormones and am deeply thankful for the difference they make to my body, that's not a snub to trans women with flat chests or male pattern baldness, and the fact that many trans women are happy and content with such does not mean that I therefore must also be happy and content with such if that's my genetic lot. It's not being truscum to have dysphoria.

I'm not queuing up for bottom surgery to win the acceptance of random cis people. I'm looking forward to it because this *gestures down there* does not spark joy for me personally, to put it mildly, and I dearly want it gone. The idea that I should just brush off my dysphoria is a TERF talking point; please be better than that.

Too easily, "you don't have to have xyz to be trans" gets twisted into "no trans person should have xyz".

before my transition i almost never took photos of myself, and never EVER shared or posted them. because why bother, right, when no one wanted to see it? and now, everything is different. even just documenting the transformation for posterity, there's no hiding how good this makes me feel, and everyone, even the ones not giving huge compliments, tells me i look worlds happier than i did before.