dork central

Now, Americans associate crack with Blacks, and crack users' infants, dubbed "crack babies," are always portrayed as Black. During eighteen years as a news and science editor at metropolitan dailies and national magazines, I have never seen a published photograph of a white crack baby. The putative harms done to crack babies were first popularized in graphic detail in 1989 by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer who warned,

"The inner city crack epidemic is now giving birth to the newest horror: a bio-underclass, a generation of physically damaged cocaine babies whose biological inferiority is stamped at birth." These infants, he claimed, constitute a "race of (sub) human drones [whose] future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority.... the dead babies may be the lucky ones."

By "inner city", Krauthammer meant, of course, "Black". Douglas Besharov of the American Enterprise Institute, who coined the phrase "bio-underclass", did not shy from the racial label: "This is not stuff that Head Start can fix. This is permanent brain damage. Whether it is 5% or 15% of the Black community, it is there."

Krauthammer's column triggered a cascade of national headlines describing these infants as born addicted to crack and neurologically damaged to the point where they constituted a permanent army of inferiority- miniature Golems who could never be human."

Wanting to look like a stereotypical cis man is transgressive.

Wanting to look like a stereotypical cis woman is transgressive.

Wanting to be hairy, with tits, curves, and a dick is transgressive.

Wanting to be hairless, without external genitals, and with an ambiguous silhouette is transgressive.

Because the main step you made to place yourself outside of social expectations is being trans. The society will not accept any kind of a look from you for as long as you're trans. It doesn't want you to be passing, it doesn't want you to be nonpassing, it want you to first and foremost not be trans.

Outtakes, because I deserve to be recognized for any clear photos of this animal.

the transmedicalist way of thinking (that trans men, in order to be "real (trans) men" and deserving of respect and community, must seek to be as close to cis men as possible and to downplay their transness and their relationship to the social class of "women" and/or misogyny as much as possible, and vice-versa for trans women, and that nonbinary people are suspect at best and actively detrimental to trans people as a whole at worst) is very much aligned with the trans radical feminism we have seen becoming increasingly blatant in this community. because fundamentally, when trans men discuss transandrophobia and anti-transmasculinity theory, we do so by first rejecting the idea that everything about patriarchy and gender oppression is reducible down to the cis binary, or that trans people shouldn't organize as trans people, as a trans community.

transmasculine transfeminism, at least the productive kind, demands we reject the assimilationist model that says that trans people should have no trans class consciousness, that trans people are only doing politics right when we identify with cisness, whether cis women's or cis men's. it demands we go "no, being a trans man is something more than just being a confused female or being a cis man in the "wrong" body, there is more going on here when it comes to gender oppression and how it impacts us and our bodies than what cis feminists have described, there is a trans position that has something worthwhile to contribute to analysis of patriarchy, and manhood and womanhood."

this challenge is absolutely vital for the continued development of feminism and the liberation of all peoples, on a gendered level and a broader social level. it is not exclusive to transmasculine transfeminism, to be clear. but when trans people adopt the cissexist radical feminist model, they adopt a binary view of patriarchy that reduces it down to "men vs women," which is inherently transphobic; it is inherently transphobic to push the idea that the patriarchy is all about "men vs women" which erases transphobia and intersexism as core, fundamental parts of how patriarchy functions and has always functioned.

when TERFs use this framework, they act transphobically (and racistly) by trying to explain away trans experiences as "basically cis men (universal oppressors) or basically cis women (universally oppressed, and all oppressed in the exact same ways with the exact same material experiences)". nonbinary people are erased in both of these ways, and trans people are rendered unable to describe transphobia without it being reduced down to a side-effect of misogyny as it impacts binary (cis) women, or as a side-effect of toxic masculinity as it impacts binary (cis) men, which is also brushed off as a legitimate point of feminist interest and concern. when trans people use this framework, we do the same thing, just in reverse; trans men are forced into the category of "basically cis men," trans women are forced into the category of "basically cis women," transphobia becomes a side-effect of misogyny, etc etc. and in many ways, adopting this framework is especially tempting because it is the framework of transphobic cis women and patriarchy as a whole; because if we can make this model of gender ours, tweak it just enough that it can fit some trans people inside it comfortably we can control the framework that is used to hurt us so badly. we can finally be real men and women by the definitions of the model that has been used against us.

My credentials on this topic are that I have decades of lived experience as a chronically ill disabled psychiatrized person, and also that I have read hundreds of thousands (maybe millions?) of words of medical studies, research articles, legal frameworks, human rights initiatives, essay by activists, advocacy organization platforms, and histories of disability rights.

Your credentials are that you are a Person Who Thinks They Knows Stuff.

We are not the same. Your opinion is irrelevant to me, because the degree to which you possess less information than I do makes it laughable that you would have anything new or of value to add to this conversation.

The degree to which this is my area of expertise makes any discussion we have about it which does not first acknowledge the disparity in our levels of expertise inherently disrespectful to me as a person.

And you can't even tell, because you are so ableist that you don't see my experience as expertise to begin with.