Paper Cranes and Pride

God I don't even know what her point is here. "Trans" as a term is problematic because it pretends that trans women aren't more oppressed than trans men, the solution is to accept that "trans" is meant to be about a dialectic between the "opposite forces" of masculinity and femininity (and uhhhh nonbinary and agender people too or whatever, which Jules constantly bemoans how much she doesn't understand what a nonbinary experience even is but I'm meant to buy that her theory has genuinely considered how nonbinary and agender people fit into this, sure!!!!!) and t4t is here too and we can fuck about it, problem solved.

I have to point out that she says

There is the non-binary denouncement of so-called binary trans women for apparently taking gender too seriously, or perhaps taking beauty too seriously, in medically transitioning.

And then she cites an article, Why Can’t My Famous Gender Nonconforming Friends Get Laid? by Meredith Talusan. And I do not get why. This article is about Meredith (a nonbinary person) talking about her friends Alok Vaid Menon (who is nonbinary) and Jacob Tobia (who is genderqueer), and their collective observation that Alok and Jacob struggle to get dates by virtue of being visibly gender-non conforming and androgynous, while Meredith (who can pass as a cis woman and went through HRT and SRS while still identifying as binary) is seen as much more desirable. They reflects on their friend's struggles with being nonbinary in the dating world while visibly androgynous in the "wrong" way.

There is nothing in this article about how “binary trans women” must be denounced for “taking gender too seriously.” That is entirely a projection on Peterson's part, one she does nothing to explain; just pops this article into this paper I'm guessing because it pissed her off when she read it. The article is about misandrogyny and how it impacts nb/gq/gnc’s people love lives. But of course, to Peterson, this cannot be interpreted as anything other than an attack on “so-called” binary trans women.

Because nonbinary people are never ever allowed to ever imply that being aligned with the binary in certain ways can result in being spared from kinds of transphobia that others, particularly many nb/gq/gnc people, cannot escape as long as we live authentically. Pointing out that a visibly androgynous, hairy and feminine, body is seen as undesirable is, of course, secretly REALLY about how nonbinary people loathe the True Transsexuals and their HRT and surgeries (nevermind that Meredith is a nonbinary person who physically transitioned, a group that Peterson loves to pretend doesn’t exist). Because everything nonbinary people do and say when it comes to describing our oppression is actually about being big meanies to binary trans people, The Main Characters Of Transness.

The "so-called binary" thing is a dogwhistle imo, because while all trans people can be affected by misandrogyny, binary trans people who CONSTANTLY define themselves in opposition to nonbinary people, love to act like being called binary is a slur (hmmm where have we heard that one before, class?). But I just know it grinded her gears to hear Alok joking about how going on E and getting electrolysis would make them be seen as more desirable, to see a person who decided being a binary trans woman wasn't right for them and who is openly talking about exorsexism/misandrogyny (if not by those names).

this isn't even getting into just how much this whole theory of hers is EXTREMELY fundamentally binary, but she thinks she can get around that by mentioning nonbinary people once or twice and suddenly its totally not everyone! like:

I suggest that trans is better regarded as an auto-antonym than an umbrella or an interchangeable prefix: a word that generates two opposite meanings (in this case, masculine and feminine). This auto-antonymic quality in fact produces many more than one pair of ‘opposite’ meanings, considering that trans holds nonbinary and agender significance too, rejecting any singular masculine/feminine master dialectic.

Nonbinary people are brought up three times in this whole paper, and one of those times was the above-mentioned bad faith reading of that article. & anyways, after reading her blame the fucking Skrmetti decision & the legal attacks on trans healthcare on "vainly championing the ostensible superiority of androgyny, or, today, a kind of immaterial, nonbinary idealism" and her doing that whole fuckass article waxing lyrical about how nonbinary people are just playing dress up and aren't meaningfully different than binary people, I'm sorry but fucking Press X To Doubt that she put the line about nonbinarity in there for any other reason than to say she didn't technically exclude nonbinary people if people yell at her on Twitter.

Anyways re: "the trans battle of the sexes can be fixed by t4t sex and everyone just agreeing that transfems have it worse, because that's the only real problem here :)" didn't S.L Void literally write an essay on this exact "solution":

There are also cases where the reaction [from all types of people] to transmasculine people expressing pain they have suffered due to this kind of discourse and the sweeping generalizations being made about transmasculine people that sounds something like: “in real life we don’t talk about this, we all just kiss each other”, and this reaction is just as shitty as dismissing it entirely. It adds a dynamic of something that many trans people are intimately familiar with, that of the “please, I like you when you don’t speak and are simply something nice to look at”, the kind of reasoning that strikes the fear of being abandoned by loved ones into the hearts of many many trans people of all different gender embodiments. [...] It is not helping anyone to pretend like “in real life” these problems do not exist and in real life we all just kiss, cause it’s not true and it creates a situation where transmasculine people feel like to express pain is to be a party-pooper, and to be an ally is to be happily sexually available with no regard for who perpetuates antitransmasculinity or not. [...] So while yeah, its possible that in real life, some of us are just kissing each other, it’s also true that many of us are doing both — we’re acknowledging and working to combat one another's oppression, and loving each other while we do it. It is also very possible that in real life the opposite is happening, and there is antitransmasculinity and transmisogyny being perpetuated in spaces that should be mostly free of them. ‘Irl we just kiss’ is a dismissal of this, and it’s not helpful for anyone. It mistakes attraction for allyship, something we sincerely cannot afford as a unit.

^^^^ this is the problem with Peterson's whole approach to these gender wars and many other people's. While not always productive, some of this discourse is the dialectic, it is a slow addressing of some deeply unaddressed wounds in our community, and importantly, this cannot be done without addressing anti-transmasculinity and exorsexism alongside anti-transfemininity/transmisogyny.

edit: people are reblogging without the addition so im putting the extra versions in the base post too

So, in spanish (so almost a fourth of the world, cause all Latín américa speaks it) we don't have "gramatacly correct" neutral pronouns, we literally use gendered pronouns for objects for crying out loud.

So, back during the post pandemic years (I think 2023? I don't remember) there was a movement to push the pronouns "elle" for nb pronouns, the most remembers installment being a person saying to their Google meet class "I'm not Your classmate [femenine], I'm Your classmate [neutral]" in a voice most people deemed obnoxious

This led to a complete smear campaing, with people citing reasone why the pronouns were not "gramatacly valid", stitching that one Rick puking clip with the "compañere" audio and people talking about how adding e at the end of words was gonna confuse kids. It all culminated (at least in Argentina) with a governor making it ilegal to have the pronoun in oficial documents and making it completly invalid in legal settings. Some people (incluiding myself) still use it in prívate, but is almost imposible to actually use it in public, having most people simply choosing to use "any/all" to avoid ridicule

This is without Even mentioning that people were scandalizing over xenogendered just a month or two ago (incluiding almost all of the few people that were actually in support with the neutral pronouns thing), but I won't be diving into it as i'm not xenogender and I feel it would be unfair since I havent seen or lived Even close to half of it

I'm sharing this all here Even if is in English cause i feel is incredible important to show the blatant exorsexim that is still present in the grabd majority of the south continent

So, in spanish (so almost a fourth of the world, cause all Latín américa speaks it) we don't have "gramatacly correct" neutral pronouns, we literally use gendered pronouns for objects for crying out loud.

So, back during the post pandemic years (I think 2023? I don't remember) there was a movement to push the pronouns "elle" for nb pronouns, the most remembers installment being a person saying to their Google meet class "I'm not Your classmate [femenine], I'm Your classmate [neutral]" in a voice most people deemed obnoxious

This led to a complete smear campaing, with people citing reasone why the pronouns were not "gramatacly valid", stitching that one Rick puking clip with the "compañere" audio and people talking about how adding e at the end of words was gonna confuse kids. It all culminated (at least in Argentina) with a governor making it ilegal to have the pronoun in oficial documents and making it completly invalid in legal settings. Some people (incluiding myself) still use it in prívate, but is almost imposible to actually use it in public, having most people simply choosing to use "any/all" to avoid ridicule

This is without Even mentioning that people were scandalizing over xenogendered just a month or two ago (incluiding almost all of the few people that were actually in support with the neutral pronouns thing), but I won't be diving into it as i'm not xenogender and I feel it would be unfair since I havent seen or lived Even close to half of it

I'm sharing this all here Even if is in English cause i feel is incredible important to show the blatant exorsexim that is still present in the grabd majority of the south continent

Especially considering transgender men and mascs have some of the most egregiously high sexual assault statistics out of any gender identity, due to it being used as punishment for our deviation in an attempt to force us back into womanhood.

So no saying transgender men look like predators isn't the #feminist move these mfs think it is

people act like masculinity, unless otherwise specified, is cismasculinity. like pericismasculinity is "true" masculinity. if you say "masculinity," "pericismasculinity" is implied.

transmasculinity and pericismasculinity aren't seen as equal expressions of masculinity. transmasculinity is seen as being modeled after pericismasculinity. trans men are men but trans. intersex men are men but intersex. pericis men are just men. if you deviate from cismasculinity, then you deviate from masculinity as a whole.

if you want to call yourself a man you have to be a pericis man, because obviously that's what a REAL man is. a REAL man can't get pregnant. if you talk about being pregnant, you are either a confused woman or a lying man. because pericis men can't get pregnant. therefore men can't get pregnant

it's why trans men and intersex men are told to shut up on account of being men. pericis men have privilege. therefore all men have privilege. because pericis men are the default man and all other men are modeled after them. either you are a man and shut up because you have privilege, or you don't have privilege and admit to not being a man

Either you're having sex for love, or you're a wh*re

So aroallo people struggle to proudly exist because we're labeled "shallow" or "unavailable" when we don't fit into the lines drawn for us, without us.

We're just as real and just as normal as anyone else, but the constant shame surrounding sex pushes us to label ourselves wrong.

I cannot be the only person who labelled myself aroace despite knowing it wasn't true because I was scared of what others may think of me, even in my own communities.

Well that's bullshit. I'm not going to live in the closet because of others' ignorance. I want to be loud and honest and maybe if I'm lucky, I can help someone else feel just a little bit less alone.

You don't have to be afraid of who you are. Who you are is cool as fuck.

Either you're having sex for love, or you're a wh*re

So aroallo people struggle to proudly exist because we're labeled "shallow" or "unavailable" when we don't fit into the lines drawn for us, without us.

We're just as real and just as normal as anyone else, but the constant shame surrounding sex pushes us to label ourselves wrong.

I cannot be the only person who labelled myself aroace despite knowing it wasn't true because I was scared of what others may think of me, even in my own communities.

Well that's bullshit. I'm not going to live in the closet because of others' ignorance. I want to be loud and honest and maybe if I'm lucky, I can help someone else feel just a little bit less alone.

You don't have to be afraid of who you are. Who you are is cool as fuck.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

shout out to all the trans men on this site that are normal about trans women

shout out to all the binary (+non GNC) trans folks on this site that are normal about nonbinary/genderfluid/multigender/GNC/etc trans people

shout out to all the perisex trans people on this site that are normal about intersex (and intertrans) people