It's okay, he's not very big

I don’t know how universally relevant this is (I guess no part of queer history ever is) but I wonder how many trans people know the history of T&T groups.

Like, in the 90′s and 00′s in the Netherlands almost every trans related groups was a T&T ‘Transsexual and Transvestites’ group and that seemed to also be a quite common thing in other north-west European countries for as far as I can see. Maybe beyond Europe too? I’m not sure.

People who called themselves transsexual and transvestites at the time felt that they had many experiences in common that made organising together valuable and many agreed that there was a large grey area of overlapping identities. With very little information available, a lot of trans women identified as transvestites first, before identifying at trans women (in that period often using the term Male-to-Female transsexual and transwoman without the space between the words).

Then, in about 2007-2012, things changed. Transgender became more popular than transsexual and crossdresser largely replaced transvestite. In those early days, the term transgender was often understood to include crossdressers. The transgender umbrella is from that time:

Back then, the word transgender was seen by many as the umbrella term that would unite all the struggles against gender roles. But that grouping together was far from uncontroversial and a lot of heated debates took place over how broad or narrow the transgender umbrella term should be. Some feared too wide an umbrella would take attention away from transsexuals, others feared it would be confusing, some groups that had previously only had transwomen and transvestites did not appreciate the new presence of transmen and transmasculine people in their transgender community, some felt that it was very important to distinguish binary-identified transsexuals from all sorts of weird non-binary identities.

Those who took part in the debates probably remember the specific standpoints in more detail. For me, I just remember how in 2008-2012 all the T&T groups started changing their names to ‘transgender groups’ and then slowly but surely focussing more on only those transgender people that wanted some kind of transition, physical or social. Eventually, transvestites (or crossdressers, as the common term was by then) disappeared entirely from the transgender groups and a lot of transgender people forgot about the earlier wider meaning of transgender as an umbrella term.

Within that same period, there started to be a LOT of new and fairly positive media attention for transgender issues, specifically transition related atttention. The media was no participant at all in the ‘what does transgender mean’ question but the questions they did ask were ‘are you on hormones yet?’ and ‘did you have the surgery’? Since that was a lot better than ‘so are you mentally ill because you want to be a woman?’ a lot of people who fitted the hormones + surgery narrative eagerly accepted this ‘positive visibility’ and did not question the narrow focus. This further cemented the view that transgender meant transition.

And the transgender activists? Well, let’s just say many of them, knee deep in a struggle against terrible health care and cruel human rights violations, leaped at the opportunity to seize the momentum and finally make some changes and many didn’t really give much thought to the slow disappearance of transvestites from the newly named ‘transgender’ community.

So where are we now, in 2018?

The transgender community seems to have largely forgotten about their T&T history. The terms transvestite and crossdresser both seem to be in decline, as are the communities that meet around those identities. Younger people who don’t fit the gender binary but also do not desire social or physical transition, are now more likely to identify themselves as some kind of genderqueer and nonbinary or just ‘not into labels’ or just to wear whatever they want and rock it. Some of them find their way back under the transgender umbrella after all. Which I guess is some kind of a happy ending.

I am not going to dignify these comments with a response because they’re too disgusting to reblog, I do not think they would listen and frankly reading them fills me with far too much emotion to write coherently.

I just wanna say: this is what happens when we are so quick to forget our very recent history. Despite the many debates and divisions that have existed in the past, few trans people could have had these completely off-the-wall misguided ideas 15 years ago because if they travelled in trans spaces they would have met so many transvestites and crossdressers. They would chat and hang out and probably make friends. They would swap experiences, share hardships and learn to recognize transvestites and crossdressers as siblings in the community of gendernonconforming and marginalized people.

My heart breaks for the young crossdresser out there today who might enter a trans space looking for their community of supporting likeminded people, only to find out that they are not welcome and even despised. I can only hope that if this happens, some older trans people will talk some sense into their younger community members and remind them of the long road transgender people and crossdressers have walked together, the battles we fought together, the crossdressers who fought for trans rights and the trans people who fought for their siblings too because we understood those struggles as interconnected.

BUT

but it's an entirely new level of tragic when somebody you've actually spoken to gets turned into a bot account. it's like peeking at a zombie apocalypse through the window and realizing one of the shambling corpses was your friend.

and then the zombie catches sight of you, lurches up to your window, and shouts through the glass that they accidentally reported your account to tumblr and you'll be deactivated unless you click this link.

if you get something like this ↑ they're gonna follow up by instructing you to contact tumblr support on discord and give you contact info; or they're gonna link a website that looks sort of like tumblr support and say you have to email them; or any variety of "you must now contact tumblr, here is how you contact tumblr."

whatever they send you, it Does Not lead to tumblr. it leads to the master zombie that bit them and inducted them into the ranks of the undead, and will bite you the second they have your email and password. i might be confusing zombies and vampires. anyway,

it's easier to fall for these messages because the blog doesn't LOOK like a bot blog, because it ISN'T a bot blog. it's a normal person's blog that got accessed by a bot, meaning the blog's content CLEARLY looks like a real active user when you click on it. and yes—it might even be a blog you already know. sometimes bots like this go down a blog's DMs or reblogs and message people they've previously interacted with.

it is genuinely useful to have, both: 1) a genuine materialist analysis of this kind of non-violent domestic abuse, AND, 2) an analysis of weaponized incompetence and emotional abuse that not only does not assume hetero-normative monogamy, but actively discusses how femininity can be weaponized just as masculinity can and there is no demographic nor sexuality nor gender nor disability nor politics that makes it impossible to be an abuser.

just to be clear: i do not believe, and i do not think the essay says, that it is wrong, abusive, or evil to be trans, to be anxious, to have disabilities, nor even to have needs of emotional care (or physical care).*

i, like many people, squirmed a few times over the sections that specifically used the example of dishes and sensory issues, because as someone who frequently forgets to do the dishes and struggles with them due to sensory issues, and someone who was unemployed and then underemployed for quite a while, "i am hurting my partners by letting them do most of the work of the house and not contributing" was a fear of mine. but like. that's very clearly not actually the situation she's describing in the essay.

she's describing the issue of a polycule of at least four women, and at least three of them are spending the vast majority of their time not only caring for a partner who does not reciprocate in any way, but being shamed and attacked for displaying any emotions other than patient joy and loving support while doing so.

if you read that essay and had, like many disabled (and/or polyamorous) folks, a twinge about the times you have felt that you needed more from your partner/s than you could reciprocate, ask yourself 1) whether you did any work to try and get to a point where you could reciprocate, and 2) if you routinely responded to any of their efforts to have a genuine conversation about their own needs with an emotional breakdown that re-focused the conversation on your needs. and if you did, ask yourself, trite as it may sound, how it would make you feel to be treated that way, and try to re-calibrate accordingly.

I am sorry I did not write, before the dog woman, the partner with the stool by the washing machine and the calendar on her phone and the text that says the dishes will be tomorrow’s project, i’m sorry, i love you. That partner is the figure my friend has been giving me all morning, with the patience of a girl who knows the writer she is messaging has been writing around the real sentence all week. The partner with the stool is the essay I should have written earlier because she is the figure who makes the puppygirl legible as a strategy and the dog woman legible as a practice. Without her, the puppygirl can look like disability and the dog woman can look like able-bodied discipline. Those readings are wrong in opposite directions, and the confusion between them is exactly the room this essay has to enter.

whew.

it is genuinely useful to have, both: 1) a genuine materialist analysis of this kind of non-violent domestic abuse, AND, 2) an analysis of weaponized incompetence and emotional abuse that not only does not assume hetero-normative monogamy, but actively discusses how femininity can be weaponized just as masculinity can and there is no demographic nor sexuality nor gender nor disability nor politics that makes it impossible to be an abuser.

just to be clear: i do not believe, and i do not think the essay says, that it is wrong, abusive, or evil to be trans, to be anxious, to have disabilities, nor even to have needs of emotional care (or physical care).*

i, like many people, squirmed a few times over the sections that specifically used the example of dishes and sensory issues, because as someone who frequently forgets to do the dishes and struggles with them due to sensory issues, and someone who was unemployed and then underemployed for quite a while, "i am hurting my partners by letting them do most of the work of the house and not contributing" was a fear of mine. but like. that's very clearly not actually the situation she's describing in the essay.

she's describing the issue of a polycule of at least four women, and at least three of them are spending the vast majority of their time not only caring for a partner who does not reciprocate in any way, but being shamed and attacked for displaying any emotions other than patient joy and loving support while doing so.

if you read that essay and had, like many disabled (and/or polyamorous) folks, a twinge about the times you have felt that you needed more from your partner/s than you could reciprocate, ask yourself 1) whether you did any work to try and get to a point where you could reciprocate, and 2) if you routinely responded to any of their efforts to have a genuine conversation about their own needs with an emotional breakdown that re-focused the conversation on your needs. and if you did, ask yourself, trite as it may sound, how it would make you feel to be treated that way, and try to re-calibrate accordingly.

I am sorry I did not write, before the dog woman, the partner with the stool by the washing machine and the calendar on her phone and the text that says the dishes will be tomorrow’s project, i’m sorry, i love you. That partner is the figure my friend has been giving me all morning, with the patience of a girl who knows the writer she is messaging has been writing around the real sentence all week. The partner with the stool is the essay I should have written earlier because she is the figure who makes the puppygirl legible as a strategy and the dog woman legible as a practice. Without her, the puppygirl can look like disability and the dog woman can look like able-bodied discipline. Those readings are wrong in opposite directions, and the confusion between them is exactly the room this essay has to enter.