i love being queer

What these screenshots show, at face value, is a trans person talking about how their mum, of her own volition, has decided to use singular they/them pronouns to refer to her cat in order to get used to them. We can infer that her views on and understanding of trans people/gender have developed over the last three years or so, and the child is supportive of her, but that’s it.

But @bb-radfem reports it as the mum “learning to self-censor”, and describes her kid as “shitty” and willing to “call the thought crime police” despite there being exactly nothing in context to suggest anything like that. Even when @terf-tips mocks this narrative, @radbadbish echoes this by describing the mum as “allowing [herself] to be policed on what [she] says” rather than, y’know, genuinely caring about other people. Being nice.

We do not know the mum’s motivations, but this recontextualisation of her actions requires us to assume her true beliefs are trans-negative in opposition to the trans-positive behaviour she demonstrates. Besides being intellectually dishonest, this is deeply disrespectful—but also very common. TERFs frequently describe women supporting trans people as having been manipulated into doing so, refusing the possibility that their support is genuine. Compare to accusations of “virtue signalling”.

The suggestion, meanwhile, that this “self-censorship” is uniquely a bad thing when concerning trans people—and not, for example, making efforts not to use misogynist, racist, or ableist slurs—is special pleading. And of course respect (and not being a bigot) extends to talking about someone, not just to them.

When I have told people about my transition goals before, they seem to react somewhat negatively. I get the feeling that people think I’m not really trans because I don’t have an issue with the outward appearance of my body, but rather the things my body does/can do. I do use they/them pronouns and I definitely feel disconnected from femininity and the female experience, but I’m not sure if that’s enough. Is it wrong of me to identify as non-binary? Any advice would be deeply appreciated. (2/2)

Oh my gosh. So, I actually stopped the graphics work that I was doing in order to make this convenient graphic for you and anyone else who needs it, on this the first day of Gay Wrath Month:

[Image description: a flow chart. The first question asks: ‘Do you identify as the gender you were assigned at birth?’ this leads to ‘yes’ and the answer ‘Congratulations! You are cisgender.’ and then to ‘no’ and ‘Congratulations, you are transgender, should you choose to identify this way, and no one gets to gatekeep your identity based on whether or not you have dysphoria or want to medically transition!’ From that box, it leads to another question: ‘But am I trans enough? I don’t want to medically transition, or only want to do [this thing], or maybe I don’t have dysphoria, or…’ and from there to a box which reads: ‘Yes, you’re trans enough! Gatekeeping based on medical transition and existence of dysphoria only serves the cisgender majority and contributes to our further oppression by enforcing cis-centric standards of hegemony and dictating that our stories must be centered around misery and suffering rather than joy. If you must suffer to be trans, then being trans is only ever suffering. We are more than our pain.’ On the side of the image are white words outlined in rainbow reading ‘You Are Trans Enough. You Are Enough.’ The image is marked with the NerdyKeppie signature logo and URL.]

My salpingectomy was one of the most gender-confirming things I’ve ever, ever done for myself.  Ever. I’m so happy that I did it. So I can personally say that I really hope that you get to do your bit soon. (Check into a salpingectomy instead of just a tubal ligation, btw – my surgeon said she might as well take them out since she was in there, and it lowers your future cancer risk to not have those tubes just floating about in there.)

“I like dick” is fine. “If you weren’t born with a dick, you’re not a real man” is transphobic.

“I don’t want to have sex with someone who has a vagina” is fine. “Trans men are actually women and I wouldn’t have sex with one even if he had bottom surgery” is transphobic.

Of course I was blocked by @drewsinead before I could write this but for posterity: 

“Straight people are not calling themselves queer.“

today I met a professor who does queer studies. she told me that her teenage gay son yelled at her recently for using the word “queer” in describing her discipline and demanded to know how the university “could get away with calling it that.”

so of course she’s baffled right, and asks him where on earth this is coming from. and he told her he read it on Tumblr. 

listen if you don’t want to be called queer and don’t want to be lumped in with folks who comprise the queer community, that’s fine. that’s totally fine. it is 100% okay. people are allowed to have complicated histories with that word. it’s a fraught signifier. it’s a mess and it’s allowed to be. 

what’s not cool is telling young LGBTQ+ people that queer is a slur in all contexts because now you are stripping away not just the language that we use to describe ourselves but also the language that creates the discipline that lets us study our own lives and our cultures. Queer studies has been a part of American academe since the 1970s (possibly earlier, depending on who you ask). “Queer” has been a functioning and largely unproblematic signifier in American academe since ten years before the AIDS crisis. If you don’t at least know that much, you have absolutely no business trying to educate LGBTQ+ youth about queer history.

Trying to censor the word queer from our collective cultural lexicon is 1) impossible. it’s here now. and 2) an erasure of our lineage of scholarship. I could spend all day lobbing criticisms at American academic culture and I do, but queers created space for ourselves in academe. We built a queer world inside the tower that tried its best to keep us out and now we have a place here. 

Here’s a thought

@cause-a-gay-has-got-to-slay is right. They essential trait of being trans is to be a gender other than your assigned gender/sex. That is what the ‘trans’ in transsexual/transgender means: “across” (cf. ‘cis’: “on the same side”).

That ‘transition’ has a similar etymology is no coincidence, but it’s not what trans means. If some nonbinary people don’t call themselves ‘trans’ that’s their right to do so—I know some, particularly from certain cultures reject assigned gender entirely so they don’t see ‘cis’ or ‘trans’ as applicable—but it’s not generally the case.

Your dysphoria doesn’t have to be crippling

You don’t have to have every single type of dysphoria

You don’t have to conform to gender roles to have dysphoria

You don’t have to “wish you were cis”, or hate yourself, to have dysphoria

You don’t have to feel sad all the time to have dysphoria!

Dysphoria doesnt equal crippling mental pain like tucutes stereotype! It just means a dissconnect from the gender in your brain and your body that causes discomfort to some degree! Both trans people and nonbinary people get dysphoria, although usually in different forms!

You don’t need to conform to gender roles to be trans, you just need dysphoria!

Of course! I answered this question once before, but I feel as though I didn’t explain it well enough. The definition of bisexual is “sexually attracted not exclusively to people of one particular gender; attracted to both men and women.” When people typically describe themselves as pansexual, and I’ve heard this many times, they will say

“I am attracted to men, women, and trans people. I like all regardless.” 

In that phrase alone, that person is stating that trans people are not men and women, but are some sort of “other.” Therefore, whether they mean to or not, are excluding trans people from when they mentally are. This idea that a transman is not a man just because he was born with a vagina, is actual transphobia. When stating things like “Gender is a social construct, and I like all” people are invalidating gender dysphoria and the struggle that transsexual people go through.

This also insinuates that a bisexual person would not date a trans person, which makes no sense seeing as though bisexual means both. A bisexual person is just as likely to date a trans person, as someone who identifies as pansexual.

Likewise “hearts not parts” is biphobic and homophobic, but that isn’t the definition of ‘pansexual’ (or ‘bisexual’) either.

While bisexuality is attraction to people of two or more genders, pansexuality is attraction to people of all genders. (i.e. pansexual people are bisexual, but not all bisexual people are pansexual.)

That’s it.