#cishits

Me: I never thought of that, but looks like you’re kinda right and it was a meaningful term for a lot of us and has a pretty interesting background in queer history!

A cishet: bUt WhAt AbOuT tHe StRaIgHt GiRls WhO uSeD iT!?

They said that the muscular darkskinned woman (professional boxer Fatima Pinto) looked like, and I quote with extreme disdain, “a man in a dress” [blegh] while they completely missed that the actual trans woman was Hari Nef.

the issue with this movie is that it’s not really about trans acceptance, what the movie is about, in the director’s own words.

“She’s just a girl who is being herself and is chasing the opportunity to start hormone treatment. So to actually use a trans boy was not an option because this isn’t what my story is about.”

this isn’t a story about acceptance. this isn’t about trans people: this is just more of the same bullshit we’ve had to go through forever. this is to gawk at us and our experience without actually believing we are trans.

Ray is Ray always. it’s not about having a “boy’s” body (and btw you should avoid that language since it’s heavily trivalizes people who have yet to transition and intersex people). trans women are always women, and trans men are always men. we do not call ourselves women and men because we want to be that. we do it because we are. no amount of horomones or surgery will change what we are and what we are not: we do these things in order to present how we wish, and be at peace with ourselves. trans men and women who take no horomones or surgery, never transition, are and always will be men and women.

i’m saying this to you because everyone needs to understand this is so much more than just stereotyping and misinformation: so, so much more than that. it is taking us and reducing us to what we always have been in the eyes of the public: a spectacle.

society as a whole has never seen or accepted us as true men or women: maybe won’t in my lifetime either. we’re boys and girls who want to pretend to be the “other gender” (ugh just typing that makes me sick) who don’t know the first thing about what they’re doing or saying. you’re a boy, or you’re a girl. but damn, do our lives make a good show! just look at Caitlyn Jenner: the media couldn’t stop, it was a gold mine! family drama, “boys” wearing makeup, all the good stuff! it sells and makes money because it is “strange” and to the majority implausible. it’s a narrative at our expense to a crowd that will watch the entire movie, and not actually believe the character is a boy. because it caters to that majority. just like with Caitlyn they’ll get their show, and when it’s all done, they’ll talk about the movie about “that girl who wanted to be a boy” without believing that character was a boy. and this is a movie about that idea, that narrative, that sensation.

the director says it herself: she’s just a girl who is chasing the opportunity to start hrt. not because this character is a real boy, but rather a girl who wants to “become” a boy, when the reality is that trans men are always men. however, the director, Dellal, is part of the majority who refuses to see us for what we are. what does this mean?

this isn’t a movie aimed at transgender people. nor is it a movie that wants to treat us for the men and women that we are. nor will it try to educate the cis people who see it about our struggles and experiences, as the director herself has no desire to be educated. why should she? it’s hollywood: she needs to make money, and she’ll be praised as an lgbt icon by countless cis people all the while.

it’s just us as a spectacle. reading her words helped me to understand us.

not quite like stonewall, but similar.

gawking at us, talking about us without understanding us, for the sake of profit. like always.

representation, must be in favor of the people it is meant to represent. family guy and cleveland show’s portrayals of trans women aren’t representation: it’s a heap of transmisogyny for cis people to laugh at and make fun of. no, this ,movie will be nothing like those heaps, but nonthless, it serves it’s point. representation must absolutely, undeniably in favor of the people it is meant to represent and must be made with them in mind.

if we’re just going to be gawked at, then fuck it. wait longer. if all the representation does is victimize us even more, what’s the point?

Me: I’m going out with my friend ______ tonight. I think you’ve met them before.

Cis: them? That’s for multiple people. Is that friend a guy or a girl?

Me: uh. Neither. They is a gender neutral pronoun. They don’t identify within the gender binary.

Cis: so does this person have both parts down there or neither? Female or male?

Me: uh what. They were born a baby. I haven’t put my face between their legs. Also that’s irrelevant.

Cis: ugh ok watever. So like does this person have a penis or a vagina?