Syscourse is talking about trans people and agab, apparently.
This started as a reblog of @chaos-in-one 's ask to @thecircularsystem but it got long and slightly more detailed than a reblog ever needs to be.
So, what do I have to say about this shit show? As your resident intersex person with too much experience with gender, here's my take.
I just hate the idea that people can't choose for themselves what labels they use, which is what the conversation boils down to ime. This idea puts back the queer movement decades. What happened to "whatever you want forever"? What happened to "bodily autonomy for all"?
Certain experiences aren't locked behind the fucking language you use, because what is the "experience" of a gender? If you purely define gender as a bodily or social experience then you're being so incredibly transphobic to trans people who don't want or can't transition, trans people who have "incongruent" transition goals, and intersex people of all sorts.
Race and Gender aren't the same (obviously, but why)
Comparing gender to race is regressive and denies the fact that gender is a feeling, because gender isn't based on any tangible differences between people. Transness has to be "transitioning toward [gender* trait]" otherwise it is based on bioessentialist and regressive ideas.
Woman is not "person with/wants vagina, vulva, ovaries etc etc." Man is not "person with/wants penis, testes, prostate etc etc." They are internal feelings based on a mix of things, not limited to pronouns, hair and clothing style, gendered term preference, internal view of body.
* importantly not a gendered trait
I do not believe that cisness or transness ever has to be based on which letter you were assigned as a new born. The assignment can be wrong (due to processing errors, doctors being lazy, intersex variations), the assignment is based on sex and not gender, and it's not even based on sex it's based on newborn infant genitalia.
I genuinely believe that anyone can call themself cis or trans, because the reasoning behind is more important. As some examples:
A man who presents herself exactly the same as your average cis guy but uses she/her pronouns because she feels they're comfier. She doesn't want oestrogen or surgery, but sometimes tries drag because her friends do it and it's fun. She hates the idea of being seen as a woman.
A person who was afab went through an androgenizing puberty and because it happened without medical intervention considers themself a cis man. They now have ambiguous genitalia and may be treated as a trans man.
At a later age, this same person finds out they are a woman and make the legal changes required. They then go on oestrogen and have a vaginoplasty. They call themself a trans woman, they were raised as a girl until puberty where they were seen as a man.
A drag king presents himself in drag daily. He doesn't use cis or trans labels, his gender is drag king.
Similarly, a cis man wears dresses, wigs and makeup as an adult. He is fine with strangers assuming he is a woman but makes no effort to take oestrogen or get surgery. He uses any pronouns but most close friends use he/him because he is a man.
A person raised as femqale goes on testosterone and has a phalloplasty and top surgery. He sees himself as a cis man because he always internally felt like a man.
But what if the person speaks over others?
Are they actually speaking over others (by saying their experience is the only correct one) or are they just talking about their experience? If they're actually speaking over others they're an asshole, why is it so hard to realise that people of any group can be assholes.
I've met assholes of so many groups: ace people, pan people, trans men, trans women, cis people, nonbinary people, lesbians, gay men, intersex people, bi people, straight people.
Any individual can be a shitty person because being part of a marginalised community doesn't make you immune from bigotry!
Now can we stop being transphobic and intersexist in the tag.
