liberté, egalité, transféminisme

The nefarious confounding, lurking and latent variables:

I cannot be out at home because my family would be ostracized, I have a friend (cis bi girl) who is constantly physically abused by her mother because she found out that she has a girlfriend. Shit is not safe for queer people in these villages. I am out to classmates and a few professors at my college in the city where it's more progressive but I am misgendered multiple times a day and deadnamed every now and then even though I have been out at college for over a year. I am always seen as a woman when my professors address my class, "all girls class", "I don't see any men here", "you must know this because all of you are girls". 

I do not pass at all and I have no access to hrt or surgeries that would not involve outing myself (additionally I do not even know if I want to pursue those things because I like my appearance but I do not like being misgendered so ugh). I walk a little faster when cis men follow me and my friends, i have been whistled at before, my friends and I have been recorded by a cis man before, I have been told to do things more like a lady by older women before and been told about how I will someday want to birth children. I do not have male privilege.

The only times I am treated like a man is when I'm told that my family is disturbed by me not wanting to shave my peach fuzz or by wearing men's clothes.

(And that's not even getting super into my ex who accused me of SA for telling her I'm questioning being a trans man after telling her in depth about questioning my gender identity for months. "If you do identify as a man well you sure are acting like one" in response to me blocking her because she didn't want me to break up with her after she said more horrible things to me and also tried to tell me that I'm probably not a trans man bc I don't know if I want to physically transition). I'm tired of Americans talking bullshit, I am only acknowledged or treated like a man when others are trying to shame me and disapprove of my behavior, I do not have male privilege.

Last week, the Trump administration quietly released a sweeping new federal rule that would use funding threats to force institutions across the country to reject transgender people. The 400-page proposed regulation would codify the administration's anti-trans executive orders into binding federal policy, imposing a blanket prohibition on federal funds going toward "gender ideology"

The proposed rule, formally titled "Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance," rewrites the government-wide framework governing all federal grants across every agency. Among its most consequential provisions, it requires that before a federal grant recipient can receive money, the award must pass a "pre-issuance review" conducted by a political appointee—not a career expert or peer reviewer—to ensure it is "consistent with applicable law, Federal agency priorities, and the national interest." The regulation explicitly instructs these appointees to screen for "denial by the recipient of the sex binary in humans or the notion that sex is a chosen or mutable characteristic." [...] An institution that acknowledges transgender people exist—through its policies, its training, its healthcare, its bathroom access, its HR procedures, its name-change processes—could be deemed to "deny the sex binary" or to “support the notion that sex is mutable” and have its federal funding blocked.

so, I kind of figured I might get some messages expressing bitterness or resentment towards myself and others. nobody's been nasty to me, either, before anybody gets the wrong idea. hurt, bitter, certainly. but nothing that's not extremely valid. I mean, tbh, I wouldn't blame anybody who came in and wrote up something truly mean, either. and I don't mean that in a self depricating way, obv I don't necessarily think I deserve that per se, but I also just don't think it's the end of the world if somebody's venting their frustration and using an anonymous inbox to do so. I digress.

it's okay if you think I'm virtue signaling, or suspect that (not that anyone needs my permission for anything). I think that's a very natural thought to have.

I think that skepticism is plenty warranted and understandable. if anything, I've sat on this for a very, very long time now, largely because I wanted to make sure I was doing it for the right reasons and in a way that was respectful to everyone involved. I had witnessed these types of situations play out so many times, no matter how much I tried to intervene or stop them, and the reason for putting up a form like this is because I want the stories of those impacted to be front and center here, not me.

I'm not going to post it in full, because tbh that feels inappropriate, but I do want to address one snippet in particular:

If you're going to talk about disposability, make sure you talk about the disposability within the part of the Tumblr community you're in too

yes. that's actually a large motivation behind me actually hitting publish on that post instead of keeping it in my drafts this whole time. because everything you mentioned, are things I've noticed* across multiple platforms on multiple occasions to multiple people. it's a problem. understatement of the year, I'm aware. I'm not under any sort of illusion that one single article could adequately "fix" anything, but I do think there's value in a cold hard wakeup call for all sides of the community, regardless of gender. nobody is immune. almost everybody is complicit. I have absolutely zero desire to sugarcoat the racism and bigotry exhibited by transmascs within this community and within various subgroups of this community. it's something people often disturbingly refuse to even acknowledge exists at all. I try to combat it when I see it, but it's not enough. it is far from enough. so yes, that is my "why" for wanting to do this, anyways.

*minus the accounts mentioned; I'll be looking into that. thank you for letting me know, and I'm sorry that I've failed to notice that in the first place. I honestly don't use tumblr much at all, mainly because it's been shit for my mental health and I try to stay off of it for the most part. I come on once or twice a day for a few minutes at a time, mainly to check notifications. but still, that's something I need to be more wary of, clearly.

I also had a feeling that other parts of that response were going to be the case, and I was alright with that. again, I really don't blame anyone for not trusting me. I'm not entitled to that when there are hundreds of years of precedent to suggest exactly why I do not deserve any sort of inherent trust at all.

I also don't think my goal should be trying to convince anyone out of that. I'm not the victim here. that's kinda the point. I'd like to use my little bit of a platform to bring attention to something a lot of people in our community don't want to confront, but that's about it. I don't need tumblr or twitter or any of it. I don't need approval and admiration from strangers on the internet. I honestly don't want it, from something like this where I shouldn't be the main focus.

part of it is that I've become increasingly involved in my university's Black Studies department over the past couple of years and repeatedly sitting in the gravity of everything I thought I knew compared to just how little I actually knew. it's fucked up. I grew up "progressive"/lefty/etc. with ancestors who fought against the KKK and there was (is) still this endless well of toxic sludge to dig through. I was coming from a somewhat """better""" standpoint than a lot of people**, and yet I was still ignorant to such a degree that I both look back and wonder how many white "allies" were/are exactly like me (and worse) and will never bother to educate themselves, and also look to the future and wonder what I'm ignorant about now that I'll look back at with similar sentiments.

**I've been more actively engaged in social justice since around 2012/2013ish, but some of it was also various formative experiences growing up that I'm not getting into because this is already way too long. my point not being "look how good i am see I'm different™", but instead "I was a relatively more-educated-than-most white person and the abject horror of realizing just how ignorant I truly was, combined with how many people are still there, combined with how I am still (un)learning things every day". I realize multiple people will be reading this and I do in fact think a lot of white people need a red alert that if you think you are a good ally, by sheer probability you are almost guaranteed not to be. if I was still ignorant as fuck, you probably are as well. ignorance comes in a lot of flavors and it's not always going to look like the types you think make you a bad person. a lot of times, it's hidden within your unwillingness to question why everyone you follow online is white, or in the books upon books upon interviews upon records upon mass graves that you don't even know exist. just. start somewhere. I am no better now I am just more informed and significantly more humbled. you are not immune. you are not immune.

and my point isn't to be all oh woe is me, because again, as much grief as may be there, it is not my suffering. I am not the victim, here. I think my point is just. putting it into words, at least. hopefully I've got an ounce of self awareness. maybe i don't. idk. if it becomes something ill-advised, then I just won't publish it. but it feels worse to just sit around and do nothing. and I've got at least a little bit of a platform, might as well try to do something with it. maybe it's the disillusionment with a lot of things as a whole, idk. I don't really know how to convey my thoughts.

anyways, your concerns are very reasonable concerns to have. they're things I've questioned about myself (at least as far as "what are my actual motivations"). I need to keep that in mind. I already had it on my mind, but. still. the reminders don't hurt. they're extremely necessary. anyone is welcome to give me input. I'm not a fan of tone policing. I'm grateful that you reached out at all, to be honest. I don't think you were mean. I think you have every right to criticize me.

I'm sorry that the world is such a shitstain that you even have such experiences to inform that intuition. there is a depth of suffering there that never seems to end. across time and history, the single most evil things I have read have been those committed by the hands of white people. I do not know you and I do not know your story, but the pain is apparent and I'm sorry that humanity has failed so abysmally to eradicate such evil. you do not deserve that. it is not your fault that the world is full of shitty people with shitty diabolical beliefs. you deserve love and safety and peace, and it is a grave injustice that such basic essentials are not guaranteed.