Trans, Non-binary, and Genderqueer positivity

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Ignoring the experts on the subject while also appealing to "common sense" and dismissing all research that contradicts them while also appealing to "basic science."

Edited to add: Since a lot of people are reblogging this original post, I'm adding the updated version I did that incorporates the intersex circle...

If you're the type of person who automatically assumes men are bad people, then I have news for you. That assumption isn't going to wait until I tell you I'm trans. You're going to—whether subconsciously or consciously—assume I am just a man, and even after I tell you I am a trans woman your perception of me will still be permanently altered.

Discriminatatory beliefs aren't going to wait for me to tell you my pronouns.

I grew up in Florida, where at the age of twelve I was a victim of terror campaigns telling adults that I was going to sexually assault their children in the bathrooms, specifically because of the reason that 'men are all evil.'

I went through way too much at the hands of those people to see practically every ""leftist"" online continuing to push that ideology. Unlearn it. Please. It directly affects us trans women, too.

I still, to this day, have internalized this ideology, and I cannot look at myself in the fucking mirror because I think to myself people see me as a threat, no one feels safe around me. As a direct result of 'all men are evil.'

my secondborn (my parents)

7/10

sounds vaguely historical but in the way that I'm going to be sent off to war to prevent a succession crisis

potentially confusing to the listener bc the average conversation has little relation to birth order

my sister's, [name] (my aunt)

9/10

direct and to the point!

still very clear about what our family relationship is. I think we can do away with many nouns if this is any indication

my young adult child (my mom)

4/10

it's giving "20 year old minor"

I promise you can just say my kid. it's ok I don't mind strangers thinking I'm like 5 bc that would make me a prodigy for doing stuff like my laundry and dishes in one day and honestly I could use that kind of support

my liberated one (my grandma)

10/10 THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT

completely unclear what my relationship actually is to her. her personal oracle perhaps?

Please read and share this, it affects everyone within our community, and if anyone has any further sources to add, including ways we can push back, please do.

Here is a link to the Federal Document signed this past February 19th.

This is just conversion therapy, just straight up conversion therapy. This is human experimentation trying to "cure" being transgender that the US Government is enacting on captives in federal prisons who do not have the rights to protect themselves and cannot fight back against it. It is utterly inhumane.

Not to mention that black Americans end up disproportionately incarcerated in US prisons and this will certainly be an extension of a long history of the US government committing human experimentation on black lives and bodies.

Alongside this, I need everyone to be very aware that if even a portion of these cases are marked as 'resolved', if the US Gov can manufacture some kind of statistic that these methods "work," it could very well become a mandated policy for treating gender dysphoria across the US. Not just in prisons, but any kind of government custody and potentially in psychiatric inpatient care, and potential extensions beyond that into the life of the general public.

Although what may be most effective would be to make it so that many trans people end up either within government or psychiatric custody, where their rights are directly denied from them in a situation they are defenseless against- just like this. And this will effect firstly those most vulnerable in our population, those impoverished, unhoused, severely mentally ill/disabled, immigrants, and the many black trans americans and other trans people of color who fall into these categories, especially.

The first idea is "the patriarchy does not oppress men, it punishes failed men."

I am going to word this in a very particular way because I think exactness on what is happening is important.

The patriarchy oppresses men by imposing artificial and harmful standards of "manliness". Men are punished for failing to adhere to these standards, but the standards themselves are inherently oppressive even to those who conform to those standards. In addition, these standards are not inherent to manliness or for the benefit of the men who conform to them, but exist to prop up and perpetuate the patriarchy. This is not to say men, individually or as a group (conditional on a lot of factors I can not possibly enumerate here), do not benefit from the patriarchy. But these artificial standards themselves are oppressive and not beneficial.

That ends the exactness part. It's pretty plain, but let's look at what I consider the most obvious example: emotional repression. A whole lot has been said about how men are expected to bury their feelings. Failing to do so will have severe social repercussions, but being coerced into emotional repression is oppressive even if you do conform. It is not good for a person to be emotionally repressed. It is harmful to that individual (to say nothing about the effects on those around them).

Emotional repression is also not an inherent trait of manliness. A man is not a failure of a man if he is willing and able to express emotions.

It is wrong to try to frame male oppression under the patriarchy solely as a matter of punishing failed men. Men are punished not for failing to be men, but for not conforming to a set of artificial oppressive standards. Non conformance is punished, but both conforming and non conforming men can be said to be oppressed by the patriarchy.

The second idea is that white cis straight etc. Maleness is not oppressed, but that deviations into minority identity maleness is, framing the whole issue in terms of identity politics. While it is true marginalized men are oppressed more heavily and violently, and often specifically because of aspects of maleness related to their minority identities, that does not account for everything. This is not simply a matter of black vs white or cis vs trans.

actually adding my tags. ik op also talked about Stormé in the notes but like. i really do find it so frustrating how he has been completely neglected as a historical figure. to the point where there's a lot of people who will, when talking about the erasure of Black trans people from Stonewall history, will immediately jump to talking about Marsha P. Johnson (who, while a vital figure in US queer history who deserves the attention she has started to receive from the community, did not start the uprising and arrived to them later) and continue to credit her with "throwing the first shotglass." but they don't even know who Stormé is, despite again, it being at the very least equally if not more likely she was actually involved with sparking the uprising.

and its even more frustrating because part of the reason its likely isn't just Stormé's own recollection, but because there are other reports that the uprising was kicked off when the cops arrested, specifically, a person seen as female who was wearing male clothing and was being violently arrested for FTM crossdressing. FTM activists were trying to raise awareness about this in 1989. like people specifically saw (even if it wasn't Stormé) a butch dyke getting arrested explicitly for wearing too many men's clothes and not enough women's clothes.

and yet, no one ever. fucking talks about this. no one who specifically is trying to talk about the erasure of trans people from queer activism mentions this. and we should all be asking, ourselves and each other, why? a lot of people don't want to have this conversation because it asks a lot of us, but that's exactly why its so vital to have responsibly.

Stonewall is as much myth as it is historical event, especially at this point in time. and how we choose to narrate it matters, even though we (should) all know that we will never know the full exact story, nor do we need to because, again, much of its importance is serving as a grounded myth of the birth of organized queer resistance in the US. And the fact is, there is every reason for us to tell a version of this myth which highlights that the inciting moment for queer people being fucking done with the constant acts of violence, was a mixed Black transmasc woman, a drag king who identified as a transgender warrior in Leslie Feinberg's book of that name, being violently arrested for his transmasculine presentation.

and not only is that not the version we tell, there's often no trace of transmasculinity at all in how we remember Stonewall or any queer historical events. & op is so. so incredibly right in prompting people to critically examine that absence. because i do believe if Stormé was a femme lesbian, people would be a lot more invested in making sure people know about the lesbian woman who started Stonewall. almost like, on an unconscious collective level, we see transmasculine figures as undesirable when it comes to being community icons, martyrs, heroes, theorists, creatives, etc.

anyways, for those curious, here's Stormé's recollection of Stonewall, from this interview:

The conversation turned to the night in June of 1969 at the Stonewall Inn where she made history. Quite a few friends, writers and historians over the years have identified her as the tough cross-dressing butch lesbian who was clubbed by the NYPD, which evoked enough indignation and anger to spur the crowd to action. She was identified as the Stonewall Lesbian in Charles Kaiser’s book The Gay Metropolis, and her scuffle with the police has been mentioned a few times in passing by The New York Times in the past couple of decades. Then in the January 2008 issue of Curve Magazine she identified herself as the Stonewall Lesbian in a detailed interview with writer Patrick Hinds, an excerpt of which is below: I asked her if she still remembered that night. She answered in the affirmative. After the cop hit her on the head, she socked him with her fist. “I hit him,” she said. “He was bleeding.” A natural protector, she has worked as a security guard at a few of the lesbian bars in the city. I spoke to her friend, Lisa Cannistraci, who has known her for around 25 years. Now one of the owners of lesbian bar Henrietta Hudson, Cannistraci said that DeLarverie worked as a security guard at the original Cubby Hole, located at 438 Hudson Street, starting in 1985. Cubby Hole eventually moved to the corner of West 4th and West 12th. Then Henrietta Hudson opened at the 438 Hudson Street location, and DeLarverie continued working there until 2005. “Until she was 85 years old?” I asked her. Cannistraci said yes.

also, just to drive home the point, the community ignoring Stormé was not a harmless act. he developed dementia later in life and did not receive the support that she fucking deserved from the community:

In March, Farrell, who lived next door to DeLarverie at the Hotel Chelsea, found DeLarverie disoriented and, uncharacteristically, asking for help. DeLarverie was shaking and dehydrated, and she was taken to and treated at the nearby St. Vincent’s Hospital. No next of kin has been located, and she no domestic partner. Friends say that she had a long term relationship with an aerialist and burlesque performer, but that was “a long time ago.” With no one in her life legally able to make health care decisions, she was given a court appointed a guardian: the Jewish Association for Services for the Aged (“JASA”). She remained at the hospital as doctors ascertained her ability to care for herself. When St. Vincent’s went bankrupt and closed abruptly, she was transferred to the nursing home. SAGE, an advocacy group for elderly members of the LGBT community, has also been offering assistance. Her friends say that communication with the aforementioned groups has been inadequate and a source of frustration, and they feel powerless to improve her situation. [...] DeLarverie continued emceeing and singing after Stonewall — at gay events and at benefits. Her friend Williamson Henderson, President of the S.V.A., told me that she hosted an annual gay nightlife event, The Gay Bar People’s Ball, where all of the movers and shakers of NYC gay nightlife would congregate and receive awards. “It was an event that was well known and a big deal,” he said. In Sam Bassett’s film, DeLarverie said that she continued to sing at benefits for battered women and children, remarking “Somebody has to care. People say, ‘Why do you still do that?’ I said, ‘It’s very simple. If people didn’t care about me when I was growing up, with my mother being black, raised in the south.’ I said, ‘I wouldn’t be here.'” What does the future hold for DeLarverie? Cannistraci told me that she is currently in the process of petitioning for legal guardianship of DeLarverie and hopes to move her into a brighter, more modern nursing home with a larger staff and activities for the residents — and one where a friend of DeLarverie’s already resides. “She was a protector of the community, and [her situation] is heartbreaking,” she said. [...] DeLarverie’s situation is, unfortunately, not unique, and it highlights some of the issues faced by gay and lesbian seniors. It is unclear whether DeLarverie has no surviving family members or whether she has surviving family members but simply lost touch with them over the years. Many elders become isolated from their families, either because of family disapproval or because they moved away from their families to a big city with a large gay and lesbian population, thereby becoming out of sight and out of mind. If they do end up in a retirement home or nursing home, there is also the issue of whether other residents will have a problem with their sexual orientation. Furthermore, in many states, same-sex partners cannot be legally bound, and if there is no next of kin, one can end up being a ward of the state. If the Rosa Parks of the gay community can end up in a nursing home among strangers like other forgotten elderly men and women, it is certainly a wake up call.

^^^ all of this + Gavin Grimm not only did that, but he didn't benefit basically at all. he graduated before the case was decided, and he only got $1 from it. Gavin was left traumatized and poor and has since struggled with housing. And I personally have never heard his name mentioned in discussions of vital modern trans activists in the US. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Fuck, I've barely heard his name ever, and I'm a queer from the DMV (region in the northeast USA) who has been pretty involved in my local queer community, so there's really no excuse.

You can still donate to his GoFundMe if you'd like. From this article:

As Donald Trump rolled back LGBTQ+ rights, including banning trans servicemembers from the military and authorizing homeless shelters to exclude trans people, Grimm won repeated court victories. But his school district appealed. One court of appeals judge compared Grimm to the historic American plaintiffs who challenged slavery, Japanese concentration camps, segregation and bans on interracial and gay marriage. A 2020 ruling offered a “resounding yes” in favor of the constitution and civil rights laws protecting trans students from discrimination. Grimm graduated before the case was resolved and never got to return to his school’s boys’ bathrooms. In 2021, the supreme court allowed Grimm’s victory to stand, and the school board was ordered to pay $1.3m in attorney’s fees. Grimm, however, only got a symbolic $1. To secure damages, Grimm would’ve had to give the opposition’s lawyers access to his medical records to scrutinize the cause and extent of his emotional distress, a process he couldn’t stomach after years of fighting. The idea he’d have to prove his anguish was unbelievable to his mom, who can’t shake the memories of her son becoming suicidal. Grimm doesn’t regret moving on without damages. But he desperately could’ve used financial help – especially as the trauma of his childhood began to catch up with him. [...]