CHOTTO MATTA!

The checkbox at the start of the big annual survey reads:

Yes, I confirm that I don't really fit into just one of the two boxes of "always, solely and completely a woman/girl" or "always, solely and completely a man/boy."

Obviously the logic of this very precise wording is very familiar and coherent to me, because I have been thinking about it every year for like 10 years or something! But I do always get a few people confused about whether binary trans people are deliberately excluded, or whether they are "nonbinary enough" to participate.

So, this evening I made this diagram that I hope illustrates what I was going for with it:

So, there will be people in just one circle, or two circles, and people all the way outside all three. (That's me, agender, occupying zero circles: consistently never anything.)

I think most cisgender, transgender and intersex binary women would say that they are always women, they're not anything else, and they're women all the way through, for the most part. Ditto most cisgender, transgender and intersex binary men. If they agree with that for themself, they're not invited to participate.

It's intentionally very broad. That's why cisgender and binary are on the checkbox list, because someone could feel like they are a cisgender man or a cisgender woman and there is still something that nudges them out of that central segment. (As a nonbinary person I'm like, "are there really people who feel like they truly absolutely are always, solely and completely [men/women]? That sounds fake." But yeah, that's most of the population apparently!)

And the thing is, there is no sharp cut-off. Two people can have the same internal experience of their gender and maybe even call it the same thing - but one of them might feel that they qualify while the other feels they don't, and that's totally fine.

Edit: Diagram now with "none of the above" and "secret third thing" for clarity!

not true

rude actually

minimizing a disability

"everyone's a little weird"

true

human brains are very different

not diagnosing random people

i understand that you're a 4tran resident and you don't think anything can ever get better for you because that's how everyone on 4tran is. i cannot stress enough that the vast cavern of insecurity you're choosing to live in is exactly what this post is for.

you are obviously not going to smash the patriarchy by doing something small for one single trans woman. that would be absurd. but that doesn't mean that anything you do has no effect at all. if you let a trans woman who doesn't pass at all dress really fem and call her pretty and genuinely mean it you have done something really good. if you go to the gym with a trans guy and support him in the locker room, you've made a meaningful difference in his life specifically. if you create a space for your nonbinary friend where you make it clear you don't see them as one or the other, exorsexism will still obviously exist in other places but they're comfortable with you and that's what matters

it's better to do something small that doesn't change the grand scheme of things than to get so jaded about your inability to change the grand scheme of things that you do nothing at all

you don't need the grand scheme of things to change. you need someone to take your hand and tell you that you are a girl and things will get better for you, over and over until you believe it. and if you choose to do that for yourself then you still will have made a change and made the world better, even if no one else knows you did it.

But of course 🥹

I often think that the 2jamie clinginess is exaggerated, but then I look at any picture of the two of them and they are indeed either holding onto each other or in each other’s immediate personal space, I love them so much 😭