need people to understand that the idea that “regular people” can’t understand trans people is inherently transphobic framing. #1: we are regular people. demographically, we are less wealthy than cis people on the whole because of employment discrimination, housing discrimination, and the wage gap
This is all very true, but I do know a lot of boomer-age people who claim to respect and understand trans people, but don't see the issue with """reasonable""" bad-faith arguments about trans sports and trans youth. They don't see the urgency and don't connect it to other kinds of injustice
(and they won't say it out loud but they see trans people as expendable)
right, these are people who have accepted this framing! we are still Others to them, and their “acceptance” is conditional
Claiming to respect and understand is very different from actually feeling that way. Honestly I think the “I’m an ally, but…” impulse is fundamentally middle class, not “salt of the earth” or “just folks”.
this is very true in my experience
Yeah, in my experience it's mostly people who are financially comfortable and directly unaffected and have a kind of "team sports" attitude to politics. It's all pretty abstract to them
That and also the middle class is fundamentally about the social gaze and needing to present a certain appearance that is unrelated to actual behavior or deeply held convictions.
bsky.app/profile/elip...
I grew up in Louisiana. The first other trans person I ever saw worked at the local McDonald’s. Until I was in college, all my awareness of trans, genderqueer, and even visibly gay existence was working class.
This is the same problem that I’ve seen in disability rights over the last 40 years. Disability is widely viewed as abnormality and basic accommodations so we can participate are viewed as a “burden”, but our society assists and accommodates many people many ways. We just want inclusion.
It’s super baffling because disability is something everyone is inevitably going to experience at some point in their life (old age always comes with more physical and potentially mental limitations).
The disabled are always the first victims. “Aktion T4” is how the Nazi’s perfected the gas chambers later used against the Jews. We used forced sterilization in the U.S. until the 1970s, and basic rights only date from 1990 (IDEA and ADA). Trump falsely blamed the disabled for a crash week 1…/1
I think it is because we value the wrong things. Looks, money, education, job, fame, power… Lots of the shittiest people on the planet have those. Yet people bitch about their taxes going to SPED and SSI, even as their own state or county is heavily subsidized so they can have hospitals and roads.
I support regular people and cis people
It’s not that they can’t understand trans people. It’s that 1. Trans issues like access to gender affirming care don’t only affect trans people and 2. No one’s lifespan is long enough to fully understand all the medical conditions and people they do affect. You’re standing in for 10s of millions.
Queer ppl are situated relative to cishet ppl differently than nonwhite ppl are situated to white people. No one's child will ever come out as black, but even the most reactionary person may have a queer child. And every cishet person knows at least one in their family/ social circle who is queer
one of my coworkers came out as a trans man in 2005 and everyone was completely normal about it, and this was a meat and potatoes blue collar town of 150,000 people. the so called “regular people”. The only problem was some folks forgot to call him Martin a few times and said Martha, then apologized
this trans panic has been entirely generated by the right wing and their enablers in the media and anyone buying into it is a rube
it’s SO EVIDENT, you just need to think critically for 0.000002 seconds
also.. you don't need to "understand" someone's deal to acknowledge their humanity and treat them w dignity
on the contrary - I am cis and therefore OWED AN EXPLANATION
I said this to my mum many years ago when she didn’t understand one of my sister’s kids as non binary. You don’t need to understand. You just need to support as normal.
Bingo
Yeah, like, I don't understand trans people. I'm cis! I can't! But I also recognize that there are some things I don't understand, and that's fine. I don't have to understand everything, and they obviously feel stuff that is foreign to me. They still deserve to be happy.
"can't understand" is a bit of a stretch.. books exist, if understanding of the lived experience of trans people is something you seek, you may even learn something about yourself along the way
I mean I can hear what they say their feelings are but I can't *empathize* with it, I can only *sympathize*. I've read dozens of trans peoples' accounts of their dysphoria and all I can say is "Yeah that sounds shitty. I can't imagine caring about that in my own life but it's obv important to you."
empathy is the bedrock of political solidarity bc it teaches us not to always center ourselves in the conversation of What's Needed, to see how vast and vibrant the world can be, and to understand one another so we may move forward together sympathy is close tho, glad you're there at least ✨
exactly!
like let's start w dignity THEN we can have conversations about yall coming to understand our whole deal or whatever.. lots will be learned from that initial conversation abt dignity!!!!!!!!
As an older person, I have no direct experience with trans people. When I was young, I lived amiably with gay and lesbian people in shared housing and we were often close friends. I assume today's "trans" people would have identified as gay or lesbian back in the day?
some of us do right now! (i am a trans woman and a lesbian)
You can’t be trans and lesbian it’s oxymoron
i manage it well enough, but thanks for the concern! ^^
Can you tell me how, biological women are attracted to women and they are lesbians, trans women are biological men , so by definition they can’t be women therefore they can’t be lesbians,but I’m glad I could clear that for you
oh, you're one of those have fun pretending you're in any way meaningfully opposed to the rising wave of fascism
My personal philosophy is "live and let live", so whatever you are is fine with me, as long as you don't harm others... but have you considered the possibility that you are simply a male who can't spell heterosexual?
i really tried to be a straight guy and i couldn't. idk what to tell you if you start from the assumption that i'm a man, the details of my life will befuddle and confuse you. if you start from the assumption that i'm a woman, it'll make sense. this is generally true of trans women.
"trans women are women" isn't just a slogan, it's a statement with better predictive power than the alternatives, when it comes to anticipating the actions of trans women and the paths that our lives take most of what we deal with is just a particularly intensified form of misogyny
Men, on average, are more prone to violence than women and women usually have a beautiful nurturing kindness. Evolutionary necessities, so both are good in a sense. Not sure where trans women fall, in respect to these qualities.
i don't think men or women have innate gendered qualities but i sure was under a lot of pressure to sexually harass women back when i was trying to be a man, and i didn't like it one bit trans women tend to be very well-behaved wrt violent crime on account of v-coding (look it up to ruin your day)
I can't agree there. Of course, there is wide individual variation, and I am not saying you or other trans women are aggressive, but there is a big difference between men and women. I think I can claim I am intimately familiar with the beautiful qualities of women. I have to go do some chores now...
Sorry for my smart-ass comment goats. The thing that really confuses me is that almost nobody identified as trans when I was young (long ago), but so many do now. Maybe there is less pressure to conform now. Best wishes.
trans people existed back then, being openly trans was just far less safe, so the usual course of action was to try to go "stealth" (transition all at once, go missing, move to a new town and start a new life with none the wiser) most of us don't do that anymore for reasons i'm sure you understand
That sounds plausible, but I am still surprised by the very dramatic change during the past 50 years.
50 years ago they were making sex change jokes in sitcoms. you didn't think those came out of nowhere, did you?
not necessarily. the communities overlap heavily, which is why they’re grouped together, but “transsexual,” “mtf” and “ftm” were all in use before “transgender,” which is itself a term that dates back to the early ‘60s. (also, please don’t scare quote “trans.”)
We also both have "oppression that is gendered but Not Like That" going on. I know a lot of trans lesbians who had experience being called gay because of effeminacy in their egg days, who were basically at "... but I'm into girls?" about it.
I don't believe they for the most part had gay community connections (unless they had them for ally reasons), but they did have experience of homophobia. And me, I despair sometimes of finding people who talk about trans men who don't assume that we somehow belong in sapphic circles.
consider that you may have known trans people without knowing they were trans
I’d love to see what a “regular person” is and how understanding trans folk are beyond them? My five year old understands the concept just fine.
Mine too! My kid is just at the stage of starting to identify w a gender (male) & even tho he’s cis, the fact that he understands why gender identity matters transfers onto others regardless. It’s actually really cool to watch bc I remember being his age when I first felt I was in the wrong body.
Yeah, my little one too. I raised her very gender neutral and she just naturally gravitated towards femininity and identifying as a girl (cis) without social pressures. Kids know who they are and we need to trust them.
#2: there is this idea that trans people are a creation of queer studies/the university and that we are a recent phenomenon. we’re not, and the university thing is backwards. we are objects of study
Trans people are “new”? (wtf right?) I had a talk with my mom once about several pairs of same sex “roommates” that lived where she grew up in Riverside Ca. circa 1955. Her point was that people knew the truth and chose to not make it their business and gay people were always there.
(slams ancient hebrew having 6 different words for understanding sex/gender that encompass both trans people and intersex people down on the table) It's not the only bit of evidence, nor the only language/culture with these types of terms, but still. The terms wouldn't exist if the people didn't.
Also just listened to a lecture on an element of esoteric Judaism, and something said that resonates is, "Every prohibition is a confession." Prohibiting the use of these terms is confessing they are being used regularly.
Well, that does not matter since universities promote violence and are extremely unprofessional.
#3: people do not need diplomas to understand that if someone is different than you they also deserve basic respect
This is something I have found even with allies. I have been asked to vent or talk about my feelings when suffering from dysphoria. Before being told "I am sorry I can't really understand what you are going through. Maybe you should talk to another trans person?"
Despite the person being the one asking, then again I've already done that. Sometimes I just need to vent and if you give me space to do so I will. I think what frustrates me is I have realized how.. hollow this argument is?
I wouldn't tell a gay man venting about his issues to talk to other gay men when venting. I wouldn't tell a person of colour to speak to other persons of colour. I wouldn't tell a woman to talk to other women. I'd listen to them even if I didn't personally get their struggle. I'd sympathise.
Sometimes there are great things to gain from talking to people who share your experience. And i'd even advice it myself, and it's been crucial for me. But I would NEVER turn a friend in need away. I'd try to listen to what is being said, sometimed you don't need the answer, just the ear.
Yes! It’s like the most basic principle. We got all sorts of shorthands for it from so many cultures!! It’s like the common ethical aspiration.
I wish I could like this thread ten thousand times
Indeed not. www.wpr.org/news/larry-j...
Things I don't understand: Chinese, physics & chemistry, statistics, a lot of math, Opera, the popularity of Friends, why that one co-worker is still employed... There are lots of things that I don't understand, and that's okay!
Whether "regular people" understand it or not, they should understand and accept that it's none of their business. Just live and let live. It's not difficult and requires zero effort.
I was 9 years old when I first met a trans person, tops, and had no issue with the concept. She was very working class. I've been confused about adults saying they don't understand the concept for almost 30 years.
She had a scumbag boyfriend, pet rats, and snacks for me. There was no major difference between her and all the other women I was around as a kid.