I've been bad about checking back on this thread, I've got a bit of catch-up to do. A lot of this has already been addressed, but re-stating a bit won't hurt nobody.
politeness demand we refer to those we are close to in ways that will make them happy. So does self-interest- if we piss off those we like, we will be lonely.
But- the demand that folks "correctly gender" others is a step backwards in gender freedom, and anti-feminist.
There's been decades of efforts by feminists to develop forms of language that de-emphasize gender, and the constant recitation of gender in conversation, through use of gender-neutral pronouns among other things. This is rooted in an effort to overcome sexism and misogyny, just like gender-neutral bathrooms.
Note that this struggle has been successful in eliminating the routine recital of a female's marriage/ownership status (through use of "Miss" or "Mrs." before their name) in my lifetime.
In this view, gender is seen as a socially-constructed performance, not an innate identity.
Gender is de-emphasized out of a recognition that traditional gender roles have had very bad consequences for persons with female reproductive organs.
Use of singular "they" as a gender-neutral pronoun comes out of a desire to de-emphasize the gender binary, but can conflict with the neo-binary gender performances of trans folks.
"Misgendering" a person is seen as disrespectful, with use of [would-be neutral] "they" sometimes considered to be misgendering since it seeks neutrality rather than determining the gender identity of the person spoken about, and affirming it through pronoun usage.
Note that English pronouns only are gendered when speaking about individual third parties- "I" and "you" are not gendered, nor are plural references to third parties.
So we have folks trying to be polite and PC by using gender-neutral pronouns getting told off for doing so. But why do we need to relate to people through determining and reciting their gender? How is this progressive?
The issue of "They" being a misgendering term relies almost entirely upon the speaker not shifting this to "he" or "she" when corrected by the audience. Very few instances will someone get immediately angry about the use of "they," more often than not it'll go something like this
Speaker: Oh yeah I know so-and-so, I just saw them busking earlier today
Audience: Nice, just so you know, though, so-and-so goes by She
After this point, the original post stands alone for the most part. Make the attempt to shift that language, that'd be cool. If not, yeah, you might piss someone off. Nobody is going to waterboard you until you get it right.
Throughout the ages it seems that people have struggled with & sought after the questions pondered by our ancestors.
Gender confusion is a delusional subconscious programming being at its inner core , a deep seeded lack of acceptance of oneself & how one was created out from the womb
It’s believed that our essence or soul is comprised of two vital energies, one would call “male” other “female”
Each containing its own correspondences & traits. The idea is by meeting both energies in a balanced trajectory, the “male” & “female” energies unite in complimentary progress of evolutionary form, & bring the soul to zero point
Or what buddha called the middle path
Quite frankly, this is not what buddhist idea of a middle way refers to whatsoever and the rest of it is just as off-base. A person's energy is a facet of your spiritual belief, whereas gender is a material reality. I know this to be the case because I don't believe people have any form of spiritual energy and I know for a fact I know people who have a gender.
What's frankly a bit upsetting about this is that you call my lived experience "confusion." I'm not confused. I know precisely what I'm doing and exactly what that means for how I interact with the world around me and how I expect the world around me to interact in turn. There is nothing unsure, unstable, or unharmonious in my own being, sans sometimes I get a hair too drunk and try to get everyone around me to fight cops with me. My discovery of my own self and my decision to introduce that self to those I care about were introspective journeys, and as such they were curated with mind and care to the best of my own ability.
it’s yours & only your decision to react to these situations. U can choose to observe it,not give a fuck what people say or think or you can be the opposite & let others control how U feel
Look we all have things going on, & I don’t care what anyone chooses to identify as long as u happy ..but laws of nature don’t change becuz one wants them to..all the disguises an hormones serve as escapist realities of the lost soul
There are very few things I accept as natural laws. I will list them here:
1.) All species must fight
2.) All species must feed
3.) All species must fuck
Beyond fucking, fighting, and feeding, there's no universal truth from one species to another. In fact, these don't even apply to individual organisms, that's how frail natural laws are to me.
Regardless, I wish the first part of this were true. That would be a truly great world to live in, if I were the only person who was in control of how I felt. A few years ago I was walking around the north side of Chicago with a friend and we walked a bit too closeby to a strip club packed to the gills with rowdy bros. Two of them jumped me and another two chased my friend off while throwing bottles at her. During the beating, I was called a tranny and a faggot. Now, I suppose I could have chosen not to let that bum me out, as I do now -- that experience is just another experience I had, it's none more or less traumatizing or saddening to me to reflect on it now than any other experience -- but I could not have chosen how those men made me feel in that moment. I didn't make a choice to feel harmed, that was forced on me. I COULDN'T have made that choice. I'm not physically strong enough to fight multiple people and take control of a situation like that.
How the outside world interacts with me is not a choice I make, how I perceive it is only a choice in a limited sense, and how I respond in turn is only a choice insofar as the situation is a peaceful one. Sadly, that isn't always the reality for non-genderconforming people in this world.
what is it shorthand for, exactly?
This is in response to the use of "Cis," which the roots of have been speculated on already, but I'll go on and clear the air. "Cis" is shorthand for "Cisgender," the counterpart to "Transgender," "Agender," and "Nonbinary," to name the major markers. There are a plethora of other markers as well, but these are the ones you're most likely to deal with unless you start really getting to know your local queer communities.
Cisgender is a term that's been popularized over the past decade as a descriptor for someone who identifies their gender with the one they were assigned at birth. That is to say, if you are born, the doctor says "It's a boy!" and today you see yourself as a boy (or, as a man, I'm not sure how many children read this forum) then you fall within the category of cisgender.
Transgender is a term to describe someone who does NOT agree with the gender they were assigned at birth. In my case, the doctor said "It's a boy!" and throughout life I've come to realize, no, it is not a boy. It's not a boy at all. Silly doctor.
When people in this thread say they don't identify as cis, that's fine, but I wonder if that's out of stubbornness of trying to prove a point. Because, honestly, if you identify with the gender you were assigned at birth, you're not like... less of a person for that. That'd be ridiculous. But when someone says "dont call me cis" it means one of two things to me - either you're trans, or you have negative feelings about trans discourse in general and are angry to some degree at trans people. For a term that just means "I was born, called a boy, and I'm still a boy" (or, substitute with girl) people tend to get really angry about it.
The REASON cis was popularized as a counterpart to trans is this: The alternative to "Cis man" and "Trans man" is "Normal man" and "Trans man" - and the immediate implication is that there's something abnormal - or worse, anti-normal - about trans people. And in redefining that language, we lessen the impact on our trans brothers and sisters.
Sometimes us trans folk take the piss out of cis people because there are some fundamental things yall wouldn't understand about our lived experiences no matter how many gender studies classes or trans friends you have - but it's mostly a coping mechanism we use because we have such little power over how the greater culture perceives us. In the same way racial minorities rib at white people, we rib at cis people. Wealthy white cis men control the basis of western society, and people who aren't those things tend to cope by identifying those aspects and making fun, while also genuinely organizing to dismantle a power structure that allows for that to have happened in the first place. And with all of those markers except "wealthy," none of those are a choice. So, there's a bit of unfairness here in ribbing like that. White cis dudes didn't choose to be born in the first place, let alone did they get an option on how they came out. There's no character creation screen in our parent's wombs. But the blunt and basic fact in all of this is that you DO have it easier by being white than you do any other race in America. You DO have it easier being male than any other gender in America. And you DO have it easier being cis than trans in america. That isn't to say that you have it easy. Let me repeat that: THAT IS NOT TO SAY YOU HAVE IT EASY. That is just to say that, in your exact situation that you live right now, if you are a white cis male, substituting ANY of those markers for another one would make your current situation harder.
And yeah, in the same way that some individuals who are racial minorities hate white people, some individuals who are gender minorities hate cis people. And, I mean, i guess you can be mad about those percent-of-a-percent type people.
Preface: I am a trans man who has had no physical transition, and may never physically transition.
Power, brother. I see you.
Okay, starting with asking that people use gendered pronouns being "anti-feminist"....
Well plenty of the "feminist" movement(s?) has been and continues to be trans exclusionary. Pussy riot shit where "feminism" is all focused on anatomy, and the fact that trans women have and very much continue to be seen as outsider men trying to invade a REAL women's space.
And so many "feminists" are ready as all hell to try to silence trans men or other trans afab people. As if us not identifying as women somehow changes the way we're still treated on a day to day basis by the general public perceiving us as women.
THIS IS REMARKABLY IMPORTANT AND I CANT BELIEVE I DIDNT BRING THIS UP SOONER
Feminism is an ideology as varied as anarchism. As you go back through the timeline of feminism, it's meant different things to different people. And alllllll these different brances, from suffragettes to sex+ to red umbrellas to riot grrrls - they still exist today. The same way a Haymarket anarchist of the early 1900s might disagree with an Insurrectionist of the early 2010s in every way except "The state has no role in a truly free society,"" these different aspects of feminism do NOT agree with each other in anything except that "women are inherently equal and should be considered as such by the culture at large."
Given
@Older Than Dirt 's username and references to your age in general, I would imagine that a lot of feminists you've known and stood with through your life are what we call "second wave" or "2way" feminists, and that focused a lot on examining performance and the role of gender in structure. What it really, really, REALLLLLLLY didn't like was a third gender. A lot of prominent thinkers of this generation had a lot of really awesome things to say and BRUTALLY GOOD analysis of the role of gender in the household, workplace, bedroom, and organizing spaces, but discounted the abstract "third gender" as a hinderance and a distraction. It wasn't until the 80s or 90s that the "third gender" started being carefully considered, and honestly I still consider a lot of 3rd wave feminists (80's/90's+ newer wave) transphobic because in that consideration, though it was undoubtedly careful, no small number of them straight up went "a third gender exists and should not, these people need to pick a side or obscure themselves." And thankfully, more of them went the route of acceptance and a "third gender" was understood to be something that was there all along in trans people.
Feminism is a blanket good. The basis and the underlying goal of egalitarianism is something I fight for in my organizing, just as I hope the rest of you do in yours. But that's not to say it's one coin with two sides. We're out here rollin d20s on anarchism and feminism, it's not an either or situation.
Okay I lied. One more thing.
While corn got pissed at Matt using "they" for a woman who prefers "she", I have heard Matt call this girl "she" before multiple times too. It's not been exclusively "they" and total avoidance for "she". And when this girl first came out n Matt wasn't used to the pronoun shift, if I heard it and needed to correct him about calling her "she", he immediately complied every time. "Right, she."
This is also important, and goes back to my example conversation. Just try to do it better, just a little bit each time. Ya'll will get there. And it's worth the effort, because the people you love will be safer and feel better.
I'm gonna let the end of this post stand alone cause, i dont know what else i could possibly add to this. It's perfect:
It does take time for people to learn. If there's true effort being put forth, I'm down to give that person patience. But if someone is not willing to give that patience bc it's damaging to them to stick around for the process, that's valid too.
Actually no i do have one thing to add. Croc, get to me on DMs if you have a facebook, I would love to be your friend.
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ScarletMountain also agree with what you said about this is an issue about the person not liking themselves the way they are born male or female, if someone doesn't like the way they are and then start to mutilate themselves to feel better, is this not a disharmony in the mind? people get locked up for that. They say trans people have a high suicide rate, some say its because they are bullied, but black people often say they are bullied too there is a lot more of them and they commit suicide much less, so it can't be about bullying, like yes that is part of it but someone with mental illness is more likely to hurt themselves if they are bullied a lot, then someone who doesn't.
Okay, this one I really want to hone in on one specific word, and that is "Mutilate." There's a really long right-wing history of people, mostly evangelical christians or new-age spiritualists who disagree with christianity but still prop up ultraconservative talking points, comparing transition to mutilation because some - not all, not even most, but some- of us commit to gender affirmation surgery (or "The Surgery"). This is a medical procedure that adults consent to over the course of years IF NOT DECADES. It is not mutilation. It is not on the same level of religious genital harm. It is not on the same PLANET as corrective female genital mutilation. It is a MEDICAL PROCEDURE. THAT COSTS TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS. AND TAKES YEARS. IF NOT DECADES. TO EVEN GET A CONSULTATION ON.
And it's a huge, HUGE decision that nobody takes lightly.
gender is nearly impossible to escape. i have never met a single person who doesn't use gender in relating to others. basically *every* social interaction is affected in some way by gender, especially interactions between strangers but close relationships as well. cis people tend not to notice this because they don't have any point of comparison. many trans people, myself included, would love to exist in a world without gender. but that's not an option. our options are being treated as a man, a woman, or a subhuman freak.
DING DING DING
That's how the world sees us, unless we (and by we, I mean you, reading this) makes and active effort to change that. And that's the kind of introspection that I wanted to create with this thread. What can I do to change this? What can my friends do? What can the person who wrote this post (Hi my name is emma) do better to get people on board? Because this is precisely the issue, and this is precisely how the world treats us. For the most part, we just want to be left the fuck alone. I'm loud and I spend my energy on posts like this, conversations like this, meetings like this, teach-ins, workshops, zines like this, because I want to create a world where if my own child (who is 3 now) comes out, that my child won't have to spend this much time and energy, but can just... exist. and be happy.
seriously, can cis people please shut the fuck up about being trans? because you don't get it, it's embarrassing for everyone. every damn new ager with some theory about "energies" and debunked pop neurology thinks they know how trans people work and you all know NOTHING.
To be fair, I did purposefully open this up for cis folk to be able to make mistakes and have a discussion. I also absolutely, in the OP, asked for patience from them when trans and GNC folk got frustrated. But also i love you and pop neurology is some terf shit lmao
whew. this was a good thread idea. but i'm gonna link to this every time i need to make the point that cis people nearly always fail to be good about trans stuff. even the cis people who are alright. i've been lurking on this site for a while and it really drives home the thought that if a space isn't just queer, it's not going to be queer-friendly.
I LOVE YOU PLEASE ADD ME ON FACEBOOK THANKS
Do you hope to help foster any understanding by operating in queer-only spaces or should we just maintain some kind of at-odds factionalism?
Queer only spaces are a reflection of a culture that inherently has queer-free spaces. It's not exclusionist, it's not factions, but simply a place where we can go where everyone is like us and just for a moment we don't have to deal with the outside world. Cisgender heterosexual Caucasian males have hooters, we have a coffee shop somewhere just outside Seattle and absolutely nowhere else. (THATS A JOKE PEOPLE)
But really, it's nice to be able to go somewhere and be able to be myself without worrying about fucking up the presentation and having someone kick my ass for it.
Personally, I accept myself fully. I'm a faggot with tits and a vagina who wears crop tops and boxer briefs and has hairy limbs and crevices and loves getting dirty and working hard and being active and doing people's make up. I am very secure in who I am and plenty of other trans people are too.
PREACH
Not just bc we are bullied, but because we are denied and belittled (read your own words for a direct example) by many people very regularly. Also, check the suicide rates for trans black people (yeah, those groups do overlap....)
A black person isn't gonna get kicked out of their home if they tell their parents that they're black but it happens to trans people all the time. Black people aren't called mentally ill for being black, something they did not choose in the first place (wow kinda like being trans whoaaa wild).
Have u considered that yall denying trans people's identities and calling us ill has uhhh idk A LOT to do with why our suicide rates are high???
My mom and I never had a phenonimal relationship but after I came out to her she would not answer my calls or texts for a year. That doesn't happen to black people for being black. Apples and oranges. The person who u lived inside of, who was the first to hold u in this world, who is supposed to love and care for u unconditionally cutting off contact with u bc they don't agree with or like who u KNOW u are... That's the kind of shit that makes people kill themselves.
Where is the applause emoticon 👏👏👏👏 NVM I FOUND IT
I'm a 34 year old straight white man. And god damn it was hard enough just to become that, my transition into manhood started about 5 years ago, right after I got married. I can only image the struggle LGBTQ's have to face, and I support that.
I was introduced to radical feminist politics and queerness when I was 17. Matter of fact, the banner of this thread is a Crimethinc poster I used to have hanging on my wall. I have observed a lot of interesting behavior since that time, and have participated in a bit myself, including crossdressing. I have only ever ONCE been asked to use correct pronouns. Denver 2003 I was handed a business card by a 16 year old trans person that described the different pronouns that they used, and some other gender insights. There was mention of the ze zir zirs which I never used and they seem to have fallen by the wayside. I say THEY when appropriate, and I have friends that ONLY say THEY when referencing EVERYONE, I don't like it, but I don't think it's bad.
To date, I have been intimate with 2 trannies mtf/ftm, a drag queen, a gay man, and a lesbian. This was most all in my 20's as I spent a lot of time on the streets, traveling, and photographing. I did not really enjoy any of it (well except the lesbian), this was all circumstantial and I have no problems relating to people in new and exciting ways.
My beef with the LGBTQ's doesn't lie within gender identity but the extreme radical political baggage that usually comes along with it. BE GAY - cool, but then you got the anarchism, veganism, un-patriotic, anti-capatilist, hate everything in society mishmash of over bearing naive radical ideologies that mostly always fizzles out in your 30's. I've had confrontations fit to make a whole new season of Portlandia!!! So there we go, you can be a a tranny but, just I still might think your an asshole.
The use of slurs has already been addressed, so I won't continue on that cause that's settled. What I want to focus on here is why queers tend to have extreme ideologies.
Imagine a world where your very existence is questioned. Not in a racial sense, like "are asian people bad," that happens and that radicalizes a lot of Asian people, or at least pushes them to create change. Not in a gendered sense like "are women bad," because that happens as well and, similarly, that pushes women to be proactive and fight. But i mean literally, "do trans people exist." When we're right here, saying "Yes, we do. We exist." and the conversation goes on without us. It makes us, as a group, a lot more likely to stop trying to affect change, and a lot more likely to start looking into historical instances where people had to fight for their very survival. In our own introspection about what we as individuals are to our own selves, we have to at some point think about what we are to those around us. And if that conclusion is, "we aint shit. We're nothing, and that's how they'll treat us," then yeah, a lot of us go to extremes to defend our existences.
So basically call people what they ask you to but don't wander the earth in crippling fear of misgendering a stranger? I think that's the gist of this thread...
You got it, family <3
This isn't just for one user, this is to make it crystal clear that this thread is a place for people to learn, not to argue why they refuse to act like a decent (and I'm really reaching here by saying decent, because if that's too much to ask holy fuck what a prick you must be if you can't comprehend this by now) person.
I'm making it a point to go back and give yall post karma, this settled it.
One more time: calling folks "cis" men or "cis" women is rejected by pretty much all the people you are applying that label to (the few that have heard of it anyway), including several right here in this very thread. And not just "me personally",
I ask with acknowledgement to your own time, space, and effort, that you take a look at earlier in this reply regarding the term "cisgender" and hopefully we can revisit this
Just to be clear "cis gendered" comes from the world of plant breeding where certain plants can have both female and male traits or just one. As in this plant could be self pollinating but it only produces pollen so it's "cis" meaning it only shows one gender trait. Also "tranny" can be a slur, however transvestite does not equal transgender. I've known a few drag queens who would not consider themselves transgender, and have no problem with the word tranny, shit, some have it in their stage names. The way I've always understood it is a transvestite has no desire to "transition" they're proud to be a hybrid, where's a trans gender person identifies (a least some of the time) as a member of the gender/sex opposite their biology. That being said, I agree that 99% I hear the terms "cis" or "tranny" they're being used in a negative way.
My main issue with drag queens is that they are men playing dress-up in their free time. What they say doesn't go for all of us. And what you might be allowed to say at one of their stage shows doesn't mean it's cool to say elsewhere. Drag queens are entertainment acts that toy with gender. Trans people live lives that are at risk because of gender perceptions.
In other words, simply try to not to be an asshole.
And this is what it all really boils down to <3
