a star made of elves. or an elf made of stars

Nov 17

relevant to previous post:

Cissexists, if you want to be taken seriously, you really ought to quit using ‘But boys and girls are different!’ as an argument against trans* people.
This is not new. This is not a huge revelation. This is not even a valid argument.

Dirty little secret (and by ‘dirty little’ i mean ‘huge, blatantly obvious, how did you not already know this’ secret) time: we already know. That’s how we figured out we’re trans* to begin with. I know y’all like bringing up the dictionary definition of ‘male’ or ‘female’ to cover these things so here’s ‘transgender’: of, relating to, or being a person (as a transsexual or a transvestite) who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth’ (emphasis mine).
Differs from. As in different.

The argument here is not ‘cissexists think men/women are different and trans* people do not.’
The argument is cissexists tend to think the difference is genital, hormonal, chromosomal, or some combination thereof, whereas trans* people think the difference is neurological.

Really. You are not ever, ever going to turn to a trans woman and say, ‘You know, there’s a difference between men and women’ and hear her respond with ‘Oh my gosh! You’re right! Silly me! All those years of insisting i’m a woman, it was all because i thought men and women are the same! Thank you, oh wise one, for saving me from a lifetime of devastation!’ (Well, you might hear this if she’s being really sarcastic. You’ll never hear it in an even remotely serious way.)

There is not a binary trans* person in existence who thinks men and women are the same. Mainly because there is not a binary trans* person in existence who didn’t figure out they’re different, at the very latest, the second they figured out they were trans*. And most of them figured it out sooner, during the whole agonisingly-long questioning phase of trying to figure themselves out.

Now, this is not to say nobody ever argues ‘men and women are the same.’ Plenty of people do. But i have yet to see one of those people who doesn’t fall into one of two categories:

Really under-informed genderqueer people who somehow have learned about non-binary genders while never learning anything about binary trans* people

Cis people

And it may just be the corner of the internet i hang out on, but it’s been my experience the majority of trans* people - especially binary trans* people - not only know there’s a difference between men and women, they consider the argument to the contrary downright offensive.
Because trans* people don’t just know there’s a difference. We live the difference. Because trans* people need to get downright aggressive (and be the ‘angry trans* person’) just to get people to use pronouns which don’t make us feel bad about ourselves. Because trans* people need to pay fees and fill out paperwork just to get the gender marker changed on their passports or driver’s licenses or birth certificates and even then: ‘How much therapy have you had? How long have you been on hormones? How long have you been living full-time as this gender? Have you had surgery yet? Sorry to get so invasive, we just want to make sure you’ll never change your mind.’
Because trans* people’s gender is never fully our gender. Because living too far away from a therapist, not having money for hormones or surgery, or being afraid to come out to our parents is always taken as a sign we’re not ‘really’ who we think we are. And if we do put any effort into transitioning, there’s always going to be some self-righteous cis person saying ‘Ugh, i can’t believe you would do this to yourself. Men and women are the same anyway, just accept what you have and be happy.’

Tangentially related:

If your argument ever includes ‘Hey, i know this nursery rhyme isn’t entirely accurate, but it makes a good point!’ you need to back up and get some real evidence.

Do not even pull this ‘speaking the truth in love’ stuff. Just don’t. If you can’t even understand how a minority group feels about themselves, then it is time for you to shut up, sit down, and listen in love for five minutes. If you can’t do something as simple as listening, then you don’t really love us and you need to quit playing like you do.

Ugh, this. STORY TIME: I grew up not knowing I was trans because I thought men and women were the same. I also thought feminine women had just been duped by the patriarchy and thus I thought they were stupid (thus making me a misogynist in the name of feminism, yuck). Meanwhile I kept wondering why, say, when I volunteered with kids I had a natural rapport with all the little boys. It was actually a misguided, underinformed sense of feminism that kept me insisting men and women are the same and thinking I was somehow a “cooler” woman when actually I was a dude. I realize “feminism made me sexist” is a strange statement but you know, that’s what happens when you adopt a philosophy you don’t really understand yet. Encountering actual, complex feminism is what opened my eyes to the fact that gender actually does exist. And that’s what allowed me to figure out I was trans.

14 notes | Reblogged: (via)

6 months ago Source: keelanrosa