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deliadexaerisofficialuniver-blog · 5 years

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Gendered Communication and the frustration of trying to communicate with TERFs from a perspective of inferred masculinity

I feel like a frustrating thing trying to have any semblance of impactful dialog with TERFs is that they act like gender doesn’t exist when it’s convenient for them, but then also like it does exist, and is irrevocably tied to genitals, also when it’s convenient for them. Example: Any education major, which I once was, psych major, or gender studies major has to take courses which at some point will cover gendered differences in communication between men and women. When I was taking this course (that’s not the content of the whole course, just a significant portion of it,) I had to give a presentation on this specific topic. When I did, it was a uniquely awesome experience as a transgender woman, even not being fully out at the time. I had a habit of coming to that class dressed in my more feminine attire/stylings, as it was on the same night as drag nights I went to at the time. I was often wearing a women’s shirt, women’s bondage pants, and nail polish, without makeup, had long hair, tied back, but went by my deadname and male pronouns. It was in the bible belt, so I found it odd that people didn’t harass me at the time, but it was obvious they were never quite sure what to think of me.

Anyway, when I was going through the presentation, I struck a huge chord with the other women in the class (most of whom were straight), by focusing on how those differences often create conflicts in heterosexual relationships which could be easily avoided by each member of the relationship learning the subliminal languages of the others communication style, and how they differ from their own. The men seemed like someone had lit a light bulb over their heads and smashed a brick over them simultaneously in this sort of series of “OH!” moments, while the other women were just a constant sea of nods and “mmhmms,” punctuated with laughter. I hadn’t really piped up much in the class, I was pretty quiet and liked to keep to myself, but after the presentation I was expected to be a social butterfly of a public speaker on gender when all of the attention of the class suddenly turned to *my* gender, which the other students presumed must be female. They all saw me as a transgender woman, even though I hadn’t come out, brought it up in any way, or made any outward indication that I identified this way. Everyone, even the cishet guys, was legit just reading my mannerisms and communications style, and matching it with I’d gone over in my presentation, which I was conveniently enough actively demonstrating literally just by communicating the way I’ve always communicated, which they’d also been able to observe in what limited interactions they’d had with me up to that point, and realizing that they internally coded me as feminine based on my communication style and mannerisms.

At the time, the concept of transness was in and of itself very new to me, and I was carrying a lot of internalized transphobia. The way that people in the class tried to put the way *they* perceived it was generally vocalized as “So you were born a boy, but you’re really more of a girl on the inside,” and I was happy to leave the understanding at that, but my the point is that they were able, just from watching a trans person give a presentation on gendered differences in communication, and analyzing how that person communicated, determine my gender, even if their language was off/not entirely accurate. Okay, cool, so what does this have to do with trying to have any kind of productive debates with TERFs, and how their treatment of gender as existent when it suits their purposes and non-existent when it doesn’t? Well, first, let’s establish that gender is a thing. It’s a social construct which people align to based off of who we find ourselves as similar to throughout our lives along it’s spectrum, and those who study gender generally agree that gender is much more about culture and psychology than it is about sex, and is also an independent factor from sex, just many people within a given sex align with the same gender, but it’s not always that way. Some people, like me, differ from this expectation.

I’m not talking about what kind of clothing you like to wear, and how you like to present yourself in order to express the trappings our society associates with gender, right now, even though those are still a part of the larger social construct, because those are the ways we learn to express a way in which we desire to be seen to others who have not yet had a chance to interact with us and “feel out” our gender, I’m not talking about arbitrarily gendered interests, like who is taught to like cars and sports and who is taught to like fashion and domestic interests, because 1: It’s just as stupid as gender coding colors and styles of clothing, and 2: this is more an effect of society sexistly deciding that some interests are only appropriate for one gender, and inappropriate for another.

I’m talking purely about how we interact with other members of our gender vs. members of other genders, and the interesting web of communication difficulties and misconceptions that can create in a world where we are constantly shifting between interactions with other members of our gender, and members of other genders. IE: How I decided “Ew, ‘other’ boys are grotty and weird and bullies and I would rather spend my time with my sisters or alone” long before I entered school, how I decided “Wow, girls make a lot more sense, and I’m going to make friends with the girls, and screw the boys” when I first entered daycare and elementary school,” how my bullies in middle school decided that I was to be attacked for “being a girl,” and how my friends in high school decided that I was “such a girl.”

Once we have felt out someone’s gender, we either flow with it, or fight it if we decide that the person we are interacting with is not gendering “properly,” according to our expectations. The problem I tend to see in interactions between transgender women and TERFs is that it seems like TERFs frame their expectations as “Penis = Male = Man = Read everything this person says as though a man is saying it.” Now, there are a lot of differences in communication styles between men and women, and I’m not going to go into an in-depth discussion right here, right now on every single difference in the ways that men and women use, or don’t use different words, gestures, tones, subtle vocalizations, or lacks thereof to “say” different things in combination, how much of a conversation each gender takes part in and how we break in and bow out when we are in shared physical space/setting, because this is online communication and many of those things are eliminated, and we get down to pretty much just words, with no real limits on what we can say, how long we have to say it, etc., but still, even when reduced to written words, a man and a woman using the same words can be saying two completely different things. The intents behind those words, the message they are meant to carry, in a conversation in a shared space, or even over an audio or video medium are much easier to read because we can take advantage of other portions of the message that we are missing online, and so, when we are reading something, in order to infer those subtle signs we are missing, we have to rely on what we know of the gender of the person speaking to try to perceive meaning properly as just one of many things that we should know about the person who’s message we are reading. In a debate between a woman who is trans and a TERF, often the individuals communicating are strangers, the TERF reduces all missing context to gender, and a man’s tone, intent, and meaning, which were never placed by the woman writing are instead forced on by the TERF in order to accomodate her lack of understanding for the fact that she is in fact speaking to a person who genders as a woman. The transgender woman has two choices at this point, she can get into a lengthy series of having to try to re-explain everything she’s saying, and break everything down to the most idiot-proof, lengthy-ass detailed as fuck version she can to spread every feminine coded message in between the lines of the words selected, which tone, gesture, and other more subtle forms of communication would have carried had she been having a face-to-face conversation, and force that understanding past the masculine coding the TERF has chosen to forcibly apply to the message even in it’s initial absence, or she can throw up her hands, roll her eyes, and walk away, which the TERF will take as a “victory,” even when it represents a fundamental lack of understanding, and generally amounts to actually shoving words in the other woman’s mouth. This is an example of how TERFs, even subconsciously acknowledge gender, but assign it as irrevocably tied to genitals when it is convenient for them. If they can tack an unintended, and absent male coding onto words from another woman just because she is trans, and the written word may lack the necessary context clues to indicate they should instead be reading the attempted communication with the female coding which would have been more easily readable in a face-to-face interaction, they can use their own misinterpretation as a basis to portray the woman as exhibiting “masculine behavior,” even when none is present, and was only inferred by a complete lack of comprehension based on an improper, internally applied coding, which was assumed based on the genitals of the individual speaking. Conversely, in repsonse to this discussion a TERF may argue that gender has no impact on the way in which we communicate, because they are critical of whether gender is even real, even as they themselves continue to assign male gender coding to a woman’s words. While the irony at this point is a bit unfathomable, it is useful to remember that gender, while it does play an immense role in the way we communicate is not a binary, and is a social construct, and that everyone relates to gender uniquely, pieces our own gender together out of a complex upbringing in a society in which the meaning of each gender is continuously changing in ways from subtle to gross from generation to generation, and again, very importantly, that how we gender, in the end, as described by experts in the study of gender, has little to do with our genitals, and much to do with psychology and culture. Therefore, when I say that communication has gendered differences, a TERF may read “all people with vaginas communicate one way, and all people with penises communicate another way,” or, even, if being perceptive, “all women communicate alike, and all men communicate alike,” and apply the idea that there are only two groups, when neither of those things is what is being stated, and there are in fact not only two groups to belong to with some universal set of coding, and they are not inherently linked in any way to how an individual would be sexed in an also false binary on the basis of primary and secondary sex characteristics. What must be understood is that these differences simply exist, and occur in broadly definable ways, which most people can relate to well enough to be able to say when educated on these differences “Oh, I relate more to this particular aspect of gendered communication styles than this one,” for each of the various aspects of human communication we use beyond mere verbage in a dialog. Essentially, one, when made bluntly aware and properly educated should be able to see that spectra exist in the ways we communicate, and that most people who identify with a gender can roughly see how we line up with most other people who identify as we do. This is not without complications however, and these complications go beyond the vast differences in the most masculine styles and codings and the most feminine styles and codings of communication, to the fact that an individual can definitely have a “mixed bag” of codings. Furthermore, styles of communication are not strictly gender defined, and are influenced by an array of other factors, nor are they gender-defining. In general, we do tend to communicate better, at least in face-to-face settings with members of our own identified gender than with other genders, although this can obviously be improved through education non these differences and practical application, as men who spend a great deal of time around women, or women who spend a great deal of time around men can very easily learn to decipher, and speak the languages better, and often do, and we all develop our own unique languages based on who we spend most of our time around, but at the same time, who we spend most of our time around and communicating with doesn’t change our gender. Examples include a woman who might have many interests society deems “male,” and be identified as a “tomboy” who might have more male friends than female friends growing up may learn the masculine coding better than the feminine coding, and be a bit lost among the more feminine women and more comfortable communicating with men and other women who’ve had a more male social circle, and her identity as a woman is still valid. A man with more traditionally feminine interests who may have therefore spent more time associating with other women may have an easier time communicating with women and other men who have had a similar social surrounding, but his identity as a man is still valid. Trans people are often a bit caught up in the middle somewhere, which can be a strength in facilitating communication in groups of mixed gender, as it was in my presentation, or can be a frustration when we are intentionally mis-read on the basis of our genitals being used to apply an assumed gender, even, at times, in a way which may be used to intentionally override any broadly gendered communicative styles we present and express, even in face-to-face interactions in a way which completely derails communication, and can, again, really make a woman want to throw her hands up, roll her eyes, and walk away from the conversation regardless of whether it’s with a man, or another woman. In the end, neither genitals, nor identified gender is strictly determinative of how we code our communications, and what subliminal messages should, and should not be read into the spoken, or written word. Genitals in fact, have no impact at all past perhaps gonadal hormones impacting how patient we may or may not feel in a given moment, but gender is still a massive factor, and one which should not be ignored or erased, and communication can almost be guaranteed to be mistranslated when those codings are ignored, even more so when a present coding is erased, and an inferred, non-present coding is implied. This, combined with the way TERFs seem to enjoy acting like gender is ever-present in a dichotomous binary determined by genitals when it is convenient to their understanding makes it likely that having a reasoned conversation with a TERF online, or, perhaps even in person, is simply impossible when coming from a position in which masculinity will inevitably be inferred and applied to every word as even as present femininity will be ignored by the TERF, all while she may even claim that gender simply doesn’t exist if it suits her argument, a belief which could be influenced by a misunderstanding of the reality of gender as a social construct in preference for an over-simplified take on what this means, or, in some cases, even the uniqueness of her own experience, development, presentation, and expression of her gender, which may not have been explored past the idea that vagina = woman = all women must participate in gender identically, otherwise gender itself is invalid. This is not at all to say that she does not gender herself correctly, merely that she may ignore the complexity of gender and the fact that not all members of a gender adhere to some cookie cutter mold of gender, regardless of what genitals we were born with, and that the cookie cutter is in fact what is invalid, because society attempts to apply gender not only in a strict binary, but also in a way which attempts to force every aspect of personality, identity, interest, motivation, drive, behavior, sexuality, etc. into one of only two available all-consuming templates, only one of which is considered “appropriate”/available to each gender, which does not indicate that gender does not exist, merely that society is sexist and discriminatory in the way in which it establishes expectations of performance on individuals on the basis of gender. This could become it’s own entire conversation. The point remains that until a TERF can become willing and able to acknowledge the feminine gender of a trasngender woman, and read her words with the intentional assumption of a female communication style and meaning, choosing to hear the words with the intended tone and subliminal, “between the lines” messages, we might be better off just throwing our hands up in the air, rolling our eyes, and walking away the same way we would talking to a dense man who doesn’t understand what we’re trying to say, even if we are in fact attempting to communicate with another woman. It just doesn’t work when an intentional road-block is put up by the party intended to understand, regardless of shared gender.

#trans #transgender #communication #gender #terfs

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sighingtirf · 6 years

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Y’all it’s so wild how discussions of transphobia are constantly centered around trans women, and anything that actually focuses on trans men (when it isn’t demonizing and silencing them) is just stuff like “you’re allowed to be feminine uwu” or “your pronouns are valid!” or “your body is beautiful no matter what it looks like”.

When people only focus on the violent transphobia that trans women face, when discussions of transphobia forcefully exclude trans men despite the topic in question effecting both trans women AND trans men, it’s no wonder people are going to think it’s at all acceptable to talk about how trans women have it worse and trans men have “masc privilege” and whatnot.

Not to mention, any violence trans men face pre-transition is written off as “misdirected misogyny” and treated as unimportant or a “whoopsie”, and no one bothers to look into it or take it into account. In fact, the violence and mistreatment trans men face pre-transition is treated as even more evidence that trans women have it worse, because if that mistreatment is viewed as “misdirected oppression towards anyone who identifies as a woman”, that includes trans women and excludes trans men.

Not even taking into account all the “misdirected misogyny” I faced, let’s go over the specific transphobia I’ve been through, despite only being out as a trans guy for four years, rarely leaving my house except to go to a very liberal and accepting arts school the first two years, rarely leaving my house at all the last two years, and having a very nice and accepting family.

For the sake of brevity and simplicity (due to the fact that before I came out, most of what I’ve been through would be labeled “misidrected misogyny” or would be nearly indistinguishable from ways GNC girls are treated), I’ll stick to things that have happened since coming out.

(quick clarification before I start: I was at a public school for a short time in this time period, but most of my time was at the arts school)

Someone who was my friend since 6th grade (who ngl, was a pretty shitty friend considering she was constantly hitting me and calling me worthless and embarrassing and annoying etc.) started screaming at me in front of the whole school. Yelling at me for wanting a sex change, and for liking girls.

Not too long after this, I got messages from an ex boyfriend of mine, threatening violence on me if I went through with a sex change.

People at my school would regularly come up to me and start harassing me about me “wanting to be a boy” (they would also consistently harass me for liking girls, but that’s a matter for another post).

One of my closest friend’s exes started talking to me for the first time after finding out I was a trans guy, sending me a lot of sexual messages and being suddenly interested in dating me.

When I went to a behavioral health hospital because of suicidal ideations, the moment a boy there discovered I was a trans guy, he would constantly touch me and run his hand up my thigh before I had time / ability to pull away etc.

Whenever I’d tell a man that I’m a boy, the typical reaction would be to give a long hard stare at my breasts.

When I was 15, after finding out I was a trans guy, an adult started sending me intimate details about their sex life.

Once a week, a group of pro-lifers would be protesting outside my school. Whenever I walked by, they’d harass and misgender me (as well as other friends of mine who were trans men).

An ex boyfriend of mine (a different one than the one I mentioned before) messaged me asking all these intrusive questions about my genitals, sexualizing me and saying how he’d still love to go out with me if I had a vagina, etc.

While I already had more than enough instances of people making invasive and inappropriate questions about my genitals and sex life, one that really stands in my mind is when someone did that to me at church. This someone was an young adult, and also the boyfriend of a woman I’d had a crush on for as long as I could remember. In front of her, my ex, and I believe some other people, he asked very graphic and embarrassing details about my genitals and I was so shocked and embarrassed I could do nothing but answer to the best of my ability.

There were plenty of instances of transphobia I faced from staff members in hospitals, and I won’t mention every single one, but a general synopsis is staff members stopping everything to rudely point out that I’m “not actually a boy”. It was to the point where I was self-harming inside of the behavior health hospitals, a place I’d gone to for help with my suicidal tendencies. They treated another trans guy I saw there like that, too.

I briefly had a teacher who was known for targeting the trans men in her class and misgendering them and being very rude to them. Unsurprisingly, she was rude to me and didn’t actually teach me anything, ignoring me and focusing on the other students in her class.

During another hospital stay, the psychiatrist assigned to me would blame all of my mental health problems on my HRT. All he knew was that I took HRT. He silenced me and spoke over me when I tried to explain to him what was actually going on and how I knew that that wasn’t the case. At one point he yelled at me, which can be pretty damn scary in a small room alone with an older cis man who has complete power over you.

When I went to visit relatives, I got stopped at airport security because my body was “suspicious” because I’d said I was a man but I “clearly wasn’t”. I got publicly groped as they “checked things out”.

I got called the f slur on multiple occasions.

A friend’s trans girlfriend groped me because she was “curious about how it felt”, then lied about it and victim-blamed me and intimidated me (and her girlfriend) about it later.

I was taking a walk at the local park, and this guy approached me. We chatted for a bit, then he said he knew what my sex really was. Thankfully he left and didn’t do anything to me, but I was terrified.

In this specific example, I don’t know if it was transphobia or “misdirected misogyny”, but I know that I was passing a fair amount of the time by then, and most of the time when I wasn’t people still made it obvious that they knew I was trans. Anyways, while I was at the park, an adult man preyed on and molested me, and I was very nearly trafficked.

A separate time, I decided to take a walk around the park at night. An older man approached me and told me about how he could tell I was trans, and what a great prostitute I would make, and how he’d be totally down for having sex with me etc.

Last park story I swear, and this is at a different park, but while I was swinging, a guy approached me. He started talking about trans people getting violently raped, and about the time he beat up the woman who yelled at him to pay child support, and about the fact that he knew I was trans, and then he started hitting on me.

Dear God okay I won’t get too deep into this, but long story short I had a partner who would make fun of my body and all the changes HRT was making, made me feel like shit about it. Sexualized me, raped me. Coerced me into shaving my legs and putting on makeup. Etc. It wasn’t a fun time.

This is all just off the top of my head, and it’s not even getting into all the ways I’ve been treated within the trans community, or all the inherent pain and loneliness and dysphoria that comes with being trans.

#transphobia #afab privilege #trans masc privilege #trans male privilege #misdirected misogyny #trixy talks

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guardiandae · 7 years

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(gender anon 1) dae i have an important question that's been bugging me since forever : how do people figure out their gender and pronouns ? it used to seem simple to me but tumblr confused the hell out of me. i get that gender doesn't depend on genitals and stereotypes, that girls can like cars and videogames and boys can be sensitive and wear skirts and that everything in between is just as free to be what they like, etc. so i guess my question is : what DOES gender depend on ??

(gender anon 2) why do people chose one over the over ? at this point it seems to me that the only real difference is the spelling. tbh gender only made sense to me as a way to let people know what genitals we are most confortable with. exemple : i'm a girl because i have / wish i had a vagina, this is what i identify with, or, i'm non binary because i don't feel like specifying to people what's between my legs / i feel like i'd be okay with either / i'm intersex and i'm cool with it.

(gender anon 3) but that doesn't seem to justify the dozens of different genders that exist. so. i'm really confused. i hope i'm not missing something obvious and this doesn't come of as dumb.

(gender anon 4) sorry me again. i feel like i didn't properly explain my question and i wanted to try to approach it from another angle. let's take an example : person A's gender is "girl". what does it say about A ? it doesn't necessarily mean A is feminine or born female, those are both stereotypes right ? but then, what DOES it mean ? what meaning is left in "girl" ? if girls can be anything and anyone can be a girl, then why would person A chose that label over another in the first place ?

I feel like there are “a dozen genders” now because for decades, especially in Western society (and I can only speak from experience of Western society), there’s been such a strict binary divide, “This is what a man is, and you should fit this mold or be ashamed” and ditto for women. People who didn’t fit neatly into the category that society pegged them as would face social, even legal consequences or worse, assault or death. (”You were born with a vagina, so you’re a woman, but you’re too masculine and trying to be a man so you’re going to jail until you learn to behave like your sex!”) Now that’s less heard of... unfortunately not entirely eradicated, but for the most part people are waking up to the fact that this gender binary concept is kind of bullshit, and what even is gender and is it real and what does that mean for us???

What gets my goat is that, a lot of people who are against these “new genders” or the concept of say, boys wearing dresses.... ultimately when you argue with them, it boils down to them being angry because they can no longer tell who is “actually” male or female, who has a penis or a vagina. They are probably coming to the same conclusion that you have, that if penis = masculine, sports, cars, assertiveness, square jaws, beards, ‘men’s’ style clothing, and vagina = feminine, caretaking, babies, sensitivity, soft faces, breasts, ‘women’s’ style clothing .... isn’t true and is in fact just a giant lie created by society that we’re realizing we don’t need to believe in anymore... I lost my train of thought. But they are realizing the same lie, but instead of just being in confused awe of it and accepting it, they react with fear and anger. People with vaginas should act and look a certain way, people with penises should act and look a different way otherwise how will we know who has penises and who has vaginas?! Rabble rabble rabble! It’s the same obsession with sex with homophobia, regurgitated as transphobia and... I’m not sure what word would be the phobia for non-binary-conforming people in general.

But honestly? The fear is bullshit, and the entire concept of non-binary people isn’t new in the slightest. I work in retail. Staying away from gendered terms like “sir” or “ma’am” is a wise choice because there are many many many many many many older people who I honestly cannot judge their gender by their face, body, hair, or even voice. That’s why anti-trans bathroom bills are a really bad fucking idea for everybody, btw. How many older women with whiskers on their chin are going to get kicked out of the ladies’ room? It’s just asinine. But I’m off-topic by now.

My answer to your actual question is pretty straightforward and probably unhelpful:

Gender depends on how you feel. Whether you identify as male or female, and what pronouns you prefer, really depends on what feels right.

I saw a twitter thread where someone mentioned the topic of how many genders there are, and isn’t that excessive and unnecessary and other people are just trying too hard to be special, right? Not for them. They never felt like they quite fit in anywhere until they saw “demi-girl” defined, and they burst into tears because finally something described how they felt. It’s like how I felt when I finally realized that I did fit into the asexual ‘umbrella’. Holy fuck, I’m not broken, I’m not alone, this is me, this finally feels right.

I asked someone that I know who is trans if they had a different take on this, but she answered simply with, “I just kind of knew.” She said that puberty felt wrong when she started growing a beard instead of breasts, but that she was also a tomboy, so the masculine/feminine constructs have always felt like a weird contradiction.

The thing is, the ideas of what is “masculine” and “feminine” might be a socially constructed lie... but in many ways they are still true because as a society we know what is generally considered to be masculine or feminine. For some people, they want to have a ‘feminine’ fashion style, for others, they want a ‘masculine’ body. I don’t think that it’s necessarily bad to have these stereotypical concepts of masculinity and femininity, as long as we understand that people are not stereotypes and we can’t force gender roles onto other people. It’s when others come in and try to tell someone, “you’re a man because you have a penis / you are a woman therefore you must love shopping and babies / you’re a man so you can’t wear makeup and heels” that we run into a gross problem.

Personally, I felt betrayed when puberty hit and I gained weight, and suddenly I had breasts. Before that, I could be boy/girl, either, neither, and that made me happy and felt right. After I got curves I was like, “...I guess I have to learn how to be a female now” but it never felt right and honestly gave me a lot of stress and dysphoria at times. The closest I feel to any gender would probably be agender... but pronouns? I don’t know about that either, because personally, nothing feels right. If I could opt out of pronouns altogether, that’d be great, but the English language makes it difficult to be gender neutral, much less avoid pronouns altogether.

So yeah. Sorry this is a non-answer, but really there isn’t a good answer. I’m not sure you really can define “boy” or “girl”. I’ve not been able to see anyone define “man” or “woman” in a way that didn’t exclude cisgendered men/women in the process. You just... know. It feels correct. And when you’re misgendered, it feels wrong or even unbearably awful.

#long post #sorry I don't feel like putting it under a cut #this is just my personal take #I follow a lot of trans twitters #but I am no expert #I feel you hardcore anon #when I think about gender I'm like 'NOTHING IS REAL' (mind blown)#but then also like #if we delete male/female concepts then so much of the english language actually breaks down #and hey maybe in the future it should definitely be a deleted concept #i'm kind of on board with that #love my anons #answered

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radfembee · 7 years

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riley j dennis - are genital preferences transphobic? transcript:

trigger warnings: cissexism, genitals(A Lot), conversion therapy, rape, religion,

Recently, on the internet, there´s been a lot of discussion around genital preferences and transphobia. In this video, I´m going to use the word ¨cissexism¨ instead of transphobia, but they´re really similar words. At its most basic, cissexism means prejudice or discrimination against transgender people.

So, what´s been happening is that some people are making the argument that it´s not cissexist at all to only be attracted to people with one kind of genitals. For example, these people might argue that being attracted to only women with vaginas in no way negatively effects trans people. On the other hand, I would argue that it´s more complicated than that. We all have our implicit biases built into our preferences, and gender isn´t as simple as the genitals you have. But, after I say that, I usually get a lot of blatantly cissexist responses. So I thought I´d address all of those responses at once.

Number one: ¨You´re being homophobic!¨ In this argument, I often get accused of homophobia, lesbophobia or lesbian erasure by lesbians who believe that I´m trying to change their sexual orientation or identity. They say that my language sounds a lot like a dude who tried to turn them straight, or like conversion therapy. Those responses are rooted in cissexism.

This is because I´m not telling lesbians that they can´t be lesbians. If you´re a woman who only likes women, go ahead, identify as a lesbian! But some women have penises. And if the fact that some lesbians might be attracted to those women offends you, it´s because you don´t think trans women are real women. That´s because these accusations of homophobia can sound like I´m trying to convince lesbians to like men, but I´m not. I´m trying to show that preferences for women with vaginas over women with penises might be partially informed by the influence of cissexist society.

You do not have to like men. You do not have to date men, or have sex with men. And if you think that´s what I´m arguing, you´re simultaneously strawmanning my argument, and implying that trans women are men.

Number two: ¨You´re upholding rape culture!¨ This is probably the worst response I´ve heard, and probably the most cissexist one. That´s because trans women have a long history of being accused of being rapists by cis women. It´s the logic behind bathroom bills that prevent trans women from using the right bathroom. It´s why some cis women are terrified of the idea of sharing a locker room with a trans woman. This is a very common tactic used by anti-trans folks to discredit trans women as just ¨men trying to invade women´s spaces so they can rape them.¨ Even if this is not your intention when bringing this up, this is what you are implying and it is where this argument comes from.

Suggesting that trans women are rapists for wanting to be fully recognized as women is extremely harmful. And I should note that I´m not saying you have to do anything without consent. I´m a big fan of affirmative consent and you should never feel pressured to have sex with somebody. This isn´t about an individual. This is not saying: ¨You have to have sex with a trans woman, or you´re cissexist.¨ It´s saying that you should examine the societal influences on your preferences. There´s a massive difference between honing in on individual scenario and considering wider societal issues and attitudes.

Number three: “I’m allowed to have a preference!” Technically, you’re right. You’re allowed to have your preferences and you don’t have to change anything. But there’s more to it than that. Ignoring the deeper issues by stopping at a surface level analysis doesn’t do this issue any justice. Like, you’re allowed to have a lot of things, you’re allowed to have prejudice towards trans people, but that doesn’t mean you should.

So if you look a little deeper into this issue, there’s the possibility of your genital preferences being at least somewhat partially informed by growing up in a cissexist society. Also, the fact that a preference is different from saying you would never do something. Like, having a preference for tall girls is fine. But refusing to date anyone under 5′7 is ridiculous. Obviously, that’s not a perfect analogy, because short girls as a group don’t face the societal marginalization that trans women do. But, I’m interested in having a conversation about labels, implicit labels, and trans-inclusive language.

Simply saying “it’s my preference! End of discussion!” is a good way of sidelining all of those issues and instead, centering the feelings of cis people in a discussion about trans people.

Number four: “I have a trans friend who says this is okay!” People love their tokens. I’ve done an entire video on moral licencing and why this is a terrible defense, but, in summary, you’ll always be able to find trans people to back up your cissexist views. You’ll always be able to find gay people who spout anti-gay rhetoric and you’ll even find people of color who openly advocate racist policies. That doesn’t make you right.

Having a trans friend doesn’t mean you’re suddenly an expert on trans issues. People often internalize negative ideas about their own identities and regurgitate them with passion. I’ve met gay men that told me that their homosexuality was a sin, and their punishment was to be celibate their entire lives, and even still, they’d probably go to Hell. Obviously, that would be anti-gay for any straight person to say. And it’s also not okay for gay people to advocate that. In the same way, if a trans person is saying cissexist garbage, it’s still cissexist garbage.

There are cis people who are on my side as well, so if you think it’s okay to point to your token trans friend, then I can just point to my token cis friend.

Number five: “I’m triggered by penises by past sexual trauma.” [author’s note: i fucking swear to god if they attempt to shut this down i will flip shit.] That’s completely understandable. I’ve never said that someone should have to have sex with someone with a penis if they don’t want to. If intimacy with someone who has a penis is triggering for you, I would never suggest that you have to do it. Take your time to heal and work through your trauma at your own pace. Just be aware that the majority of people making the “I could never date someone with a penis” argument are not doing so because of trauma or triggers.

So that is all of the typical responses that I could think of. The first two responses in particular come from TERF/radfem[me, a trans radfem] and gender-critical ideologies, which are all proudly anti-trans. Even if you don’t consider yourself a part of those movements, you’re siding with them when you use their arguments. Their entire platform is cissexist, and their arguments reflect that. Even if you say you believe trans women are women, it doesn’t do a whole lot of good if you’re completely siding with folks who don’t believe trans women are women.

And the last thing I want to say is that if you’d rather not have sex with a woman who has a penis, maybe just don’t make such a huge deal of it. Trans women are often afraid of not being found attractive or desirable after coming out. And you’re not helping.

If you really want to be an ally to trans people, you can just not talk about it. And by that, I’m not trying to censor you, okay, so don’t pretend that this is censorship. You have the freedom to say whatever you want, I’m just asking you to consider if it’s necessary to say those things when they reflect harmful or violent rhetoric. Because if you have an opinion that you know is only going to make people feel bad about themselves, why constantly share it with the world?

It’s fine to not find people attractive, but it’s mean to constantly yell about how unattractive you find those people, especially when those people are oppressed. For another imperfect analogy, it’d be like if you weren’t attracted to girls with short hair. That would be fine, but you probably wouldn’t write articles and make videos defending why it’s okay for you to not like girls with short hair. You could do that, but sometimes it’s best to just be polite.

And that is everything I have to say on that topic, this video is a part of my feminism with Riley that I’m doing in collaboration with Everyday Feminism, a website dedicated to helping you stand up to and break down everyday oppression.

Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.

#tag urself i'm cissexist garbage #text #mine #riley dennis #sorry this is so late!

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