I'd like to leave this trans crap well alone, but it won't leave me

Here's what, you Good People:

• I'm not your, or anyone else's, badge of tolerance
• neither I'm a collectible item to add to your collection of "different" friends that you can then parade in front of people you want to impress with your, I dunno, breadth of humans you know. Should you do this to me, let me assure you you're no friend. Friends don't objectify their friends.
• I'm not different, unique, or anything else special. I'm a normal human being who's had incredibly strange things happen to her.
• Aaaand finally bugger all this trans shit. Shove it where the sun doesn't shine and leave it there.

Sod visibility, too

(It seems I'm growing this into a series!)

International Transgender Day of Visibility? Count me out. I need visibility as trans like I need a hole in my head. I don't want pity. I don't want condescension or some fucking understanding, which is what actually happens almost all the time if I'm outed as trans. Oh, and don't forget the perverse questions and looks you get from people when they start furtively looking at your crotch, or the condescending remarks of the "welcome to womanhood" -variety. Yeah, I'll pass.

Here's yet again what I do want. I want the same decent treatment, same privacy and same rights and duties as everyone else, trans or cis. In my utopia, the whole concepts trans and cis would not exist at all, because if needed, we could just say "oh, they effed up my legal sex, but it's corrected now" or "I had this congenital defect fixed last month and was thus unable to work". If we, the people undergoing this stuff, so chose to.

If you absolutely have to have a day, have one called "International Day of Cis People Having a Hard Look at Their Oppressive Behaviour and Perverse Curiosity".

STP puh-lease

"That transsexuality would no longer be viewed as an organic illness, because the gender of a person, trans or not, is not biologically programmed (this is the organic or physical dimension of depathologization);" (STP Best Practices Guide (pdf), p. 17)

Umm, no. Darlings, dearies, do not pretend to speak for me. Transsexuality was very much an organic, physiological illness for me. My sex and gender seem to be biologically determined to be female. There was precisely fuck-all I could do about it, except conform to the fact that I'm deeply unhappy if I a) have to be on wrong hormones, b) have to have a wrong kind of bodily configuration and c) have to pretend to be a man which I am not, and I stopped being unhappy precisely when I a) had the right hormones, b) a suitably configured body and c) could (safely) stop the stupid pretense, and be the woman I was and am in the eyes of other people, too. That required physiological treatments, and those treatments fixed my very organic body. So yeah, it's an organic illness all right.

While I'm at this, I'd also like to point out that while it's wrong to push Western ideas on non-Western people, I've no personal objection to Western ideas and paradigms - I'm Western, and a European myself, and wouldn't want to appropriate some other culture's way of doing sex and gender for mine.

In short: STP folks, you're mistaken at some points. Stop pretending you're speaking for all people who are identified as trans by the cis majority. I may be trans in their (and maybe your) eyes, but I sure don't feel like trans any more much at all. Our needs are different, don't subsume mine under your agenda.

Can't be arsed

Just too tired and bored with the direction trans activism is taking. I'm tired of fighting on several fronts at once, tired of trans women undercutting progress 'cos it somehow isn't ideologically perfect enough, or steps on their cis beloveds' or "allies'" toes. I'm sick and tired of being treated like some fucking special snowflake. I'm not so special. I'm sick of people who want to be treated like special snowflakes. The whole specialness strand of all things trans is a huge trap IMO. I want medical and bodily privacy, decent, respectful medical care as a matter of course, and not as an exception, and freedom from violence. I don't want exceptions. I want, as a matter of course, the same every damn cis person gets as a matter of course. Maybe more on this later, right now I'm too tired and too worried out to think straight. Or queer.

Let's all bury our heads in the sand? The fuck I will.

This is a post on my brief foray into a local forum for trans feminine spectrum people and their significant others, but the issues are not limited to that forum - I've experienced similar stuff elsewhere, too. This is an outline of why I increasingly opt out of that stuff.

Here's what I like:

• people across transfeminine spectrum co-operating on common and not-so-common issues.
• being able to talk about difficult issues.
• trans-centricity.
• some common decency.

Somehow, more often than not, I've ran into problems wrt all of the above.

The relations between transvestites and trans women seem to be tense. My take on that is that there's plenty of phobia on both sides: transvestites perhaps fearing us trans women are seen as somehow contagious, that we infect transvestite men with the virus of transsexuality and then turn them into women. It's not entirely unreasonable, though - the common joke about the difference between a transvestite and a trans woman being five years is not entirely a joke. Some trans women do approach transition from that position, and it's a perfectly valid angle. I understand this might cause some concern amongst transvestites and especially their cis spouses, as hormones, surgery and legal sex change aren't exactly seen as a favourable outcome of coming out of the closet as a transvestite. Trouble is, it happens, and it won't go away just by refusing to talk about it, or beating around the bush and trying to give the impression it doesn't happen, like, ever. The motivation might be pacifying the cis spouses, but that pacification is based on a rather limited edition of the truth, and I'm pretty sure the cis spouses will find out, sooner or later, and then you'll be deep in doo-doo.

From my side of the pond, I can say being lumped with transvestites isn't always that hot, either. Transvestism is still often seen as something provisionary and elective, which I've come to understand is not the case; a transvestite probably can't choose if he wants to dress in woman's clothes no more than I can choose if I'm a woman or not. Yet that seems to be something that's trotted out by a disgruntled relative/friend/spouse when the issue of not being entirely of the sex assigned to you at birth comes up. It's the "why can't you just stop" -trope. And transvestites, seemingly, can stop, at least for some time - and stopping being a woman, for a trans woman, is about as possible as for an unsupported stone at height to not drop in standard gravity. I suspect it's the same for anyone who's somehow trans; you can't get the cause of trans out of you, you just have to live with it somehow, either eliminating the most of the underlying stuff (I'd call this transition), or finding some other ways to live with it. Trans doesn't seem go away. It's wishful thinking to think that you, or your friend/lover/child/whomever, can just repress it indefinitely.

I think there's a lot of common ground for male transvestites and trans women - it's not like the oppression is totally different: we're tarred with the same brush, and general public still isn't too keen on our differences. But the fear of the other just seems too great, and the investment in the tolerance given by the cis keeps many of us in their places, too, and makes them side with the oppressor, trying to silence people speaking out.

Talking about oppression and pejorative language seems to be a really hot button. I really don't understand why it provokes such intense feelings, but it does. Commenting that "tranny" is generally offensive can be met with loud claims that it isn't for the claimant. That may very well be the case, but it doesn't do squat about the general case. Tranny's no compliment, it's a slur, and no amount of "but it isn't for me" changes that on a universal basis - perhaps a more universal reclaiming might do that, but I'm pretty sure its time isn't quite yet. I am perplexed, however, why anyone trans would claim its unoffensiveness loudly in a discussion supposedly about the word's general, offensive usage (and why you really shouldn't use it about anyone specific, either, unless you're pretty damn sure it's accepted). Internalised cissexism? I never thought I'd run into anything that would bring up that particular concept in my mind, but I have, now. As if we weren't worthy of decent treatment. And, more importantly, as if we weren't oppressed and discriminated against, and as if that wasn't a bad thing. Puh-leeze. Stopping speaking about oppression doesn't make it go away.

I love transcentricity. I love the places that are for us, by us. There's the whole wide ciscentric world out there for the cis people - I really love the spaces where I can breathe freely, without anyone cis breathing on my neck with privilege, watching that I stay on my cis-allotted place. Or even if there are cis people around, it's still not about them. Of course some cis people will try to make it about them - I can understand that, and while they have my sympathy, it's not a demand that should be indulged in. Plenty of ciscentric spaces around, hardly any transcentric. Transcentricity is rather hard to come by, however.

And finally, common decency and not getting all riled up when it isn't about you in particular is very nice indeed. It also seems to be rather rare. I suspect this is a common phenomenon when discussing emotional subjects - it becomes mighty hard to separate the issues from the person. Yet, it's pretty hard to discuss anything worthwhile and important if you can't speak your mind on subjects that provoke emotions, so I think this is something we all just have to learn to live with. Strong emotions will be provoked, we have to learn how to behave like adults do, and not fly into a fit of rage if someone dares to disagree with us. If their case is bad, it probably isn't too hard to show why that's so, and while the disagreement probably won't go away, it's still possible to discuss the issues instead throwing a fit each time someone says something controversial.


The warning signs I should have heeded

• spouses-only board on an otherwise at least nominally transcentric board. This is always, always a big warning sign. It means the cis spouses' concerns are favoured. It also means the people running the forum mean it's ok for things to be this way (see http://www.thespectrumcafe.com/?p=66 for an explanation as to why this is a bad idea).
• abusive language is tolerated. I wasn't aware of this, but noticed it almost immediately.
• moderation is not only ad hoc, but also invisible - completely deleted messages and threads are a prime example. Moderation needs to be open and visible. (for a simple introduction to the subject, see http://www.communityspark.com/how-to-effectively-moderate-forums/) This isn't quite as easy to notice, but once you hit it, you do notice it.

Silly me, didn't listen to myself.

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