I know 8 trans people well and many more as acquaintances. The 8 people I know well range from being an old childhood friend, to coworkers, to students, to neighbors.
I'm mostly aware that they are trans at all due to the increase in anti-trans laws and blatant transphobia in the US. Were it not for that? I might not know or even care. I worry about them.
In each case the fact that they are trans is one of the less interesting things I know about them.
I sometimes want to just explain to the bigots, this could all be very normal if you'd stop huffing bigoted media and get to know someone who was trans. It's just like ... a hormone imbalance that can be treated. It's like being mad at people for having red hair. If only you knew how boring this could be, how normal. How easy to forget that they are trans.
And I could just forget, if it weren't for the bigotry and the threats to their safety.
In decades of knowing trans people and being in places that are more accepting of trans and LGBTQ people I've never once had someone say "how dare you misgender me" though if someone had I don't know if that would matter, it's just nothing like what people expect and fear.
No one is pole dancing. I do not live in a gay pride parade.
I'm a Christian, I go to church now and then. I'm inwardly kind of prudish and I don't even like being around people swearing much.
All these nerds are so normal. And we are all robbed of feeling normal by the bigotry.
I'm glad that I'm not exceptional among the cis people I know in these communities, who are like me frustrated and angry that people we care about are being used as political props.
But how do you explain that everything is normal? How do you make a big sensation about how there is nothing sensational about the fact that people may change their name, or their gender?
And if you don't like slightly sheltered nerds who wince when we hear swear words there are people who are more outgoing & bodacious: some of them are trans. It's very normal and boring. No one cares.
Whatever cultural daily norms you find ... normal could include trans people. It wouldn't matter. It has no impact on your life.
Why has your fear reached across the country and made one of my students nervous that he can't get his medicine?
How fucking dare you.
I can understand the fears that people have for their children. "be yourself" is good advice but being yourself can be dangerous. And that's often not fair. You might tell your teen daughter "you're not leaving the house dressed like that" you know she could be hurt. It's "better parenting" to make it clear why you are making such demands, but there is this practical impulse to keep young people safe.
I've spoken to parents of trans kids filled with fear.
But, having seen decades of trans lives as an outsider I think it's better to still be yourself in the end. It's healthier. It's safer.
That it is less safe to be a trans kid than a cis kid isn't the fault of trans kids.
Like, we all knew that, right? But it's worth saying anyway I think.
Even if we enter a more repressive world I will still know the same number of trans people.
This is nothing new, and maybe we are painfully turning a corner.
It already exists in little pockets, it works better than the alternatives. It's spreading.
Maybe things are going to get worse before they get better but I believe in and want the future where being trans is boring.
@futurebird yeah...
I would love so much to be boring and normal
+3. But I would not give up being trans for all the tea in China.
@alexadeswift @mina @daswarkeinhuhn @PalmAndNeedle @futurebird
+4
Every time I see another "visibility day" I want to scream "let me be goddamn invisible for a change!"
You nailed it. Being trans is one of the *most boring things* about me.
I work for a freaking bank. I'm boring. My coworkers don't even know I'm trans.
And if it weren't for all the bigotry, I would *barely* talk about being trans. It's a completely insignificant piece of my existence.
I ONLY stay loud and involved because it feels like the only way to survive. I am being targeted and my life is being threatened. My literal life. So it becomes the *only thing I'm allowed to think about.*
What's happening affects every aspect of my life. And it's painful and scary every day. And all I want is to build my career, live in a comfy home with my partner, have a bunch of dogs, travel a bit, and become a better cook. But I can't do any of that because I'm instead planning for the possibility of getting arrested just because my ID says 'F' on it. And Republicans have decided that's "the Big Lie."
Just...leave us alone. Ya know? Leave us alone.
The best reaction my wife and I had to telling someone I was transgender was a heartfelt "is that all?"
@futurebird Yeah, wanting to try being another gender out is a risky thing for your personal and social safety. But I guarantee you that trans kids havent come to that decision on a whim. This isn't dating a sketchy significant other. Or even choosing a "bad" major in college. This is about a kid choosing Who They Are.
Countless kids movies are full of "be who you are" narratives. But somehow the cishets want to say "be who you are, but not That".
Patriarchy lets predators run wild. At this point I think it's basically designed to do that. You hear right wingers making so much noise about protecting children, but let that child be "imperfect" in any way ?
So upset about the exploitation of the innocent, yet no one is innocent enough to be a victim worth listening to.
"she's a disturbed woman with a long criminal history"
Said the press secratary about one of the Epstein file accusers.
@futurebird It's such a toxic culture :(
It's very ingrained into the right and their identities I think, but also still elsewhere. I've seen enough 'lefties' who feel a lot about their kid following their parents footsteps, but also fear of straying from 'their path' will lead to unhappiness and being afraid for their children. Patriarchy is all they know, and the unknown scares them (helped along by misinformation).
@futurebird I believe that the attack on trans people is an attack on "be yourself", because people who are desperately trying to fit themselves to a norm are more easily led
and I think one thing we all can do is create spaces where people can just be normal as themselves
@futurebird I’ve definitely been there with parents that are wrestling with this fear too, more than any bigotry or biases (plenty of parents of trans kids that do have transphobia to work through too, but this is a thing I’ve seen too among some).
With the way you framed it…it somehow brought to mind the way Ta-Nehisi Coates describes why his family resorted to physical punishment: fear of what the outside world would do to him. I remember that hitting like a pile of bricks when I read “Between the World and Me,” the lesson his family was teaching him before the world taught him that his body didn’t belong to himself under a system of racism.
Makes me think about this parallel, how the current political powers are making it very clear that they do not think trans people’s, especially trans kids’, bodies belong to themselves. How it’s a lesson so many of us have to internalize and navigate to survive. And I can so easily see parents of trans kids wrestling with how to try to instill in them that their lives and bodies should belong to themselves but that there are violence shitheads who don’t.
I deeply object to the notion that G-d made me to test other people.
Like, wtf I can't even
@futurebird @celesteh if there were a Christian G_d, They'd have made *everyone* to test other people. How you treat people who are in distress, showing compassion and empathy... Same for everyone in our LGBTQIA+ collective.
I view it the same for myself - if I tell someone what I am and they vilify me, that's not on me, but if there was a G_d, that would be a judgement on them.
Do unto others etc.
When I googled Homer's Heresy, I got a bunch of stuff about the Homeric Question, but my hunch this was a Simpson's reference lead me to Wikipedia.
Anyway, G-d wrestling is categorically not blasphemy.
I mean, fishes change gender as part of their natural life cycle; frogs can as well; many animals are hermaphrodites; some are gynandromorphs; homosexuallity is very common (double-digit percent) in a number of mammals and birds, inclusive of the rearing of chicks. Beyond vertebrates, there’s even more variation. As a biologist, these debates are bizarre, because all that matters is that the population persists over time, and individuals contribute what they want or can to that success. And being nice to each other sure smooths everyday life, increasing chances of success. We are all in it together, here on spaceship Earth.
Diversity in all respects is a strength. It is also a joy. A population of Hegseth clones would be so mind-numbingly tedious that we would welcome its (inevitable) rapid demise.
Imagine a world without railway map nerds. Hideous.
@jetlagjen @albertcardona @futurebird
“Exactly, Biology!”
I was raised by a microbiologist, so I could have some biases. There are a number of things I hear in those conjectures. If they claim logic or numbers —tell me the difference between a sample and a population. How would you use a ratio to evaluate the relative scale of any factor?
If they appeal to religion, you get that nature always brings diversity? Or are you claiming the gods did it wrong?
@futurebird
> I've never once had someone say "how dare you misgender me"
Because usually it goes like that:
X: insistently on purpose misgenders Y, adding a bunch of transphobic shit.
Y: "could you please not misgender me?"
X: doubles down on misgendering, adds even more transphobic shit.
Y: "COULD YOU PLEASE NOT"
X: triples down.
Y: "you're asshole", and leaves (if possible)
X, later: "ah, these trans people, they always say "how dare you misgender me""
With an online conversation it's hard to know if someone who disagrees with you is being sincere or not.
"LGBTQ people and their allies want it to be illegal to express yourself"
There are always limits to expression. If I decide I don't want to call you by your name, but I feel that "Sealion" is a better name for you, I could get in trouble at work or at school for doing that after you object... because it's rude.
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