I am not One of the Good Trans.
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@Tattie Tattie, what an amazing thread. Some of those parts must have been very personal, thanks for sharing!
Another example of a trans person existing in a conservative space: me as a child. It was years after leaving my conservative church and becoming ever more leftist and progressive before I even found out trans people existed and (gasp) I was one!
@Tattie Had you asked me as a child/young adult"would you rather be a girl/woman" I probably wouldn't have dared to say yes, but it never popped into my head because it just didn't register as a possibility. Basically everything after LG in LGBT+ was a cultural blind spot. And yet looking back I now do recognize some of my bad feelings back then were gender dysphoria. But at the time I either felt shame or I brushed it aside as normal. It just never came to that conscious "I am a girl" thought.
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Similarly, trans Reddit thinks that trans people are some way, and trans Bluesky thinks that trans people are some way, and trans Fedi thinks that trans people are some way, but these are illusions.
I tell you, there are trans people out there who have never hugged a Blåhaj and don't even like trains.
25/@Tattie
This last made me laugh, and you've made me think. Thank you. -
@ada I hear you.
I love my trans self now, and I wouldn't choose to be different. But only because that would feel like undoing myself. Replacing myself.
But before I knew what I was? I wouldn't have volunteered to be trans. I would've chosen an easy(er) life.
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We are all shamed into staying within narrow confines of what is socially acceptable for our assigned gender. We narrow our possibilities, split ourselves into the part that we can be and the part that is forbidden. And then we create an inner gatekeeper whose job it is to keep us from the forbidden parts of ourselves. To police us before society can even catch us out.
And if you're that sort of person, you then project this inner judgment externally. Onto, perhaps, your children. Or your classmates. Or the people who work for you. Or sex workers. Or your wife.
14/@Tattie Ironically (if that's the right word), my conception of ideal femininity has always been firmly rooted in the idea of rebelling against conventional social expectations of femininity -- and my attraction to it was never about clothing, because I liked it better when girls wore neutral-to-masc clothing. That's what I found attractive and what I secretly wished I looked like.
(FWIW: the obstacle for me was that I had been taught that gender was entirely socialized, therefore the idea of wanting to be a different gender was a logical contradiction and also probably indicative of secretly being a rapist or something.)
(And anecdata, in case it's useful: I never went through a Nazi phase; was always a feminist. I never even went through the more common phase of trying extra-hard to perform masculinity -- I always hated it, knew I hated it, and saw nothing wrong with that.)
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@Tattie Blasphemy! All hail Blåhaj!
@faithisleaping @Tattie Reason I have imposter syndrome number #507: I've never even seen a Blåhaj in real life. I don't even know how to say it!
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I am not One of the Good Trans. I have always said this.
What I mean is: I reject the framing that picks and chooses "acceptable" #trans people, and rejects and invalidates others.
1/@Tattie get eviller
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Being transgender is two things. On one hand it's a social construct, a shared terminology and set of narratives. And on the other it's an inviolate fact of how we are born.
Why am I so sure of the second? Well, because even in the most progressive community, who would actually choose to be transgender? I know I wouldn't've. I'm proud now to be trans, but it would've been a hell of an easier journey to be cis.
5/@Tattie rare take maybe but i Did choose this life, this way of being, seeing that it was absolutely an option not to, to try to conform or assimilate, and felt rather that it's safer in the front, and that the overton window needed torn a new one, in whatever terms I might've had at the time for similar sentiment
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R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic
