Trans Politics, Trans Activism, also 'rolling is this transphobic?' thread

I think about this when I see the growing number of gender-noncomforming young people working service jobs around town — both of the Kroger stores I go to regularly have trans/nonconforming cashiers, as does my local Taco Bell and probably half the coffee shops in town. When people are getting their groceries or tacos or coffee, I wonder how they square whatever Fox News trans panic they feel with the friendly (sometimes very attractive!) people filling their orders.

We're in mind-meld. I'm writing about this now.

is there a good analysis / comparison between the gay rights landscape vs the trans rights landscape? there are some obvious parallels (such as the asinine "grooming" fear mongering) and i'm particularly interested in the comparison of the tactics / strategies that worked before but don't work now, and why. one obvious thing is that the anti LGBTQ2S groups are much more organized now - and i wonder if that's mostly due to the social network effect, or is it because they learned. but it also feels like the resistance is _less_ organized now.

anita bryant's death was a stark reminder of this. just reading about the protests that erupted because of her - we don't seem to have this organized collective effort anymore. what happened? we have pride parades attended by millions. what's the point?

in regards to what tipsy said - i strongly believe that what really contributed to the advancement of gay rights was the general public learning that their aunt, accountant, next door neighbour were gay, which finally connected the abstract (to them) notion of human rights to real humans.

This 1979 Playboy interview with Wendy Carlos popped up in my feed on Bluesky. Apparently that was the vehicle she used for her coming-out. (As a journalist, the mention of 800 pages of unedited transcript in the intro nearly made me weep.)

Anita Bryant hasn't died: we'e living through her recrudescence.

Trans bathroom bill just passed the Montana House 58-42. Still has to get through the Senate. Fucking idiots.

just want to dispute the idea that most cis people don’t know or interact with trans people. as pointed out above, they do, they just either don’t know it or compartmentalize their hatred.

In my politically blood-red neighborhood an out-and-proud trans woman works at our Starbucks and she gets nothing but respect and courtesy from the MAGA Cubans who want to end her.

i strongly believe that what really contributed to the advancement of gay rights was the general public learning that their aunt, accountant, next door neighbour were gay, which finally connected the abstract (to them) notion of human rights to real humans.

― scanner darkly, Wednesday, January 15, 2025 2:51 PM (three hours ago)

i think that, even at the height of AIDS terror, mainstream america may have been scared of gay men and gayness in the cooties kinda way -- i'm scared to touch you physically because it could kill me -- but, and i may be wrong as someone who didn't live thru that time, it feels to me like there is something fundamentally different about transness that makes people feel like humanity as they know it is under existential threat. it took decades for the idea that people don't "choose" to be gay to take hold in society, but i think the acceptance of that idea did as much for gay assimilation as anything else. you can easily absolve someone of a sin, and then begin to embrace their existence, when you can think of them as being victims of some unknown force. trans people don't choose to be born as the wrong gender, but our society does not view trans people as being non-agents of their own circumstances in the way that gay men were eventually allowed to be seen. i think the public at large sees gayness as something that happens to gay people, where as transness is something that happens because trans people decide for it to happen. thus the decision to change genders feels not like the inevitable bursting of a dam that couldn't be contained, but instead an active deliberate attack on the very way of life. i'm not sure that exposure is going to work in the same way because i don't think the concept of forgiveness will (hopefully i am wrong)

i'm not sure that's the difference, and the fact that the exact same lies and same tactics are being used against transgender people that were used against gay people ("grooming", "it's a lifestyle", etc) attests to that. or the fact that the same people who are now transphobic still claim that being gay is a choice.

there _is_ something different, however, and that's what i'm trying to understand. we were able to shut down these tactics before. why is it not working as it did before? social media allowing bigots to organize and coordinate efforts better? gays and lesbians mostly getting what we fought for, so we care less? (or worse, the LGB no T idiots).

we are losing both the angry loud protest battles and the battle for the general public to stop seeing transgender people as an outside group.

trans people don't choose to be born as the wrong gender, but our society does not view trans people as being non-agents of their own circumstances in the way that gay men were eventually allowed to be seen. i think the public at large sees gayness as something that happens to gay people, where as transness is something that happens because trans people decide for it to happen. thus the decision to change genders feels not like the inevitable bursting of a dam that couldn't be contained, but instead an active deliberate attack on the very way of life.

To put it bluntly, the difference is that one of these things involves surgery and the other does not. Like, you can argue with people who claim that gayness is a choice by asking, "Do you remember when you decided to be straight? Tell me about that, and how you came to your decision - what factors you weighed before deciding." But transness involves literal medical transformation in a way that terrifies some people and enrages others, and the "none of your fucking business" argument doesn't work as well against rage and terror as sensible people would like it to.

anita bryant's death was a stark reminder of this. just reading about the protests that erupted because of her - we don't seem to have this organized collective effort anymore. what happened? we have pride parades attended by millions. what's the point?

i was, like, three when all that stuff was happening, but i don't feel like people are doing any worse today at protesting than people were in bryant's day. from what i can tell, there wasn't this sudden mass uprising against bryant. orange juice sales didn't suddenly plummet. the people speaking out against bryant weren't necessarily taken super seriously. my feeling is that in the '80s, things got worse for gay people in a lot of ways - a lot worse.

in regards to what tipsy said - i strongly believe that what really contributed to the advancement of gay rights was the general public learning that their aunt, accountant, next door neighbour were gay, which finally connected the abstract (to them) notion of human rights to real humans.

― scanner darkly

ok so this is the tricky bit. it's the marginalization. yeah, when i passed as a normal, respectable, middle-class middle-aged white woman, i made a lot of positive changes. it's fucking hard to do that with the shit we're going through right now. marginalizing people isn't just about making big speeches and passing stupid, unenforceable laws. i have a friend who was a trans man back in the late '90s, early '00s. he didn't feel like he had the right to use the men's room, until he got kicked out of the women's room for being, well, a man. it's hard to enforce laws that bear so little relationship to reality that they might as well be word salad.

the thing about being trans that i see is that... it's not always direct. it's not something you can point to and say here, this, this is it. it's this slow burden, it's things we can't talk about to each other because we're trying to not spiral, things we can't talk about to cis people because it's so hard for people who haven't lived it to understand. people will accept us if they can look at me and see someone who's just like any other middle-class middle-aged white woman. the things that have gone on for the last couple years, the things that trans people have dealt with... makes that increasingly difficult.

the thing about "passing" is that is about appearing to be someone what isn't. when i "pass", it's not as a _woman_, but as _cis_. god, if i'd been able to meet patriarchal expectations of gender performance i wouldn't have fucking transitioned!

so yeah, things are scary for me, things are dark, because popular acceptance feels, like it often has in the past, conditional - conditional on my ability to be the person they _want_ me to be, no matter what crazy bullshit they do to us. if we suffer when they hurt us, that becomes _our_ fault, somehow that gets taken as _proof_ of our deficiency, proof that we're _wrong_.

idk. it's scary. you say the kind of things that bigots are saying about trans people loud enough and often enough, people decide to start taking matters into their own hands. what then? do we still get blamed? maybe. even if we don't... i'm not interested in being a martyr. i don't want my name on a fucking memorial somewhere. i want to live a long, happy, and largely unhistoric life.

i think that, even at the height of AIDS terror, mainstream america may have been scared of gay men and gayness in the cooties kinda way -- i'm scared to touch you physically because it could kill me -- but, and i may be wrong as someone who didn't live thru that time, it feels to me like there is something fundamentally different about transness that makes people feel like humanity as they know it is under existential threat. it took decades for the idea that people don't "choose" to be gay to take hold in society, but i think the acceptance of that idea did as much for gay assimilation as anything else. you can easily absolve someone of a sin, and then begin to embrace their existence, when you can think of them as being victims of some unknown force. trans people don't choose to be born as the wrong gender, but our society does not view trans people as being non-agents of their own circumstances in the way that gay men were eventually allowed to be seen. i think the public at large sees gayness as something that happens to gay people, where as transness is something that happens because trans people decide for it to happen. thus the decision to change genders feels not like the inevitable bursting of a dam that couldn't be contained, but instead an active deliberate attack on the very way of life. i'm not sure that exposure is going to work in the same way because i don't think the concept of forgiveness will (hopefully i am wrong)

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.)

i don't know if it's different or not. fwiw, i don't think, right now, there's a fundamental difference between how bigots view me and how they view you. because the thing is, when they call us slurs, they call us the same ones they used to call gay men, back in the day, the f-slur. if they were really ok with you, ok like they pretended to be, why would they call us that word? why would they act like that word is an _insult_? when bigots ban drag in public... i used to think it was because they didn't know the difference between drag and being trans. it's abundantly clear to me that the truth is that they just don't care. that they don't differentiate.

queer people are a _threat_. you, me, all of us. by our existence, we are a threat to patriarchy, to the idea that men are inherently better than women. if someone's a straight-passing cis gay man, if someone's white, if someone doesn't ever _bottom_ (and i neither know or care which of these are true of any specific person)... maybe someone can get one's name further down the list, but as long as there's a list, we're all on it. it doesn't benefit me to make it out like i'm special or unique or _new_ just because it's a new experience to _me_. patriarchy and white supremacy have been doing this sort of thing for all of american history, and one of the biggest lies is that it's just a small minority, that it doesn't affect anybody else. people being transphobic... they can hurt me, they can hurt a lot of people. they can't ever help themselves. they won't ever help themselves, that way.

ftr i hate how these conversations are defined. like gay ppl are helpless to be gay but trans ppl by contrast have made a decision. i don’t even feel helpless to be trans!!! i did make a decision. i also made a decision to kiss women AND men, when that happened. anyway. this is politics i guess but i hate it

the framing is all just such bullshit

also i just want to say that transness doesn’t necessarily involve surgery!!! is that too nuanced for broad political speech or. i mean i take hormones that’s “unnatural” to some people except that cis people are prescribed hormones all the time

straight people aren’t naturally straight either that shit is due to nonstop social messaging from birth sorry!!!!

because popular acceptance feels, like it often has in the past, conditional - conditional on my ability to be the person they _want_ me to be

i should've phrased it better but yes, i didn't mean that popular acceptance happens when general public goes "oh, frank is such a _normal_ guy, never thought he was gay!" but rather it's a realization that people are different and some people you thought were straight are actually gay, and some people you thought were gay are actually straight, and somebody you thought was one gender is a different gender or non binary and not knowing who they were did not affect your interactions with them as long as you stuck to being a decent human being, so why should it change once you do know?

i hate the word "acceptance". it's almost internalized homophobia to me. i don't give a fuck about somebody accepting me, because the mere requirement for them to exercise acceptance in order for them to just not be fucking bigoted assholes means i don't give a fuck about what they think of me. i fucking exist, whether you accept it or not. "i never dreamt that i would get to be / the creature that i always meant to be" i always choke when i hear this line because it helped me burn down some of that remaining internalized homophobia.

and fuck "i was born that way" also. yes, i was born gay, but if i could choose i would choose it million times over because i would be with the tribe that knows how to exercise compassion, the tribe that cares for its own, the tribe that could be almost decimated yet persevere and laugh in the face of it all and dance on the graves.

they hate us because we got to be the creatures we were always meant to be.

. i think the public at large sees gayness as something that happens to gay people, where as transness is something that happens because trans people decide for it to happen. t

idk these straight people, way too prominent about defining the conversation and terms, may say so but they're in denial about how they regarded gays in, say, 1986.

straight people aren’t naturally straight either that shit is due to nonstop social messaging from birth sorry!!!!

plz do not tell me who I am or what is natural to me. I promise to accord you the same ability to define yourself and frame it any way you please.

omg fuck off!!! if you told me my transness wasn’t natural i’d be like “yeah you’re right it’s better living through chemistry!” we’re all fucking brainwashed and trapped, accept it!

straight people are always taking shit so personally. it’s a compliment when i say you’re not really straight

just want to dispute the idea that most cis people don’t know or interact with trans people. as pointed out above, they do, they just either don’t know it or compartmentalize their hatred.

Yeah that’s what I went on to say in that post. But it’s also true that I know a lot of straight people who have never (knowingly, anyway) talked in any meaningful way with a trans person. I think that will become less true as more trans people are out, but it’s still true now and it feeds the demonization. My mom e.g. asks me questions about trans people because she’s never met one that she knew of. And she’s not even prejudiced, just curious.

The first trans person I met was a co-worker in an office job when I was 20, in 1990 in Seattle.

(As far as an "overtly trans person" with a name change and HRT and so on.)

Yeah, I have worked in two different newsrooms with trans women. The first person, I actually knew pre-transition but she came out while I worked there and was about to begin transitioning. The company and the whole newsroom were very supporting, I was happy to see that. This was 30 years ago.

The latest Pew Center survey on this was in 2021, when 42 percent of Americans said they knew a transgender person. That was up 5 percentage points from 2017, which is a pretty big jump in a short time. It will keep growing I'm sure. But for now that still leaves a lot of people who don't.

I've always thought of the "born that way" line as a tactical shortcut for normies that won't be able to handle more. I agree with ivy that it's bullshit (everythinh else is socially constructed, why wouldn't this be), it's just sometimes it's not worth it to bust out the Judith Butler for grandma.

plz do not tell me who I am or what is natural to me. I promise to accord you the same ability to define yourself and frame it any way you please.

― more difficult than I look (Aimless)

The thing is that what ivy is saying isn't about you _personally_. There are systemic factors, systemic biases, and I honestly didn't fully appreciate the extent of those biases or how they were affecting me for a long time. There's an idea called "comphet" - "compulsory heterosexuality" - that talks about all of the pressure patriarchy puts on people to think of ourselves as cishet, to _perform_ cishet stuff.

Well, here's an example. Do you wear dresses? Is there a reason you don't wear a dress? There's nothing wrong with wearing dresses, there's nothing wrong with men wearing dresses. They're just clothes. It's an arbitrary social distinction, but one that's instilled really, really strongly in anybody patriarchy defines as "men". Maybe that's a personal preference, but God, I know how hard it was for me to allow myself to actually wear a dress. I know the messaging I heard about what it means to wear a dress. None of this is _personal_, that's the thing. It's not a choice individuals make in a vacuum.

i should've phrased it better but yes, i didn't mean that popular acceptance happens when general public goes "oh, frank is such a _normal_ guy, never thought he was gay!" but rather it's a realization that people are different and some people you thought were straight are actually gay, and some people you thought were gay are actually straight, and somebody you thought was one gender is a different gender or non binary and not knowing who they were did not affect your interactions with them as long as you stuck to being a decent human being, so why should it change once you do know?

I think I'd agree! I also think, though, by those standards... a lot of people _weren't_ ever accepting of gays. I'd say that not only - agree with Alfred here - is a large percentage of the population in denial about how they regarded gays in 1986, a large percentage of the population is being less than honest - with others and, I think, to a significant extent themselves - about how they regard queers, or racial minorities, or _women_, now. The whole "I'm not racist, but" thing - people trying to, like, self-identify as "not racist" or something, like bigotry a matter of _self-determination_. No, it doesn't actually work like that. I don't think racism is the _same thing_, or has the same _effect_, or manifests in the _same ways_ as homophobia, but I do think there are certain commonalities among various diverse forms of bigotry.

I also wanna highlight here that I'm not categorically immune to bigotry. The whole idea of "internalized transphobia", it's something I continue to struggle with. There are certainly transphobic trans people. One of the insidious things about bigotry is the way that the targets of bigotry are co-opted into being agents of their own oppression, both systemically and individually. I don't think it's a personal failing. I was an agent of my own oppression for a long, long time. I was taught to hate myself, and I did, and now I've outsourced that responsibility back to them. And the people responsible for bigotry are taking it badly. It's fucking hard work, bigotry and hatred. It's _not_ natural, it's _not_ normal. You've got to be carefully taught, and we are, we all are, because, haha, solidarity works both ways. The more people they can convince to adopt their bigotry, their hatred, the less work it is for them to be bigoted and hateful. You could almost say that bigotry and hatred is, well, a _social contagion_ of sorts. It's memetic, as noted bigot Richard Dawkins, back when he passed as a legitimate scientist, once phrased it.

i hate the word "acceptance". it's almost internalized homophobia to me. i don't give a fuck about somebody accepting me, because the mere requirement for them to exercise acceptance in order for them to just not be fucking bigoted assholes means i don't give a fuck about what they think of me. i fucking exist, whether you accept it or not. "i never dreamt that i would get to be / the creature that i always meant to be" i always choke when i hear this line because it helped me burn down some of that remaining internalized homophobia.

I strongly agree with... well, here's how I'd put it. We're strongly encouraged to frame things in ways that privilege and center a white patriarchal cisheteronormative worldview. "Acceptance", "toleration" - like, what, saying that I have a right to _exist_? Like, why is that even a question? Why is it something these motherfuckers get to _decide_ and _enforce_? What gives them the right to control and police my body, the right to control and police _anyone's_ body but their own? My queerness isn't up to them, isn't something I have to justify to them. There's a scene from X-Men 2 that's well-loved among a certain subset of people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXtccnXt21Y

The way I define "transition" isn't about surgery or hormones or clothes or any of that stuff. These are just external manifestations, the ways we make ourselves intelligible to others. All "transition" is, the way I see it, is learning to value yourself more than who other people want you to be. And you know what, yes, that is a choice I made. And the reason I did it was because, well, I had to. Because not doing that was fucking killing me. It wasn't a one-time decision. It's still a choice I have to make, to put into practice, every day, and it is _hard_, it is _hard_ for me to love myself when Facebook and Youtube and all of these different powerful voices, all of these people who patriarchy says _matter_ more than I do, tell me I'm a monster, I'm a "groomer" (for, uh, supporting and encouraging other people's right to self-determination? not sure how that works tbh), that all the things _they're_ doing to me are _my_ responsibility, my _fault_.

Shout-out to my homies on the Neil Gaiman thread. Because he's not the only one doing that shit.

The first trans person I met was a co-worker in an office job when I was 20, in 1990 in Seattle.

― braunschweiger winter (Eazy)

the first trans person i met was in 1997, a lady i was on a usenet group with from... seattle!

that's not a _coincidence_. it's not a _coincidence_ that i transitioned shortly after moving to portland from indiana. what bigots call "social contagion" i call having _healthy role models_. it's not like i was gonna come out as trans when my role models for gender non-conformity were people like buffalo bill! who the fuck is gonna do that, "oh, you know that serial killer who hates women in that one movie? that's who i'm like, that's me." people see me and they are more accepting of trans people, and often that means that trans people see me and are more accepting of _myself_. i'm not always a great role model haha, but my being visibly trans has helped and encouraged other people, cis and trans, to be their best selves, just things like eliza d. talking about _her_ transition back in the day encouraged _me_.

i made myself invisible for a long time because i didn't know there was any other choice. now i know there is another choice. now i know the _cost_ of invisibility, the _cost_ of trying to be the person they wanted me to be. they want me to be invisible and silent. radical queer activists like avram finkelstein taught me from a young age what silence equals. i'm grateful that i was able to learn that lesson young, even if it took me a lot longer to truly undrstand what it meant, how it applied to me personally.

and often that means that trans people see me and are more accepting of _myself_

more accepting of _themselves_, words are hard

To shift to policy/law for a moment, this week The New England Journal of Medicine published a legal perspective on the Cass report. The authors, Daniel Aaron & Craig Konnoth, say: "Our concern here is that the (Cass) review transgresses medical law, policy, and practice, which puts it at odds with all mainstream U.S. expert guidelines." "The Review’s departure from the evidentiary and procedural standards of medical law, policy, and practice can be understood best in the context of the history of leveraging medicine to police gender norms." No idea how impactful this kind of thing but thought it worth sharing. Full piece is here: https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMp2413747

pushing back on the idea that Portland or the west coast is better for trans people or gay people. if you’re white, sure. otherwise, i would argue that from Sacramento north to the border is as dangerous and racist as many other parts of the country.

there are tons of trans people in Philly. it’s cheap, lefty-liberal, and there aren’t roving gangs of white nationalist thugs always roaming around the city.

also fwiw ivy, i agree with you about what you’re saying about the framing being endlessly frustrating, but do think Daniel’s point about how to get grandma to understand transness is well-taken.

there are tons of trans people in Philly

including a few good friends of mine! not that a couple of them haven't made Canada-related contingency plans

yes, imago, my best friend here is trans.

oh yeah i understand we gotta get grandma on board, i just always experience this profound dissonance when ppl are generalizing about the trans experience in order to appeal to the heteropatriarchy. i guess i will for quite a while!!!!

I like to think my late grandmother would've understood Judith Butler.

what i was trying to get at with my earlier posts about why i think transness provokes a deeper bedrock prejudice in people (compared to homosexuality) is like — i think it is telling that on a national level the convo over trans issues has so often played out against the back drop of sports, because i think it provides cover for people who feel existentially threatened by transness to portray being trans as unfair. in the context of a game you can more easily launder your argument that transness is breaking the rules and it can’t be allowed to happen. but i think this is how these people view transness in general — rules are being broken, fairness is not being upheld. i think this dynamic was obviously true for gay people — being held back from upending marriage as a male-female institution — but transness takes the “rule breaking” further in destroying the binary system of gender that human history is based on in ways that cis homosexuality simply does not. americans are obsessed with the concept of fairness, the idea that someone over there doesn’t get to do something if i don’t get to do it too. it drives so much of our politics as it pertains to marginalized people — welfare would be the most obvious example. the idea of transness flies in the face of the notion that if i can’t/won’t/don’t then you aren’t allowed to either. it’s connected to the pro-cop backlash to black lives matter, the proliferation of ring cameras etc — most americans want people monitored for how they are adhering to rules and norms, and visible, open transness is a complete repudiation of that worldview and way of living. and i think that’s extremely destabilizing to a lot of people even if they don’t even realize exactly why they feel that way

i’m not attempting to appeal to the heteropatriarchy, only trying to interrogate why it fees like, to me, trans issues touch the deepest rawest nerve with some people, and how that is informing the politics around it

"human history"? you mean "history as viewed through the western colonialist views of the enlightenment," right? because trans people and non-binary genders have been integral parts of human history since well before the written word.

like, i get what you're saying, Jord4n, and think you're right in many ways, but i think that terms like "human history" aren't neutral in this case, and it's worth pointing that out rather than using shorthand.

xxxp

queer people are a _threat_. you, me, all of us. by our existence, we are a threat to patriarchy, to the idea that men are inherently better than women.

transness takes the “rule breaking” further in destroying the binary system of gender

I'm sure everyone is tired of me saying "I saw that on Tiktok!" but there's a very good video about this by a transwoman creator on Tikok, about why trans people are treated like such a threat to established order...because they prove that gender isn't binary or immutable, and that means that ANY gender-determined thing can't be real. Considering how much of America/the world is influenced by Christianity and the gender essentialism that derives from it, that does rather expose the underpinnings of a lot of what is keeping cis men in power in every way.

sorry cis straight men, you know the drill, white Christo fascist hetero patriarchal capitalism, the whole thing.

The creator is @decolonizationcoven if anyone is interested in these waning days

Considering how much of America/the world is influenced by Christianity and the gender essentialism that derives from it, that does rather expose the underpinnings of a lot of what is keeping cis men in power in every way.

Somewhat related, there's apparently an article in the Wall Street Journal today (their paywall's impregnable, I haven't read it) talking about how corporations' retreat from "DEI" programs/policies removes an excuse mediocre people have used to justify their own lack of success. It's not DEI, Ralph, you're just bad at your job.

Also, to give credit where credit is due, it was a queer ilxor who blew my mind years ago by saying that maybe trans-ness isn't about physical bodies or body parts, maybe you can just be the gender you know yourself to be and say that you are. To whoever that was, thank you! That idea was transformational to my thinking, and has had so much more generous, expansive, beautiful potential within it than the thinking that I had before.

like, i get what you're saying, Jord4n, and think you're right in many ways, but i think that terms like "human history" aren't neutral in this case, and it's worth pointing that out rather than using shorthand.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table), Thursday, January 16, 2025 11:13 AM (twenty minutes ago)bookmarkflaglink

i hear you. i'm trying to explain how i perceive other people to be thinking but i don't want to parrot those words/thoughts in the process of doing so

xp I think that's part of what anti-trans folks find so destabilizing. Identifying as a gender that does not conform to one's visible biological sex is seen not just as undermining the gender binary but as denying the very notion of objective reality.

Yes, the "so biology is hate speech?!" people.

I'm waiting for the haters to retort with, "You call us out for denying the truth, yet here you are denying the TRUTH about your biology!"

idk i'm still having trouble seeing this as all that distinct from homosexuality destabilizing and compromising the "family" (patriarchal system of abuse much like the gender binary, inherently unfair psychologically damaging systems that are considered "fair" because they're all we know, etc. etc.) seems like history repeating itself to me, just with an adjacent marginalized group. though i really appreciate your posts j0rd, much as i reflexively bristle at the way this conversation is defined before we even start talking about it

pushing back on the idea that Portland or the west coast is better for trans people or gay people. if you’re white, sure. otherwise, i would argue that from Sacramento north to the border is as dangerous and racist as many other parts of the country.

there are tons of trans people in Philly. it’s cheap, lefty-liberal, and there aren’t roving gangs of white nationalist thugs always roaming around the city.

― butt dumb tight my boners got boners (the table is the table)

oh i wanna be clear i don't think portland is unilaterally "better" for queer people. my own experience as a queer person exists in a large context - the fact that i am white in a white supremacist culture is a significant part of that context. moving to portland helped me out in terms of my queerness, but my own white privilege also was a significant factor in that decision. i didn't really acknowledge or appreciate that at the time. portland _is_ a lot more dangerous for people of color, particularly Black people, in ways that many East Coast cities aren't.

hell, it's more than that. as a trans person, trans community is really important to me. that's not something that's only true for trans people! as much as i'd _like_ the PNW to, like, stop being racist, lol, i'm also not naive enough to think that the answer to that is for me, as a white person, to tell people of color to move to a city with a long history of marginalizing people of color, of systematically displacing communities of color, _including by promoting white queer community_. there _are_ groups here that work to support queer people of color, for instance Black, Brown, and Beyond the Binary. i'm glad that they exist. the people who need to be doing the lion's share of the work to fight the culture of white supremacy in portland, though, are white people like me! white supremacy is the problem, us white people are the ones who need to change :)

I like to think my late grandmother would've understood Judith Butler.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

alfred, i agree (i mean in principle, i didn't know your grandmother lol). a lot of times there's this idea of dismissing bigotry as a problem of _older generations_, and honestly, i haven't found that to be the case, either in my life or among the people i know. my impression is that a lot of older people have come to the conclusion that bigotry takes time and effort and that they have better things to do with that time and effort.

I'm sure everyone is tired of me saying "I saw that on Tiktok!" but there's a very good video about this by a transwoman creator on Tikok, about why trans people are treated like such a threat to established order...because they prove that gender isn't binary or immutable, and that means that ANY gender-determined thing can't be real. Considering how much of America/the world is influenced by Christianity and the gender essentialism that derives from it, that does rather expose the underpinnings of a lot of what is keeping cis men in power in every way.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit)

i haven't seen the tiktok in question but this exactly describes how i feel about gender and i wholeheartedly agree.