Trans/Genderqueer/Agender/Questioning Thread

Your color analogy makes me think of Don Joyce's "Squant". Do you know that one?

I like your high/low culture analogy though. In this analogy, I was raised to write classical music, from birth. People just look at me and said "Ah, now, they're clearly a classical composer." Turned out that I was really shit at a lot of aspects of being a classical composer, but it turned out I was fucking great at, let's say, orchestration. Just an amazing orchestrator. So that was OK. The ways I was taught to orchestrate were bullshit. Pure 101 strings schmaltz. I was good at it, but it was stupid. All I was doing was making music I hated more popular.

So I quit doing that, and I started writing pop tunes, and I don't know if I was any good at it or not but I LOVED doing it. So I said "OK, I'm a pop songwriter now", and to my surprise people were generally OK with it, even if nobody really understood why I would do something like that, even if there was this assumption that classical music was the music that was Important and respected, the music that everyone went out of their way to listen to and talked about how much they liked it even if they didn't really.

But I also, you know, I sometimes try to write a different sort of music. And I talk about it and people are like "Oh, so you're looking to write a cross between popular and classical music?" And I say no, I'm not interested in classical music at all, there are some people, particularly people who grew up writing pop music, who are doing a really amazing job at classical music, way better than the popular crap I grew up with, and I admire and respect them but classical music is really not my thing. It means nothing to me.

And they say OK, well, if it's not a cross between popular and classical music, what is it, then? And I say, there aren't really any good words for it. Like, first off, it's not a cross between popular music and anything else, I like pop music but it's not pop music. What is it? It's something I've sort of seen and heard somewhere sometimes and I think it's really cool but I don't know what the formal word for it is. And they stare at me blankly. And they say that doesn't make any sense, that sounds like you're just doing a cross between popular and classical and you don't want to admit it.

And I kind of shrug and walk away and keep telling everybody that I'm a pop songwriter.

Ha! I'm listening to Squant, and it's reminding me amazingly of Anish Kapoor and the whole squabble over Vantablack and the World's Pinkest Pink, but it actually years earlier? Again, Negativland proving to be amazingly prescient in so many ways.

I don't see nonbinary as being about 'squant' at all - it's about recognising the existence of 'yellow'.

And it's funny, because I didn't really lampshade this at all in my analogy, but you absolutely picked up on it. The non-reversability of power structures. That the prestige of Art-Music and the disposability of Pop-Music creates a power gradient. Like, if you pick up and move your concert from the Grand Royal Opera House to a cheap venue on the wrong side of town, where the Pop-Music gets played, people at the Opera are going to think you are incredibly weird and strange, but it's no skin off their back if you go.

But the people who are going to *object* the loudest are the people in the Cheap Seats, because damn, you can play at the Opera any time you like, why are you taking space away from all the Pop-Musicians who are waiting for just 5 minutes onstage in the cheap venue with a sticky carpet and no mirrors in the dressing rooms. They didn't create the rules that confined Pop-Music to the Cheap Seats. And they know - if someone gets up from the Cheap Seats and decides to go and sit in the front row of the Opera, there are so many damned *ushers* who are going to try to stop you from getting there! No one sees the *ushers* who are also enforcing the stupid, arbitrary rules about keeping Pop-Music out of the Opera as being objectionable, they are ~just doing their jobs~.

It's the whole fucking system, that assigns prestige to one genre of music and disposability to the other, that sucks. But if people don't see the Opera-House ushers as part of that same system, but only ever see the people in the cheap seats complaining as being THE problem, they just *replicate* the whole power dynamic that keeps the Opera-House prestigious and well-endowed and covered in gold cherubs and the Cheap Seats poor and shoddy. Why on earth would Art-Music Composers ever complain about a system that benefits them?

Haha but if you say "I'm not interested in the Cheap Seats, *OR* the Opera House, I just wanna go play my own kind of music in a field somewhere!" - everybody piles in and invokes the Criminal Justice Act to stop people having raves in fields.

y'all, help me out a little bit here

i'm on this huge prince binge and i'm reading this bio of him and look

i believe in self-determination, really i do

but then i run across shit like this

https://www.towleroad.com/2009/04/prince-is-not-gay-but-he-is-a-fancy-lesbian/

Did you first think Prince was gay?

Lisa: He was little and kinda prissy and everything. But he’s so not gay.

Wendy: He’s a girl, for sure, but he’s not gay. He looked at me like a gay woman would look at another woman.

Lisa: Totally. He’s like a fancy lesbian.

look, goddamn everyone who knew him at all will say shit like this about him. this is less like "canonizing anne frank as a mormon" and more "canonizing anne frank as a mormon after realizing that her diary is absolutely jam-fucking-packed with references to the angel moroni". i am having a real, real, fucking hard time maintaining self-determination kayfabe on this one

I'm really struggling with Prince in general, after reading the reveals on the #MeToo thread, so everything I say is going to be kind of filtered through that - the importance of separating the intensely personal and culturally important Meaning of The Work, from the fallible and damaged and damaging human that made it. And also separating the public figure of "Prince" (also, a work of art, and at least partially the co-creation of the viewers) from the human being Prince Rogers Nelson.

I'm not saying that as a caveat, I'm actually arguing that that distinction is *important*.

With some artists, and Prince is really one of them, their presentation of their onstage Self in public *IS* part of the art, which is available for interpretation and projection and identification by fans.

Prince, again and again, in his work, presented himself as nonbinary, presented himself as a lesbian - I do not think it is stretching or breaking anything, to read 'Prince's Life', as depicted in songs, videos, interviews, to be a work depicting a nonbinary lesbian. Prince as nonbinary is about as close as you can get to *canon* for a nonfictional universe.

Whether that means that Prince Rogers Nelson, the actual human being in Minnesota, conceived himself as any kind of trans (big-tent or small-tent) is beyond anything that any of us *can* know. We don't have access to the actor behind the role. We can't make that call. But for a fan to read the work of art that is "Prince", the fabulous purple pop star, and say "I read this as a nonbinary lesbian" - I think that's 100% A-OK, and that is what art is *for*.

And sometimes, as I said above, queer people often *do* have a kind of sixth (sorry, Colin, seventh) sense, for ~people of our kind~. Gays have a gaydar, bis have a bidar, I do actually think that trans people have some kind of transdar that operates on the same kind of 'you are too *like* me to be a coincidence'.

(I was reading the RIP Bimble thread recently, which I sometimes do around the anniversary of his death, because I loved him, and I feel like I never expressed that love enough while he was alive. But reading that thread, I was struck - he *knew* that I loved him, without my having to tell him. He did tell me in emails, that there was an instant and powerful attraction, we both had a sense of "you are *like* me" - that was actually independent of both of us going through very similar friction on ILX. When he told me he was trans, my reaction was a completely visceral "OMG I love you *more* now!" which didn't make sense at the time, but in the light of understanding more about myself now, that was something like my transdar kicking my very repressed homo tendencies into high gear. That how much I used to *fight* for the right to fancy men was very much linked to repressed trans-homo-ness. I wanted to fancy boys ~as a boy~ which was something that Mark was one of the few people to allow me.)

But to come back to Prince, I honestly wish that more people would understand that the trans / cis thing really isn't a binary. There is no hard and fast divide. Sometimes our transdars make false positives because we're so starved for role models, but sometimes our transdars *do* pick up the non-cis that exists even in some cis people.

it's particularly challenging. i posted over in the prince thread about having just read duane tudahl's book on 83-84 prince, on which tudahl agrees with the statement that prince _is_ his music. "separating the artist from the art" is not _possible_ with prince. all of his convoluted dances, all of his work, he's trying to reveal himself while at the same time protecting himself from the consequences of what he's revealing.

a great example of this is the song "if i was your girlfriend". i listen to the song and to me, what hits me is holy shit, there is no way in hell this guy is cis. and my wife, you know, she listens to the song and says holy shit, this guy is openly controlling and abusive.

and those two things, both of which were undeniably obvious to anybody who spent any time at all around him, both of which are attested over and over again in interviews with people around him, are the two things that he was trying the most to protect himself from the consequences of.

it's also complicated because of the extent to which he is a public figure. gina x, you know, she has her life, she has her privacy, and she has the right to it. prince is dead, has been dead for four years, but he's not quite a historical figure. who he is touches the heart of a lot of unresolved conflicts - the racial conflict in america, most obviously, but he is also very close to the heart of lgbtq issues.

he's still the most famous genderqueer person, as far as i can tell. i mean, the "celebrity" people talk about is caitlyn jenner? that's... even people my age don't remember her athletic career. she's not famous for anything she did. she's famous for being famous.

prince is different. he was a genius, he was an abuser, he was a gay-basher, he was genderqueer.

i don't, morally, have the right to him, _nobody_ has the right to him, but the harm he did, the damage and pain he caused... those of us who are alive today, those of us who are genderqueer today, those of us who were made invisible the same way prince was made invisible when over and over again, for decades, the only question anybody would ask is "hey is that dude gay", we have a right to the truth.

and the truth, in this case, is "no fucking way was that guy cis".

Yeah, I don't know that there is "a truth" in the way you are looking for.

There is only interpretation of the artist's work. You do not have access to any truth beyond that, except your own. Own your own truth.

i do think "transdar" is a thing. i would, honestly, say it's _more_ of a thing than gaydar. the heart of homosexuality is who you love. the heart of gender identity is who you _are_. to me, that's a lot harder to hide than sexuality. "transdar", for me, is not a "sixth sense", it's, well, an ability to use the senses we have. it's absolutely completely fucking baffling and hilarious to me the circumstances under which i pass. because cis people... they can be incredibly ignorant. not as a moral judgement, just as a practical matter - the shit they learned about trans people, the media stereotypes, we tend not to conform to those stereotypes. cis people will walk past a six foot six woman with pink hair wearing a pink white and blue striped sweater and never even consider the possibility that she might possibly be trans. i'm not sure my ability to take that possibility into account is any sort of mysterious gift!

Yeah, I don't know that there is "a truth" in the way you are looking for.

There is only interpretation of the artist's work. You do not have access to any truth beyond that, except your own. Own your own truth.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

in general, i do agree with you. my entire argument is special pleading; i think this is a special case.

That is the point of good art - to give you (either a window to see another world) or a mirror to see yourself.

Something can look a *lot* like you, in art - but ultimately what you are seeing is yourself.

I mean, I have literally in the past year, had someone I always viewed as a ~trans root~ agree, yes, what I saw was real - that nonbinary, genderqueer, genderfluid are all very good terms for how he experiences himself! And I know how amazing that is, and what a validation it is and how much one WANTS that.

But in the absence of that confirmation, it is still projection, it is still about you - but it’s allowed to be.

And transdar isn’t what you’re talking about - it’s anout the ability to recognise another trans person sometimes even *before* they are out to themselves (let alone transitioned). That is just a vibe thing, which is not opaque.

That is the point of good art - to give you (either a window to see another world) or a mirror to see yourself.

Something can look a *lot* like you, in art - but ultimately what you are seeing is yourself.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

I mean, that's the thing, I don't see myself in Prince. I see someone who is NOTHING like me. I'm white. I was born 18 years after he was. I have no musical talent. God means nothing to me. I'm afraid of and avoid religion. I have no idea what the hell my sexuality is, but it's nothing like his. I'm not nearly as controlling as he is. I work hard to create and maintain boundaries instead of expecting other people to accommodate my every whim.

It's the abuse thing, that's what fucks me up. If he hadn't spent his whole life hurting everyone around him, you know, it might be different, maybe. As it is, as we are, I can't consider it _right_ to talk about Prince without talking about the fact that he was an inveterate, chronic abuser. Prince wouldn't accept that. Prince would vehemently reject it. But it's true, it's not something to which self-determination applies.

And his gender identity... Look, his gay-bashing hurt Wendy and Lisa. Hurts gay people, still, to this day, because his ideas, his beliefs, are embedded in his work, _he_ is embedded in his work, and to talk about him, to talk about him as if he really was a cisgender man because of some _default assumed gender_, even though his lifelong behavior was deeply at variance with that default gender...

It's those fucking assumptions. Not-abuser. Not-queer. For decades the only question anybody asked was if he was gay, and the answer was always "no", because he liked to fuck women, and four years now he's dead and nobody even wants to ask the question, the question he asked on record in 1987: What if he _wasn't_ a cisgender man?

And he could ask that because nobody would take the question seriously. Lisa and Wendy said what they said about him in _2009_ for God's sake and what they said meant something completely different back then than it means now, and all I can do is go back and read that and say "You know what, I think those statements are worth taking at face value."

I don't believe Prince ever would have _seriously_ said that about himself. Because he was filled with hatred. Because he was an anti-gay bigot. Because he was an abuser. I sincerely believe that if he was alive today, he would be saying some completely awful things about trans people, and Christ does that fucking hurt.

And transdar isn’t what you’re talking about - it’s anout the ability to recognise another trans person sometimes even *before* they are out to themselves (let alone transitioned). That is just a vibe thing, which is not opaque.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

I get what you're saying. I think in that case, with a so-called "egg" (I guess that's not necessarily a term that crosses over to AFABs?), it's not quite the same, but it's similar. Because someone who's not out to themselves is often operating from a similar position of ignorance to a cis person. I know I was. Once I understood what trans people were actually _like_ it was not very long at all before I started to transition. So much of transphobia and trans erasure is predicated on lack of understanding, lack of insight, and sure, there are times when I understand things about other people before they understand them about themselves, and I have to hang back and wait for them to figure it out.

I am familiar with the term "egg", yes, but I just don't find it a useful or descriptive term to apply to my ~gender journey~, and... my experiences were different from yours.

FWIW, in Glitter Up The Dark, Sasha Geffen agrees with you on Prince's genderqueerness, and writes quite a bit about it. But Geffen's book is about the wider, more big-tent subject of "Gender Nonconformity In Pop Music" - and they acknowledge that "gender nonconformity" is a much wider category than "trans", and you don't need a self-description to assign someone to the category "gender nonconforming", and genderqueer can be a description of someone's presentation, as well as an identity. (There are huge swathes of gender nonconformity that are *not* trans; just as not all trans is "gender" "nonconforming".) So Geffen is quite happy to call Prince genderqueer, and cover him in depth in a book about gender nonconformity, and leave out the question of whether he was "cis" or not, because that was a question that only Prince could answer.

I guess the question I would ask is - why is it so important to you, that you classify this dead rock star, as "not cis"?

I guess the question I would ask is - why is it so important to you, that you classify this dead rock star, as "not cis"?

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

i think it's a good question, but i sort of tried to answer that in my last post on the topic. i don't know if i did a very good job of it!

One of my AFAB friends talked to me last night about her questioning. I know I've talked to Branwell before about my problems talking about trans people based on their AGAB, my desire to not be defined by my AGAB, and I think... I think I'm putting too much "should" in the equation.

I feel today that to say "AGAB shouldn't matter"... like, the purpose behind that is to reject a certain transphobic narrative, the narrative that AGAB is _all_ that matters, that gender is nothing more than one's AGAB.

But when my friend talks to me about her feelings, even though there's a lot we have in common, I have a lot of uncertainty, a lot of confusion, about how to listen. When an AMAB questioning person talks to me, it's very different. I listen and I say "Yep, been there", "Yep, I know that feeling", and the general tenor of the talk is one of them realizing oh, shit, I thought that was just a normal guy thing and we just didn't talk about it.

There are a lot of things cis guys Don't Talk About.

I can spend all the time I want being unhappy that there's so little overlap between AMAB trans spaces and AFAB trans spaces but I feel like I'm coming to the point where I have to acknowledge there are practical reasons for it.

The main thing about it is that I'm very extremely comfortable as a middle-aged lesbian. Here is an identity that describes me _way_ better than that bullshit I was raised with. It took me a while to feel comfortable identifying that way. Mostly it's that lesbianism isn't just a sexuality. There's a whole lot of baggage that comes along with it, and it turns out that it's baggage I was already carrying. So many of the tropes of lesbianism apply to me and my wife. Useless Lesbian? Check. U-Haul Lesbian? Check. Lesbian Bed Death? (sigh) Check. God, I spent most of my youth literally wanting to be a librarian before tech bros devastated that career path.

Identifying as a lesbian is scary because there's some unpleasant history there and I never know when I might run into someone who will say all kinds of awful and untrue things about me, but people like that don't seem to control women's queer spaces like they apparently used to. I've found TERFs pretty easy to avoid, all told. We talk about them a lot, but I haven't yet found myself in a situation where I've had to talk _to_ one.

I really don't know what pre-existing gender identities are available for AFABs who transition to fit into. I go on E and I want to cry a lot more and not just trans women, the cis women I know understand and we are there to support and care for each other. An AFAB goes on T and wants to hit things and what is there for them? I don't know.

My feeling, and this could be prejudicial, I could be wrong on this, but I look at feminist history and it's paved the way for me. Pre-feminist gender roles were constricting and false and women spent fifty years fighting against it, and one result of that is that there is someone I can be. What is masculinity without toxicity? I don't really know. I don't see it very often in practice. I think a lot about the reasons why I didn't come out in the '90s, and how much of it was that there was nothing for me to come out _as_. Once I came out, it was pretty straightforward to transition, and that process seems a lot more complicated and fraught for AFABs.

But honestly there's a shit-ton I don't understand here and I could be wrong on all of this. If I get something wrong please do correct me!

You know, first off, you don't have to know exactly how someone feels, in order to help them.

(Autistic digression - there are two terms I *always* get mixed up, because: autism. Sympathy and Empathy. There's one where someone describes an emotion or experience, that you, yourself have felt, and you can go "oh yeah, totally, mate, I know *exactly* how that feels". You feel *with* them. And then there's the one where you see someone going through something, and you really *don't* know what it's like. You kinda have to ask them, "you seem in a bad way, what are you feeling, is there anything I can do for you?" and you have to kind of listen to what they're going through, and what they need, and you can't feel *with* them, but you can feel *FOR* them? This latter one is much harder, and I think it really has to be taught. (And there's a big gender split on this, because people who are considered to be 'women' are taught, from birth, 'the feelings of the people around you are YOUR responsibility' or you're a monster, while people who are considered to be 'men' are allowed to just let that slide, without it reflecting too badly on them. But that latter one is really important to learn.)

So... sometimes the thing that is most important is *not* knowing exactly how someone feels, but thinking through the kinds of questions that will help you understand them, and help them get to a better place?

An AFAB goes on T and wants to hit things and what is there for them? I don't know.

I'm trying really hard, to react to like this with kindness, to try to put some knowledge against this ignorance. I actually know quite a few trans men and transmasculine enbies who have gone on T - they don't generally report wanting to hit things. In fact, one of the common experiences I've heard, is how they went into T thinking it would make them aggressive and violent - only to find out that was completely untrue. What they all reported, was T made them hungry, and T made them horny. They didn't want to hit things. They wanted to eat things, and fuck things. (This is one of the reasons I have always been nervous to go on T - can you imagine what a hornball I would be, if I got *more* horny?) Wanting to hit things is a sign of unprocessed anger (and boy, do trans people often have a lot of unprocessed anger) - not a sign of T or maleness.

I don't know, it's weird - the knowledge gap only really goes one way. Like, every trans man or AFAB enby I know, seems to know trans women, and the stories of "what it's like for a trans woman to go on E" are quite well known. But you know *nothing* of us, and our ways. And that's frustrating.

(Like, I am on E right now - Eezer Goode! Eezer Goode! - and have a completely different experience of it. It doesn't make me feel more womanly, it makes me feel weirdly *more* trans, having to take it. It doesn't make me cry more easily - I do NOT cry, and never have cried easily, the only time I cry is when I'm really freaking angry - but E actually stopped the vast and torrential fits of uncontrollable weeping that actually completely scared me.)

I mean, I do agree - Feminism has spent the past 50, 60 years expanding the roles and ~ways of being women~ that are available to cis women and trans women. The ~ways of being men~ have not expanded so far so fast, but I think there's more to the non-straightforwardness of the AFAB trans experience than just that. But it's really hard to talk about those differences without bringing up some defensiveness.

Like, the way that you are able to relax and expand into the category of "lesbian" and make it your own - I do genuinely think that's really beautiful, and a lovely thing. I even know women who call themselves ~Trans Dykes~ and they own that identity and that's great, like they've taken a slur that was yelled at me out of car windows, and made it a beautiful, living, loving identity. Fantastic! More power to 'em.

But, in my own specific experiences - like, there are many, many different ways to be nonbinary, and I can think of at least 3 or 4 different ~general categories~ that most (but not all) AFAB enbies tend to fall into. But in a small group, where I was extremely lucky to fall in with a bunch of people who were very specifically trans in almost exactly the way that I was: we were all AFAB, most of us dated women, but we all felt drawn towards a masculinity that was... *not* anything like a cis masculinity, it was a very effeminate, queer, homo-coded masculinity, like in a weird way, all of us were far more attached to our identities as "queer" than we were to any identity of "woman" or indeed "man". We did an exercise where we brought pictures of what we felt our true "selves" looked like (David Bowie; the twink from Call Me By Your Name; stills from Velvet Goldmine) and someone laughed and said, "wow, we are a bunch of trans f*gg*ts, really" and we all kind of giggled nervously. Because at the same time, we were both recognising that yes, 'trans f*gg*ts' were, in a very real way, exactly what we were - and also the realisation that we could never, ever refer to ourseles as such publicly, because that was not our word, not our oppression, and that was very much *not our place to inhabit*.

And I don't know why that is.

I'm trying really hard, to react to like this with kindness, to try to put some knowledge against this ignorance. I actually know quite a few trans men and transmasculine enbies who have gone on T - they don't generally report wanting to hit things. In fact, one of the common experiences I've heard, is how they went into T thinking it would make them aggressive and violent - only to find out that was completely untrue. What they all reported, was T made them hungry, and T made them horny. They didn't want to hit things. They wanted to eat things, and fuck things. (This is one of the reasons I have always been nervous to go on T - can you imagine what a hornball I would be, if I got *more* horny?) Wanting to hit things is a sign of unprocessed anger (and boy, do trans people often have a lot of unprocessed anger) - not a sign of T or maleness.

thank you for that. i really am trying to get more knowledge and what i did there, really, is i overlaid my _own_ knowledge and experience with testosterone over people whose experience with testosterone is just, like, fundamentally different from mine! being in situations where i needed to take testosterone did make me much more angry and violent, i wanted to hit things. i didn't at all feel more sexual or hungry. this is how, like, my own ignorance gets in the way of my even _learning_ more. so i appreciate your being kind.

my general response to AMAB trans people is, just like, naturally empathic, totally unforced and easy and relieving. whereas talking to AFAB transpeople, it's not something i've lived, it's not something i've experienced, and you know, personally, i've always hated sympathy, i've always hated pity, i don't want people to look at me and go "oh you poor thing". i'm learning to do better at accepting others' sympathy but it's still hard.

I don't know, it's weird - the knowledge gap only really goes one way. Like, every trans man or AFAB enby I know, seems to know trans women, and the stories of "what it's like for a trans woman to go on E" are quite well known. But you know *nothing* of us, and our ways. And that's frustrating.

yes! it frustrates the hell out of me too. why the hell do you understand so much more about me than i understand about you? like, there are as many of you as there are of us, why are you still so fucking marginalized and invisible compared to us?

Because at the same time, we were both recognising that yes, 'trans f*gg*ts' were, in a very real way, exactly what we were - and also the realisation that we could never, ever refer to ourseles as such publicly, because that was not our word, not our oppression, and that was very much *not our place to inhabit*.

And I don't know why that is.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

i mean, honestly, when you say that, i get this very strong and immediate "yes, of course". it's not even for me a matter of _keeping_ my queer identity, it's a matter of being allowed for the first time in my life to have a queer identity in the first place, and that's my life, really, it's my fucking life. i have transfem friends who are straight and it's really hard for them, and i understand why. because for an AFAB there's so much more erasure in transition. early in my transition i struggled with passing, for reasons of basic _safety_, and now that i've transitioned enough that that i have some basic ability to pass, i find myself putting in effort to not pass, particularly with my voice which is something i'm really conflicted about, have always been really conflicted about. mostly i keep the same voice i had before transition, which is not so much a "male voice" or a "female voice" as a voice with an _unusually wide range_. to pass as female would be to cut off the low end, and i don't want to do that, i don't want to lose that.

i mean, the word you used to describe yourself _isn't_ a word that's, uh, open to being reclaimed right now, for whatever reason, but the _concept_ should have a word for it, a word that's _not_ a slur but a word of pride, and you should have the _right_ to identify as that publicly, to have everybody know it, every bit as much as i have the right to say "i'm a lesbian". i mean what the hell is this bullshit, this fucking heteronormative, cisnormative bullshit that AFABs aren't _allowed_ transition to david bowie?

I'm really not sure how you get from "You have to ask them ... and you have to kind of listen to what they're going through, and what they need" to "personally, i've always hated sympathy, i've always hated pity, i don't want people to look at me and go "oh you poor thing""

Do you not think it's possible for people to feel *other* emotions for people? Have you never heard someone say "I feel happy for you" or "I feel proud for you" or even "I feel angry on your behalf"?

There's a lot more I could say about how Trans Women are considered The Authentic Trans Experience (TM) and how Trans Men and Nonbinary People are... just not. (And it's not just within trans communities that this happens - it originates in the Cis World, whose stories are considered important and normative, and whose aren't!) But I just don't want to engage with that level of ... anger / negativity / whatever ... at this time in the morning.

Let's just say, even when I was a full-on lesbian, I was *always* aware that I was a Second Class Homosexual (and not even gonna talk about how realising I was bisexual downgraded me to "not even homo at all") - so to discover that being a transmasculine (ugh I hate that word) person, means one is a Second Class Trans is... not a surprise at all.

Do you not think it's possible for people to feel *other* emotions for people? Have you never heard someone say "I feel happy for you" or "I feel proud for you" or even "I feel angry on your behalf"?

sometimes i don't know how to feel!

i think it's more that i lack confidence? i don't know how to ask, i don't know what words to use? to me trying to understand afab trans identities reminds me a lot of when i tried to come out as trans in 1996, and i didn't, i couldn't, because the only identities available to me were "transvestite" and "transsexual" and i sure as hell wasn't either of those things. and so just like nobody could acknowledge me, support me, give me space to be who i was back then, i just don't know how to do that for afab trans identities now.

i watched "disclosure" a while back and i thought it was a good documentary because it went out of its way to make space for trans AFAB and trans POC narratives and i was surprised by how absolutely goddamn ignorant i was of AFAB trans experience. i know so little, understand so much less, and before i watched that show i didn't even know how little i knew. to the extent that i can imagine how that would feel, to have that experience, i would feel really angry, really frustrated. all i can say is that you have the right to it. you have the right to be pissed off at the situation, you have the right to be pissed off at _me_ for being trans and not even understanding the most basic things about your experience as an AFAB trans person. i'm certainly frustrated with myself, with the way i keep putting my damn foot in my mouth talking to you. i don't understand you the way you deserve to be understood, but at least i can try to accept you for who you are without judgement.

Well, how did you get from where you were in 1996, to where you are now? How did you fix that knowledge gap?

I'm guessing it involved a lot of research, asking questions, finding stuff out?

What kinds of questions were helpful or useful to you, when you started to explore that maybe you were trans? (I'm thinking of stuff that you can do to help your Questioning Friend, more than anything else.) There are questions that help winkle that stuff out - I'm thinking immediately of things already discussed upthread, like 1) if you could describe your gender without using the words "man" or "woman", how would you describe it? 2) do you have any pictures that you feel like, yeah, I would really like my gender to look like that? 3) if you did not have to go through expensive treatments or painful surgery, and you could just pick a body from a catalogue, like choosing clothing off a rack, what body would that look like? 4) If you woke up tomorrow, in the body of a different sex, really think through - how would that feel like to you? Relieved, disgusted, intrigued?

I think these are pretty AGAB-neutral questions that you can use to help anyone talk through these issues, without having to dig into jargon and terminology that can be kinda off-putting to newcomers who are just starting to question. (Or if you are unsure of identities other than your own!)

...

Can I just ask you a favour, though? Can you please not make assumptions about how I am feeling? "Ask questions, listen to the answers" is really relevant advice here. I get the feeling that you're feeling slightly defensive - which leads you to the conclusion that *I* must be pissed off? Especially after I've just *said* that I don't want to engage with anger today. (Which would surely start with the presumption that I was not feeling angry at the time I made the statement?)

What I feel right now is... *perplexed* at how ~ILX in general~, within 2 weeks, seems to have gone from "trans experiences are EXACTLY THE SAME, how dare you talk about AMAB experiences being different from yours - in fact, we'll bully you off the forum even for using that term!!!" to "wow, AfAB experiences are so strange, so opaque, so completely unknowable, how can we ever understand their mysterious and ineffable differences?" a turnabout which is... confusing to me.

We learn to navigate and understand difference all the time. One might even say that's what ILX is for. We learn by asking questions and comparing experiences.

Well, how did you get from where you were in 1996, to where you are now? How did you fix that knowledge gap?

I'm guessing it involved a lot of research, asking questions, finding stuff out?

lurking! that's the internet i grew up on. just trying to listen to other people. and then i try to mirror that, try to rephrase what i hear in my own words.

Can I just ask you a favour, though? Can you please not make assumptions about how I am feeling? "Ask questions, listen to the answers" is really relevant advice here. I get the feeling that you're feeling slightly defensive - which leads you to the conclusion that *I* must be pissed off? Especially after I've just *said* that I don't want to engage with anger today. (Which would surely start with the presumption that I was not feeling angry at the time I made the statement?)

branwell, i'm doing my best. i really am. but i'm not a tabula rasa. every post i work to put down my assumptions, not put myself in your head, and every time i feel like i've failed. i don't know how to do what you're asking me to do. maybe i should just quit posting to this thread. maybe i'm just not ready to deal with these things yet.

What I feel right now is... *perplexed* at how ~ILX in general~, within 2 weeks, seems to have gone from "trans experiences are EXACTLY THE SAME, how dare you talk about AMAB experiences being different from yours - in fact, we'll bully you off the forum even for using that term!!!" to "wow, AfAB experiences are so strange, so opaque, so completely unknowable, how can we ever understand their mysterious and ineffable differences?" a turnabout which is... confusing to me.

― Extractor Fan (Branwell with an N)

see, i don't see ILX in general as having done that. maybe it's because there are a lot of threads i don't read, but when i look at ILX, i see the only people talking about this stuff being you and me. i don't see you summarizing "ilx in general", i see you mirroring things i personally have said on ilx over the past few weeks. and the way you're mirroring the words i wrote, well, none of that is what i was trying to say, not than, and not now, and i'm just frustrated. if the dialogue has changed, it's because i've changed my words, the things i say, because i'm trying to learn from what you've been saying, and i'm not sure it's been to any avail.

this conversation is really painful to me.

Asking questions of another person, and listening to their answers, is how you learn to tell the difference between "mirroring" and "projection". (There are a lot of people on ILX, besides you, and I have had to deal with an enourmous amount of projection, both in the recent and distant past.)

Maybe go back and look through our conversations on this thread, and look at how many questions I've asked you, versus how many you've asked me? This conversation is starting to feel quite unbalanced, and that clearly isn't fun for either of us.

Maybe our conversational styles just don't mesh, which is unfortunate, because, as you say, we do seem to be the only 2 people interested in having these kinds of conversations on ILX right now. But if we go on like this, we are going to do each other damage, and I wish neither to be damaged, nor to cause someone else pain.

See you around.

agreed, i'm not in a good headspace and it's really important for me to step back from this discussion.

This is quite an emotive topic, so I've been wondering whether to bring it up here or not. My feeling is, it is something I would like to put out there, as important information which doesn't seem to be getting much attention - but that I do not wish to have a debate about it, but neither do I wish to have a performative round of ~t*rf discourse~ from cis people.

Good news first (and I always make a point of linking to the Guardian when they DO occasionally publish a positive piece on trans and nonbinary people, to try and click-train them. I have no idea if it works, but one can try):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/17/gender-fluid-engineer-wins-landmark-uk-discrimination-case

^^^it seems that nonbinary people, even though we do not have specific protection in law, are starting to win legal protection through judicial decisions, that protections aimed at trans people are considered to cover nonbinary people as well. (I am so grateful, and feel so hugely lucky that I do now work for an overly pro-LGBT organisation, and that my boss and HR have been entirely supportive of me, my transition, namechange, pronouns etc - in a way that previous employers have definitely not.)

This is the worrying news - and this is something that I fear gets obscured, buried and lost in the process of reducing trans issues and trans discourse to a steady stream of 'oh god what has Scottish wizard lady said this week':

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/sep/17/womens-equality-party-runs-consultation-on-self-identification-for-trans-people

^^^This terrifies me.

Background, for people not in the UK, as to what is at stake. The UK has, for several years, been trying to make amendments to the Gender Recognition Act, which would make the legal transition process simpler, less invasive and time-consuming, and cheaper for trans people, and to extend the same protections and recognitions to nonbinary people. More background information on the changes here.

This came up during the Theresa May years, and was ALREADY put to a vast public consultation - the consultation was supported by Stonewall and other LGBT organisations, and several feminist organisations promoted it - it had over 100,000 responses, 70% of which overwhelmingly supported the suggested changes.

Once Boris Johnson came in, he decided to just quietly drop the whole thing. There was a huge push among the UK trans community, to get in contact with MPs, send emails, and try to raise enough noise to get it UNdropped (subtweet - I honestly wish that cis people would put half the effort into stuff like this, that they did into ~publicly condeming Scottish Wizard Lady~) and back on the political table.

Noted Radical Feminist, and serial ~supporter of women~ (yes, this is sarcasm), Boris Johnson, has now handed it over to an organisation called the Women's Equality Party, to do their own private consultation, of their private membership of less than 30,000 members. I have no idea who the WEP are, who is backing them, what their membership looks like (I've seen that they have definitely done business with A Woman's Place, who very much *are* aligned with anti-trans people) or what their policies regarding trans people even are! How is a private consultation of 30,000 members of what looks like a fairly fringe political party supposed to be somehow fairer or more evocative of the public's mood, than an open, public consultation of over 100,000 people, including the trans and nonbinary people this will actually affect?

I do feel like Boris Johnson is the biggest threat that trans and nonbinary people in the UK have faced since Thatcher - and there's a very cynical part of me (forgive me if this is a ~paranoid reading~ but this is a paranoid country) that thinks that all of the very public current fuss over ~Scottish Wizard Lady~ is a *diversion* from what is happening right now with the GRA - that one cis man has the power to handwave away a huge public consultation that was overwhelmingly in favour, and replace it by handing power over our lives and our destinies to a small, private, members-only group. It's terrifying.

I'm going to go and look to see if I can find any other coverage on this, because as mentioned elsewhere, the Guardian is not exactly known for its track record on trans news.

uh i don't think that's saying the uk government is putting the WEP in charge of deciding what to do with GRA reform or anything, just that the WEP are doing their own consultation of their members on the topic to decide on their official party line because they're very internally divided on whether or not to hate trans people. the WEP aren't really politically relevant at all so idk why the guardian is even reporting on this, like 'very minor party consults its members' isn't much of a story at all. idk how dominant the WEP's transphobic wing is either but it also doesn't really matter compared to the many other much more prominent transphobes in uk politics

I really hope that is the case, and that I *have* misread this.

But the link to the last news on Boris Johnson's plans to drop the bill reminded me that there has been no update on this for months at this point. (Granted, other stuff has been going on.)

My friend is a prof who specialises in trans healthcare, and while she was invited to give some evidence, she couldn't face it when the other people invited were so notoriously and viciously transphobic. So yeah, WEP are transphobes. But I think it is just their own internal consultation, not a government one.

OK, that's slightly less heinous - if this is just their own internal consultation. Whenever I hear 'let's hear both sides' it makes me nervous - why would anyone want to have to go and defend our own humanity in the face of vicious bigotry. (And there was some 'but what if cis is a slur' stuff I found on their own internal documentation about the event itself, which was very cringe.)

I'm glad that this is not "the" consultation, but I do live in fear of what horror Boris Johnson will come up with. If it's just going to be quietly dropped forever, which seems very much his style.

On the positive side, the BMA came out in support of self-ID recently: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/09/16/british-medical-association-trans-non-binary-self-declare-gender-recognitio-act/

That is positive news, and I do like to keep positive news centred as a counteractive to all the bad news!

Does anyone have a subscription to The Times, because I'm not giving anything to a Murdoch paper to read this, but all of the news I've seen refers back to this piece:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/changing-gender-to-get-cheaper-but-self-identify-scheme-is-off-0twtdw5fr

Reading the recap of it in the Guardian it doesn't look good. It doesn't look like they plan on changing anything around self-ID, they are going to continue to insist on ~you have to be officially diagnosed with a mental illness by a medical doctor~ and all the other crap. (And absolutely nothing reported about its effects for nonbinary people?) Being Tories, literally the only thing they care about is what it costs - they might make it marginally cheaper?

Seriously, how can we get cis people to care about this, to make a noise about this, to stop these reforms from being just quietly dropped? I honestly wish cis people would put like 1/4 of the energy into campaigning for meaningful change as they do ~shouting at 't*rfs' on the internet~ it's so frustrating.

If the Sunday Times article is true, then the government will have ignored its own consultation & evidence about the need for transgender rights and self-id. 🙁🏳️‍⚧️

A very troubling last paragraph too, basically saying that the public supports a Trumpian bathroom-bill. They don't. pic.twitter.com/UOJYaoT9AR

— Heather Peto (@heatherisone) September 20, 2020

Lol at the officials implying the 30% of responses against the changes were entirely organic and in no way the result of obsessive lobbying, oh no. Personally my response to the consultation was in response partly to the coverage and partly to a WhatsApp group I’m in flagging up the deadline. Government just didn’t want to put the changes through because they want this as a live issue for when they inevitably fuck up on something else in the future.

Thanks, XYZ and the kind person who webmailed me the archive.

Piece is not very helpful - essentially saying what they are *not* going to do, but not saying what they do plan on doing?

This is just ...

More than 100,000 responses were received to the consultation. Insiders say 70% backed the idea that anyone should be allowed to self-identify. However, officials believe the results were skewed by responses generated by trans rights groups.

So it turns out that the one group who are not perceived as having a valid right to officially lodge opinions on how trans people should be treated is... trans people?

Message of piece clear, though: Polls are only good or accurate when they support what they already wanted to do.

Here it is, just published https://t.co/WQOaLsxEfs#GRA https://t.co/vr3fmtfU5c

— Jessica Parker (@MarkerJParker) September 22, 2020

This is a fucking awful development

.@TheGPhC you've just banned my only source of trans healthcare from being able to work with the chemist that fulfills the prescription

What am I suppose to do? I need this medication. How dare you just dump thousands of people with no alternative because of transphobic lobbying

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 7, 2020

I have sent a strongly worded complaint demanding resolution to this blocking of trans people's healthcare to @TheGPhC using their online form https://t.co/tHgeNnEwP5

Please can you do the same

— Katy Montgomerie 🦗 (@KatyMontgomerie) October 8, 2020

Have just set up a recurring donation at https://localgiving.org/donation/genderedintelligence

I mean, fair play to the windmill fucker also, because he’s been working with trans activists on this too.

The effect of making it impossible for transgender kids to access regulated wrap-around healthcare in the UK was to drive them and their families to piece together bits and pieces of healthcare from across jurisdictions and administer it with the help of YouTube videos... https://t.co/wH18YUDxfq

— Jo Maugham QC (@JolyonMaugham) October 8, 2020

I've made a new thread, for discussion of trans politics, trans activism, transphobia, etc. because ILX really does clearly need one and has done for some time:

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

As I said on the other thread, this isn't about trying to ~ban the cises from the trans thread~ - but that constantly reading about people who hate you, in a space which is supposed to be *for* you, is exhausting for trans people. Let's try to keep this space open for centring the lives and experiences of trans, nonbinary, questioning, etc. ILX0rs, and use the other thread for discussions of problems, and what can be done about the problems, in terms of activism, allyship, etc.

thank you

Hey!!! Haven’t seen you post here in ages! How are you doing?

not bad as far as material things go, but my spirit is weary. that said, in regards to the topic of the thread, being now 5+ years into this, feeling like I've "transitioned" rather than being in the process of "transitioning" is a very interesting perspective shift.

how about yourself?

Congratulations?!?! I mean, on reaching that point of feeling "transitioned" rather than "transitioning" - that feels like something worth celebrating. Is it a good shift? Do you feel more comfortable, more rooted, more bodied on the other side of that shift? (Or indeed not - something I think we don't talk about enough is that it's OK to feel bittersweet or have mixed feelings.) But I think that perspective shifts are p much inherently good for you. :)

It's nice news to me, that there *is* a state of "feeling transitioned" on the other side, because I feel like, for me personally, "transitioning" is this endless process that will never feel done. Like, honestly, I have at this point made all the changes I am ever going to make (at this point in my life). Internally, I feel like "there, that is done! I have Socially Transitioned" and that has brought me a lot of comfort and confidence.

But there's this weird combination of both... partly, I feel like because of what my identity is, it's like I've tried to build an island to live in the middle of this treacherous fast-flowing river, and every time I think I've got one part of the island buttressed and reclaimed and done, a flood comes along and sweeps it away. I think it was actually you who reframed the idea of 'coming out' for me - that it's never a one-time thing, it's just this endless process of constantly re-asserting yourself. That never feels done. :(

I'm sorry your spirit feels so weary. What are things that lift and re-energise your spirit?

FGTI, I've thought about replying to this for a couple of hours now, and I don't think I'm going to feel peace until I do, so I'm going to bring it here, in the hopes of having an insider-conversation with a bit more lassitude and feeling free to speak. (If people want to brand me a transphobe or FP me for what I'm about to say... well, they were always going to do that anyway. If this goes at all clusterfucky, I'm out of here.)

It was recently proposed to me that the best way to resolve TERF/trans conflict is the normalization of, and education of, penises as being "normal" on women. I've never felt anything weird about "a woman's penis" personally; the "eureka" was really that other people should be invited to have the same attitude, rather than allowing any concessions whatsoever toward obsolete and incorrect essentialism

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the term "terf" is not helpful, it does not describe a unified or consistent philosophy or even group of people, it has come to be a gunny-sack that just means "female transphobe" and draws no difference between the various concerns / prejudices driving that transphobia. That there are distinctly different strands of female transphobes, some of whom can be reached by different methods. (And others of whom can not.) I have some criticisms of this suggestion, which I hope you will take constructively - based on conversations I have had with women who have been exposed to trans exclusionary feminism. (Most of whom I was able to reach, and bring them "on side", and the ones I couldn't - well, at least I got them to stop expressing it in public/around me, which felt like progress from where they'd been before.)

1) I've said this to you privately the last time we talked about this, and now I'm going to say it publicly. Why do you always frame this as "some women have penises" and never as "some men have vaginas"?

This may seem like a semantic quibble, but honestly, this gets right to the heart of the matter for many feminists. Why is it always "woman" that is the contested identity, the contested space? Why is it not "man"? CONTEST THE SPACE OF "MAN" FFS!

Many women, especially older femininsts, report having started to feel like ~trans issues~ are something that are being "forced on women" - and *exclusively* on women. The perception is that the conceptual space of "Woman" is being forced to change to accomodate trans women - rather than the bigger truth that all of gender is being widened, changed, altered, expanded - including the gender of "male" and "man". Make it clear that ~Trans~ is not something being done exclusively to women. Trans men exist. Men with vaginas exist. That the category of "Man" is undergoing as many changes as the category of "Woman" is undergoing - or rather, it should be in a fair world!

There is this vast double standard, that "Woman" has been a contested space since the Year Dot of Feminism - hell, since even before the invention of feminism, in fact this belief is part of what drove the creation of feminism to start with - that the category of "Woman" is always up for debate and requiring of definition and redefinition. In a way that the category of "Man" is not a contested concept, but seen as axiomatic and self-evident. These things are not separate - that the constant contesting and challenging of the space of "Woman" is the result of "Man" being uncontestable, the constant against which and in opposition to which "Woman" is defined and re-defined - and that these challenges and squabbles and "TERF/trans conflicts" all taking place in the contested category of "Woman" and only "Woman" actually feeds and supports and enables the categorical uncontestability of the space "Man" - which is a pillar of male supremacy.

If you want to reach feminists, do everything you can to show that the category of "Man" is as constructed and contested and as open to debate and ~trans-ing~ as the endlessly fought-over category of "Woman". That goes double if you have the authority of a name that is read as male, or if you are in any way read as "male" by the people around you. Contest maleness as much as you can. (If you're a cis man lurking on here, that means you too - talk about some men having vaginas!) Because a ton of old school feminists feel like "Womanhood" is under attack from ~penises~, in a way that "Manhood" is exempt from ever being disputed. Dispute and contest and trouble "Manhood" if you want this to look like fair play!

2) which brings us to penises. That it comes up again and again, this idea that what transphobic women and/or trans exclusionary feminists are afraid of is *penises*. I've never had a deep-level conversation of this type, where "Penis" (or "testosterone", which is the other bioessentialist fall-back) didn't turn out to be a metonym for something else. You have to understand that the conversation is almost never about the actual genitals, but about what genitals are understood to *mean*. That what most women are afraid of - terrified of, with good reason - is not penises, but male violence and male entitlement. If you don't recognise that *that* is the conversation you are really having, you just sound silly and obsessed by going on about genitals all of the time. You cannot wave away the deep female fear of male violence and male entitlement with penis-talk, in fact this often reinforces it. (Remember, Flashing is a form of sexual violence.)

For me, the tack I take on this - which I've found usually very effective - is to build solidarity, by talking about the ways in which trans people - especially trans women - are almost always far *more* exposed to male violence. Do not downplay or handwave away women's fear of cis men, but you can use *shared* fear to build empathy.

Almost all of this depends on the idea that you are actually talking to the *feminist*, in trans exclusionist feminists. (If you just use the word "terf" to obscure differences between trans exlusionist feminists, and transphobic women who aren't really particularly feminist because they are still themselves deeply invested in male supremacy and *upholding* the gender binary because they *get* something out of it, these tactics are unlikely to reach the latter at all. This is why I do make such a big deal out of not being lazy about the term, and really specifying who you are talking about, and what their motivation is!)

Sorry this is so long, and that I go over obvious stuff multiple times. I never know what is obvious to other people, and what isn't! I've read this over four times now, and it hasn't got any less contentious, but I'm going to hit post and go to bed.

I've never really questioned my gender identity until recently (I always thought I was a cis male) but over the last few months I've been wondering if I'm non-binary or genderqueer. The main thing that I'm wondering about is whether I'm NB or GQ enough to really go all the way and identify as such.

I think the main reason I'd want to do that is for what I guess you could call political reasons - I think gender is bullshit and it would be great if all that gender role stuff just went away so we didn't have separate pronouns, different clothing sections in shops etc, so I sort of want to be the change I'd like to see and step outside of all of that. In terms of what I actually do/how I present there's not much that I do or would like to do that wouldn't really be classified as 'normal' male behaviour - except for wearing makeup, which I would totally do more of if that was more accepted. I think I'd like to use they pronouns but again I'm just not sure.

Like a lot of people, I've thought that gender roles and what have you are awful for a while so I'm not sure why this is coming up for me now. It could well be because I'm asexual and a lot of the other aces I'm friends with are NB/GQ or trans, so maybe that's been giving me ideas. One of the reasons that I'm wondering whether I'm NB/GQ enough is because it's not like I've been questioning my identity since I was a teenager or anything like that.

My understanding is that nobody can really tell you that you're NB/GQ and that it's just something that you've got to work out for yourself, so if you feel that you are then that's fine. I'm not really asking for anyone to tell me what I am here but I'd be interested to hear how other people have come to realise that they don't fit in the gender binary. Also my understanding is that NB and GQ mean pretty much the same thing and when it comes to deciding which one applies it's about which label people feel more comfortable with - is that right?

imo being nonbinary for political reasons is rad as hell and u should go for it if you want to

I sympathize with the feeling of not being genderqueer enough, but the fact that it’s weighing on you at all is a pretty big hint that you’ll be happier if you start sloughing off the dead skin of your received gender

imo if ppl tell you you’re a man or a woman and you ask yourself “wait am I a man?” and get the answer “no” from yourself, congrats you’re nonbinary, here’s a coupon for a stupid haircut

silby is extremely otm

happy and exciting for your journey paolo <3