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

just to jump slightly backward to nicole and Neanderthal on pronouns upthread: yes it is new and will take practice.

But honestly it is really not that hard for well-meaning people to navigate this in a well-meaning way. As long as they're truly, y'know, well-meaning.

Currently I am navigating this because my eldest (14) is nonbinary they/them. So are many of their friends. I will likely mess up. But the guiding principle is just to... not be a dick, I guess? The people who are having the most trouble with it tend to already not be on board with the whole project. And of course if you're not on board with the whole project, your motivation to practice and be a non-dick is lessened.

For me, if I try to relate an anecdote about what Ash said to Jinx and how Sky reacted, well, I'm going to be using their names a lot more than I otherwise would. A sentence like "Jax said that Sky and Ash are going to Sky's house" both avoids misgendering, and avoids potential confusion between singular and plural.

the "not being on board" is key, if you support your trans or non-binary friends, you're not going to fly off the handle if you get corrected when you screw up. but if your viewpoint is "I'm really, really trying hard to do this bullshit for you, but as much as I love you, I think this is fucking stupid", you get angry when corrected because you think you shouldn't have to do it anyway.

dating while trans can be a gauntlet of managing different kinds of transphobia; i feel grateful to the few ppl who have been attracted to me without making me feel weird about their attraction. that's about as far as i care to have an opinion on the matter which is otherwise really dense and confusing to me

Stating the position is in itself an act of pressuring people into having sex with people they don't want to have sex with.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

vtc, did u just not read the next sentence in my post or

cis people have long portrayed trans people as either punchlines or disgusting untouchables, often both. this absolutely informs who and who isn’t considered attractive collectively and individually.

this doesn’t mean that any given person must correctively fuck trans people, or that every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, but it does mean that we should all (trans people included, sometime especially so) examine and correct how those anti-trans biases affect our worldviews

now, if someone comes along and points this out, and someone else responds by loudly and publicly refusing to do so, rallies a bunch of cis people in support of their brave stand against being “pressured” to fuck trans people, and uses that organization to lobby against equal public services for trans people, then yes, they’re doing transphobia!

given that this is one of the main ways that anti-trans organizations have gained power and influence, and that that power and influence has led to very real material restrictions on our individual lives and collective well-being, you can perhaps forgive us for reacting to someone coming along taking the “just asking questions, let’s all be reasonable here” tone about “simply” not wanting to have sex with trans people comes off as in direct service of transphobia.

don’t want to fuck us? don’t fuck us! a billion tweets can’t make you. just keep it to yourself for god’s sake, it’s being used by more hateful people than you to hurt us.

last two posts otm

Neanderthal otm

nicole, I don't know if it helps you to hear this, but current 14-year-olds are apparently woke as fuck. I know I'm in a socially liberal bubble but still. If I were to judge by my child's school and my child's friends, everyone is either queer or queer-positive. And they appear to view trans inclusion (including respecting pronouns) as an integral part of LGBTQ+ acceptance. Their teachers and school administrations have been supportive as well.

I don't think you're in a bubble, it's just how people are as people tend to be supportive to each other. The terfs and other bigots have built bubbles for themselves.

nicole that post of yours is fucking outstanding

i'm also wowed by nicole's posts itt and elsewhere. i don't have anything of import to say about this other than i'm also mystified about 1) the timing of this wave 2) the uk axis and 3) the appeal of transphobia generally. threats to male supremacy in the u.s. i understand, but this seems different.

No. Conflating abstract discussions about ppl's preferences with coercion makes no sense to me - like if we were having a discussion about, for instance, whether it's racist not to be attracted to ppl of certain ethnicities, I think there'd definitely be ppl arguing that. Casting this as "lesbians pressured into having sex with trans women", as the BBC article did, strongly misrepresents the issue at hand - any casual reader browsing the headline will obviously interpret this as women being personally coerced into having sex, not some philosophical disagreement. Which of course is great for the gender critical crowd because their concerns all boil down to thinking trans ppl are sexually predatory anyway.

You don't think hearing people say "women who don't want to have sex with people with penises are transphobic" puts pressure on women who don't want to have sex with people with penises to have sex with people with penises? If we're talking about lesbians specifically, I think it's undeniable that this puts pressure on them; as part of the LGBT community, they would understandably care deeply about what other people in that community think about them and how other people think they feel about other members of that community.

I don't think saying "people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities are racist" puts the same kind of pressure on those people, because people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities probably don't care if other people think they're racist. Or, if they do, it's fair to put that pressure on them, because it's likely that they are motivated by racism. Whereas not wanting to have sex with people with penises is likely due to...not being sexually attracted to people with penises. And it's wrong to intentionally make someone feel bad about that.

I think the BBC headline would have been more accurate if it had said that it's not just trans women who are pressuring lesbians into having sex with trans women. Plenty of people who do this aren't trans.

Nicole, I know you don't think every person who doesn’t want to sleep with trans people is a bigot, and I'm sorry if I gave you that impression. I'm talking about people who DO think that: people who think having a "sexual preference for certain/specific types of genitals" is inherently bigoted, such as the people Simon and j. mentioned in the other thread, and many people on Twitter and TikTok. These people definitely exist, and they are in the wrong. These are the people who disagree with you, and I'm saying it would be better if they felt the same way you did on this matter.

people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities probably don't care if other people think they're racist.

massive stretch here

If I were nicole, I might just repost my last post, because you have paid attention to no part of it whatsoever.

I don't think saying "people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities are racist" puts the same kind of pressure on those people, because people who don't want to have sex with people of certain ethnicities probably don't care if other people think they're racist. Or, if they do, it's fair to put that pressure on them, because it's likely that they are motivated by racism. Whereas not wanting to have sex with people with penises is likely due to...not being sexually attracted to people with penises. And it's wrong to intentionally make someone feel bad about that.

You're creating an artificial divide here where ethnicity is something you choose to be attracted to or not, while genitalia is just something you either are or are not. In fact both those preferences are molded by societal standards, from a very young age and to an extent that it's quite difficult to grasp for any "pure" attraction that could predate this. Considering how societies sexualize certain ethnicities and make others seem sexually threatening or unattractive, it's pretty safe to say that not every person who has preferences in this department "wouldn't care" what ppl thought of that or is even bigoted.

I think (to echo Nicole here) that it's important for all of us to reflect on how our preferences have been shaped this way. At the end of the day, your preferences are your preferences, and no one has to fuck anyone they don't want to. But ppl who go around making a giant noise out of how they are not attracted to group x or y are being at best insensitive and at worst pretty clearly bigoted, whether that's regarding race or the cis-trans spectrum.

(cis-trans spectrum a bad choice of words there; obv loudly proclaiming you're not attracted to cis ppl doesn't carry the same baggage, much as saying the same regarding white ppl doesn't in most parts of the globe)

You're creating an artificial divide here where ethnicity is something you choose to be attracted to or not, while genitalia is just something you either are or are not. In fact both those preferences are molded by societal standards, from a very young age and to an extent that it's quite difficult to grasp for any "pure" attraction that could predate this.

To be honest, I’m not totally sure I grasp what you’re saying here, and I’m not entirely sure if I made myself clear in the post you’re responding to. I’m not saying everyone who isn’t attracted to certain ethnicities has explicitly chosen not to be attracted to those ethnicities. But I am saying that if you realize you are not attracted to certain ethnicities, and you hear people saying people who aren’t attracted to certain ethnicities are bigoted, and this bothers you because you don’t think of yourself as bigoted, you can choose to reflect on how societal standards have shaped your preference (e.g. by making other ethnicities seem threatening), and generally this will result in the preference changing.

I think you would agree with all of that. However, you can’t equate preferences for ethnicities with preferences for genitalia just because both are influenced to some extent by societal standards. There is an actual distinction between the two, because in the case of genital preference we don’t know if the same reflection process generally results in the preference changing. While some people can change their preference, a lot of people feel very strongly that they can’t change their preference, and there’s no reason not to believe them. So putting pressure on them to change has the power to do harm. And saying genital preferences are transphobic does put pressure on lesbians to change.

it's important for all of us to reflect on how our preferences have been shaped this way

I think it's fine to say this, but this isn't what people in the BBC article were reacting to. Again, the problem is that other people are saying something different, which is that genital preferences ARE transphobic. It sounds like you don't agree that genital preferences are transphobic, but when lesbians react negatively to people telling them genital preferences are transphobic, you're saying they should keep it to themselves.

- The survey the BBC article was based on was conducted by a specifically transphobic organisation and answered by a self-selecting sample of transphobes. These are the people you are aligning yourself with.

- Conflating "social pressure to not be a bigot" with "individual pressure to sleep with someone" is textbook moral panic and completely vile.

- Why are you assuming all trans women have penises?? I know transphobes are completely obsessed with genitalia but this is very strange.

Also I feel like I should say that as a moderator I am absolutely going to ban transphobes from the board whether they get 51 FPs or not. I haven't run this by any other mods, but honestly I'd rather get stripped of my privs and yelled at by every single member of the board than let it stand.

not yelling, cheering

It is often tougher than you would think to know where someone is on the spectrum from "just asking questions", through recycling GC talking points, to outright hate. VTC is dancing just on the side where I'm furious but don't feel like action is reasonable. But I'm putting it out there that I'm not going to tolerate a whole lot of bullshit on this matter.

hear, hear

I am not sure why people think they have the right to tell other people what they should or shouldn't be attracted to, and to tell them their natural attraction is immoral (which is what they are doing, since transphobia is immoral) and/or due to a set of social conventions (which seems no different to me than saying being gay is a choice; one can choose different social conventions). I will say, as a gay man who spends a lot of time in an extremely conservative Middle Eastern country, that the arguments I am hearing from certain trans people are not very different from the one's I hear from conservative religious people who also have a problem with my genital preference.

Luckily, the trans people in my life just want to live their lives and aren't interested in telling people what to be attracted to.

no one is saying the preferences have to change upon reflection. it's fine if some cis person is ultimately sexually incompatible with a trans person they had been attracted to, even after reflection. what trans people do object to is how any suggestion that people reflect at all on how societal transphobia has shaped people's preferences, or a trans woman calling herself a lesbian, or even just "trans women are women" is then equated with sexual coercion. no one's position is "cis people have to have sex with trans people they aren't attracted to out of some ridiculous guilt", but transphobes love to twist things to present it that way in order to attack trans people.

there surely are some trans people who do indeed have extreme unnuanced 'if you have any genital preferences you are transphobic' positions but that's very much a minority position, not at all reasonable, and no one here is arguing for it, and even then it isn't the same as the transphobe's straw man of "cis people have to have sex with trans people". the bbc article is extremely bad faith & i do not trust it to be representative of anyone.

ultimately 'genital preference' discourse is just a bad faith cudgel wielded by transphobes & i don't think it's at all a useful lens to approach the issue of sexual biases against trans people.

people raising the issue of 'genital preferences' are largely either transphobes trying to suggest that trans people are coercing cis people into unwanted sex, or trans people very very clumsily attempting to express the 'preferences are shaped by society' thing (and they should be discouraged from doing so for how obviously clumsy it is!), but it's much much more often the former.

I don't disagree with you, but I think the "genital preference is transphobic" argument of the last few posts has been in response to someone upthread mentioning such takes on Twitter and TikTok where of course you do get a lot of un-nuanced takes. (Also the argument that it is transphobic to have a genital preference falls to pieces when one simply inverts the stating of the preference: instead of saying what you do prefer, you say what you don't. I don't like vaginas, whether on a man or a woman.)

And I do think that gays and lesbians are especially sensitive to these un-nuanced takes because we have had our sexualities (sometimes literally) policed our whole lives, and this just seems like another attack and from a corner where one would not expect it.

There is an actual distinction between the two, because in the case of genital preference we don’t know if the same reflection process generally results in the preference changing.

This is true of all other preferences too! Ethnicity, body shape, whatever.

It sounds like you don't agree that genital preferences are transphobic, but when lesbians react negatively to people telling them genital preferences are transphobic, you're saying they should keep it to themselves.

Consider transphobia as a societal force that impacts us all to some degree or other, as opposed to "specific bigotry from bad bad people", and I think you might start to understand what ppl are saying in the examples you cited?

Why are you assuming all trans women have penises?? I know transphobes are completely obsessed with genitalia but this is very strange.

fwiw emily that's OTM and I'm sorry for engaging w/ the debate without pushing back against that notion.

"as a gay man" my eyes nearly fell out of my head at the mention of the phrase 'genital preference' and "as a gay man" I'm familiar with gays posting 'no Asians, sorry just a preference' on their Grindr profiles and "as a gay man" I'm quite familiar that desire is always already complexly political and whenever it's presented otherwise there's always somebody on the receiving end of something and, well, look what's going on...!

Familiar* with what ? The fact? The reality? The concept? The notion? The history? I guess there's a reason my mind passed over it.

nicole at 8:08 27 Oct 21
practice! I’ve had a few people change pronouns in my life and just taking ten minutes a day to repeat to yrself a short script like “Their name is x. Their pronouns are they/them. They like x and it’s fun to hang out with them” or w/e works pretty well ime, and it doesn’t seem to occur to a lot of ppl

This is really sad and enraging.

got told to leave a women’s toilet last night (again) which was personally distressing obviously, but also like. could this country please pull it together ?!

— michael wave: gourd boy edition (@SzMarsupial) October 30, 2021

“as a gay man" my eyes nearly fell out of my head at the mention of the phrase 'genital preference' and "as a gay man" I'm familiar with gays posting 'no Asians, sorry just a preference' on their Grindr profiles and "as a gay man" I'm quite familiar that desire is always already complexly political and whenever it's presented otherwise there's always somebody on the receiving end of something and, well, look what's going on...!

― plax (ico), Sunday, October 31, 2021 9:57 AM

I don’t really understand your post, but the parallel between racial preferences doesn’t make sense. If one writes “no [x race]” that is racist because a person is of a certain race by... being part of that race. But genital preferences don’t work like that, unless you define gender by genitals, in which case you’re the transphobe. So since vaginas belong to no gender specifically, you can’t say preference for or against them is transphobic, since trans, cis, and non-binary people can all have vaginas.

if a hunky trans man were into me i'd definitely do them. that is all.

"genital preferences" are really fucking idiotic the more you think about it. but i don't think this new poster is really interested in doing that (thinking).

The more I thought about it the more I realized saying it is transphobic makes no sense. You however have not made any argument. But again please explain to me how saying "I don't like x" when x can belong to trans, cis, and NB people is transphobic. If you mean saying that "I don't like men who have x" is transphobic, that is not a genital preference. That is a genital preference plus a gender preference. But gender preferences aren't transphobic either since trans people can be any gender.

i really appreciate the posters in this thread who are not showing their ass

oh so now it's ok to have ass preferences

lmao

Lol harbl

It needs not be something as charged as trans-sexuality, but anytime you make a big thing out of sexually excluding a physical part of a person, well you are just being rude, no matter what it is. Everyone can have preferences, very few people care about them.

And woman get chastised by those same dudes for sometimes having a preference for tall men.

Anyway we can banhammer these new users who seem to just be here to be transphobes?

dating while trans can be a gauntlet of managing different kinds of transphobia; i feel grateful to the few ppl who have been attracted to me without making me feel weird about their attraction. that's about as far as i care to have an opinion on the matter which is otherwise really dense and confusing to me

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Friday, October 29, 2021 12:45 PM (three days ago) bookmarkflaglink

reading this back, the degree to which the talking points being advocated itt by kafka_keba and VTC made me commit weird internalized transphobia on myself makes me think they're not advocating them in good faith ha ha

yah i mean idk if legitmate concerns CAPTCHA and co are sockpuppets but i could do without their poisonous sophistry either way

CAPTCHA has been posting since 2008 and mostly stayed under the radar until....this performance of theirs.

the long game

ok well the other guy literally has one post about borges wife from a couple days before arriving to offer us his 'insights' into 'genital preference'

Actually I had an account a long time ago circa when Momus used to post here and then just read the forums and then decided to get a new account. Anyway no one has actually told me why what I said was incorrect and frankly I don't think my comments are any more rude than other people's comments telling me that my natural desires are some sort of phobia.

Speaking of transphobes...

"In my defense, I used to post here when [*just picking person at random here*] the guy who famously bullied Wendy Carlos with a transphobic song did"

i understand the need to believe that trans hate will fade away organically but it didn't happen organically in the first place so i see no reason to think it's a demographic issue

the best hope would be a coalition with every other target of the establishment's moral panics over the last several decades the problem is everyone still around is traumatised and demoralised and suspicious of one other to varying degrees and in the worst cases have joined in this time out of fear or desire for leverage or revenge or whatever

if this is a conspiracy to disempower feminist and queer movements from the inside and provide cover for the crimes of cis men they really couldn't have done a better job

if it actually is something like that few participants are actually aware of it which reflects poorly on their understanding of their own history considering how many times gays and/or feminists have allied themselves with the right and been destroyed as a result (even if they felt temporarily empowered at first)

I know most of the people doing this are straight with nominal if any connection to actual feminist movements but I never expected better of those people anyway

the best hope would be a coalition with every other target of the establishment's moral panics over the last several decades the problem is everyone still around is traumatised and demoralised and suspicious of one other to varying degrees and in the worst cases have joined in this time out of fear or desire for leverage or revenge or whatever

right, it's always been a key tool in the colonialist/capitalist playbook - divide the opposition, pit them against each other - it's the guiding principle behind corporate social media. unfortunately it is really effective, at least in the medium term. not only does marginalization and oppression serve to pit oppressed groups against each other, it also causes tremendous conflict within marginalized groups. it's one of the reasons i'm thinking of getting the fuck out of portland. even those of us who have some small amount of financial resources, those resources a drop in the bucket. it's not enough to make meaningful change in even the life of one person, given the forces we're up against. i learned that one the hard way. getting adequate systemic resources and ending systemic oppression will never happen under capitalism, but at the same time we're too isolated and marginalized to overthrow capitalist oppression. by the time capitalism does in fact collapse, what'll be left in its wake are heavily traumatized and marginalized communities constantly at each other's throats. i don't really have any hope for a better future. i'm just trying to have the best present i can.

if this is a conspiracy to disempower feminist and queer movements from the inside and provide cover for the crimes of cis men they really couldn't have done a better job

if it actually is something like that few participants are actually aware of it which reflects poorly on their understanding of their own history considering how many times gays and/or feminists have allied themselves with the right and been destroyed as a result (even if they felt temporarily empowered at first)

I know most of the people doing this are straight with nominal if any connection to actual feminist movements but I never expected better of those people anyway

― Left, Saturday, April 20, 2024 6:53 AM (two hours ago)

lily alexandre's video on the topic actually addresses these points really well imo

i understand the need to believe that trans hate will fade away organically but it didn't happen organically in the first place so i see no reason to think it's a demographic issue

― Bitchin Doutai (Noodle Vague)

well, it's more complicated than that. it _didn't_ happen organically, true. cisgender ideology, however, has been a key component of hegemonic christian colonialism. it systemically eradicated queerness and anything that didn't conform to their ludicrous idea of the gender binary.

the thing to understand is that it _failed_. i grew up in an age where the cisgender agenda had achieved total success. the only way to survive as a trans person was to "pass" - to eradicate one's own transness and spend one's life conforming to their gender norms. if such a hegemonic norm was truly sustainable, then we wouldn't have all of this overt bigotry now. transphobes are fighting a battle they've already won. it doesn't matter how many times they "win" - they cannot truly eradicate transness. trans and queer ancestors fought hard and fiercely against their own erasure for decades, and if people are fighting against us harder today, i truly believe they're fighting for a doomed cause.

because transphobia is based entirely on enforced ignorance. the only way their ideology works is if people believe, like i believed, that there was no other choice, no other option. it's utterly demoralizing that transphobia is entrenched in every single institution of power in the uk, all the media, both major political parties. and it is effective. people listen to the crap that comes out of organs of power more than they listen to their own children. monstrous. absolutely monstrous, this level of cruelty.

they have to _keep doing it_, is the thing. always and for all time. they can never stop. we're everywhere. we walk among them. we're their own children, their own _parents_. it's so much work, and the more of us there are, the harder it is. i know the cost. i know the toll it takes to hate like that, because they taught me to do that to myself. i carried their hatred for them for a long time, and i gave it back. it's theirs now.

and that doesn't _fix_ anything. for trans people it still fucking sucks. they hurt us, we suffer, we die, too often and too soon. and them? ok, they die alone, unloved and unmourned.

the reason we win is that they can just _walk the fuck away_ at any time. i've seen it, again and again. if i could walk away, you know, from all this. if i could walk away from me. i absolutely fucking would. in a heartbeat. if i had any kind of a choice at all i would absolutely not choose this. i can't. this is who i am. this is who we are. my life runs deeper than their hatred, signifies more than their fury.

do i think a better world will come from that? not really, no. the cruel of this world - and there will always be more of them - will find new people to hate and kill. they always do.