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

No no, last week it was the twitter CEO, this week it's the tumblr CEO..

when does twumblr get involved

wtf

https://x.com/bowwowgoodboy/status/1774917359590916149?s=20

So I did watch the new Lily Alexandre video and it's as always a good watch, a difficult one, but I thought the peroration was particularly good at... succintly expressing things I see around me, things that I feel a lot and don't know how to express.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CxiPdXuwgc

"With such a wide range of people committed to giving trans people a hard time, it can sometimes feel like the whole planet is conspiring against us. Nearly all the trans people I know are barely scraping by, struggling in ways they've done nothing to deserve, while the people working to intensify our struggling face no such stigma. A lot of people I know are withdrawing. A lot of them are coping in ways that worry me."

There's more to it than that. Lily's not saying that to be a doomer. I'm not a doomer either. The stuff she says after that is important. It's stuff I know, stuff I've known for a while, and it's important to be reminded of that, and since she says it, it's important for me to remind other people of that, in my own words this time.

The planet is not conspiring against us. I'm a longtime conspiracy theorist, but I wouldn't say that there's a conspiracy _against_ trans people at all. It's not really _about_ us at all. The kinds of shit people are saying about us, they could be saying it about anyone. The Jews or the Palestinians or Black people or, you know, anyone. We're not the first. I don't think we'll be the last, though I'd fucking love to be wrong about that. It's comforting in a way, knowing that it's not just us, knowing that trans people aren't alone in this, but it's also frustrating. Alexandre quotes Bari Weiss, who's Jewish, parroting flat out anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, just with the word "trans" substituted in for "Jewish".

And it's not... I mean, someone like Weiss is exceptional in a lot of ways. Not, like, everybody is going to be as blind to the reality of things as Weiss clearly is. It happens more than I'd like, though, and it's so dispiriting. I am withdrawing. I am pretty withdrawn, because it just hits me so hard whenever I see someone acting like that. I don't really want to know just how _many_ people there are who'd do the same thing, under those circumstances. And do I blame them personally? Not for the most part. Weiss, yeah, sure, I'll blame her personally. Like I said. She's exceptional. Most people? No, I don't blame them. But it breaks my heart. Every time. I can't bear to see it. Even if that's only, like, one in ten - and I think that's a pretty low estimate, one in ten - it breaks my heart.

I've said this a couple of times, but it's good to be here lately. It's good to just... talk to cis people and know that y'all have my back. That none of you are against us, that if you were, you wouldn't fucking be here, one way or another. I value that a lot. It is easy for me to feel, sometimes, that I'm in a bubble, that I live in a different world from everyone else, that it could all just come crashing in, that we could all just be _gone_, and we would be... like what frogbs said about people who died from COVID.

even now it's like these people are barely even remembered. just people who existed in some sort of "before time"

And, you know. If it's them, it could be us. It could be all of us. That scares me. I hope... I hope that fear is groundless. I still, haha, I still have a little bit of hope left, I guess. Even when I feel like I don't.

if anyone's in or near glasgow there's a protest at 6.30 today in george square. the local nhs board are due to announce a ban on hrt and blockers for trans youth

instagram.com/transprotestglasgow/

gotta say things aren't looking too great over here on terf island rn, and i can't see the situation improving any time soon :(

I feel for you. The utter bleakness is just overwhelming sometimes, particularly when it comes to things in the UK. Not that things in the US are all beer and skittles... people keep saying "2024 is an election year"... I don't know what that's supposed to mean and I don't want to know. I stopped following politics years ago... it's incredibly clear to me that whatever happens isn't up to me... at least in the US _some_ people will support us. I don't feel like I can talk about the reality of it, though, people turn away, they can't look at what's happening to us. I can't blame them. Sometimes I just, you know, feel like our lives are the abyss people avoid staring into...

Right now I can't bring myself to hope for a better world. I don't feel like... I don't feel like I have the _right_. That's just right now, though. How I feel changes a lot.

Ava I'm not going to be able to make it tonight - it was just too last minute for me, I got hit with an unexpected busy spell at work and I have a funeral tomorrow morning so I had to stay late. I'm with you there in spirit though, this is dismal.

i'm sorry for your loss, hope the funeral goes as well as possible, and thanks for your kind words

i have purposely avoided this cass bullshit cos most of my trans pals would seem to rather talk about other stuff (nerdy music chiefly) and i suspect it'd be too predictable and upsetting. like, it's obvious she's a GC plant right? and yet the guardian is rabbitting on about how finally science is prevailing. bullying is the last thing these people have left; you have to have faith these are terminal throes of an embittered older generation surely

i've been avoiding most of the media coverage too, it's deeply depressing and i just can't deal with it. i've been told that the telegraph used the phrase 'evil trans ideology' recently. even for a right wing paper that kinda shocks me. but not too much

and i hope you're right re the older generation thing. hopefully things will be better for us in a couple of decades or so

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.