as small as a world and as large as alone

8:23am April 14, 2015

bittersnurr:

slashmarks replied to your post: “wheekwonk replied to your post: “Fun fact: everyone I know is offended…”:

queer is gender-related, too

yeah but a decent chunk of people would consider a DFAB NB person who doesn’t have any social dysphoria and can’t transition and is mostly in the closet too privileged to count so it doesn’t matter.

All the identities I have under the umbrella are ultra-passing-privilege ones so I can’t use that word and honestly a large amount of people wouldn’t want me in their spaces period 

Can I just say how much I loathe the thing where DFAB but other than standard gender has come to mean “not trans enough” and “acceptable target”?

All I did was say that DFAB + trans is not the same thing as trans man or trans masculine, and I got so much bullshit insulting stuff in reply including the presumption (untrue) that I’d just been called out by a trans woman.

All I was doing was noting that trans people (trans men as much as trans women, and some nonbinary people too) were starting more and more to use “DFAB trans” as a shortcut for “trans man” or"trans masculine", and that this wasn’t okay.

For my trouble, people assumed I’d been called out and was seeking a way out of that callout (nope), and that I was seeking to deny that transmisogyny existed (no, and I hadn’t even mentioned it) or that I benefited from it (of frigging course I do, but if I were going to deny something like that, I would art least, you know, mention it by name).

I am DFAB.

I am genderless. Not as a political statement either. It’s just the best word for my relationship to gender.

If I could, I would always go by sie / hir – I discovered and secretly longed after those pronouns on Lost Souls MUD as a young teenager.

If I could, I would have X on all ID that required gender.

If I could, I would go by Mx.

If I could, there are a number of body modifications I dare not talk about in public because they don’t conform to anything I’ve ever heard of, some may not be physically possible yet, and they’ve existed as the body I have in dreams ever since I’ve had a body in dreams.

I am not a man, trans or otherwise. If I were, I wouldn’t be genderless.

I am not masculine, trans or otherwise. If I were, I wouldn’t be genderless.

I think it is up to each individual trans person how much they want or even need access to places designed for their assigned gender. In many cases, this is survival. This can change over time, as well. This does not make them any less the gender they really are. It should not make them pariahs in the trans community. This. Is. About. Survival. Anyone who can’t grasp the survival aspect of this issue, and who instead makes it into a “is this person trans enough?” thing or a “is this person making it hard for other trans people” thing, doesn’t get it. There are and have always Ben and always will be trans women, trans feminine people, and other DMAB trans people (including genderless and nonbinary), who exist primarily in places designed for cis men (including gender-atypical men, but still cis men). And trans men, trans masculine people, and other DFAB trans people (including genderless and nonbinary) who exist primarily in places designed for cis women. I’ve seen it, I’ve studied my history. This won’t and shouldn’t go away. The fact that it has been horribly abused in transphobic and/or transmisogynistic ways does not mean it always has to be like this, it means some people have taken horrible advantage of existing power structures to hurt and kill trans people, mostly trans women and trans feminine people.

But I should not have to insert a lengthy disclaimer demonstrating my comprehension of the background situation (hint: I usually have more in-depth knowledge than my accusers) in order to avoid accusations of transmisogyny, every time I want to say “Hey, people like me exist and aren’t what you think we are.”

You wouldn’t believe what I went through last time I said that DFAB trans doesn’t mean male. You’d think I was out murdering people, rather than trying to make people like me less invisible in the one community we should be able to get help from.

But nope, we are a punchline at best and an instant call-out (even when we’ve done absolutely nothing wrong, beyond perhaps misread a social situation HAVE I MENTIONED I’M AUTISTIC AND THIS IS A REAL THING NOT AN EXCUSE?!) and mass social shunning by the communities we depend upon for survival, at worst.

Oh yeah and just because people even meds this up: genderless people are not all our even mostly DFAB. Not that I’ve met anyway. And even if we were, it would not be acceptable to use this to turn us into a joke or question our reality all while pretending to have the moral high ground.

And nobody. Nobody. Gets the moral high ground just because of their real or presumed oppression status. Pretending you do, does make you a jerk, though, and someone I will never trust unless you show clear and consistent signs of changing. You don’t know or care the damage you do to people whose identities you don’t understand, and that makes you a danger to me and anyone like me whether you’ll admit it or not.

This doesn’t just go for gender. This goes for any set of oppressed identities where the actual dynamics of oppression and privilege are complicated as hell, but everyone wants to pretend it’s simple. See also: disability politics, “verbal” vs. “nonverbal” autistic people, etc.

30 notes