potato_head | listen up

So y'all I was thinking, right. And it seems to me like a lot of you (like all of you) avoid some of my more ranty posts. And I figure it's like, you don't agree with me but I sound like I might hunt you down and bite your face for disagreeing with me? And I won't do that. I mean, I do like debate, I really don't mind people disagreeing with me, as long as you're respectful and not patronizing about it.

(I assume none of you are going to express an opinion like that I should be checking myself into a mental health hospital for being trans or else you would not be reading my journal and getting trans cooties on your eyeballs and digital feelers? But yeah that isn't an opinion it's bigotry)

So yeah. I won't rip you apart for disagreeing, promise. Like

anobjectinspace disagrees with me sometimes and you know OBVIOUSLY HE IS WRONG AND WILL AGREE EVENTUALLY e u e but he's still alive, for the most part.

Also, I feel like I should follow this post up with a bit because it seems in retrospect like it might not have been entirely comprehensible to cis readers, because like...there's some things that I've realized almost all cis people just do not know or have any way really of knowing, and this in particular is one of the things, pertaining to that entry:

There is absolutely no way to know how dangerous a cis person might be to a trans person in a situation until they're in that situation.

It isn't this like, easy thing where if a person is generally an asshole, you know to stay away from them, and if they're generally nice, you can be assured they are to trans people as well. You can't even really guess based on other prejudices. Yeah, a homophobic person might also be transphobic, but they also might not actually be at all; and somebody with no other apparent prejudices or bigotry might be downright violent if they find out somebody they 'trusted' is trans.

I don't know exactly why this is. I just know how it effects me; basically, I can't know if someone will hurt me until they do it. And I thought at one time that after several years of friendship I would have a good handle on how a cis friend stands wrt trans stuff, but, like many, many trans people I know, I got slapped in the face with that assumption; not once, but twice, with people I thought I knew very well and who I never thought in a million years would think it's okay to start telling me how the trans community needs to adopt certain semantics to endear themselves to the cis population, or that trans people are by nature less attractive.

Being a self-proclaimed ally doesn't mark a cis person as 'safe', either. Hell, the victim-blaming, transphobic assholes I got into it with in

sf_drama - most of them called themselves 'allies'. Even cis people who really are trying to be good allies aren't necessarily educated on the issues; so many of them are operating on their assumptions, and something one trans person they know told them once, and despite their good intentions they come out with terrible shit sometimes.

(I also think I should take a moment here to point out - I'm aware I'm very privileged, as far as trans people go; I was very fortunate that my parents support me at all - and didn't kick me out! - and I'm a trans man, making me much less likely to be actually physically assaulted; and I live in an area where that would be somewhat more unlikely, on the whole. For the most part, what I'm referring to here is emotional or social injury)

So yeah. It's not that I assume all cis people are dangerous to me. It's that I just can't tell who's safe and who's not; it's not as easy as so many cis people seem to assume.

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They tend to become extremists because they all agree with each other

IME it's actually the other way around, extremists are more likely to seclude themselves. But that is admittedly limited experience :P but I'm already as much of an extremist as I can be, I think (taking into account my morals). I agree though that it's easy to surround oneself with yes-men and say it's just a matter of protecting oneself, so it's something I'm very careful about, and it's part of the reason I get involved so much as an ally for groups I'm not a part of, to help myself keep perspective.

But TBH I think it's really my extremism that come out of my learned trust issues, personally. I really don't know if that might be the case for other people, because the fact is that I associate with very few extremists. But those that I do know come from a similar social past that I do, i.e. having been very badly bullied for a very long time, with no support. Which is definitely something to think about (I'm discussing it with someone right now actually) but I don't think particularly means anything either way; it could mean that I'm still repeating patterns I learned in a different social context, or it could just mean that I've incorporated what I learned there about people's natures into my view of the world today.

But still, it feels a little insulting to be clumped in with all people of the label 'cis', since, in my experience, no one group of people is all the same. Or even remotely similar.

Is anybody doing that though? I'm fairly certain I didn't say anything to that effect, nor have heard any sentiment like that from any except violent extremists...it's very confusing to me because you're certainly not the first person I've heard express this sentiment. It seems like a lot of the time, if a minority says anything about feeling safe with regards to being around people with power over them, at least one person reads it as them all being tarred with the same brush; I also see it really frequently in feminist discussions of the 'potential rapist' concept. And it seems to happen regardless of how carefully things are worded. So I'm at a loss.

My most successful 'freak' friend had a way about him of announcing the truth calmly and without apology to those that needed to know.

How are we measuring 'success' here? I'm assuming something along the lines of confidence, apparent quality of life, and so on...but I'm also wondering if your other friends would actually agree with your evaluation of their success vis a vis his. After all, not everybody has the same goals in life...it seems impossible, to me, to try to compare how successful people have been at...hmm...living as a freak? I guess part of the problem is I'm not sure what exactly it is that he's supposed to be being successful at :P

But regardless...it's not always so cut-and-dry, as I'm sure you know. Trust me, we are all aware of that balance; finding it is one of the struggles of being trans, along with many other minorities, and it's a different place for everyone...and TBH in the case of trans people, that place will ALWAYS make SOMEONE uncomfortable. You just have to look at the 'rules' some cis people make up about how trans people should conduct themselves on dates - they all conflict. No matter whether you're always out about who you are, or choose to wait until after one date or two dates or until you get intimate - some cis person will be very uncomfortable with your choice. So - this is why I think, personally, an individual's choice as to how to address their own differences should probably be only their own business, inasmuchas it's not hurting anybody else; you can't make everyone happy, and some people's goals aren't to make anyone besides themselves happy, which personally I think is fine too as long as they don't expect to make friends easily, which I'm sure they're aware they won't.

I'm not sure all of that was actually coherent :P you've got me thinking about a lot, it's usually not a good idea for me to try and type and think at the same time.

There seems to be a small but vocal trans community that wants to turn "cis" into an insult, and of course cis people are going to sense that and dislike it. However, most of us use it as a simple descriptive term meaning "not trans." It's not a generalization about an individual. It's no different than being called white or straight (if you are those things).

There seems to be a small but vocal trans community that wants to turn "cis" into an insult,

Really? TBH I've up to this point only heard of this concept of cis as an insult from cis 'allies', so I was assuming it was just coming from discomfort of being given a label they didn't really understand. But I guess it does make sense that there would be anti-cis radical extremists out there somewhere. I tend to avoid the more hate-filled pockets of the community, so I often have no idea wtf they're saying.

But yeah, in general it's just a descriptor.

I was mainly thinking of one trans woman and her supporters on Twitter. She loved to talk about "the cisgays" who oppressed her (in retrospect, she was one of the most homophobic people I've ever encountered) and always managed to make "cis" sound like a slur. Unfortunately, there are others out there, and it's too bad ... but my sympathy for cisgender people's butthurt abut it is limited. ;-)

Ahh yeah. I wouldn't be too surprised to hear stuff like that coming out of the more homophobic trans groups. They like to spread the hate around.

but my sympathy for cisgender people's butthurt abut it is limited. ;-)

Ahahaha yeah xD

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