listen up

[potato_head]

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.

Comments

[poto-heart.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I definitely agree that there's similar thoughts in other marginalized groups. It's especially visible in feminism, because women are caught socially between being told that if they trust men, they deserve to be victimized; but if they're not nice enough to strange men, they're being cold, mean, jaded, etc. and there's just this expectation that a marginalized person should be able to know, just by looking at someone else, whether or not they're a threat.

And I can understand...feeling a bit dismayed, to realize people suddenly see you as a threat, when you're not the kind of person who would do that to someone; after all, I am FtM, and suddenly I am a threat to a lot of women. But understanding it myself makes it easy for me to confront and deal with; and as you say, allies have to remember it's about those they want to help. So even when it does make me feel uncomfortable, sometimes, to realize I'm being seen as potentially dangerous - that's nowhere near as uncomfortable as the woman who's being cautious of me probably feels - and it's my responsibility to put her at ease, whatever that might mean in that situation; nobody owes me their trust.

And there's no problem with going off-point, tangents can be illuminating :P