I'm an incorrigibly geeky transman with a love for neuropsychopharmacology, cacti (or plants and botany in general), weird music, spiders (and other cute animals), experimental film, might and magic, daggerfall, pokemon, and math (especially when symmetries are involved).
Proband is 20, female, white of Ashkenazi Jewish descent
Proband presents with extensive segmental hypopigmentation
(not following the lines of Blaschko)
Facies characterized by small upturned nose, anteverted nares
short philtrum, tented upper lip
and upslanted palpebral fissures.
Digit anomalies include mild fifth finger clinodactyly
extensive joint laxity in upper extremities
and partial simple bilateral syndactyly of the second and third toes.
Autistic features, normal intelligence.
I just read Ann Cvetkovich’s An Archive of Feelings, which is really interesting and is getting me into trauma theory but also has gross stuff like lengthy discussion of Mich Fest without any acknowledgment that Mich Fest is transmisogynistic and pretty reductive discussion of how transness relates to the butch/femme dynamic in Stone Butch Blues.
But it’s mostly about archives and history and witnessing, and that stuff I love. Cvetkovich talks about various narratives of care, work, and witnessing by lesbian women involved in caring for people with AIDS during the 1980s. It reminds me of being a teenager and watching other trans teenagers die or almost die. Witnessing, communal trauma, sometimes discussed, mostly not, only discussed in certain spaces, only speakable in the most dryly academic or disproportionately rhetorical of ways.
I just have no idea how to talk about this stuff in public space at all. I think it’s murder and I think it’s premeditated murder and I don’t know where or how I should be mourning it or raging against it or avenging it.
I think that when white trans guys take up space in TDOR it’s this kind of murder they’re trying to talk about, but they can’t name it because at best everyone’s decided to pretend that it isn’t murder. At worst, everyone’s decided to pretend that trans teenagers are not dying or going through traumatic mental health related near death experiences. So white trans guys appropriate something else as though it had to do with them. And it’s a racist transmisogynist disaster.
This post is a cry for assistance? Help me think?
[preemptive apologies about hijacking the post to make it all about what happened to me but I am still trying to make sense of this experience and am really glad that there is public acknowledgement that this shit happens? and maybe if enough individual people share our adventures in undeath then we can find solutions that will help us all?]
To clarify: this post is about trans suicides induced by external denial of validation/resources/autonomy, right?
Cause if so, then that interpretation makes SO MUCH SENSE re what happened to me. It’s so clarifying to suddenly see it as, yes, this was attempted murder. But then it opens up a lot of new questions. For instance idk if it’s even right to call an action “(attempted) murder” (in this informal context; not getting into legal definitions here) when the agent does not believe it will kill or even harm the person affected. Alternatively, one could view the agent as cis society as a whole, which seems fitting but then wtf do you do on an individual level? How do you stop people from being murdered by parents/family/society through a denial of any transition-related resources? Greater access to informed consent programs, free legal aid, stuff like that maybe? But I was not lacking in things like that, and I still wound up in the hospital. And I’m sure I’m not alone in that experience. Preventing abusive family dynamics? Mine isn’t the typical household referred to by that phrase, and like 90% of the battle is getting myself to believe the dynamic was abusive at all (which I gather is a very common thing for people who have suffered abuse, esp. emotional abuse). Maybe the only solution that would universally cover cases like this would be a wider support network for trans youth outside of family, outside of conventional structures. That is probably a flawed idea in some way or other too, but I can’t find any holes in it at the moment.
UPDATE: some words from the inimitable missdorotheabrooke:
“When the extermination of an essential identity leads someone to kill themselves, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to call it murder.
I’d call it murder if you gaslit someone so thoroughly that they came to believe that chugging bleach was part of a balanced breakfast.”
Being a trans hooker is hard work these days. Not only do you have to navigate a potentially dangerous work environment, try to stay out of the criminal justice system, possibly deal with being HIV+, often live precariously without immigration status in the country you work in, worry about violence and harassment from other sex workers, and deal with a society that puts so much stigma onto your profession that you might not be able to get stable housing, you also have to hear just about every non-sex working trans person alternately use your existence as a political pawn in their campaigns for middle-class privileges (often called “rights”) and condemn you for either being a victim or making the movement look bad. As I said, it’s hard work.
Here are some of the dumbass things you’re probably going to hear regularly when you enter non-sex working trans spaces, especially trans activist spaces (and these activists will, of course, lament the lack of involvement from sex workers in their efforts).
Sex work is perfectly fine as a choice, but we need to talk about how survival sex work and “trafficking” are hurting our community!
What they’re actually saying here is that sex work is fine if you have an MA in Women’s Studies and work in queer feminist porn (which they can happily jerk off to without feeling like bad feminists). These same people usually have only a tenuous grasp on the concept of trafficking, probably don’t have any sex workers in their close circle of friends (unless they have the aforementioned MA in Women’s Studies). They are quick to become angry if you suggest that coercive sex work is actually rare, statistically, or that you chose street sex work because it made sense for your life at the time.
All sex work is survival sex work, in exactly the same way that I could describe all jobs at McDonald’s as survival food service jobs.
I wish the media would stop making it look like we’re all hookers!
I actually hear this as: you sex workers are making the rest of us look bad! How will my parents/grandmother/best friend/dog ever accept me if they think that I’m a HOOKER?
Let’s be real for a minute. Media representations focusing on a single stereotype suck for every oppressed or underrepresented group. That’s totally fair. What’s not fair is when the rest of the community backlashes against this by trying to distance themselves entirely from those represented by the stereotype. At the end of the day, I don’t care if the fact that I and a lot of my friends are or were sex workers makes your grandmother uncomfortable. What I care about is the fact that sex work is still illegal in so many countries, leading to more violence, stigma, and murders of trans and cis sex workers, yet there’s been little effort by mainstream trans (or queer) organizations to help sex worker organizations fight for their rights. Nevermind that our entire movement in North America was founded by sex workers. Do the names Silvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson mean anything to you?
Trans Day of Remembrance is about the murders of transgender people simply for being transgender.
This happens a lot. I try to come from a place of compassion when responding to this, but my first thought is usually “You must be new here.” Trans activists will be more than willing to “fight for your rights” as long as you’re dead and they can list you on their TDOR list. Most of the organizations that hold TDOR events, especially those on college campuses (organized by the army of Aydyns), won’t mention that you were a sex worker. They won’t mention that you were murdered while doing sex work. They won’t mention sex work when they speak at the event about how hard it is to be a white, male, queer, trans University student. Won’t somebody please think of how hard that is for them?!
I am often the only person in the room at trans organizing events who has sex work experience. I know that I am there because I hold a position within the community that is seen as important and because I’m a former sex worker, rather than a current sex worker. The trans men in the room (who inevitably make up 90% of those in attendance) will often ask me, together or in private, how they can make the space more accessible to trans women and to trans sex workers. And I think about the things that they say about sex work, the way that they treat having their cis femme girlfriends in the room as being “inclusive of women’s perspectives,” and the fact that almost all of them either have degrees or are students. And I just smile say “I really don’t know.”
relevant to what I’m about to post
(Source: transfeminism)
(Source: warminvention)
Any suggestions for appropriate trolling?
Like, even from people that are fucking awesome about everything else.
It never seems to cross peoples minds to be inclusive towards trans women.
It never seems to cross peoples minds to acknowledge trans women.
It never seems to cross peoples minds that without inclusive and acknowledging statements, trans women need to assume that we aren’t wanted.
We NEED to do this because we are tired as fuck of assuming that we are being included.
We are tired of coming into women’s groups and being victimized and abused.
We are tired of going to rape crisis centers and being turned away because our existence is triggering.
We are tired of wanting a safe space and then being told WE are the rapists, the deceivers, the monsters, and the child molesters.
We are tired of being the punchline and the joke. The fetish object and “best of both worlds” so long as we’re gone by morning.
Never mind the fact that many of us are victims of rape.
That many of us have dealt with child abuse.
That many of us have been physically assaulted.
That all of us live and deal with the constant deceptive nature of cis people.
We NEED to assume we aren’t wanted. Because the whole wide world is telling us we’re trash and we can’t be arsed to assume that you actually meant to include us when you said fucking nothing.
We don’t have the fucking luxury to assume that we are being included.
So yeah…
Make it damn clear that you want us around.
Make it clear that you won’t put up with transmisogyny.
Make it clear that you view us as women. That you view us as fucking people.
I’d like to see some fucking solidarity, but I wonder if this will even be reblogged?
And if it is reblogged I wonder how many people that aren’t trans women will do so?
I’m honestly not betting much, so I guess we’ll see.
I haven’t seen a single trans person deny that anti-abortion laws are often rooted in misogyny. I really haven’t. We’re genuinely not asking you to ignore this. However, when you’re talking about these things, when you say things like ‘this harms women’ or ‘this is bad for…
all of this.
(Source: campdracula5eva)
you know we had to
credit goes to me and A
this is cute! although i don’t think it’s necessary to put “cis” in there (i don’t think trans/cis status really affects a man’s ideas about queer women)
disagree
also - not all femmes are queer women
seriously there are loads of femme trans guys on tumblr
I’m a trans man => I interact with the trans community => I interact with femme trans guys => I have a more nuanced perception of what femme means and who femmes are than an archetypal cis dude
(I know that conclusion’s not true of all trans guys but it’s true of any who deserve my time and attention)
and who knows maybe I’ll turn out to be femme myself :P
I’m at the point where I’m tempted to frame any cis fictionalized genderfuckery as appropriation, just b/c I’m sick of cis ppl understanding & accepting fictional gender/sex variations (futa and the like) more than real ones.Yanno, that makes a lot of sense actually.
Everyone needs to know about this:
“The character’s name is Georgie Fruit, and he’s in his late forties, a black man who has been through multiple sex changes. He’s been a man and a woman, and then back to a man. He’s been to prison a couple of times. In the 1970s he was in a band called Arousal, a funk rock band sort of like the Ohio Players. Then he went through a few different phases.”
-a white guy about his ‘alter ego’
OH my god I totally forgot about that eurgh now I feel sick
I’m at the point where I’m tempted to frame any cis fictionalized genderfuckery as appropriation, just b/c I’m sick of cis ppl understanding & accepting fictional gender/sex variations (futa and the like) more than real ones.Yanno, that makes a lot of sense actually.
(Most of the six billion are not skinny, white and able-bodied, but alright)
It makes me sad when people use such “safe” images that don’t challenge the status quo of beauty when trying to make a profound statement about human beings.
what ze said.
(also reminds me much of the problematic “will I grow up to look like my Barbie?” image that was floating around for a while.)
(Source: filthyliar)
