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What The Hell, People?
16 hours ago
Hey everyone, just had a little something I wanted to say. Is there much point to this? Probably not – I trust that most people that read my journals already have similar views as me, or at least, aren’t diametrically opposed on the important shit – but I’ve been seeing some stuff bubbling elsewhere that I wanted to talk about.
I’m a big fan of a certain artist’s comic. This comic – and I’m keeping this relatively vague to avoid bloating things and because I’ve not discussed talking about this with them – involves a number of characters. Male, female, non-binary, all in a fantasy world, all with magic, all with kink and casual fun.
Recently, one of the characters discovered that they are not the gender that they’ve thought they were. Magic was involved, allowing them to change their body to the gender that they thought they might be, and there was a lot of gender euphoria from the character. This was done, in my opinion, very well.
Unfortunately, that has not been the opinion of a number of people.
Now, if this was merely a drop-off in views, or a few quiet comments about being surprised or something like that, or even just dealing with something that they hadn’t expected and they needed time to process that, that would have been understandable. A bit disheartening, I suppose, but understandable.
Instead, there was fucking bullshit.
Again. I am not naming names, not from the artist, not the comic, not anything else. I am sticking within the bounds of privacy, and of avoiding callout stuff, because I don’t want to go shouting at these people. I want to talk about the way that this shit is a perfect example as to why trans people can have a very uneasy relationship with the rest of the queer community, and more to the point, why a lot of trans people will go out of their way to not come out of the closet, even among those that are supposed to be their allies.
Imagine being trans and wanting to embrace that, only to be told that you are being ‘influenced’ by others, that you’re confused, that you can be non-traditionally your gender and just because you don’t feel ‘traditionally’ masculine or feminine doesn’t mean you have to be something else.
Imagine being told that your discovery of who you really want to be doesn’t make sense, that they never saw this and thus your discovery of yourself is invalid.
Imagine others looking at you and liking you as a man or a woman, but suddenly wanting to be anywhere else as soon as you want to be the other.
In one fell swoop, you go from an adult, a person, to being a child-thing in the eyes of others. Something – not someone, something – that cannot know what is best for them, that is too immature to be allowed to make their own choices, who is being petty and spiteful by daring to try and do something without the permission of society as a whole.
You are ostracized.
You are demeaned.
You are humiliated.
And that is before you take into account how people that should be your allies treat you. The infamous TERF movements of how trans women are just men invading a woman’s space, with unfortunate lesbian allies. Gay men who treat both trans men as ‘just women’ since they don’t have a ‘natural dick’ or treat trans women as either a fetish or something worse. Hell, there’s a huge fetishizing thing toward trans people where objectification masquerades as acceptance purely so that people can get off on it, and too many see that as respect for the gender rather than what it really is.
This is beyond the pale. It’s one thing to be hit with this in the world of heteronormative people, but in the queer community, we’re supposed to be better than this.
It’s one thing to not be attracted to someone anymore if they change. That’s fine. We all deserve the same freedoms to be ourselves, and true to ourselves.
But that means that they have the right to discover, embrace, and enjoy themselves, to be happy, to be genuine, just like we do.
When a trans person tells you who they are, believe them.
When a trans person celebrates who they’ve become, celebrate with them.
And for the love of fuck, don’t go asking them to prove it, or explain it, or say that they needed to be clearer before, or anything of that sort. Let them be their own person. Let them be what they want to be. We spend enough time fighting to get the right to do that ourselves, so why the fuck are we making others fight us for the same thing?
And if you don’t care? If you don’t want to see it? Then keep in mind your choice to not interact includes not saying shit.
I’ve not always been perfect. I’ve used words that were hurtful to the trans community in past stories, and I’ve not always understood what it means to go through life the way that they do. I’ve had to do a lot of learning, and I’ve done my best to be better going forward, and to support them, and to be on the right side for everyone in the queer community. It costs me nothing to give others the freedom to say who they are, to believe them, and to treat them with the same respect and civility and joy that they treat me with.
I still have more to learn, and there’s more I can do and ways that I can do it better. But I will always challenge stupidity and bullshit when it comes to people I care about, and I care a lot about a great deal of people.
Like I said at the start, I feel that most people that would read this are already on the same page as me. Most of you don’t need to hear this. But for those of you that do, please know where I stand on this, and know I’ll always challenge the bullshit.
I’m a big fan of a certain artist’s comic. This comic – and I’m keeping this relatively vague to avoid bloating things and because I’ve not discussed talking about this with them – involves a number of characters. Male, female, non-binary, all in a fantasy world, all with magic, all with kink and casual fun.
Recently, one of the characters discovered that they are not the gender that they’ve thought they were. Magic was involved, allowing them to change their body to the gender that they thought they might be, and there was a lot of gender euphoria from the character. This was done, in my opinion, very well.
Unfortunately, that has not been the opinion of a number of people.
Now, if this was merely a drop-off in views, or a few quiet comments about being surprised or something like that, or even just dealing with something that they hadn’t expected and they needed time to process that, that would have been understandable. A bit disheartening, I suppose, but understandable.
Instead, there was fucking bullshit.
Again. I am not naming names, not from the artist, not the comic, not anything else. I am sticking within the bounds of privacy, and of avoiding callout stuff, because I don’t want to go shouting at these people. I want to talk about the way that this shit is a perfect example as to why trans people can have a very uneasy relationship with the rest of the queer community, and more to the point, why a lot of trans people will go out of their way to not come out of the closet, even among those that are supposed to be their allies.
Imagine being trans and wanting to embrace that, only to be told that you are being ‘influenced’ by others, that you’re confused, that you can be non-traditionally your gender and just because you don’t feel ‘traditionally’ masculine or feminine doesn’t mean you have to be something else.
Imagine being told that your discovery of who you really want to be doesn’t make sense, that they never saw this and thus your discovery of yourself is invalid.
Imagine others looking at you and liking you as a man or a woman, but suddenly wanting to be anywhere else as soon as you want to be the other.
In one fell swoop, you go from an adult, a person, to being a child-thing in the eyes of others. Something – not someone, something – that cannot know what is best for them, that is too immature to be allowed to make their own choices, who is being petty and spiteful by daring to try and do something without the permission of society as a whole.
You are ostracized.
You are demeaned.
You are humiliated.
And that is before you take into account how people that should be your allies treat you. The infamous TERF movements of how trans women are just men invading a woman’s space, with unfortunate lesbian allies. Gay men who treat both trans men as ‘just women’ since they don’t have a ‘natural dick’ or treat trans women as either a fetish or something worse. Hell, there’s a huge fetishizing thing toward trans people where objectification masquerades as acceptance purely so that people can get off on it, and too many see that as respect for the gender rather than what it really is.
This is beyond the pale. It’s one thing to be hit with this in the world of heteronormative people, but in the queer community, we’re supposed to be better than this.
It’s one thing to not be attracted to someone anymore if they change. That’s fine. We all deserve the same freedoms to be ourselves, and true to ourselves.
But that means that they have the right to discover, embrace, and enjoy themselves, to be happy, to be genuine, just like we do.
When a trans person tells you who they are, believe them.
When a trans person celebrates who they’ve become, celebrate with them.
And for the love of fuck, don’t go asking them to prove it, or explain it, or say that they needed to be clearer before, or anything of that sort. Let them be their own person. Let them be what they want to be. We spend enough time fighting to get the right to do that ourselves, so why the fuck are we making others fight us for the same thing?
And if you don’t care? If you don’t want to see it? Then keep in mind your choice to not interact includes not saying shit.
I’ve not always been perfect. I’ve used words that were hurtful to the trans community in past stories, and I’ve not always understood what it means to go through life the way that they do. I’ve had to do a lot of learning, and I’ve done my best to be better going forward, and to support them, and to be on the right side for everyone in the queer community. It costs me nothing to give others the freedom to say who they are, to believe them, and to treat them with the same respect and civility and joy that they treat me with.
I still have more to learn, and there’s more I can do and ways that I can do it better. But I will always challenge stupidity and bullshit when it comes to people I care about, and I care a lot about a great deal of people.
Like I said at the start, I feel that most people that would read this are already on the same page as me. Most of you don’t need to hear this. But for those of you that do, please know where I stand on this, and know I’ll always challenge the bullshit.
You hit the nail on the head that all we want is to be treated like anyone else, and for our transness for a lack of better term to be a non talking point.we again just want to be treated as people. Not a freak, conversation piece, or fetish. All we are are people that come with a massive amount of work and debt for ourselves to just feel happy with our bodies.
Thanks for calling out the BS and standing up for transpeople.
Gay people said the same when they were coming out of the closet in droves, saying that they weren't confused, that this was who they were, and why would they insist on this if it meant so much pain?
Eh, bleh.
People will learn, one way or another. I can't fix people, but I can at least be one more person adding volume to the right side.
And this, this is important. Wherever it is this took place, I can say for certain that it's not an isolated incident.
I've seen people lashing out at the... 'revelation' of a trans person's sexuality far more often now. Just knowing that there are others speaking out against it; who would readily and happily do so, feels really good. And I'm not trans. I can only imagine how it must feel for transpeople to hear that there is someone speaking out on their behalf.
I share Willow33's thanks for speaking out against the BS; it's really needed now.
And I will always keep speaking up. I kinda think that we always should. The faster we challenge stupidity and bullshit and hate, the harder it is for it to gain momentum.
I really like your way with words. Thank you so much for saying this!
On the other hand, it shows you what kind of people were around you, and what you hadn't seen before, and leaves you wondering how much you're missing in the future.
You have my deepest sympathies on that one.
When you get to be my age, it's little more than eye-rolling fare. When I was in my youth, though, it could really hurt. Nonetheless, those against whom it is directed, should just do their best to let it go in one ear and out the other. It's more about the speaker trying to enlarge and/or ingratiate themselves in the eyes of what they perceive as like-minded people. And those like-minded people, in these instances? Quite usually the lowest common denominator society has to offer.
Which, whatever age-group of which you are apart, should induce eye-rolls and nothing more.
On the other hand, bigger ones can quickly snowball, and those are harder to just push away. And sometimes, I honestly feel they need challenging instead of ignoring. Otherwise, it festers.
Case in point: A few years ago, I chimed in on a discussion that was downing people for being into sex with animals. These people were conducting a right pile-on session with some poor guy who had the misfortune of gaining these idiots' attention. Well, those same idiots decided to try and pile onto me. My response? I just walked away from it. They even tried a smear campaign against me. My response to that, too, was to just not rise to it. And eventually it went away--no residuals, no one bringing it up again with me, in these intervening years.
Most all bigotry is motivated by someone who is insecure or who is feeling unsatisfied with their life, trying to make themselves the center of attention. Moreover, this often comes from people who have no talents anywhere else in their lives. They can't draw. They can't write. They can't afford expensive fursuits to go and parade around in at cons, and so on. So the only thing left to them, as unfortunate as it is, is to draw attention to themselves through stirring up controversy, or by making clarion calls to groups they know will respond. There's no shortage of bigot groups, whatever the walk of life, and they're easy to find, if one knows where to look. But all of these groups? What all do they ever do? Make catcalls, try to cyberbully, try to make others feel like crap, so they can congratulate themselves for being clever enough to call these "degenerates" out. But that is all. The only power they ever have, is the power their targets give them.
So like I said, eye-roll. Groups of bigots come and go. They're a dime a dozen. They're cracks in sidewalks. Just don't give them power. Just roll one's eyes at them and move on.
From what I've seen and heard from the more conservative types, it comes down to the split between born-this-way and chose-this. The classic gay rights rallying cry was that it wasn't a choice, your attraction is a birth thing, and gradually that was accepted. With trans, in the old days, it was restricted to people with gender dysphoria, also a 'born-this-way' thing. As time has gone on, the trans umbrella spread to cover a lot of other cases. To simplify it, a crossdresser would be trans, right? But they chose that because they like it, not because of some 'natural' gender dysphoria. That's the 'weak link' they're targeting.
Admittedly, I sorta get it? I feel like, why are we all using the same 'label'? Can't we be different and still be together? But then stuff like this happens, and you get not only rough traditionalist and conservative types going at us, but gays and lesbians and others too. :/
The other thing is all the anti-trans horror stories. They're not all real horror stories, some are just 'jerk' stories, and some of them are true, too. There are absolutely trans people who are jerks, like any other sort of person. But they take these events, and stories, and exaggerate them, and return to them again and again. They take out the names, so that every time you hear the story, you think it happened again, that it must be an epidemic.
It's pretty awful.
just ask them are you wssure you can live with this decisionb
if they can then hug them and suppoort them and wish them well
its their life so you cant tell them what to do
just love them and let them be]
Personally, I believe that gender exploration should be more of a thing we all do rather than taking it for granted, but at the very least I think a little faith in their own judgment is allowed, particularly as it's unlikely that anyone would be saying that if they weren't fairly sure already.
I get where you're coming from, wanting things to be okay for them, and that's good of you, but I'd go further than questioning and wishing well. I feel like it's good to embrace them and welcome them into their new self, too.
i just feel that you are surgically changing your sex that isnt like getting a hair cut.... its a HUGE deal thats how i take it anyway its a big cjhange to their lives and it shouldnt come lightly...., but thats just my take is all
And some people don't even want the surgery. Hormones or even just being able to present as the gender of their choice is all they need, or even want.
But in any case, whatever distance they want to go, it takes no effort to accept this is who they are and give them the right word, respect, and belief, heh.