Guardian of Spirits

This is some brilliantly written stuff

“

Due to the fact, however, that I was read as “more” female — or at least because I felt different enough from typical social groups — I found myself more comfortable in gay and lesbian circles. My relative transparency as a trans woman, and the conditional cis privilege that came with it, led to me being at least nominally “welcomed” into queer women’s circles; this however lead to a remarkably disturbing insight. For the first time, I began to hear the way cis people talked about trans people — and trans women in particular.

Much to my own shame, I joined in from time to time. Yes, penises were gross. Yes, “tr—ies” were ugly. They were mockeries of women. Nothing would be more disgusting than to engage in sexual activity with one of them (trans women). Anyone who did so was, by proxy, gross. They (trans women) were “men in dresses.” They were just “really gay men.”

They … They … They.

On occasion, there was even an approval for violence toward “them” because they were “raping” women by the very virtue of their existence. The appropriation of women’s bodies, they argued, was an act of rape. And, of course, the fact that queer trans women were sexual beings, and not the non-threatening subservient eunuchs the system had instructed us to be, this changed the tone as to which trans women in these contexts were tolerantly received. Queer trans women were violent, sexually aggressive, rapists, predators, deviants, and perverts. And thus crossed the bridge from eunuch to rapist in the false choice imposed on all trans women.

But the cis women I was around weren’t talking about “them”, nor was I. We were all talking about me. I was gross and ugly, a mockery, a disgusting person with whom to be intimate. My existence was an act of rape and I was not worthy of basic human consideration. As time passed, and as I heard more and more of the things they said about trans women, my shame and disgust with myself won out.”

-MM

I’m glad someone’s writing what it’s like from the other side.

Some thoughts

There’s an issue that’s been raging around the internet for the last couple months and getting everyone polarized and riled up. Names called, insults are hurled, and general callousness all around. It’s an issue so ugly I’m not even going to say its name, because its name is terrible, but the concept is very real and it’s presented in a way that’s not fair to anyone and that should change.

Trans women are in a really unenviable position. There is a consistent, pervasive cultural message that trans women are ugly, de-sexed monsters and that anyone who would sleep with them must either be crazy, settling, or both. This is an unbelievably mean-spirited and harmful message to send to anyone—and it doesn’t just hurt trans women, it hurts the people who might have feelings for them as well. This is particularly pronounced for trans women who are interested in women, because a lot of communities for women and lesbians have a strong policing of values that ends up building an iron wall to keep trans women out.

From the trans woman’s side, a lot of the dating scene consists of having the same conversation over and over again—you tell a girl you like her, and be she straight, bi, or lesbian, she tells you she isn’t interested in you because she’s straight, bi, or a lesbian. Straight girls tell you they’re respecting your identity. Bi girls tell you they like men to be men and women to be women. Lesbians say that they don’t want to sleep with men. Either way you lose—and worse yet, nothing you do, from focusing on having a winning personality to being the best looking girl in the room will ever have an impact on your dating life. You lose automatically because of something you have no control over. So yeah, trans women are fucking frustrated with this, and with good reason. Nobody else, man, woman, in-between or otherwise would ever be asked to take this lying down, and it’s long overdue that trans women started taking a stance about it.

But there’s another aspect to it, an aspect that nobody talks about: This is also destructive to the women who find these trans women attractive. They do exist, and they are not freaks or ugly themselves. They don’t appreciate being told that they’re not real lesbians, or that they’re settling (if they’re bi). They chose to be with their partners because they love them, and if you honestly think your politics are more important than that, then you are pure poison. You are literally ruining someone else’s relationships on the holy altar of identity policing, and it’s indefensible. Nobody said you, personally, have to sleep with anyone you don’t want to. All that’s being asked of you is that you don’t actively ruin things for everyone else just to shame someone else’s body. Feminists of all people should appreciate the harm in body shaming.

In the end all that we really want is for trans women to have a fair shot, that they can make or blow via their own actions, without being held down to fulfill some jerk’s need to scapegoat someone. And we want the people who love them not to be shamed for doing so. It’s not rocket science or some huge issue that will destroy lesbian identities and feminist rhetoric forever—we’re just asking you to stop actively trying to hurt marginalized people in the name of feminism and lesbianism, and ask yourselves, is this really what I want feminism and lesbianism to be about?