Next Years Girl: To put it succinctly →

mirkwood:

You’re welcome to do whatever you like of course, but I personally feel like what this will lead to is a bunch of people telling me I’m not trans or trans enough because I’m “just an AFAB genderqueer” or I’m “non-operative” which isn’t true. I’ve really had it up to here in trans communities of being told how trans I am or am not based on how much surgery or hormones I’m willing to get or how many times I’ve been beaten or threatened. I’m more than willing to admit that I have passing privilege, but I’m not convinced that labeling like this suddenly going to convince those cis people who decide they identify as “human” to recognise the issue at hand. I’m really not comfortable with quantifying and labelling the amount of sex/gender dysphoria which authenticates someone’s experience, which I think is what this leads to. 

Personally I think we need different languages to talk about what makes someone trans* and this “cis” thing, because those two situations aren’t just perfect mirrors of each other, in which set of experiences is completely dichotomous to the other.

The approach I’m happiest with is one which treats trans* experience as identity (actually, as “identification-with”), but cis experience as situation. So what’s happening here is a bit of talk about that cis-situation, what it looks like. It’s not at all talk about the boundaries of trans* identity, which I think is how you’re hearing it?

It’s a messy approach but I think actually maps very well onto most people’s lived realities. Often when we talk and think about trans*-ness, we talk about how we feel, about who we are. (We also talk about transphobia/cissexism but we understand our trans*-ness as prior.) But when we talk about cis-ness, we talk about how cis people move through life.

I agree that there’s a huge gravity in dualistic, white, minority-world Western, male thought, towards universalising definitions/classifications, making them symmetrical, eliminating inconsistency, etc. And yeah, that’s a bad thing. And I can see how it could lead to what you’re concerned about.

But I firmly believe it’s also bad to pit trans*-ness firmly against (radical) feminism, which I think is what’s happening at the moment. By trying to say that cis people must, as some kind of prior to their situation, possess an internal, identity-token of “cis-ness”, a “cisgender identity”. That just doesn’t work with understandings of gender as a hierarchy.

This way, trans* people are one group of people who don’t feel that “prior” of assigned-gender-comfort, without suggesting that we’re the only group, or even that any group exists which does feel it. It’s not about “uncomfortable with gender” vs. “not uncomfortable with gender” - it’s “this particular experience which includes discomfort” (trans*ness) as compared to a group which doesn’t face what we face for having our particular experience, so who have to be described in terms of not-facing-that.

The trans*/cis identity/situation split is the best way I have of respecting trans* and cis women’s lives without demanding that one of us has to budge. So if I’m going to pour my energy into something, it’s going to be holding back that “Western” dualism while respecting everybody.

2 months ago  /  175 notes  /   /  Source: nextyearsgirl