Me, to a cis person: “have you….have you had…the surgery?”
Cis person: “what surgery?”
Me: “the one that removes your head from your ass”
Care for an anecdote? I call this one Cis People Are Crazy, and it’s a lil sumthin sumthin that will come as no surprise whatsoever to any trans person.
So, due to All Of The Most Recent Bullshit, I was at a trans support rally in my city yesterday with my family. Some nice person was handing out these big pretty heart stickers with the trans pride flag colors on them, like this:
We all got one. I put mine on the hoodie I was wearing, which I wear a version of basically every day, right? It’s the Cringeandwince uniform.
So, without giving it much thought, I put that hoodie on again today and go food shopping, and – this is dense as fuck, but it took me a few minutes to figure out why so many people were acting weirder than usual towards me.
I got a lot of looks.
I got mainly curiosity from people who noticed at all. But I also received open hostility from two separate White dudes about my age, over-the-top/smile-too-big kindness from a White woman a little older than me, and total, disaggregating confusion from my White 30s male cashier after he asked me what the sticker meant and I told him. As in, my presence coupled with the very concept of trans people seemed to have this guy on the verge of simply falling apart, joint by joint, atomically, behind his register. It was like he blew a fuckin gasket, ok.
For people who don’t know me well enough to know who I am – I’m a straight, mixed Native cis woman in her 40s. While I don’t think I’ve ever been misgendered, I am about 5′10″ and built like a brick shithouse, and I wear mainly “men’s” clothing (black hoodie, blue jeans, hiking boots); the word “butch” has been thrown my way in the past. I also however have very long hair and wear long earrings.
The gamut of reactions today was pretty interesting because I’m a middle-aged woman – I’m almost roundly ignored in public these days, utterly invisible. But the presence of that trans pride sticker changed that on a dime. I left the store thinking to myself, Jesus Christ, this is the most interested people have been about what’s in between my legs since I was about 25.
So, hey, other cis people? Just a suggestion that a lot of us may be looking like total gormless morons – possibly abject fuckwits, maybe even vacuous clowns??? – when we interact with trans people a lot of the time. Try to be aware of this if you ain’t already because: it’s fucking annoying as hell, kinda scary, really really boring, and weird.
Not sure I’ve ever read a more comprehensive summary of How People Stare at Me ™ before now.
LGBT BRAZILIANS TAKE CARE WITH DATING APPS AND GRINDR, THEY WILL BE USED TO TARGET VICTIMS PLEASE SIGNAL BOOST
ALSO!!!!!!!!!!!!
In Whatsapp (the most used messaging app in Brazil), if you receive a contact from a “juridical support group for LGBT+ people who are being harassed” called “REAJA”, DO NOT INTERACT!!!!!!! Apparently, this is not a real support group but it’s a trap that are targeting LGBT+ people to physically harm them. They people behind “REAJA” have very malicious intentions.
Be careful and stay safe!!!!!!!
I received the contact of Reaja on sunday night. My friends and I thought it seemed pretty weird so we blocked it… We were right.
‘In the center of Bebelplatz, a glass window showing rows and rows of empty bookshelves. The memorial commemorates the night in 1933 when 20,000 “anti-German” books were burned here under the instigation of Goebbels. There’s a plaque nearby that says something like “Where they burn books, they will also burn humans in the end.” ’
Interesting but rarely mentioned: most of the content burned that night came from the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (institute for the science of sex) headed by Magnus Hirschfeld. The institute and Hirshfeld himself were some of the first to openly campaign for the right to have sex with someone of the same gender, the right to transition if you did not identify with your birth sex and for the general acceptance of queer people. The team had already performed the first SRS operations in Germany and in addition, the institute advocated sex education, contraception, the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases, and women’s emancipation. Photographs of the night of the book burning are plastered across history books world wide, but the queer movement that was destroyed that night often goes unmentioned.
To all of my trans sisters, you are unbelievably strong.
I’m trans ftm. I could always experiment with masculine things with no repercussions. I was a tomboy growing up, and no one had a problem with it. I cut my hair short and only wore flannels and jeans, and no one batted an eye.
Meanwhile, a dear friend of mine is a trans woman. The second she grows out her hair and does pretty things with it, or paints her nails, she’s attacked. She’s bullied for these small feminine things that she does.
Trans feminine people, you have my ultimate respect. While I could skate under the radar as “just a tomboy,” anything feminine you do is scrutinized and attacked.
And while I’m at it, all y’all LGBTQ+people and allies need to protect trans people, no matter how they present or act or anything. We’re all in this together. Protect your trans family. We all have it rough.
Make no mistake. Trans people, especially trans women, are the canary in the coal mine. If the United States government manages to pass legislation making it essentially illegal to be trans again, mark my words it WILL continue on up to sending us right back into McCarthyism and the “kill or imprison anything you disagree with or dislike” policies of the 1950s (not that that hasn’t already been happening under the radar, but it’s going to be More).
There really are people out there who are acting like suggesting genetic testing to “confirm the identity” of a group of people isn’t a wildly dangerous thing for a government to start doing. This is not a door that should be opened.
Crowfanity's Tumblr 