We Need More Trans Radicalism. Throw Away Respectability Politics, Take The Word "radical" Away From

We need more trans radicalism. Throw away respectability politics, take the word "radical" away from terfs and embrace gender anarchy. Uplift the trendercore community, T4T, and start bringing the terms ftf and mtm into recirculation.

did you guys know that the robot genre of science fiction sprung up as a critique of the way in which industrialization reduced workers to taking up monotonous, unskilled factory jobs in order to earn profit, jobs which in turn alienated them from their own humanity? did you know that the theory of the alienation of the self under capitalistic mode of production is a core principle of marxism? did you know that robot itself comes from a czech playwright who, for a science fiction play, coined the word as a derivative of the czech term robota, meaning forced labor? did you know that the robot genre is rooted in anti-capitalist sentiment?

i remember being taught by my butch lesbian neighbor how to figure out if a button-down shirt fits properly, and her femme wife teaching me how to tie a tie. it was in my dining room that we used as a makeshift nursery for my sister. the walls were blood red, and the floors and ceiling were dark. the whole world felt like it was suffocating you in that room, much like life felt for me at the time. i was fifteen years old, and it had been seven months since my mother had last spoken to me. my father was drinking. i was failing my classes partially because my brain couldnt stop projecting old home movies onto the backs of my eyelids and i couldnt stay present and partially to see if anyone would notice.  no one did.  no one but my neighbors.

they invited us over for dinner. the butch always greeted us while the femme finished dinner and we took off our shoes and one would take our coats and the butch would clap her hand on my shoulder, and the femme would touch my elbow gently while she took out my chair. they fed us, we played board games, they talked openly about being gay. they held hands across the dining table, and twirled their wedding rings, neither seeming to notice they were doing it. watching them methodically work, hosting this beautiful dinner, moving together like two pieces of an intricate puzzle, like weaving together yarn and hemp, like gears, like one soul split evenly between two bodies–

i had never seen love like that. i had never met women like them. women who wore athletic sandals in november. women who wore sundresses with denim and cowboy boots and called her wife “sonnyboy,” whose wife was always quite put together, button-down buttoned to the top, tie straight (with the constant help of her wife), hair short & cropped to the scalp all the way round. women who both did the dishes. 

i didn’t know love like that was an option. i had only been shown angry, volatile love. i didn’t know i could be a woman like that. or rather, i didn’t know i could be loved as that kind of a woman. i had been taught that women like that are lonely. they’re ugly. but i watched her. her crisp leather jacket, her darkwash, baggy jeans on summer days that she folded once over her brown boots with the yellow shoelaces. she wasn’t ugly. i watched her, and i bought brown boots.

when we say "you can decide how you identify" and "you can create your own labels to fit you" we do not mean "you can choose who you are"

nobody is saying you can choose what to be; we're saying you can choose how you label those parts of you and how you don't, or if you label them at all

[trumed/terf/anti-mogai dni]

Even LGBT people are afraid to create LGBT rep half the time because you fucking goblins critique things with LGBT rep so harshly that the second it does something that you personally don’t like it gets treated even worse than the shows that have absolutely no rep in them.

Demonizing every show that is earnestly trying to provide the rep we’ve been lacking is NOT THE WAY TO GET BETTER REP

Given that I get at least three messages from terfs, from faux-pity about my apparent internalised misogyny to outright corrective rape threats a month as a fucking boat fandom blogger with ~650 followers

And given that the radfem push against trans healthcare for teens in the uk is specifically aimed at afab trans kids

And given that radfem extraordinaire Kathy Brennan deliberately doxed and outed young transmasculine people

And given how many other trans masculine people have many, many stories to tell about being targeted by radfems and terfs

I would really, REALLY fucking like it if any post about the dangers of terf rhetoric and how engaging with these people is a waste of time actually acknowledged that we are hurt by them too.

I am so, so tired of always seeing these things only mentioning the harm they cause to trans women. They do, of course they do, but by never mentioning us, by making a point to never mention us, you’re saying none of the harm they do to us matters. Or that it’s not deliberate, that they only ever harm us collaterally.

It also plays into the myth that they actively support us; which I suppose they do, if you consider pray-away-the-gay camps to be supportive of gay people.