Scarleteen

Unfortunately, Twitter is an absolute cesspool.
But it has made me think about how other people think.

An idea that frustrates me to no end is the idea of respectability and acceptability as it relates to queerness; but this can be applied to any other marginalized group.
The idea that if you act “good enough”, hateful people will leave you alone. Of course this intersects with a lot of other phenomena.

As an example, a white cis gay man distancing himself from wider queer spaces because the people are “too much” aka too queer. Statements that “those bad queers (but not me) make queerness their whole personality, but I’m a good gay—pick me!”.

Something else around acceptability that’s bothered me is trans people, specifically trans women, obsessing over their and other people’s bodies and gender expression. If someone makes art of a trans woman before transitioning, for example, it’s a “transphobic caricature” and should be erased from the internet. Trans people police other trans people’s art and expression of themselves because “it’s not trans enough” or “it makes me uncomfortable, therefore it’s evil and an attack”.
I just struggle to understand why trans women are so desperate to fit into misogynistic standards on how women should look like. Safety is the main reason, but shouldn’t you pursue your own identity? Your own happiness?

If you personally find a look on you to be dysphoric, you’re free to change. If someone else looks a way you don’t want yourself to look, you’re free to look different. But for crying out loud, you have no right to complain that another person isn’t performing gender correctly. There is no true “correct” way. It’s all a performance; you choose how you perform and others go their way.

No matter how gender conforming or cis you look, you’ll never be cis. That’s not a bad thing. No matter how “acceptable” or attractive you are, bigots will be bigots.

Why distance yourself and fight with people in a community that’s about self acceptance and challenging ideas about what it means to be “acceptable”?

The second issue is with self proclaimed radical feminists. Thankfully, the overwhelming majority of feminists in real life are kind and fairly intersectional in their feminism.

I hardly consider internet radical feminists to be feminists at all.

Because I’m inherently a little selfish (as is everyone) my main problem with them began with transandrophobia, or transphobia against trans men and transmasculine people such as myself. I know people argue that misandry isn’t real—I agree, in the sense that it doesn’t cause any real world change. But a prejudice certainly exists. Again, most women and feminists are completely normal about men and believe in equality for all people.
But a lot of these “feminists” seem to treat people like me as if we’re some kind of “gender traitors” for “choosing” to be men.

Men aren’t inherently evil, because no one is inherently evil. Or inherently any kind of personality. And women are not inherently good. And, as always, I’m mostly just shoved into the man category anyway. It doesn’t really upset me; it gives me no dysphoria to be identified as a man. But it is frustrating that even so called feminists think on such binary terms. Man or woman. Good or evil. Correct or incorrect.

Anyway, rant over. Sorry . I thought this was a better alternative than Twitter.

Holy shit I sound like such an asshole. Maybe it’d be best for the moderators’ sanity if I just stopped posting?

I think you sound really frustrated with some really frustrating things.

By all means, though, I think some of what you're talking about in the first half of this post involves some people who are just so incredibly fearful -- and usually for sound reasons -- and are so, so hoping that there are clear, easy ways to be safer or more legible to people with more power or influence, that they behave in some of the ways you mention, and I might gently suggest trying to garner more empathy for those in that group.

I just struggle to understand why trans women are so desperate to fit into misogynistic standards on how women should look like. Safety is the main reason, but shouldn’t you pursue your own identity? Your own happiness?

When you are very unsafe, you will generally always privilege safety, and for some people, or some people at a given time, that's what's required to literally stay alive. Given the murder and assault rates for trans women around the globe, I'm sure you can understand that if you take a minute. Staying alive is happiness for a lot of people. Sometimes, a fuller expression of identity, including with presentation, is a luxury people can't or feel they can't afford. Too, developmentally when it comes to gender, it's always been very common for people to first explore gender in ways it has been presented to them by others, including their cultures, and including parts of that culture that suck. From all I can tell, that's as true for adults exploring gender as it is for children, and it's still pretty exceptional for people to start any gender exploration from a blank slate, or magically without a lot of cultural influence. The exploration of gender identity and presentation tends to be lifelong for most people just like the exploration of other parts of identity. Some folks will move past cultural standards, including some based in some shitty stuff. Some won't try because it feels like a fit to them, period. Some will move towards more original expressions of themselves or how they look more quickly, while for others, more slowly, and all of these processes don't happen in a vacuum, but in the world we live in. So, for people who are the most unsafe, being the most unsafe influences all of that.

That's the kind of empathy I'm talking about.

That doesn't mean you can't still feel frustrated, though. You get to feel how you feel.

And some other folks you're talking about, and certainly TERFS? It's more than understandable to feel very angry and frustrated with those folks. Again, you're allowed.

I really do try not to sound like I have a lack of empathy.
I mean, I understand completely, to an extent, what trans women go through. I’ve been through similar things and feelings of not being safe.

Maybe I’m just really bad at expressing how I feel in a way that sounds nice.
Maybe I’m too critical or sensitive.
If I could find a way to just turn my thoughts and feelings off, I would.

The last thing I want is to lack empathy.
But that’s not a gender or sexuality thing so it’s pretty irrelevant to this post, lol

hey lopezmonty,
Sometimes, when we start to engage critically with an idea- especially with a really huge and complicated idea, like queerness and acceptability politics- we can get a bit distanced from sensitivity/nuance/empathy. I think you will find, as you keep engaging critically with things you care about, that empathy becomes more central to analysis. I don't think you should turn off your thoughts and feelings (if that were possible), rather, be willing to keep understanding and thinking further about things that are unfamiliar.