Transphobic Trans

[peanut]

Eek, maybe not a fun topic but I'm curious: How many of you have looked back at yourself and realised that you have been transphobic before or maybe despite realising you were trans yourself?

I just have this vivid memory where I was roleplaying and we were having a discussion about the characters and someone had proposed a non-binary character. I have always considered myself to be open-minded and liberal person and yet somehow I found myself getting strangely angry and scared about this proposed character and proceeded to list all the reasons why there couldn't be a non-binary character and the reasons it "just didn't make sense". I knew even at the time what I was saying was wrong and yet I couldn't stop myself from digging myself a deeper hole. I think at the time I kinda shocked my friends that I would ever take offense to a character like that. In the end, we accepted the character, but I chose not to in character... I felt justified because I wasn't exactly playing a perfect hero anyway.

I look back at this and think why was I so scared? I guess because the moment I accepted that non-binary was normal was the moment I had to question who I really am and that's a scary place to go.

[FaerieKim]

There was a time in my life, where I was still struggling to make sense of myself when I actually expressed some pretty dodgy opinions and accidentally offended a few people. 

I used to be almost a TERF in my views on this stuff. I was always supportive of transgender people and hated it when people were ignorant of them or ridiculed them or misgendered them.  However I did used to think that people who physically transitioned were "victims of social gender roles" and that it was "a shame when people believe gender roles and stereotypes so deeply that they feel they have to surgically alter themselves".  Pretty TERFy stuff and I'm ashamed that I used to think that way.

I was already identifying as "inwardly androgynous" at that time, but I sort of thought that everyone was, and that gender was a fiction, that only biological sex is real - and all that stuff.

I never hated trans people. In fact I admired them.  And I totally believed that trans women are women, and trans men are men, because to my mind gender was nonsense anyway, so I believed that anyone can and should be whatever they need to be, and so I was supportive of that and hated when people were ignorant about it, and ridiculed and misgendered trans people.

I was also aware that I was hurting very deeply, that I was confused - and I desperately wanted to talk to trans people about these issues to get some kind of understanding about what was going on with me. 

But yeah, I had a lot of crap in my mind that was making me be a bit of a dick to the very people I was trying to reach out to.  And I do feel ashamed about it when I look back on it.

Also had an awkward moment when I was trying to hit on a trans woman, and I accidentally called her a "crossdresser" or a "transvestite".  She was quick to point out that I was wrong.  And I felt so awful about it.  I even had a cry about it later.  I used to fetishize trans women a bit too.  Not proud of that either.  Porn is probably to blame.

I'm not like that anymore.  The thing I have to watch out for now, is when truscum crap starts creeping into my brain.  I totally accept non-binary people, and totally accept that trans women who choose not to have surgery are genuinely trans too and that social transition alone is ok and people's genders should be accepted and respected whether they physically transition or not.

But I do catch myself thinking things like "that's what makes me trans" about feeling like my body should be physically female.  And I have to remind myself that not everyone who is trans needs to physically transition.  I mean, someone could use that shit on me, because although I do want a vagina, I don't especially hate my penis either.  We're all different, and our body needs are our own and not really anybody else's business - but none of that changes the validity of your gender anyway.

On the other hand, people sometimes tell me I shouldn't be so hard on myself, or I should be proud to be trans, when I  simply explain how I wish I'd been born physically female, or that I wish I was a cisgender woman.  And I find it hard to explain that I'm not beating myself up about being trans, I'm just expressing a part of how my transness feels to me, and that it's an important part of acknowledging that I am what I am, to admit those feelings to myself.

This stuff is complicated, which is why we need to try to make a huge effort to just get along and help each other out, with all our differences - we need to support each other no matter how similar or different we are.

[Trinity]

Early in life I was taught to hate being trans, and hate the miror, so transphobia was internalized, it wasn't turned against others, it was turned against me.

It took a lot to overcome that. And the damage has been extreme.

[Yuki]

Yes, I was pretty transphobic I guess when I was young. Like, middle school age and such. Because society says trans people are gross, and so I thought that too and chose to not try to understand. It was more "fun" I guess to just think "Ewww" about anyone who I was told to think "Ewww" about. Because then you could laugh about it with people.

As I got older, I was more confused by it. Like, why would someone want to go through all of that? (surgeries, etc.)

I didn't really start understanding it until I started to see people talking about their experiences.

I think that's why representation is important, and having platforms to talk about these things... like when there are trans characters on TV.

[Von]

I don't think I ever had a strong opinion on trans people before my coming out. Of course, my mother did her best to vilify them to anyone who would listen - all because she supposedly caught my dad wearing one of her dresses (which may or may not be true, she was a reputed liar).

In the early days of the Caitlyn Jenner stuff, she would say stuff like "Trans people don't exist, only confused f**s"
I think that only further pushed me in a compassionate direction, because she was so awful.
So I might have had some mistaken ideas or lack of knowledge before I matured, but certainly nothing akin to full-on transphobia. I'd seen it, and hated it.

[RAYtch]

Don’t think I’ve ever been transphobic but then it’s easy to say this - I could have been without even realising it. I often found that I could relate to trans people despite not knowing/realising myself. That said, it could very very easily have gone the other way - through frustration about myself or getting in with the wrong crowd to try and fit in. 

I work with a gay guy and was very surprised and quite angry about one of his comments a while back. Another guy who works at the same place suddenly wore some nail varnish one day (it was quite discreet varnish) and the gay guy basically started talking to others behind his back about how it wasn’t normal for a guy to wear nail varnish. Basically slating him for a while. I was literally about to blow but managed to keep my internal fireball contained. I mean, especially for someone who should understand what it’s like to be in a minority group and potentially have received previous hate comments. I just didn’t get it!  >  However, I can now understand how some people could be like this without actually meaning it deep down inside.

This occurred before I realised that I was trans or whatever it is that I am. 

[Ativan Prescribed]

You might be surprised at the number of gay and lesbian, but more so gay I think, are just as bad towards trans as cis are.
They should know better, but in some ways they see us as taking them down some because we are in general lumped together.
The marriage thing here a while back was a huge deal for them and when trans tried to have the same thing, they kinda just threw trans under the bus.
They made up excuses and said that once they got it done that they would be sure to help trans as well, but they didn't.
There is a wall that they put up and I think it is the very same one they use on most everyone, and have this snotty attitude of superiority.
But I think too that it is just a mask to hide how vulnerable they are, but it's just speculating, I don't know and don't take theirs or cis opinions seriously.

[peanut]

Nov 10, 2018 10:57:17 GMT 8 Ativan Prescribed said:

You might be surprised at the number of gay and lesbian, but more so gay I think, are just as bad towards trans as cis are.
They should know better, but in some ways they see us as taking them down some because we are in general lumped together.
The marriage thing here a while back was a huge deal for them and when trans tried to have the same thing, they kinda just threw trans under the bus.
They made up excuses and said that once they got it done that they would be sure to help trans as well, but they didn't.
There is a wall that they put up and I think it is the very same one they use on most everyone, and have this snotty attitude of superiority.
But I think too that it is just a mask to hide how vulnerable they are, but it's just speculating, I don't know and don't take theirs or cis opinions seriously.

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised. My most persistent transphobia has been within the LGBT community (perhaps because I'm not out to anyone else). It's constant and I meet a new idiot every week. A lot like to claim that specifically non-binary makes a mockery of the rest of the community and invalidates their progress because people take them "less seriously". I have not seen this be the case at all yet I hear this argument time and time again. And of course there are gays and lesbians saying that trans women and men are not real men and women and therefore cannot label themselves as lesbian or gay. It's all so exhausting. People are scared of what they don't understand.

[Ativan Prescribed]

Yep, there is always the need for it to be someone else's fault, but hardly ever to their face, but there are those times as well.
In the beginning of the awareness of NB as a legit thing, there was and still is the same tired arguments, before it was the trans fault for everything that happened to gay and lesbian it seemed.
But they turned that right back at them so the fight was always simmering, and then NB comes along and they can get together and stop fighting and blame the world on us, it's all our fault.
They can't get a job, it's our fault, they get kicked out of someplace, our fault, they have a hard time finding an apt, our fault, migraines, our fault, sunrise and set, our fault, it's all our fault for anything that they see as a negative that they can twist into it being our fault instead of just owning up to the fact that life doesn't always go their way, that they aren't good enough, that their timing sucks, that they just can lack the ability to let go and just live.
But really, that's just some of them, and they know who they are, the others don't get along with them either and their coworkers are getting sick of being blamed for their lack of a better paycheck.
There is always going to be people who have to find that group of people they can pick on, because they are to weak to pick on a single person, but their picking on a group is for the very same reasons and it doesn't work, so they look bad and they haven't got it together enough to realise they just suck as humans and if they just stopped blaming others, then maybe other would help them have a better life like they do.
It's kinda like how we can blame cis binary for everything and we kinda do, but the realistic blaming is most of it, but it isn't like we can't just go ahead and do what we want and leave the bs out of it, because whenever we want. we can dress like them and they don't know the difference, it's easy and we all know it is to just be seen as the that normal person, because in most cases for most people, it's how we live.
And that is also the reason they freak out over us, they have no way of knowing us, but then cis usually has no way of knowing if they are gay or lesbian and that scares the cis, the circle id just a lot bigger for us to be blamed in, but ask anyone if they have ever had a personal bad experience with any of us, LGBT, and they can't come up with one, they all seem to know that one person and say they are just as normal as they are, but the rest of us are the scum of the earth who have caused all the problems since the beginning of time and we are the sole reason for the end of times coming and I suppose we get blamed for trump as well...