weird way, Internet message boards, livejournal, all these things feel like they’re a safe way to talk about being trans—to exist without this problematic body you’re stuck with, when you’re offline in meatspace, like they used to say in the eighties, in William Gibson novels. Which rules.
But so there is this whole Internet community, which makes sense. It’s maybe the best thing about the Internet, how you can access information you need, safely and anonymously, except that just like any other community, especially any other Internet community, it’s become this closed-off thing, with stuff it’s okay to talk about and stuff it’s not okay to talk about, perspectives you’re allowed to have and ones you’re not, and its own patron saint.
Her name is Julia Serano and like most figureheads, she’s very smart and sweet and right-on and almost entirely unproblematic, but her acolytes totally get obnoxious, taking her writings as doctrine.
Not to mention, if you are a total baby panda at Internet communities asking, like, How do I get hormones, Internet trans women are very nice: they will tell you. But when you ask a more complicated question, like say, how do you resolve a genderqueer identity with a female identity when it seems like acknowledging the restraints of female identity and then bursting them doesn’t make you no longer female, just empowered, and therefore is genderqueer a privileged identity that’s mostly available to female-assigned people with punk rock haircuts, in college, everybody gets all butt-hurt and you get in trouble.
Anyway, whatever. Stereotype: in love with the Internet.
2. There is a stereotype that trans women get all this male privilege all their lives, and then they transition and take up too much space and are overly assertive and, y’know, stuff like that. And it’s true: sometimes folks transition and are jerks; the flip side is, there are a lot of cis women who are jerks, too, and those trans women just join the general population of women who are jerks.
What’s a lot more common, a million times more common, and what nobody ever seems to talk about, is this thing where trans women are given male privilege all their lives before transition, but they don’t know what to do with it so it kind of stunts them socially.
Like, okay. Do you know any straight, male-assigned men who kind of get it? Like, they try to be feminist, but they acknowledge that it is a complicated, maybe impossible thing for a man to be a feminist, so they’re respectful of women, and give space, stand back, whatever. And it would be totally great except that it leads to them never doing anything? Like they just stand back, and, say there are some books that need to be shelved, the windows are all dirty, there are boxes that need to go outside, and some kid threw up somewhere. You will start, say, carrying the boxes outside, and then when that’s done, you start mopping up the puke, and he is just standing there, so you’re like, What the fuck! Are you going to move these books or clean a window? And they’re like, Oh, okay, totally, in this very enlightened way that gives you space to fucking do everything, except they need you to show them how to clean a window, because they don’t want to do it wrong?
That kind of guy. I will admit: it’s more complicated than that, right, I shouldn’t be mean. Straight dudes have it kind of rough if they don’t want to shake out their male privilege all over the place. But really? You don’t know how to make a bed? You don’t know how to fucking cook the onions and garlic before you throw in all the other vegetables?
Anyway, whatever. I have boys who are friends. I used to be one of those boys! This quiet dude just standing there trying to be helpful but really just pointlessly taking up space.
Anyway, that is what happens when you try not to use your male privilege, but don’t have any models for alternatives. You withdraw. Here is the
But so there is this whole Internet community, which makes sense. It’s maybe the best thing about the Internet, how you can access information you need, safely and anonymously, except that just like any other community, especially any other Internet community, it’s become this closed-off thing, with stuff it’s okay to talk about and stuff it’s not okay to talk about, perspectives you’re allowed to have and ones you’re not, and its own patron saint.
Her name is Julia Serano and like most figureheads, she’s very smart and sweet and right-on and almost entirely unproblematic, but her acolytes totally get obnoxious, taking her writings as doctrine.
Not to mention, if you are a total baby panda at Internet communities asking, like, How do I get hormones, Internet trans women are very nice: they will tell you. But when you ask a more complicated question, like say, how do you resolve a genderqueer identity with a female identity when it seems like acknowledging the restraints of female identity and then bursting them doesn’t make you no longer female, just empowered, and therefore is genderqueer a privileged identity that’s mostly available to female-assigned people with punk rock haircuts, in college, everybody gets all butt-hurt and you get in trouble.
Anyway, whatever. Stereotype: in love with the Internet.
2. There is a stereotype that trans women get all this male privilege all their lives, and then they transition and take up too much space and are overly assertive and, y’know, stuff like that. And it’s true: sometimes folks transition and are jerks; the flip side is, there are a lot of cis women who are jerks, too, and those trans women just join the general population of women who are jerks.
What’s a lot more common, a million times more common, and what nobody ever seems to talk about, is this thing where trans women are given male privilege all their lives before transition, but they don’t know what to do with it so it kind of stunts them socially.
Like, okay. Do you know any straight, male-assigned men who kind of get it? Like, they try to be feminist, but they acknowledge that it is a complicated, maybe impossible thing for a man to be a feminist, so they’re respectful of women, and give space, stand back, whatever. And it would be totally great except that it leads to them never doing anything? Like they just stand back, and, say there are some books that need to be shelved, the windows are all dirty, there are boxes that need to go outside, and some kid threw up somewhere. You will start, say, carrying the boxes outside, and then when that’s done, you start mopping up the puke, and he is just standing there, so you’re like, What the fuck! Are you going to move these books or clean a window? And they’re like, Oh, okay, totally, in this very enlightened way that gives you space to fucking do everything, except they need you to show them how to clean a window, because they don’t want to do it wrong?
That kind of guy. I will admit: it’s more complicated than that, right, I shouldn’t be mean. Straight dudes have it kind of rough if they don’t want to shake out their male privilege all over the place. But really? You don’t know how to make a bed? You don’t know how to fucking cook the onions and garlic before you throw in all the other vegetables?
Anyway, whatever. I have boys who are friends. I used to be one of those boys! This quiet dude just standing there trying to be helpful but really just pointlessly taking up space.
Anyway, that is what happens when you try not to use your male privilege, but don’t have any models for alternatives. You withdraw. Here is the
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