By David Futrelle
Tuesday was the annual Trans Day of Visibility and, as expected, the transphobes were out in force online, spewing venom and pestering any trans people they could find. Do they ever take a day off?
Some of them invaded the #TransDayOfVisibility hashtag on Twitter with their, er, thoughts on the matter. Their tweets ranged from slur-filled vitriol …
… to failed attempts at compassion.
The transphobes were quick to pile on any company or organization that put out a statement of support on Twitter. When Amnesty International UK tweeted “Trans rights = human rights” (repeating the phrase six times for emphasis), it was bombarded with hundreds of tweets from a veritable army of bigots, among them former-comedy-writer-turned-full-time-transphobe Graham Linehan, who thought he could outwit the human rights experts at Amnesty with this question:
Other commenters offered their own version of Linehan’s question or came up with equally uninspired (and sometimes incoherent) put-downs of their own:
Even the Merseyside Police — yes, a local police department in Northwest England — found themselves swarmed by transphobes after tweeting that they were “proudly flying our trans flag at Merseyside Police HQ.”
One inventive transphobic Twitterer attempted to inspire other transphobes to pester trans people and allies with a strategy that seemed likely to puzzle a lot of its intended trans targets; it only makes sense if you’re a transphobe to begin with and think that only cis women are “real” women.
While the tweet got quite a few likes and retweets, I can happily report it doesn’t seem to have inspired much of a pestering campaign; I only found a small handful of tweets asking either of these questions to trans people and their allies.
I hope your Trans Day of Visibility went better for you than it seems to have gone for these sad people.
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I didn’t do anything visibility-related today. Mostly just stayed at home, as is necessary for quarantine. Since I’m not publicly out, I don’t think there is much visibility related stuff I could have done anyway.
Regarding the Women Make Glasgow tweet, I saw that screenshot on Twitter earlier. It reminded me a lot of the MRAs who spend International Women’s Day asking about International Men’s Day. If transphobes ever accept that cis is not a slur, I can imagine they will demand a Cis Day of Visibility.
I see Graham Linehan has unprotected his Twitter, though I’m guessing he’ll go back to protecting it soon. He seems to have done this because he doesn’t like when people quote tweet or screenshot stuff he said. I would recommend that if you don’t want to be quoted for something, don’t say it.
As usual, trans men and non-binary people are invisible to these bozos.
I guess the Day of Visibility has more work to do.
“Do they ever take a day off?”
Sadly, bigotry never takes a day off.
God I hate the terfs and the “gender critical”
They are not even worthy to be compared to assholes, because assholes fulfill at least one useful function.
This.
Yeah, it’s weird that trans men and trans masculine people are invisible to terfs, which is the only way the whole “trans rights = men’s rights” thing makes any sense by their logic. When you point this out, many of them will assert that it’s because transwomen get all the attention, something something male privilege, without considering that maybe they’re contributing to that uneven visibility with where they focus their vitriol.
Maintaining a self-fulfilling prophecy to benefit your argument is a pretty clever rhetorical long game though, gotta hand it to ’em.
Here’s some tweet from my home country:
Emma wants you to buy an article about trans people, probably claims we would reify gender
I’m…mildy curious on just how one-sided this discussion is gonna be this time, after they misconstrued Dr. Conell’s position last time to defend themselves when I asked them just how cruel they want to be to us.
This is the magazine in question, btw:
Wiki about Emma
And her publisher cooperates with this … piece of journalism:
Wiki about the Bildzeitung which regularly featues stories of sexual abuse and rape as “sex scandals” or similar rapey stuff.
Luckily, Emmas popularity is dwindling but it still gets read a lot by older feminists and it’s are quite islamophobic and transphobic. But luckily, I’m just a weirdo who worries too much. Anyone care for a translation or update once I have managed to find the text for free?
So now one of the thumbnails on my browser home page features Glinner’s face slapped over a trans flag.
I am mildly upset about that.
@Women Make Glasgow
Feminists do not attempt to vilify people who are lobbying for the right not to be murdered. That’s what haters do.
If I called out actual sexism EVERY SINGLE TIME I observed it, I’d have no time to enjoy the finer things in life: brushing my teeth, feeding my cats, working for a living, and so on. That’s why I PICK MY BATTLES. That’s what feminists do.
And when trans* men and NB folx do get mentioned by TERFs, they’re always infantilized and TERFs claim they are confused lesbians or trend followers. They just can’t conceive of trans* men or NBs who are adults. Interesting that they always infantilize the group that they (incorrectly) view as female…so very feminist.
@Lisa
I translated the cover of that magazine and the TERF argument there seems rather reminiscent of one of their old favorites. The idea of trans* people reinforcing gender roles is, to put it kindly, completely false. I know lots of GNC trans* people, and most of the trans* people I know, myself included, work to defy stereotypes. It also seems to be complete projection, seeing as TERFs absolutely love to police people based on gender norms (see: how upset they get about butch women and effeminate men).
@Naglfar
I know and I think I learned a lot of that stuff from you and other boardmembers in the past, but thanks for rehashing it, I’m sure it bears repeating and I admit that I was sometimes traumatized, confused and even a bit doubtful, even desperate in the past. It felt like the end of the world for me, as you probably know.
The reason I’m mostly polite to the trans exclusives is because that is expected in a German discussion for sexist reasons. Can’t be too bitchy or my argument becomes worthless automagically.
@Lisa
I know the feeling. If you become too emphatic they will accuse you of “male anger” or something like that. So very feminist of them to silence women by saying they should be less aggressive. /s
Ay. TERFs.
If we got any more latent ones in the comment section, fuck off or reveal yourself now. The sooner we weed you out, the better. We don’t want the likes of Lady Mondegreen or Sly Fawkes around.
As for better topics.
I’m genderqueer, but also AFAB (assigned female at birth), so, as has been mentioned, TERFs don’t seem to recognize me as…existing, very much. I’ve tried to pick fights with them on Twitter, because I’m a masochist apparently, and they barely even try!
(Maybe it’s the technically anime avatar I have on there, but that’s also Hifumi Yamada from Danganronpa, who could pass as a more Western design.)
So I’m well aware that TERFs are full of nonsense. They just hate trans women so much that they for all intents and purposes, they treat trans people as just trans women for the sake of rhetoric, and then get all goddamn riled up over themselves.
If they got what they think they wanted, they’d have to deal with trans men and people like me in their bathroom, and I’m sure they’d be mad about that.
…Heh. I’ll be honest, being able to use the ‘right’ bathroom is an experience I’ve only been ballsy enough to do at conventions when going as a guy character. Coincidentally also Hifumi Yamada. I remember one guy there was shocked I was trans at all while I was doing my hair in the guy’s room…Not negatively, he just didn’t guess.
(Second con I went to, which was mostly Teruteru Hanamura instead, there were enough neutral bathrooms–but I generally bounced between when one wasn’t close.)
I honestly think that me going as male characters since fifth grade was part of my identity manifesting, and it’s what helps me present today. Rarely was it ever a conventional hero; indeed, many of my costumes were either villains, dubious sorts, or the token perverted male characters of a work–with both the figures mentioned above being of the last description. It’s a little strange, especially for me–being on here–but I also think it’s a way for me to break free, if only for a bit, of standard expressions of sexuality expected of an AFAB person.
Which brings me to a tangential topic. Other trans* people on here (or GNC!), does dressing up as characters–in terms of cosplay, Halloween costumes, or anything of the sort–mean anything to your identity?
@Troubelle
I don’t have too much experience with cosplay or Halloween costumes, but since cracking the egg, I have thought more about cosplaying, since it’s something I hadn’t really done before but now I feel like I could do it.
The simple concept of human rights gets soooo many in a tizzy. Sad.
I’m fucked.
@Naglfar
I would support such an endeavor. Just remember, thrift stores are your friend! There’s always somethin’ you can use for characters whose clothes even vaguely resemble normal ones.
@Naglfar
I don’t know anything about your size, but platos closet “if you have any in your area” is a great second hand shop that will usually have smaller petite sizes if you are petite. It took me a long time to find that, and if you have any interest in snowing I can give you some advice on alternation. Most things I get from thrift shops I have to alternate in some way just to make them more comfortable.
Okay also on topic
I just want to say for probably the million time anyone else has said it, is no, people can’t tell your gender or sex just by looking at you from how you present in the world. When I had a pixie cut hair style, if I didn’t wear anything femeine with it, people would question my gender identity. Even though I’m 5’1 and have pretty big boobs, I would get misgender a lot of the time. In fact it was mostly men who just assumed I was boy for some reason. (yes any terfs reading, I’m a cis woman)
Second, I have a good friend I’ve made in college (also a cis gender man) who doesn’t have any interest in transitioning to a woman. He isn’t a woman, he’s not gender queer or anything. He is a cis man that likes fem fashion along with clothes that could be considered “boys clothes” whatever that means. But because he is 5’3 and skinny and doesn’t have a lot of “masculine” features, people question his gender identity all the time.
When people don’t follow their gender rolls, this will lead you to question what gender that person is because some how (shocking, crazy, I now but wait for it) you can’t just magically tell what gentiles someone has because of how they dress, height, pitch of their voice, any of that.
All terfs want is strict gender rolls on how one presents themselves so that they can put everyone into neat little boxes. Even if your a butch lesbian, you better be feminite enough that they can tell your a woman. They don’t care how unhappy it makes you, if you make them question their narrow way of viewing the world, your wrong to them.
I hope terfs read this and know that they are not welcome here, and your “opinions” here are invalid. Because i am tired of the people i care about being attacked and hurt by some scum who dares to put a feminist label on themselves.
Hell I’ve even had terfs straight up ask me in a condescending way when i was defending trans people, how i knew that the guy who attacked me in a bathroom identified as man and wasn’t actually a trans woman. yeah super feminist terfs.
Anyways this rant is over, cause I’m upset.
Seems like a lot of non-terf transphobes started making quite terfy arguments. Is that a new development?
@Surplus, are you ok? I looked at both of those links and that seems scary.
@Lainy
I’ll look into that shop you mentioned. I’m not exactly petite (I’m about 5’7”) but I’ll still take a look.
When TERFs say they can always tell, my response tends to be “then why should people have to tell you they are trans*? If you can always tell, we shouldn’t have to tell you.”
My mother is a cis women with elevated testosterone. As a result, she has some masculine facial features and although I don’t think anyone has mistaken her for a man, people semi regularly ask if she is a trans* woman. Rigid gender rules hurt cis women as well.
@Naglfar
Maybe the TERFs only talk about trans* women because the caricature they have of them is so obvious? So they can always tell because they only think along the lines of “obvs a man in a dress” dribble. If they had to factor trans* men or nonbinary people into it, things would get complicated, and bigots can’t handle complicated.
I’m not sure how Women Make Glasgow expects that conversation to go. I can see they’re trying to deflect from their hatred of trans people be pretending they’re really just out here advocating for cis women, but I can’t see this conversation ending anywhere other than with them spewing a bunch of hate for trans people. The veil would not be up for long.
They might as well just skip the first bit and head straight into the hate. It doesn’t change the conversation any.
@Masse_mysteria
I think that is part of it. There is also a long tradition in popular culture of painting trans* women as rapists and murderers (e.g. Silence of the Lambs, Sleepaway Camp, etc) which doesn’t really exist for trans* men (AFAICT there are very few works of pop culture depicting trans* masc people). There’s also sexism at play: transphobes think trans* women are men and trans* men are women, and they think that men can’t control themselves as predators, are stronger, etc, so TERFs carry that over to trans* women and ascribe all of that to us. The opposite is ascribed to trans* men and AFAB non-binary people, whom transphobes generally infantilize as misled adolescents.
It could also be related to sexualization. When trans* women are depicted in pop culture, we are often heavily sexualized (e.g. the game Cyberpunk 2077’s large in game billboard of a woman with an erection). Or the trope that trans* women are trying to trick cishet men and/or cis lesbians into sleeping with us. Transphobes clearly spend a lot of time sexualizing us, and they say we’re the fetishists.
Sorry if I’m rambling, I just have a lot of thoughts on this topic and am not really sure how to organize them.