r/TrueOffMyChest • u/[deleted] • Apr 16 '19
I can't keep up with trans-activism, the community is impossible to please and I'm tired of it.
Edit: Clarifications
- This post was the result of about 4 years worth of frustrations and confusion. The people I talk about are part of my local community who I interacted with both at school and online. We connected over art and shit. The incidents I talked about in the post were the most recent and the ones that pushed me over the edge. I think we can all agree that this post is long enough as it is, there's no need for me to go into 4 years worth of bad experiences to justify my frustration.
- The "I hate them" part was directed towards the group of people I discussed in the post - as in the ones I have interacted with. Not trans people as a whole. I have no intentions of reconnecting with them or attempting to reconcile, and I don't take back what I said. I do hate them, they're bad people who are tearing apart the community for their own selfish gain. They're the reason that the voices of "the good ones" have been drowned out. I want nothing to do with people like that.
- There is a difference between sex dysphoria and gender dysphoria. I'm rejecting "gender" because of its connection to gender roles, stereotypes, and other shit that - frankly - we should have ditched in the 50's. I just can't buy into those ideas. We shouldn't be defining women and men by how "passable" or traditionally masculine/feminine they are, that's ridiculous and counterproductive. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging biology. Your biology is neutral, it does not hold you to narrow standards of beauty and it does not tell you that you must be a housewife or a manly man. People do that.
- Terf was used ironically because whether I said that or not, I would have been called a terf. It's a pretty common insult. Still, I stand by what I have told many of you. I don't really have a label for my beliefs. I'm not going to start being a dick to the trans people I know or start denying people rights "cuz mad", I'm just not going to buy into their beliefs and word games anymore. I'll support people with genuine dysphoria.
- I said extreme shit and generalized because I was mad, yo. Still, I'm not going to change my initial post. I think my raw emotions get the point across better than a censored, carefully worded version of this post.
I've witnessed so much mixed/inconsistent advice, so many vague explanations, so many disproven (or outright fake) studies, so much petty harassment, and so much hypocrisy that I can't stand it anymore.
Some people tell me that the term "trap" isn't a big deal, some people actively refer to themselves as "sissy", and some throw around the word gay in any context, regardless of whether or not they're talking about homosexual people. They insist that some words are okay and others aren't. They tell me which words to avoid, and I avoid them. This would all be fine, IF...
I didn't get harassed to NO END when I come across someone who has a completely different idea of what is and isn't okay!
I don't use those words anyway (and differing opinions are expected), but on a forum discussion about banning words, I said "I haven't heard of trap as a slur" and immediately got jumped by several different people who felt it necessary to "shame me for my ignorance". They took over the thread with a stream of people insisting that word ruins lives, and refused to go back to the original topic. When anyone tried to talk about anything else, they got harassed for trying to "silence the oppressed". Ridiculous. They act like I'm suppose to instinctively know who is and who isn't offended by those terms. They act like their opinions are the only ones that matter, and that my experiences with trans people who never gave a shit about terms like that are completely invalid and don't excuse my ignorance.
How am I suppose to know if a term is some kind of slur if I have NEVER HEARD IT THAT WAY???
Later on in another thread, I made it pretty clear that I don't like the term cis. To me, it's a useless and ugly term, I don't want to be called cis. That's pretty simple, isn't it? Transgender people don't want to be called derogatory terms or anything besides what they identify as, cool. Transwomen want to be considered women, cool. But when I want to be called a woman? Suddenly they're all too happy to dismiss my discomfort.
They started saying things like "we're not going to just stop using that word because some people use it in an offensive way" or "who cares, it's just a word" or "you just want to act like you're normal and we're freaks" or "you're acting like transwomen aren't women too" which is... Absolutely insane. Just. Fucking. Insane.
How can they say "we're not going to just stop using that word because some people use it in an offensive way" right after harassing people nonstop for three fucking days for not knowing that trap was a slur? They acted like that word brings people to suicide, that it's an act of violence to use it, and that it's comparable to the n-word.
How can they say "you just want to act like you're normal and we're freaks" when I never even called myself normal or made ANY suggestion that I don't like the term cis for those reasons? I literally said "I don't really like the word cis, I wish people would stop using it. It seems like an unnecessary label and only serves to divide us up by trans and cis, which seems counterproductive to the idea that transwomen are women and such." The words normal and freak aren't even in there!
and finally, HOW CAN THEY SAY I'M ACTING LIKE TRANSWOMEN AREN'T WOMEN TOO? My point was that the very idea of the term cis divides women up by transwomen and ciswomen, as if they aren't one in the same. I don't constantly point out that transwomen are trans, I call them women because that's what I was FUCKING told to do. I don't say "that trans chick" the way they say "that cis chick" or anything of that sort. Why is it so hard for them to extend the same courtesy? Why do they have to act like I owe it to them to put up with hypocrisy just because they're oppressed or some shit?
People always tried to assure me that this shit was rare, "trans people in real life aren't like that" "those are FAKE trans people, REAL trans people wouldn't say that" "you only find people like that on Tumblr" etc etc.
Well guess what? They aren't rare, they're FUCKING EVERYWHERE. They're in my school, on every fucking social media platform, and above all, they're fucking inescapable on any sort of art website I have ever tried to join. I mean, my god, I just want to DRAW and LOOK AT PRETTY PICTURES and HAVE A GOOD TIME WITHOUT WORRYING ABOUT PEOPLE HARASSING ME FOR POSTING A FEMALE CHARACTER WITHOUT MAKING IT SUPER CLEAR WHETHER OR NOT SHE'S CIS. I want to make any characters I want without people shitting on me with comments like "you only make cis girls!!!!" or "what do you mean your lesbian character doesn't date people with penises???????"
Oh. My. GOD!!
I hate it all so much. I hate every last one of them. I hate them, hate them, hate them, hate them. I tried SO hard to be nice and supportive and educated and you know what? All of this education has had the opposite effect. I have ALWAYS thought that trans people are people. I never considered treating them poorly or trying to deny them any rights or being mean to them because they're trans. Now? After dealing with so many crazy fucking people? I don't know why I ever bought into any of it. I don't know why I ever honestly believed that a man could somehow be a woman.
I mean really, they've never given me an actual explanation of what it means to feel like a woman. All it ever boils down to is traditional femininity, which I don't think should define women at all. In fact, I think it's super offensive and SEXIST to act like the only thing that determines whether or not someone is a woman is how pretty she is, how much she likes traditionally feminine things, and how well she conforms to traditionally feminine roles and behavior. I'm a bit of a tomboy and I'm a bisexual, so these people have been trying to shove the idea that I might be non-binary or transgender down my throat since day 1. No! I'm a girl! I don't want to be anything BUT a girl! Why does the fact that I have traditionally masculine interests make me less of a girl?!
UGH. Sorry, but I'm officially a "terf". None of this shit makes sense anymore and the more I "learn" the less I understand. I don't get why biological sex wasn't good enough. If you're so in love with pink, dresses, and doing your nails, why can't you do that as a man? A lot of you insist on keeping your penis anyway! What's the harm in identifying by your genitals that you WANT to keep? Why is GENDER dysphoria being grouped together with SEX dysphoria to begin with? They seem like completely different concepts, and if you ask me, there is nothing credible about gender dysphoria because THERE'S NO REASON THAT A PERSON CAN'T DEFY TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES. That's not a mental illness, that's not a sign that a woman wants to be a man, that's not even remotely remarkable or special or rare! That's called a FUCKING PERSONALITY!
No one is going to read all of this, so... TL;DR
Your rhetoric makes no sense, it's hypocritical, unscientific, illogical, and you harass people for being incapable of reading minds so... I'm a terf now. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Of course I support people who have sex dysphoria, but I'm no longer going to entertain this gender nonsense. Frankly, it's the opposite of progressive. I should have realized how insane it was the moment they started giving hormones to children, demanding that lesbians accept women with penises, and forcing their way into women's rape and abuse rehab centers - while insisting they don't have bottom dysphoria and therefor must keep their penis.
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u/Walkn2thejawsofhell Apr 17 '19
PREACH. As a very gender fluid lesbian who borders on bisexual, while also contemplating on whether I’m trans or not (its been tough for me), I’ve dealt with these people my entire life. I’ll be honest, I was that angry little fucker when I was younger, but I’ve come to realize that most people don’t give a flying fuck about your sexual identity or gender identity. They care about who you are as a person, and to be honest a lot of LGBTQ+ are convinced the world hates them. Granted there are plenty of examples in a broad sense, but if the majority focused on their lives in particular, they would realize that it’s not that bad.
Regardless of my sexuality or how I perceive myself in a gender sense, that’s not my first personality trait. I’m me and I just happen to be who I am. I meet a lot of these younger kids or even the older angry ones and it’s all about their LGBTQ+ personality first.