Jump to content

How to deal with the broad groupings of "trans" people


Heart

Recommended Posts

I'm experimenting a little with this thread, so we'll see if this grows wings or not. The point I want to touch on here is one that I've seen expressed a few times here and there, especially recently, in this forum. It's the idea that all sorts of people get grouped under the trans label, either because they identify as trans themselves or because the general public doesn't know any better, and yet the trans label is often treated as being one uniform group and stereotypes are made accordingly. People who identify as trans can get understandably upset that other kinds of people are being grouped in the same category by people who don't know better, and the whole lot treated in one manner or facing stereotypes together, when they have almost nothing in common.

A few concrete examples:

Sometimes transgender people are grouped with trans-age people, otherkin, trans-able people, and people who identify as a race other than the one they were born into. Though these are all different phenomenon, the general public often conflates them. This can lead to generalisations from one group being applied to another in an inappropriate way, which in turn can lead transgender people to feeling misunderstood (and, I presume, many otherkin, trans-age, etc people probably feel the same). How can the trans community better deal with the idea of being misunderstood in the face of such mis-placed generalisations? How does it make you feel when this happens to you?

Another example is the idea of nonbinary folks who may or may not identify as trans, and the binary folks who identify as trans. A nonbinary experience can be very different to a binary one, though they may both identify as trans. Is there a good way to deal with the general public not understanding the difference, and applying binary trans things to nonbinary trans people, or vice versa? How do you deal with it if that happens to you?

This thread is made as a place to talk about the frustrations and thoughts around these subjects. In the past, threads have been shut down because of harmful generalisations in this topic, so please be extra aware that insulting or harmful generalisations of groups of people is not allowed. For example, you may express frustration that trans people are often fetishized and that this is often inaccurate, but you may not say that fetishes and those who have them and/or act on them are bad.

The name of the game is inclusion, good intentions, and supportive attitudes.

Does anything I've said here resonate with you? Do you have other feelings about the umbrella nature of the term trans, or about how the general public often misrepresents the term by including groups of people who would not otherwise identify as trans?

Link to post
Share on other sites

I really, really dislike the term "trans umbrella". I get that some (NB) people aren't completely comfortable ID'ing as trans but.. I don't see how trans umbrella is any better.

And loads of times people seem to use it to include gender non conforming people/cross dressers and it gives such a bad idea of what being trans actually is..

Link to post
Share on other sites

Personally, I'm quite oblivious. I don't have to understand to accept. I'm not like... moved with those discussions any longer.

That's the whole "define X" dispute. Never gonna end well. Because identity works this way and we are having tribal wars.

Ad crossdressers... transgender is literally trans + gender, so crosdressing is a transgender practice by definition, just like gender non-conformity is trangender by this definition. But most often when we talk about trans people, we mean something more specific than the vague "crossing the boundaries of one's assigned gender". We mean someone who identifies in a different way, or maybe someone who's transitioning, or dysphoria. And those last things are a whole another topic and point for arguments.

Link to post
Share on other sites
butterflydreams

Honestly, I just get scared. Transition feels so precarious to me, for so many reasons, so anything that has any chance of threatening it is so scary to me. I remember when I took over at work a few months ago, only 2 months after starting to transition at work. I told all the higher ups: "transition is my number one priority right now. I won't let anything else hurt it."

So if I see people lumping things into "trans" that are only slightly related, I get afraid. What if that brings down all kinds of animosity? And it's not even animosity towards me. While technically in some sense, the things might be related, pragmatically, they aren't. I think that's an important distinction to make.

And I often think maybe people just don't know. Maybe they don't know how I feel, or how I look at it. To me, transition is a medical issue. It's a mental health issue. Ultimately, for me personally, that's what it boils down to. Which is why you even see schisms sometimes between trans people who see dysphoria as a requirement and trans people who view things as largely personal choice. And as I've said many times, I don't even have a problem with that. If you just want to transition because "reasons", I'm fine with that. But it's really important to me that my respect of your decision is returned onto myself. Respect that for me, this isn't a decision. I didn't choose it with other options. I had no options. So if things go south, I might be in real trouble. I've got nowhere else to go.

Generally, that's all I ask. While I may find some things under the very broad "trans umbrella" to be personally distasteful, I'm ok allowing them to go about their business as long as they allow me to go about mine. It's only fair.

Link to post
Share on other sites

A bit of a rant, but speaks to outsiders actions toward trans people...

I shot an "ally" down on a Facebook page today pleading for a mother to make her kid wait until high school before "doing anything about it" because of media influence, etc.. First I gave them a bit of an education on puberty blockers. Second, I educated her on the possible consequences of her misguided advice. Third, I told her not to speak about what WE should or shouldn't do from the outside in (her very obviously NOT being a part of the LGBT community because of the overt profession of her ally-ship at the beginning of the post). I support all LGBT people, but... Ugh.

I find there are two different types of allies. 1. Those who are general public who claim to support LGBT issues. 2. Those who actually are family of or have otherwise vested relationships with LGBT people. The latter are more educated in the reality of things and, when the chips are down, will fight for the people they care about. The former mostly give lip service.. Sigh

Link to post
Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314

I feel like being nonbinary, and agender in particular, puts me in kind of a weird place with respect to all of this. One of the most common binary trans narratives I've seen deals with people who subscribe to that narrative being just the same as any other normal (whatever "normal" is taken to mean) cis person of their gender, with the sole difference that the trans person was born with different physical characteristics. And I have absolutely no problem with that, because there's no reason to draw a distinction unless that particular trans person chooses to, and so that sense of normalcy is hard-won and precious. It affirms the right of that person to belong to "a woman is a woman is a woman" or "a man is a man is a man".

But being nonbinary, I don't get a "normal". I don't get to be a regular Joe or a plain Jane. There are no archetypes for me to fit into comfortably or break out of courageously, because being agender isn't a matter of being a square peg in a round hole, it's a matter of being some deep-sea creature that's never even seen a piece of wood, let alone had any concept of carpentry. The result is that sometimes, I'm not going to lie, the "we're just like you!" trans narrative kind of hurts, because it reminds me that nonbinary people as a whole exist on the outside of society in general--there's nobody for us to be "just like". As far as 99% of the world is concerned, we don't even exist.

I know belonging to whatever "normal" society is is probably vastly overrated, but sometimes all I want is for people to not bat an eye when someone uses "sibling" instead of "brother" or "sister", or to use "they" or "zie" or something of the sort when they see a neutral-presenting person just as naturally as they use "he" for someone who presents masculine or "she" for someone who presents feminine. (...that was a lot more eloquent in my head.)

Link to post
Share on other sites

(This is mostly ranting)

After slowly realizing I am nonbinary and accepting that fact, followed by a phase of way more intense dysphoria I ever had (that luckily got better again), and then recently experiencing several demiboy days I more and more feel "trans" and not "only" nonbinary. I came to the trans identity only hesitantly, I didn't want to appropriate anything, didn't want to overstep, I felt uncertain. But the more I realized things for and about myself, the more different from cis people I felt, and the more trans.

But I'm not out as trans, or even nonbinary (except to people more "fluid in gender talk" or who are nb themselves), if at all I come out by describing myself as genderneutral or genderless.

I usually don't use the word nonbinary irl because it's not really a thing in Germany yet, and so many people are against anglicisms and immediately shut it down as nonsense just because "new unnecessary trendy word", and also there is some right-wing propaganda against what they call "gender mainstreaming".

And I deliberately avoid the word trans because I don't want to be classified as binary trans. People would see me as either still female because they don't see trans as a real thing or they see me as male because being trans obvs means the opposite of me being female. And with it comes the expectation to medically transition.

I came out to a friend of mine who is totally not "fluid in gender talk". I told her I feel neither male nor female, and that I chose Finn as my name. She immediately used my new name and was very accepting. But then in e-mails she started adressing me as Mr "last name" (it's this silly thing she sometimes does). I immediately told her to stop, it makes me icky, because for me this is simply how people address my father. She then went on addressing me as Mr Finn. Which I am more okay with (it's kind of funny) (we don't have Mx in German anyway), but she seems set on this idea of me being the opposite of "what I was before". Instead of just avoiding the Mr/Ms dilemma.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Calligraphette_Coe

The name of the game is inclusion, good intentions, and supportive attitudes.

Does anything I've said here resonate with you? Do you have other feelings about the umbrella nature of the term trans, or about how the general public often misrepresents the term by including groups of people who would not otherwise identify as trans?

"Yea, though I walk through the Valley of The Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil."

I've been through that valley quite literally, and I still hurt sometimes remembering how Exclusion made me walk it alone. In the whole world, there is no more sad and scared feeling than that. And I find it rips out my soul to do the same to someone else. I think the sun shines on us all, and those who hurt no one with their personal beliefs and practices deserve have their shadows cast, too-- on the Plain of Life, where we all ought walk a level field paved with good intentions and lovingkindness.

It's so easy for our human natures, steeped as they are in sovereign but sometimes selfish needs, to forget that another person needs other people sometimes too. Our very survival and ascendance as a species had, as its abiding substrate, the Virtuous Circle of Cooperation sewn into it with the thread of Empathy.

There's no more solitary human experience than dying-- why should we make Living an exception. Because REAL human evil is what put that little boy with the dazed and bloody face from Aleppo where he suffered what no human should ever have to suffer. I think that image is another one of the things that will become part of the racial memory, about just how Awful humans can become when they can't sustain Community.

We can do better. I think we have the means and the psychological technology to do so, to banish suffering like a dam holding back the raging waters of destruction.

Link to post
Share on other sites
TheStarrySkai

I dislike grouping of anything [race, age, gender, sexuality, you get my point]. I don't know much about other-kin or trans-age people soooo I won't talk about that.

I would say that I'm not solidly male so my experience differs from a binary trans guy. On the other hand I identify as a guy more so than non-binary so my experience differs from them as well. Basically what I'm saying is... everyone is different as you can't assume what someone is going through because of how they identify and you can't stuff people inside a labeled box.

I can more or less fit into this box of so called "male", "transman", but not 100% percent and I won't try to fit cause I know it won't work. I'm much more masculine than the stereotypical woman and much more feminine than the stereotypical man. So I'm just this walking 5 foot piece of androgynous wtf.

I'm fine with being called he. I'm cool with that. Sure it would be great to just be a person and have gender neutral pronouns, but I can't that of people that don't even know that being gender neutral is a thing [this is where education come in, yes?].

Obviously there are people that group others without meaning too. I do believe that there should be more of a push to understand other types of people that one does not know of very well. Education can work wonders I'm sure of it. Those people that I mentioned earlier don't mean harm, but harm does come nonetheless. I hope people see gender as more fluid and stop stuffing people into weird labeled boxes.

Link to post
Share on other sites
Dodecahedron314

So I'm just this walking 5 foot piece of androgynous wtf.

Unrelated, but this is my favorite thing I've heard all day. :D May I steal this? It's just so pithy and relatable. :)
Link to post
Share on other sites

The trans community and the communities that keep getting involved with it should just continue making distinctions, I guess. The more we explain, the easier it should be to explain later, and the more our words might spread. Trans, in the way it is used by most, signifies "transgender," and gender (usually) has nothing to do with age, race, spirituality, or any of the other things that have often been confused with it. Sure, there are people who are transgender otherkin, and even people who are transgender, transage, otherkin, and more, but one does not happen because of the other and any one of those traits can occur on its own. I haven't had any opposing ideas pointed directly at me, so I can't say how I feel about that, but I can say something I use to explain if I'm ever in a discussion:

Being a woman doesn't always coincide with being a mother. Having red hair doesn't necessarily mean someone has light eyes or fair skin. Hearing loss might not result in a speech impediment. Being transgender isn't the same as being trans-some other thing.

When it comes to nonbinary issues, I have no idea. Even as I grow closer to the term myself, I can't think of a description concrete enough to sway the general public into not trashing it. Generally, I don't mind much when people generalize nonbinary people with transgender people, since they're at least recognizing nonbinary identities. If I do disagree with what a person says, though, in an area filled with stubborn Southerners or on sites full of "anti-SJWs" it can be more straining on me to fight them than it is to just leave them be.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Actualy after reading a bunch of other responses...

I think that transgender community should stick with gender as its theme. If some members happen to be otherkin, trans-age... or anything else really, tall, short, thin, overweight, Christian, Muslim, atheist... there is no reason to throw them out. But it's not the theme.

Then, binary and non-binary trans people ... Well, I am somewhere in between both. I'm not classically enby, I lean significantly towards "dude", and I'm not classicaly binary trans, I'm somewhat androgynous and not transitioning other than that, and feeling good about it. If it was up to me, binary and n-b people would be grouped together. Those are two different groups, and I'm neither here nor there.

Link to post
Share on other sites
TheStarrySkai

So I'm just this walking 5 foot piece of androgynous wtf.

Unrelated, but this is my favorite thing I've heard all day. :D May I steal this? It's just so pithy and relatable. :)

Hahaha. go ahead

Link to post
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...