Posts by tamzin@wikis.world
(DIR) Post #B69UujUBrxkjXegKDw by tamzin@wikis.world
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I get that for some people it's more of a rationalization because they're afraid of pursuing HRT, and that's totally valid. It's a reasonable thing to be afraid of. But it's good to be honest with yourself. Making up obstacles is a great way to screw yourself out of happiness.
(DIR) Post #B6JXMBhvC3NeNQvHU0 by tamzin@wikis.world
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Not for the first time, and I'm sure not for the last, something on Wikipedia prompts me to remind people: Headcanoning real-life nonbinary people as binary trans, and then demanding others agree with you, is a form of misgendering. And honestly in some ways a nastier form than regular misgendering. Personally I'd rather deal with 100 cis people spamming low-effort "actually a man" comments about me than 1 trans person insisting I'm a binary woman because I remind her of herself and so I must be
(DIR) Post #B6JXMCgtXM9ZQXRyWO by tamzin@wikis.world
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(This is partly a subtoot, but is about the general case; not everything I said here applies 100% to the scenario that prompted it, which was both less damning in some ways and more damning in others.)
(DIR) Post #B6JXMD4I8Mrub6OezQ by tamzin@wikis.world
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Ofc, the people doing this often don't think they're doing it. They think they're picking up on cues that the enby is just afraid to say explicitly. They think they're doing the enby a favor.And for sure, there are some times where it's legitimately unclear how someone identifies or how they want to be referred to. The questions to ask yourself are: Am I saying to call them something they don't call themself? And am I saying not to call them something they do call themself?
(DIR) Post #B6JXMDVEWCQ3wf0Az2 by tamzin@wikis.world
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If you're doing either of those, there's a very good chance you're misgendering someone, even if you're really really sure that deep down they agree with how you're labeling them.What happens if you turn out to be right? Well, the good news is you probably haven't hurt them. That still doesn't vindicate it as an approach, though, any more than it'd be okay to punch people just because you punched one person and they said "Yeah actually I needed that".
(DIR) Post #B6JXMDyeknxHPulfqS by tamzin@wikis.world
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A less harmful but still not-okay cousin of this is assuming people are binary trans just because they are apparently not cis. There are a lot of historical figures who it seems safe to describe as some kind of gender-diverse, but who some people will say with certainty were binary trans, as if every AFAB today who presents masc is a trans man or every AMAB today who presents fem is a trans woman. Avoiding trans erasure is good! Assuming the binary is not.
(DIR) Post #B6gZyzAWtOmGgqlEPo by tamzin@wikis.world
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It always throws me for a loop when I run into someone who's from the part of the trans Internet where everyone's always fighting about who's the better kind of trans.What's intriguing is that they never seem to believe me when I say that's not what most of the trans community looks like & they're just in shitty echo chambers.I feel like this should be seen as a humanitarian crisis, like if a neighboring country had a famine. We need a project to resettle refugees into non-toxic trans spaces
(DIR) Post #B6gZz0ADC47Lm9cUYi by tamzin@wikis.world
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If that second paragraph sounds hyperbolic, I had someone straight-up refuse to believe me when I said I'd never been yelled at by anyone in my trans/enby friend group for criticizing certain aspects of mainstream trans thought on gender. Like can you imagine that? Not just being used to your own friend group being abusive toward you for having your own opinions about gender, but being so far deep into that subculture that you literally cannot believe there is any other world?
(DIR) Post #B6gbLQrQiOdgts5uaG by tamzin@wikis.world
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Worse yet, a common justification from people in these communities for spreading transphobia is that it's the only way to secure safe spaces for themselves. They seem to be genuinely unaware that most trans people find safe spaces within the community specifically by navigating *away* from people like them.In fairness, I probably also wouldn't want to believe that the thing I was looking for had been there the whole time, but I wasn't invited because I was seen as part of the problem.
(DIR) Post #B6gbLRNKnm9yUp1OJU by tamzin@wikis.world
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And if you're someone reading this and thinking, "That's funny, it almost sounds like Tamzin's talking about me and my friends, but that doesn't make sense because I'm not part of the problem": You are.You aren't a bad person (probably), but you are part of the problem. If you are promoting division in a community on the brink of genocide, you are part of the problem, end of story, no exceptions. But you can fix that this very second.
(DIR) Post #B6gbLRnDFYrNn583eK by tamzin@wikis.world
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And I'm always one to say that I don't care what people believe, but what they do, so to be clear: I don't really care if any given trans person privately thinks that <some other group of trans people> sucks. But if you're someone who's been putting that energy out into the world, and that is hurting your soul, as putting out hatred tends to do, then fixing that is as simple as accepting "I'm part of the problem", not doing it anymore, and finding what you can do to be part of the solution.
(DIR) Post #B6gbbt1zkJ9ku0skfA by tamzin@wikis.world
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Oh & before someone tries this line: No, calling out awful groups who are incidentally trans (say, a group of racists who happen to be trans) is not promoting division in the trans community. Trans racists are not a gender minority.However, if you've identified some group that you think is awful & incidentally trans, but it is suspiciously homeomorphic to a specific gender minority, perhaps even enough that you slip up as to which you're referring to, then we're back to "part of the problem".
(DIR) Post #B6gcFJC6PFQJL6PKjI by tamzin@wikis.world
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And further, none of this is to say that there are no situations in which it makes sense to draw distinctions between different groups of trans people. There are certain harms that some kinds of trans people experience and others don't. Notably, though, few if any of those are the sorts of harms that connect to what the Lemkin Institute has recognized as the early stages of a genocide against transgender people.
(DIR) Post #B6gcFJfAfAfwnG0Y2S by tamzin@wikis.world
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Part of this, I think, may be a perverse effect of people shielding themself from "regular" transphobic rhetoric to protect themselves, but then missing what's going on out there.No one calling to murder, deport, forcibly detransition, or otherwise attack us is qualifying their statements with "transfems" or "transmascs" or whatever the acronym du jour is. Hell, they can't even manage to avoid hatecriming cis people in their quest to cleanse their country of us.
(DIR) Post #B6jFCVkZYHj5wO6jIW by tamzin@wikis.world
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@linear This sounds like something @legoktm might know the answer to.
(DIR) Post #B6rh7Nnw1D8JpYhdDM by tamzin@wikis.world
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As someone who considers xemself "true neutral" on the allosexual/asexual spectrum, I'm usually only mildly bothered by the ways society is hyperfocused on sex over other kinds of intimacy, but I will say, it's fucking bullshit that the technology exists to emulate sex with a partner from halfway around the world, but not to emulate cuddling. The former I can just as well get on a hookup app. But Grindr can't give me the experience of being in the arms of the person I most feel safe with.
(DIR) Post #B8KzgLcCOCu3wyQlmq by tamzin@wikis.world
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#poll: Polyamorous/polyamory-adjacent Fedizens, how many degrees of partner/lover separation is it from you to a polyamorous person who lives in Greater Seattle?#boostswelcome *unless* you live in Greater Seattle. (Don't want to skew the numbers too much, but ofc please still vote, Seattleites.)#askfedi #polyamory #polyamorous
(DIR) Post #B8KzgLqjWAWsg3ENRQ by tamzin@wikis.world
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This poll inspired by suddenly realizing that, after years of smirking at "Greater Seattle polycule" memes, I arguably qualify by having a lover who has partners who live there, despite having never been there myself.(For the purposes of this poll that'd make me a 2+.)
(DIR) Post #B8KznSIxuoYKj1p8XA by tamzin@wikis.world
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@ariadne Oh I know, and I know this because I have had some of the drama reported back to me through multiple completely unrelated streams within my polycule, where I've actually been able to piece together narratives that neither side had based on the two second- or thirdhand accounts, from an ocean away.
(DIR) Post #B8do48CPpPxXkEkhrE by tamzin@wikis.world
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In the past 2 months, over 1,000 #Wikimedians (and counting!) have expressed our solidarity with #WikiWorkersUnited, the #WikimediaFoundation staff union, up to and including openness to an editorial strike. Today at #Wikimania, dozens of us gathered to send a clear message to the WMF: You've said you support your workers' right to unionize; now that a supermajority of American employees have signed union cards, it's time to show that you mean it. Recognize the union without delay. #Solidarity!