Dear cis person: How much time do you really spend thinking about gender? How much of your life have you devoted to researching it? For most cis people, I would bet it's not much. Maybe you think about it for a few minutes when it comes up in the news, but then you're distracted by the next topic. If your gender isn't broken, there's not much reason to think about it.
Most trans people I've met have been experts on the psychology of gender. We have to be. We spend every day thinking about it. It's a subject that keeps us up at night. We don't just wake up one day and think, "Oh, if I put on a pretty dress I'll be a girl now!" We read the books. We spend years in therapy. We do the research.
And we don't just read the books that agree with our opinions. We
spend years trying to disprove our transness. No
one wants to be trans, it is a soul-crushing life full of obstacles and threats that most cis people don't even consider. It would make life much simpler if we could
just accept the bodies we were given. We try to fit in, we try to be comfortable, we don't just say "I guess I'm trans" and start cross dressing.
When it comes to public restrooms, most of us are scared to go into either one. It's never as simple as, "Oh, I'm dressed woman so I'll use the women's". It's more like, "If I use the women's, will they yell at me? If I use the men's, will I get beaten up? Will I make the other people in there uncomfortable? Can I hold it? Should I just go home early? Should I just stay home from now on? Can I really live my life like this?" We don't go into the restrooms for insidious reasons, we just want a safe place to pee.
No, we're not perfect. Like any group, sometimes the loudest of us say the dumbest things. Don't assume that the high profile trans celebrities represent all of us. You wouldn't judge all Christians by the ones who commit terrorist acts, so be careful about making similar assumptions about groups you don't understand.
We're not transitioning to "parody women" or "erase lesbians" or whatever the TERFs are now saying. We're not anti-feminist; in fact, most trans people I know are extremely feminist. I've personally been accused of wanting to be a woman because I think women have easier lives than men. I definitely don't believe that.
We have tried just "getting over it". We've tried living life as our birth sex. We transition to restore our own sanity, and in some cases to save our own lives.
I'm not saying your opinion is worthless. I'm just asking you to recognize that you are a novice who is arguing with experts. You may never completely understand us, and that's fine as long as you accept us. But please, stop thinking you know more about the subject than we do.
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