via
http://ift.tt/2ftcZri:
golbatgender:
Just an expansion of something I said earlier, on my main:
Cis people cannot have a complicated relationship with gender.
They can have complicated relationships with secondary aspects of cisnormativity, such as heteronormativity, racism, ableism, sexism, etc. But if you take those intersections out, a disabled cis person or a non-white cis person or a cis woman does not have a complicated relationship with gender per se. They’ll have issues with the hyper- or de-gendering of their race, or of their specific disability, things like attribution of violence or sexual availability or, heck, penis size or the “autism is an extreme male brain” thing, but not binary gender itself. Admittedly, a non-Straight cis person still might, but that’s because heterosexism is so tied up in seeing anything non-Straight as doing gender wrong; on a certain level, anyone non-Straight is also at least a bit non-cis (and transphobic non-Straight people are just assimilationists), but that’s a tangent for another post.
But denying someone’s transness by calling them “a cis person with a complicated relationship to gender” is actually calling them trans. I mean, give it a couple of years and it’ll be the trans version of the bi character who always “doesn’t like labels,” only actually a bit more of a synonym than a real euphemism. It’s a shitty and avoidant way of saying it, but it’s for sure saying it. Yeah, you think that the person you’re yelling about using a label you don’t like or disagreeing with your exclusionist politics is some sort of creepy invader who doesn’t know what transness is (because you’re a recycled TERF with your head so far up your ass you can’t even see it, pardon my language), but you’re still literally calling them not cis. And unlike gender, cis/trans really is a binary; whether you want to use the word “trans” or not, a person who isn’t cis…isn’t cis.
I disagree with this, or at least this-as-an-absolute-statement, because I think it reifies a binary between cisness and transness that doesn’t reflect a lot of people’s lived experiences. I think there are lots of people who identify as cis and/or don’t identify as trans, who have, indeed, complicated relationships with their gender identity itself, not even just its implications but their identification as a man or woman. I don’t think that it’s inevitable that these people will identify as trans in the future, and I don’t think it’s necessarily desirable.
I’m sort of baffled by what I’m reading as the assertion that racism, ableism, etc. are “secondary aspects of cisnormativity”, to the point that I can’t imagine I’m reading it correctly. i think “if you take those intersections out [their experiences would be different]” is, frankly, a ridiculous thing to say. if you took all of the cells out of my body I would be a skeleton hung with connective tissue, but here in the real world, I’m a breathing human being! people’s experiences, even if they inconveniently contradict your point, are real parts of their lives that can’t just be pulled out like bones from a slice of fish.
on my, at this point maybe fifth or sixth reading of the post, I feel like you’re using “trans” to mean “gender nonconforming in any way” which I just feel is inappropriate.
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