That Feminist Dyke

freedominwickedness:

This is now the third time I’m writing on trans and intersex terminology. I am quite sick of this subject, and I am even more sick of people immediately jumping to the assumption that I must be a dyadic and/or binary-identified trans person simply because I disagree with them. This especially goes for certain dyadic and/or binary trans people who have taken it upon themselves to white knight for what they assume is “the” intersex point of view.

Congratulations. You have successfully bullied me into talking about deeply personal medical details which I do not want to discuss in public. I hope you feel damn proud of yourselves. I hope it’s worth it to you that you’ve stomped all over my triggers, given me the worst childhood abuse flashbacks I’ve had in years, and put me in a state of severe emotional (and physical) exhaustion.

For the record, I find it utterly sick that certain dyadics are so obsessed with white knighting for intersex people that they knowingly attacked an intersex person for disagreeing with their position even after sie explicitly outed hirself as intersex. White knighting is a completely busted way of trying to own your privilege in the first place, but white knighting to the point of openly silencing and speaking over a member of the minority you’re supposedly defending?

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As for the actual issues being debated, here is where I stand.

Up until last year, I — as an intersex person — did ask that dyadic trans people use the terms AMAB/AFAB instead of CAMAB/CAFAB, on the argument that dyadic trans people are coercively socialized as their birth assigned gender but not coercively assigned at birth per se. The reasons for my change in position are as follows:

• First, I realized that AMAB and AFAB push trans people right back into the problem they were trying to solve when they coined CAMAB and CAFAB as replacements for the terms MTF and FTM. The stripped-down terms once again tie trans people to their birth assignment rather than their actual gender. In fact, AMAB and AFAB are even worse than MTF and FTM in terms of tacitly equating trans people with cis people of the same birth assignment.
• Second, I realized that intersex people as a whole were failing to acknowledge that dyadic trans people were doing us a big fucking favor in even considering giving up a big piece of their terminology at our request. Instead, more and more of us were simply deciding that we were somehow entitled to exclusive use of the terms we wanted, either by rewriting history to claim that trans people had “appropriated” from intersex people or by playing Oppression Olympics.
• Third, I realized that intersex people involved in these arguments were starting to blatantly move the goalposts by demanding that trans people change their terminology again by giving up “assigned” as well as “coercive”. Frankly, I see no reason to believe that this demand is being made in any sort of good faith; if trans people comply, they’re just going to get the “at birth” part pulled out from under them as well.
• Finally, I realized that the entire reason many intersex people were picking fights over this issue in the first place was not that they wanted dyadic privilege to be acknowledged, but because they thought of themselves as “normal” and trans people as mentally ill and/or perverts. That’s why they were acting like Apple Computer patent lawyers and going absolutely berserk at anything even vaguely resembling the “look and feel” of their claimed territory.

In light of those points, I found that I could not in good conscience continue to support any effort to seek the redefinition of CAMAB and CAFAB as exclusively intersex terms, regardless of any per se definitions. Any term which fails to emphasize the fact that trans people’s birth assignment is nonconsensual and forced misgenders trans people by grouping them with cis people on the other side of the gender spectrum, which makes both AMAB/AFAB and DMAB/DFAB actively harmful to trans people.

I see continued efforts to demarcate a “hard line” between trans and intersex to be horribly misguided at best, willfully malicious at worst, and utterly counterproductive regardless of motive. Trans rights and intersex rights are both fundamentally about reclaiming the right to bodily integrity by replacing involuntary treatment built around social compliance with voluntary treatment built around informed consent. We do not achieve freedom for anyone by prefacing it with institutional gatekeeping over who is entitled to autonomy and who doesn’t deserve it.

ftmcollectionagency:

I’m gone for seven hours, and this shit pops up? Are you fucking kidding me?

DFAB trans people, shut the fuck up. You want someone to tell you to shut up? Okay, I will tell you to sit down and shut the fuck up. You do not get to sit here and say that CAMABs are erasing you and your experiences. You don’t get to sit here and derail threads where CAMABs are saying that they’re not going to be silenced anymore and then speak over them about your entire damn ass life story.

You want to bring statistics into this? Alright, bring them in, but I’ll tell you one that I’ve learned.

Evidently, CAMABs only make up LESS THAN TEN PERCENT of survivors of hate crimes towards LGBT people, but they make up ALMOST HALF of all murders.

Don’t you fucking dare erase that.

Were we brought up in a feminine manner? Yes, we were. But you know what I’m seeing? I’m not seeing silence because of this, I’m seeing a bunch of trans men talking OVER everyone else, and sitting back and bitching that, at the same time, no one is listening.

Want to know why?

We’re full of shit, that’s why.

We talk about oppression as though we know what it is, we talk about hate crimes as though we have any idea as to what a hate crime actually is and results in*, and we have the fucking nerve to do all of this and then say that CAMABs are silencing us. They are NOT silencing us, and they have NEVER done so. We have always had privilege over them (and no, you shit-stain, CAMABs have NEVER had male privilege), and we will continue to have privilege over them. When a CAMAB tells you to sit the fuck down, ESPECIALLY a trans* WoC, you sit the fuck down.

You don’t argue, you don’t bitch and moan, you don’t cry and whine because you think you’re being silenced, you sit down, and you listen.

At this point, I’m honestly starting to think that we all crave the ability to say that we’re oppressed. Do we face cissexism? Sure we do. Do we get murdered in the street for it? No*.

I am sick and fucking tired of seeing my fellow DFABs act like total shit-stains whenever you don’t have all of the spotlight on you. I am sick and fucking tired of seeing my fellow DFABs disrespect CAMABs with our shit behavior, and I’m sick of DFABs having the fucking nerve to derail threads and center them around themselves because, apparently, they can’t fucking stand the idea of a CAMAB having a voice, at all.

You are not being silenced.

You are silencing other people.

If you honestly, truly want oppression this badly, I hope that you get it. I hope that you fucking learn what it is to be pushed out of safe spaces, to be told that you’re disgusting by everyone, and to have your fellow trans* people push you out of those spaces, too.

And to those of you who bitch about your local trans* groups having more CAMABs than DFABs? How fucking dare you. How fucking dare you complain that CAMABs, however many strong, are able to come together and feel safe and welcome. How DARE you make that about you and your lack of dominance.

You have and always will have access to far more spaces than CAMABs ever will.

Before you open your fucking mouth, and before you put your hands on your god damn keyboard to talk about how oppressed you are, you look at the TDOR list and think about if what you’re about to say is at all legitimate.

You will experience cissexism, I do not deny that, but the lack of severity in what you face in comparison to CAMABs, especially trans* WoC, means that you have absolutely no fucking right to continue to speak over them.

Sit down, shut up, and cut this shit out.

*I acknowledge that some DFABs have been the victims of violent hate crimes which have ended very badly. I also acknowledge that they are an extreme rarity.

*Once more, I acknowledge that a pinch of DFABs have been murdered. Once again, I acknowledge that they are an extreme rarity.

—I also acknowledge that while trans men have been murdered in extremely rare cases, this does not automatically mean that it was because of their status as a trans* individual, because the confrontation that lead to their demise could have easily been about something else, as, if DFABs are on testosterone, or even if they have a fairly decent passing privilege, one would not know that they were anything other than cis by looking at them.

ftmcollectionagency:

So there’s a huge pile of steaming shit going around that basically says that you’re not trans* (oh right, they leave out the * because it takes sooo much fucking effort to put a damn star after ‘trans’. forgot~) if you don’t experience dysphoria about absolutely everything with your body.

This is bullshit.

People experience dysphoria in different ways. People need different things from their body. Some DFABs are perfectly fine with having a vagina. Some DFABs can get through an entire month without dysphoria overwhelming them.

And then, some trans* people don’t experience dysphoria at all, but are still trans*.

I’m putting this on this blog because it is ONLY FTMs that I EVER see saying this load of horseshit.

FTMs: you do NOT get to decide whether or not someone else is trans* or not. You should know better than to deny someone their gender identity just because you don’t agree with it, or just because it’s inconvenient to you. You have ABSOLUTELY not excuse for this level of ignorance, and every single one of you should be ashamed of yourselves for housing said ignorance.

And since I know this is coming, since I fucking know that some binary trans guy is going to reblog this and go, “but the requirements for surgeries and hormones are—”

Yes, I fucking know that the requirements in place say that you must feel an intense sense of wrongness within the body that you have.

I also know that cis people made those fucking rules up.

Opting for surgeries and hormones doesn’t make you trans*.

Being non-op doesn’t make you any less trans*.

You’re trans* if you’re trans*, and you’re a real piece of shit if you’re telling someone if they can or can’t be trans* just based on your say-so.

queernonymoose:

Hey Y’all, I am Dan and as you know Cathy Brennan has been on a backpeddling rampage lately. Most recently, a 15 year old trans* dfab [he/his pronouns] has become the brunt of her abuse. Basically, in her classic MO, Cathy emailed the school he attends and they had a parent-teacher conference, which ultimately outted him about being trans*.

They are in a sticky situation where many a time his parents will kick him out but then let him back in, but he fears this may be permanent. If there is anyone in the CT Hartford area that can help, please please contact myself and I can direct you to their tumblr. Their tumblr is currently not disclosed so radscum watchers cannot intervene/antagonize them further.

Strangesanjles has posted about this but there was some confusion and the minor is a dfab individual who prefers he/his pronouns.

If anyone familiar with laws concerning emancipation in CT, PLEASE contact too.

(Source: dansphalluspalace)

editorialhedgehog:

Here is what I want you to do:

I want you to give Ira Gray the fucking boot. I want you to expel him from his position as a staff member in your little group. I want you to do this publicly, and I want you to tell everyone precisely WHY you’re giving him the boot. Do not make this quiet. Do not simply kick him out and then give no explanation.

He doesn’t deserve the peace of mind that comes with that.

I want you to apologize for housing a rapist scumbag, and I want you to work actively against him and destroy whatever credibility that he has.

I don’t give two shits if you’re sitting there and wondering about how this might hurt your movement or whatthefuckever, because, quite frankly, with how DFAB-centered you are, you don’t really need a fucking movement, anyway.

Get rid of him, and do it publicly.

Make a post explaining why you’re kicking him out.

Do NOT let him ~gracefully step down~ and write his own goodbye letter and post it, because you should know damn well that he’ll be a manipulative little asshole and spin it to make it seem like he’s the victim.

If he says he’ll step down, that’s great, but you better fucking frame it like you’re giving him the boot.

I have limited respect for your organization as it; don’t make it worse.

Don’t you DARE spit on his victims by letting him get away with this, or by letting him off easy.

You have an opportunity to do this shit right. Take advantage of that.