Ways to be human

[sartorias]

jimhines's latest post plus the arrival of a guest through the holidays got me to thinking

Comments

[cmcmck]

Difficult topic even for one coming at it from the inside

[sartorias]

Thank you for that. Also for 'gender confirmation'--thank you thank you.

[cmcmck]

Y're welcome :o)

I assume you were up to cis = not trans?

Although personally, I'd prefer it if we labelled all women 'woman'.....

[sartorias]

Thanks. I will go fix that.

[kith_koby]

This was beautiful, and really edifying. Thank you for sharing.

[cmcmck]

Y're welcome :o)

I got fed up with tutoring 'trans 101' so wrote this a while back!

[rose_lemberg]

Yes to all this. Thank you very much for posting.

One of my friends is a more "stereotypical" trans woman. We met at work, during a summer language school about eight years ago. My other colleagues were all whispering behind her back about how real women are not X and real women are not Y, and I kept talking back more or less along the lines you posted until people stopped gossiping about her with me. I am still angry about that. Why does it even matter what she looks like, and whether she manages to "pass"? She is a woman.

[cmcmck]

'Passing privilege' as they call it is an issue for many- because I am physically slight and transitioned young enough to avoid some of the worst aspects of puberty (userpic's me as 19 year old undergrad :o) I have it, yet there are so still many sexist and misogynistic assumptions about what women are or should be. 'You can't want to be a woman if you don't do x,y or z' or 'if you do a,b or c' is something that forces many trans women into a totally false approach- and the worst offenders over this are often the very gatekeepers who should be empathetic.

'She is a woman'

Yes, absolutely! Like there are no homely women out there.

[sartorias]

The whole idea of 'passing'--gender, race, social level--is so poisonous.

[cmcmck]

Absolutely!

The whole uncomfortable idea that there's an ideal type or way of being is straight out of the Nazi ideological framework and we all know where that led..........

[gillpolack]

The notion of 'passing' made me think of being Jewish. We experience significantly less prejudice and discrimination if we can 'pass' and if we don't admit publicly to being Jewish. Similar narratives at the bigot's end, I suspect, leading to similar vocabulary at ours.

[sartorias]

That's a good observation.

[cmcmck]

Yes, I've had the conversation with members of other opressed groups and the conclusions are often very much the same.

[3rdragon]

On the topic of 'passing,' I sound Sherri L. Smith's Flygirl to be very thought-provoking (in this instance, in a racial context).