all 14 comments

[–]spanishprofanity 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

As the trans movement is evolving, it is growing past the epithets of “born this way” and “it’s not a choice”. I always resented the political expedient that homosexuality is “not a choice.” It’s my choice, who cares? I never wanted to be restricted by that and I don’t want anyone else to be either.

yikes

The trans movement has needed to adopt this same position to receive validity, but a new generation of young nonbinary/gender-fluid people are leading us away from that. In that, transgender is now a phenomenal umbrella community and a huge opportunity for all of us to be part of. I don’t have to choose who I am, I can choose who I want to be. I love that. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

transtrenders are valid uwu

[–]ChunkeeguyTeam T*RF Fuck Yeah[S] 10 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

a huge opportunity for all of us to be part of

Wait until they find every fucker on the woke planet under that umbrella with them and realise there's nothing elite or cool about it anymore, and then they flee in droves, leaving nothing but homophobia in their wake.

[–]MoutonelectriqueBland Straight ♀ 12 insightful - 1 fun12 insightful - 0 fun13 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

"Sister, we need to talk."

I am not your sister, buddy. And I will not get used to the 'transing out the gays' party line.

The more TRA articles I read (and boy, there were a lot of those during pride month) the more homophobia and gender stereotypes I tend to see between the lines.

[–]fuck_reddit 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

I’m not your buddy, pal.

[–]MoutonelectriqueBland Straight ♀ 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I'm not your pal, friend.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

EDIT: I'm really sorry guys - apparently this article really pushed my buttons! I hope you enjoy the massive diatribe.

Oh, geez. Am I about to bitch about literally every paragraph in this article? Yes. Yes, I am.

Not too long ago, a friend’s kid came out as transgender. They grew up in a modern, supportive, progressive family, and their process of acceptance was relatively uncomplicated. That being said, one day some other friends and I were hanging out and the topic of this person’s transition came up. There was a lot of back and forth about it. Were they just going through a phase? Maybe they were actually gay, or just searching for an identity altogether. These were all progressive, middle-aged people talking, many of them gay themselves.

Why is it that "being trans" is like, the one thing that no one is allowed to allude to possibly being a phase? I doubt there are very many people that are, say, in their 30s, that are exactly the same as they were when they were teens. And I'd bet on the fact that most people on the planet went through various "phases" while they were teens, trying on different things to see what fit. When I was a confused teen, I tried on "being bi" for a time because I thought it was more acceptable than "being gay." I'm almost certain there are confused teens right now that see "being trans" as being more acceptable than "being gay," because trans stuff is in vogue right now.

A few months later, another family reached out. Their kid also came out as trans. They felt totally blindsided, and again spoke about it in the old familiar ways. Was it a phase? Our kid doesn’t realize how difficult their life will be. They won’t be happy. They shouldn’t tell anyone yet. Can’t they just be gay? Again, progressive, loving family and ultimately quite supportive.

This family is being painted as being somewhat unreasonable, but they approached a psychiatrist that is supposedly versed in this subject with questions about their child's mental state. What was the expectation? That they would have never reached out in the first place and just unquestioningly accepted whatever their child said when they shouted, "THIS IS ME NOW MOM"?

Do these words sound familiar? They do to me. It’s exactly the same stuff I and many of my gay peers heard throughout our own coming-out process decades ago. So is that it? Have we become our parents? Well, my parents never really embraced my homosexuality, so no. But yes. These concerns don’t occur as transphobic to me, just confusion born of the changing nature of society and humanity, and the challenges this presents for the previous generation as they are confronted by the new stuff. It’s to be expected and is the responsibility of the newer generation to fight for the new stuff as much as it’s the responsibility of the previous generation to listen and learn about something they know nothing about.

He says that he doesn't view the above concerns as transphobic, but it's quite clear by the fact that he's even writing this article in the first place that he feels quite negatively about those concerns, so that's just rhetoric designed to mask his disdain for parents daring to question their child's trans status. He takes issues with parents of old saying the same thing about being gay ("it's just a phase" etc.) and likens them to what's going on with "trans kids." Though the concerns may sound the same, they are coming from a different place.

If a teen thinks they're gay, and goes along with that for a bit, then turns out they were just confused and not actually gay, it's generally no harm, no foul (although the kid may feel some social pressure to continue being "gay" through high school or college or whatever since they entrenched themselves in that identity). If a teen thinks they're trans, and goes along with it to the point of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or surgery, then realizes a few years later that they were actually just confused, then there is a lot more harm done in that process. It's reasonable for parents to be concerned and have questions.

Last week, I read a story by James Finn that alerted me up to a schism in UK queer communities between The Gays and The Trans, with small minorities of LGB people rejecting the T through neutrality or frank opposition. This really bugged me, and I’ve been turning it over in my mind ever since.

He's been thinking about this constantly since he first heard about it. It bothered him significantly, but he clearly gave no thought to why it bothered him. He just knew that he was supposed to be bothered by anything seen as "anti-trans," and spent a week limbering up for his mental gymnastics to justify why it's a problem. Again, this is most likely because he's been told it's a problem by thought leaders and he can't imagine thinking critically about the subject.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Let’s establish some obvious parameters. Prejudice against homosexuals is about cross-gender behaviors. The whole terminology of “sissy”, “fag”, “poof” and “dyke” is all about gender. For generations, in prose, poetry, song, performance, tee-shirt slogans, whatever medium they could think of, many gay men have declared their childhood love for dolls, dress-up and decorating while eschewing traditional male play such as competitive team sports.

And this is where we start going off the rails. I think that, yes, some people that are homophobic are homophobic because some gay people exhibit cross-gender behaviors. But I also think that's a bit too simplistic. People are also just scared of something that's "different," and people have trouble imagining something like homosexuality and applying it to their own experiences. Sort of like how I have trouble imagining what a straight man must think when he sees an attractive naked woman (because even though I know intellectually that it's likely the same feeling I get when I say an attractive naked man, it's difficult to translate that feeling when I think about a naked woman).

In other words, just like I have trouble getting excited about the idea of putting my penis in a vagina, most straight people will feel the same way, and think that it's "gross" or "weird." Like, nothing against my lesbian sisters and bi sisters and brothers, but I personally find "being sexually attracted to a vagina" to be kind of weird. Doesn't mean I'm going to go around beating up lesbians or straight men or anything, but it's understandable to me if a straight person finds the idea of gay sex gross or weird.

These "parameters" he's setting are obviously being set to try and inextricably link the LGB to the T. Sorry, but I'm not buying it. Even if all of the homophobia in the world was due to the fact that homophobes just hate feminine men and masculine women, that doesn't mean that there's any relation to that homophobia and trans people.

I remember a time a family came to me for therapy. The young son asked if I followed professional baseball. I explained that being a gay, Jewish New York psychiatrist of a certain age, a convergence of stereotypes rendered me physiologically incapable of watching sports. He seemed a little perplexed but accepted it.

So, this certainly sounds like something that he would say as a joke, but given the context, I think he's absolutely serious. I think he genuinely thinks that he's not able to enjoy watching sports because of his intersectional identity. Right here is where we get to the heart of his attitude, but more on that in a moment.

On the occasions when guys have screamed “FAGGOT!” out of their car windows at me, it wasn’t because I was hand in hand or making out with my boyfriend (or theirs!) It was because I was walking. I was just walking, and there was something about my walk, my clothes, my hair, who knows, which they processed as inappropriately unmasculine.

Sorry, but there are gay people that you can just tell are gay from looking at them. That's not excusing abuse, but there seems to be this idea going around that everyone should be completely free from any sort of strife in their life and that no one should ever bully anyone else. That sounds great, but it's supremely naive. The people that called him a faggot might have called him that because he was acting feminine while he was walking, or they might have called him a faggot because they were just idiots and thought it would be funny to yell at someone walking down the street.

Because the author is gay, he's ascribing motivation based on that. He might be right, he might not be. There are too many unknowns for this story to be relevant to his point.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Haven’t lesbians been outspoken, outwritten, even outbullhorned, about their enmity for those same childhood female past-times while proudly embracing their inner Peppermint Patty? Because before the world had lesbians, there were tomboys; Tom+boy = girl?

Don't drag lesbians into this. Here's another instance of bias and rigid thinking. Must one be a tomboy to be a lesbian? Must one be a lesbian to be a tomboy? Also, seriously, why the need to chastise lesbians specifically? I'm tired of that bullshit myself; I can only imagine how lesbians must feel reading that shit.

As science hypothesizes the cause of the homosexual condition, theories return to one major thing: gender, androgens and estrogens gone awry in utero. The bond between sex and gender intricately woven together.

Using "science" and "gender" in the same sentence in this way immediately renders this entire paragraph null and void. Also, the specific biological mechanism behind what makes people homosexual has nothing to do with what makes people trans. We may, in time, find some similarities, but there is a marked difference between "who you are sexually attracted to" and "one's perception of one's own body." It's incredibly disingenuous to even include this line.

Cross-gender behavior, dress, mannerisms, past-times and interests are deeply woven into homosexual identity, and is the basis of our romantic and erotic objects of desire. Homosexual identity without transgender identity is just internalized homophobia, no matter how gender normative you are.

This is patently false. I'm not the manliest man in the world by any means, and I do have a few "traditionally" feminine interests (like crochet, baking, etc.) but that doesn't mean that I consider myself feminine in the slightest. I consider myself to be a man that has varied interests, and I consider myself lucky that I'm gay so that I don't experience any sort of shame for having interests that some would consider feminine. My interests and/or behaviors do not make me. My interests and/or behaviors are not inherently masculine or feminine. I'm not interested in crochet because it's a feminine hobby; I'm interested in it because it's a fun and relaxing way to pass the time.

There also exist plenty of gay men that are extremely masculine, and plenty of lesbians that are extremely feminine. What about them? It's ludicrous that he continually assumes that, because he clearly has rigid gender roles in his mind, that that means that those gender roles are both accurate and somehow related to him being gay.

I remember when I first started coming out, I didn’t like going to gay pride parades; too many drag queens. They were too flamboyant, too feminine. I didn’t want them to represent me. I was still figuring myself out, half in, half out of the closet. Being gay was more of an abstract concept still to me, and I hadn’t embraced it in all it’s wonderfulness.

I have never and will never go to a pride parade. They are too flamboyant and overly sexual and I don't want them to represent me. And guess what? That's actually not a problem. Being gay doesn't come with a membership that can be revoked for not following the rules. Gay people are not a monolith. I'm happy that this guy finally decided that "being gay" means "being overly flamboyant and in-your-face and attending pride parades;" I hope he finds fulfillment in that. But again, where does he get off speaking for all gay people and effectively guilting those gay people that don't want to be associated with stereotypes?

I thought I’d outgrown all that. Except, when I recently told a story about a drag performer on 1970s TV who significantly influenced my childhood. Only after I published the story and reread it for the hundredth time did I fully appreciated Beverly LaSalle’s impact. How fortunate I was to have her in my life, in her fabulous flamboyant playfulness, even just virtually and for a few minutes. Seriously, that drag queen may have changed my life for the better. So I guess I would say that I’m still waking up to the truth.

I don't know about Beverly LaSalle so I won't say anything about that. But this is yet another instance of him taking his own attitudes and ideas and extrapolating them out to the entire gay population and preaching it as though it is gospel. I enjoy RuPaul's Drag Race. I've been to a few drag shows. For a bit, I thought it might be fun to actually do drag, until I learned more about how the drag world is under the surface and decided I didn't want to be a part of that. But I don't identify with drag queens in any real sense. They don't make me appreciate being gay more than I already did. I'm glad this guy found a sense of comfort in this drag queen and could relate to this drag queen somehow, but... let's do this again: stop speaking for everyone and acting like all gay people are exactly the same.

It's as though he thinks, 'If only these gay men could see a drag queen on TV, they'd realize that they are denying their true, hyper-feminine selves.' We're not all the same. Being gay is such a small part of my personality as to be entirely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Not everyone makes their sexuality their entire life.

[–]Horror-SwordfishI don't get how flairs work 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If you look more carefully still, isn’t homophobia just another form of misogyny? Isn’t it about men not manifesting as masculine enough, painted and colorful, making themselves sexy, being pleasured dorsally, breaking sacred vows about masculine social barriers, communication choices. Isn’t it about women diverging from their lane as the kitten, the weaker sex or the homemaker?

Since the "homophobia = transphobia" thing might not stick, he decides to throw in "homophobia = misogyny" too. This is the same as above, where, yes, maybe that's part of it, but it's certainly not that simple. There are plenty of straight, masculine women and straight, feminine men, and likewise, there are plenty of straight men that love masculine women and plenty of straight women that love feminine men. It's almost like everyone on the planet has a different personality and likes different things, and their sexuality really has nothing to do with that.

The only sexuality has to do with it is that, like in my crochet example above, gay people may not feel any particular social pressure to conform to gender expectations. If I was a straight man, I might be ashamed to crochet, because it would be "girly," and there's social pressure on me to not be girly. Being gay, I can kind of bypass concerns about being thought of as girly, because people will probably expect me to be a little girly anyway. This is a problem with social stereotypes and not allowing people (even straight people) to do what makes them happy.

Unfortunately, changing social expectations takes a long time. Lest we forget, it was only fairly recently in the grand scheme of things that it was considered socially acceptable for a man to care about his appearance and take care of his skin. It's not something that can be rushed.

Politically, LGB without the T is divisive, but personally, it’s foolish internalized homophobia in some new camo, and either way, it’s damaging to all queer people.

It is divisive. I don't think it should be; it should be obvious that, politically, the two groups need to stand separately. I take issue with someone saying I have internalized homophobia because I think that, politically, the two groups have different needs and different issues that need to be dealt with separately.

I'll also say that I don't particularly care if something is damaging to "queer" people, because I have no frame of reference for who those people might be. I certainly don't consider myself "queer." The word itself has degenerated to the point of having basically no definition. I also don't see how disavowing the T can be at all harmful to LGB people, if that's what he's attempting to say. If anything, given the social climate surrounding the T, it is probably more harmful to LGB people to be lumped in with the T and other "queer" people.

There is no LGB without T. Thinking about those families has left me wondering what it’s going to be like for the progressive parents of 2050. What are the queer kids of today going to be confronted with when their offspring come out? What will leave them speechless and unprepared (I’m thinking it involves implants and enhancements; I’m eager to see where my predictions go.)

Yes, teens will always rebel against their parents and teens will always glom on to the newest coolest thing. This goes without saying. My prediction is going to be that in 2050, kids are going to start coming out to their blue-haired "queer" mom and dad by saying, "Hey, I just wanted to let you know that I'm actually straight, not trans, and I'm interested in waiting until I'm married to have sex." I guess we'll see.

As the trans movement is evolving, it is growing past the epithets of “born this way” and “it’s not a choice”. I always resented the political expedient that homosexuality is “not a choice.” It’s my choice, who cares? I never wanted to be restricted by that and I don’t want anyone else to be either.

Absolutely disgusting. If being gay was a choice, then, yes, who cares? But it's not, and this man is a horrible human being for implying that it is. The reason that we are all insistent that it's not a choice is because that helps people understand that a woman that says she's a lesbian doesn't just need a good dicking. By saying, "Yeah, it's my choice to be gay, who cares?" you are telling homophobes that they were right and giving further ammo to people that want to force gay people to be straight.

If anything is harmful to the LGB community, it's that kind of rhetoric. Of course, he doesn't think that way, because he's part of the "queer" community, and is following the party line that one can just choose to be whatever they want to be, regardless of the physical reality of their being.

The trans movement has needed to adopt this same position to receive validity, but a new generation of young nonbinary/gender-fluid people are leading us away from that. In that, transgender is now a phenomenal umbrella community and a huge opportunity for all of us to be part of. I don’t have to choose who I am, I can choose who I want to be. I love that. We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.

You can choose who you want to be, sure. I believe that "being trans" is a choice. Having gender dysphoria, however, is more similar to being gay in that it is not a choice. Would the author ever decide that he "chooses" to be straight? I imagine that he'd be in for a life of misery if he "chose" that.

You can choose who you want to be in the sense that you can be a good person, a mean person, a funny person, a caring person, etc. You can change your life and your attitudes and can change "who you are" in that sense. You can't just "be a woman" because you said so. There is no path from "being a man" to "being a woman" that can be followed in the same sense that you can follow a path from "being a miserable asshole" to "being a kind and compassionate person." People can, and do, change throughout their lifetimes.

People do not, however, change immutable things about themselves. In fact, they cannot, because those things are immutable. I can never be black no matter how hard I try to wish myself into it. I can never be straight no matter how hard I try to wish myself into it. You see where I'm going.

Just because there are a bunch of idiot teens and twenty-somethings that are trying desperately to continue their childhood narrative of "you are the most special person in the whole world," that doesn't mean that they are right, and I would venture a guess that, once they have more life experience, most will actually understand how wrong and how harmful they actually were.

So for all those non-queer straight-acting gays out there, you’re undermining yourselves, because we’re all one people and we need to stick together.

Oh, okay, so you're speaking directly to me, it seems, since I'm not queer and I mostly "act straight." Glad to know that I'm undermining myself just by living my life. That's certainly news to me. And again, gay people are not a monolith and are allowed to have different opinions on things. Consider the fact that, although I think that what this man has to say is idiotic, counter-productive, and holier-than-thou, I'm okay with him having written this article and, while I don't agree with his opinions, I'm okay with him having those opinions.

This particular article pulled nearly every guilt-trippy trick out of the hat in order to justify why the existence of the LGB Alliance makes him feel bad. The author is manipulative, disingenuous, and highly egotistical, and yet he seems to think that he's a good person. I'll refrain from making that judgment call because I don't know him personally, but I will say that I hope that he doesn't treat his patients with the same attitude that he displays in this article.

What this whole thing boils down to is that this man, like many "queer" people, has some sort of rigidly defined roles in his mind that the vast majority of everyday society doesn't really care about, and he's basing his entire worldview on those. "You can't be a gay man without being feminine," "Being trans is inextricably linked with being gay because they are both entirely about bucking gender norms," etc. etc. It's an incredibly narrow worldview disguising itself as an open worldview, and it's quite insidious how that all works. I believe that he genuinely believes these things he's saying, and that's what the scariest part is.

This sort of rhetoric ultimately undermines everything that gay people fought for over the past few decades, and it's sickening to me to see this attitude reach any sort of prevalence. Thankfully, it seems to be mostly confined to the online space, but I fear that it won't be long until I find myself being chastised in person because I don't walk around with a limp wrist. It's scary how quickly we went from "gender roles suck, do what you want" to "gender roles suck, except actually they are the most important thing and must be adhered to at all costs."

[–]HelloMomo 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I do think there's some truth to this passage:

Prejudice against homosexuals is about cross-gender behaviors. [...] On the occasions when guys have screamed “FAGGOT!” out of their car windows at me, it wasn’t because I was hand in hand or making out with my boyfriend (or theirs!) It was because I was walking. I was just walking, and there was something about my walk, my clothes, my hair, who knows, which they processed as inappropriately unmasculine.

Earlier this week I watched an interview with Helen Joyce where she said the same thing: https://youtu.be/OygT20clGfM?t=3380

What people used to know — and have almost deliberately forgotten — is that gay people are highly gender non-conforming. Every homophobe in the world knows this. Like every dad who wants his son not to grow up gay, knows very, very well that if he looks at the three-year-old who's borrowing his big sister's tutu and saying, "I want to do ballet," he thinks, "Shit, I've got a gay son." And like, we're somehow meant to pretend that's not the case.

The correlation isn't 100%, but it is strong enough to be statically noteworthy. For a while people have been kinda trying to pretend it's not the case, and I don't think that's yielded anything useful. I do feel like subculture that we in this group are are part of doesn't quite now what to do with gender nonconformity? Like, we say it's fine, everyone should be themselves, etc. And that's great. But what we don't do is contextualize it, or say it means anything, or give it a social framework. And this conceptualization of gender non-conformity as basically a superfluous random detail... I mean, I think it works for some people, but I think there are other people who find that lacking.

A year or two ago, I was reading ''Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold'', a historical book about the lesbian community in Buffalo New York from the 40s to the 60s. For them, the butch/femme culture was absolutely foundational. In the 70s, it fell away, and a more an androgynous version of lesbian social life, this one influenced by feminism which at the time often critiqued butch/femme subculture. I was thinking about how in butch/femme days, I doubt gender ideology would've made made any headway. There was already something else there to give lesbians a way to conceptualize gender expression. Like, the niche was already filled. But once that was gone, this new androgynous version of lesbian social life didn't last. A few decades later, young lesbians were once again reaching for a way to talk about gender expression and contextualize it socially, and now we've got this.

Even now, long after most of the butch/femme subculture has been left behind, the word "butch" has remained part of the vernacular. It's useful. It helps people make sense of things, and contextualize them within society. And every time Kai makes a post about how it's such a struggle to be a really gender non-conforming gay man, I think that the fact that gay men don't have any butch counterpart may be to their detriment.

I don't know. I think attaching meaning to gendered behavior is messy and iffy, but I also feel like basically we've already tried not doing it, we've run that experiment, and the results are in, and they're not very promising.

[–]fuck_reddit 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The only time I’ve had “faggot” yelled at me was when I was holding my bf’s hand and walking down the street. It definitely is about same-sex attraction. There’s a reason straight people are A-OK with trans people in “gay” relationships (ie. Iran and Russia).

[–]HelloMomo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think you're taking something different from the quote than I did. The person who wrote it was a TRA who's trying to argue that like... homophobia is actually just misdirected transphobia or something? I don't even know. It was written by a goofball and that clearly still bleeds through, even in short form.

The reason I quoted that section, though, is because anecdote rang true to me. It doesn't strike me like a made-up, inconceivable situation. That's not to say that men holding hands with their boyfriends don't also face street harassment! I'm not saying anything about that. When I say that his anecdote sounds believable, I mean only is that his anecdote sounds believable.

[–]automoderatorHuman-Exclusionary Radical Overlord[M] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

RIP Snappy, I AM THE NEW GOD!

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