"The trans debate" is NOT relevant "to only a small number of people" but to everyone

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Unrolled thread here
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1538603568751591429.html

Cis people: I need you to understand (and help others understand) that “the trans debate” is NOT relevant “to only a small number of people” but to everyone. Thread below for why:

(This is focused on cis women, but cis dudes I need you to listen too. You are also in danger.)
Being anti-trans is only possible by policing the gender and sex of everyone. Because I promise you - you don’t know who is trans and who isn’t.

Also, most of this isn’t really about trans people although we get hurt the most first - it’s about control.

Anti-trans policies require guesswork and punish people - regardless of gender and sex - for not conforming to extremely stereotypical (and white) assumptions about what men and women look like, act like, and dress like.

Here are just some of the types of cis women who have faced harassment, violence, and legal repercussions for using a women’s bathroom:
- women with short hair
- women with alopecia
- women who are athletes
- women who have had mastectomies
- women who are tall
(Continued)

- women who are balding
- women who have facial hair and choose not to remove it for a range of reasons including religious ones.
- women who like pants and button downs.
- women who like hyper-feminine theatrical vintage styles
- women with pronounced facial features

Cis men also face harassment in their gendered spaces if they are slight, short, have long hair, don’t obviously grow facial hair even when clean shaven, prefer not to use a urinal, are disinterested in bonding rituals centered around misogyny and violence, and more

When trans people lose rights everyone becomes open to scrutiny by the gender police. Anyone empowered to police gender is not trying to protect anyone - they’re like a teacher that hates you and loves their red pen.

I mean we’ve got multiple state governments super hyped to give kids internal and external genital exams because there might be one trans girl in Ohio playing softball. What’s the purpose of that beyond telling girls their bodies belong to the state?

Anyway, the more people anti-trans people can find and penalize for being gender suspicious, the happier they are. It’s a form of fascism that isn’t even about trans people. It’s about your freedom in your clothes, hobbies, jobs, and relationships.

It’s about motherhood not being optional. It’s about every creative, curious cell in your body being dangerous.

For cis women, trans rights are about whether you’re good enough at being a woman and good enough at being confined to the white Christian nationalist version of womanhood to be safe.

You probably aren’t. And no amount of punishing trans people will change that.

You like wearing pants? You like your kickboxing class? Big fan of wearing your hair short? Super into making your own decisions about when, if ever, to have kids? Enjoy sitting in anyway other than legs crossed at the ankle? Congrats, cis women, trans rights are about you.

And if you don’t stick up for your trans siblings, you’re at risk of having to say goodbye to everything you love about how you live as the gender you’ve always been.

The anti-trans panic part of a broader fascist agenda focused on taking away everyone’s choices in public and in private.

Abandoning trans people to persecution and death is immoral.

It also opens the doors of your community and your home and your heart to fascism.
Simple self-interest really does require cis people to support trans rights, even if it makes you uncomfortable, and even if you don’t know any trans people.

If you don’t care about us, at least save yourselves.

And maybe get busy explaining that to the cis folks around you

Also cis people? Wanna be useful? Write a letter to the editor every time a newspaper advocates that a party abandon trans rights because it’s not relevant to enough people to matter in our politics.
Also are you bleating about liking this thread but cursing me for “academic” language like “cis”?

Then USE YOUR OWN WORDS TO CONVEY THESE POINTS IN A WAY PEOPLE YOU KNOW WILL BE RECEPTIVE TO.

Come on!
• • •

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[keithbvadu2]

2. Transgender is Biblical and goes back to the beginning.

Transgender is Biblical and goes back to the beginning.

Eve was originally 100% male.

If it's good enough for God...

[NullTuples]

10. I don't get the Eve reference, but the Bible is quite clear about trans & intersex people.

The Christian God expressed in at least three places in the Bible - including the Gospels - that he wanted his people to accept and love trans & intersex people as he did, as themselves (ie not some "pastoral care" contextual misdirection).

[Hekate]

13. Thank you

[SunImp]

3. K&R

[unblock]

4. Trans rights are human rights. Same for all lgbtqia rights

People who want the government to meddle in any of this dimple don't believe in freedom. I'm hey don't believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

What does any of that mean if you can't live your life true to yourself, as you are, as you see yourself, and to love whom you choose (given mutual consent).

Unless you want to date someone or have been asked to give some specific medical advice, their sex, gender, or orientation is pretty much irrelevant to anything.

What does it matter to me if my barista is trans?
Or my doctor or lawyer or the server at the cafe or ... why do other people even care so much? It just doesn't affect them.

Let people have the freedom to live their lives as they see fit. Isn't that what America is supposed to be all about? Freedom?

[meadowlander]

5. Excellent. Thank you for posting.

And also noting that invasions of transgendered peoples' rights to privacy and to live their life however the fuck they want as long as it isn't hurting anyone else is the just the tip of the "your business is my business" white Evangelical Christian-normative iceberg.

Like wearing black trenchcoats? Playing D&D? Listening to heavy metal music? Getting piercings, tattoos or dying your hair alternative colours? Doing yoga? Getting Chinese food for Christmas dinner? Not decorating your house for Christian holidays? Working on Sundays? Public displays of affection? Going sleeveless or bare-legged when it's hot or wearing bikinis to swim? Casual sex?

The next witch-hunt is literally coming your way soon.

[MustLoveBeagles]

6. K&R

[lees1975]

7. If some people's rights are threatened...

everybody's rights are at risk.

This is why people need to get out an VOTE. If the other side wins, there won't be any LGBTQ rights, latino rights, african american rights, asian rights, atheist rights, buddhist rights or islamic rights.

[MustLoveBeagles]

8. Exactly

[SunImp]

41. +1

[IngridsLittleAngel]

9. Human rights are human rights

As trans people are humans, our rights are human rights. And a human rights violation against anyone is indeed a human rights violation against all humans.

Far too many people are willing to play 17 dimension chess on this topic. "It's just such a small minority." "It's such few people." "I'm not trans so it doesn't affect me."

To those who think it doesn't affect them: A little empathy goes a long way. I'm not black. You bet it affects me when some cop thinks he's allowed to beat or kill a black person. I'm not Jewish. You bet it affects me when people threaten Jews or paint Swastikas. I was born here. You bet it affects me seeing kids locked in cages.

We of course don't know exactly how many people would be considered trans, inter-sexed, non-binary, gender-fluid or basically anything but cis male and cis female. I imagine any numbers we hear are on the low side, because I imagine many people have remained closeted out of fear of losing their jobs, their homes, or even their lives... Most of those estimates fall between 0.5% and 1%. So, somewhere between 1.6 million and 3.1 million. Yes, people. We are talking millions. Not just "a few" but millions of people.

We now have the QOP party of hate trying to deny the rights of millions of people, deny their existence, and portray them to be "enemies" and "threats" when we are not. Sane people are rightfully horrifying looking back on the Holocaust when millions of Jewish people were killed. Well, here we are in 2022, talking about the rights and the lives of millions of people. Here.

As the post that Nevilledog shares above states: It also won't stop with us. Should they succeed, they'll go after someone else. The QOP party of death has a list of all of the "others" that they see as beneath them and "less human" than them. People of color. Liberals. Feminists. Immigrants. Women who dare to say "no".

Human rights are human rights, not politics. This is not and should not be a matter of debate. Allowing anyone's human rights to be violated violates everyone, and opens the door to a world where no one is safe.

First they came for the transgenders...

[NullTuples]

11. Patriarchy must by its very nature force the assumption of a pure sex & gender binary

It's a simple hierarchy of two - male & female. Male is aggressively asserted to be higher, superior & dominant.
This requires the enforcement of a binary that doesn't actually exist in nature or in humanity, for anyone who blurs the lines also calls into question the basic premise.

[Hekate]

12. Beautifully and thoroughly stated. I find myself trying to explain the importance of Griswold ...

… these days, more and more. It is foundational to so much else that we all thought was progress in our country. To a straight man or woman I explain Griswold vs State of Connecticut as being about the right of a married couple to choose to use contraceptives in their own home, and then while their heads are still spinning I invite them to parse the language in that sentence. “Married couple” leaves a lot of people out — for instance any single people who likewise might like to avail themselves of contraception. And then I tell them how much else flowed from that “right to privacy.”

Bookmarking

Who came up with “cis” anyway?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

15. "Cis" is the opposite of "trans" in Latin, and started being used when talking about gender in the

90s. It's been used in other contexts for much longer.

[NullTuples]

17. Cis & trans go back to the 1800's as used in what's now organic chemistry

Cis = aligned with, Trans = across from

Originally used in molecular isomerism (molecules with the same atoms, same bods but rotated differently) in chemistry in the 1870's.

First applied to sex/gender by Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld in 1918; his Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin & extensive research library was burned to the ground by Nazis in 1933.

In English speaking academia, Dr. Alfred Kinsey introduced the term circa 1947 as part of his work at the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, which he founded.

[muriel_volestrangler]

39. 'Cisalpine' and 'transalpine' date from the 16th century in English

And in Latin, from, well, Roman times - "Cisalpine Gaul" being "Gallia Cisalpina", the area inhabited by Gauls on the same side of the Alps as the Romans (ie the Po Valley, basically), while "Transalpine Gaul" - "Gaul across the Alps" - was what is now France.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cisalpine
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/transalpine

[NullTuples]

42. I completely forgot cisapine & transalpine!!! thank you!!

[station agent]

14. Amen. (n/t)

[WhiskeyGrinder]

16. I think it's important to note that this thread is in direct response to HRC's published comments.

https://www.ft.com/content/2e667c3f-954d-49fa-8024-2c869789e32f

My espresso has arrived. Clinton asks for more iced tea. I cannot allow the lunch to end without questioning the direction of her party. I say that Democrats seem to be going out of their way to lose elections by elevating activist causes, notably the transgender debate, which are relevant only to a small minority. What sense does it make to depict JK Rowling as a fascist? To my surprise, Clinton shares the premise of my question.

“We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window,” she says. “Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.”

It's not clear that the writer's question actually mentioned the "transgender debate" to Clinton, or that the question contained "relevant to a small minority." But we certainly see Clinton's position reflected a LOT here -- that we can't possibly do ANYTHING that Republicans might seize on until the next election is won. That next election is always, conveniently, right around the corner; and as a result, it's always the only thing we can possibly focus on at any given time.

[yardwork]

18. I disagree with the interviewer's framing.

It's typical of journalism now to blame Democrats for the bad behavior of authoritarians, as if the Republicans' bad behavior would stop if only WE stopped talking about it. We've seen this with BLM, the police, LGBTQ rights, etc.

It's false framing to suggest that it's Democrats who are creating the problem. Republicans literally make things up and then create wedge issues out of them.

[NullTuples]

19. Although one would think that if it were out of context...

She'd put out a clarifying statement as she had to do in 2019.

https://www.them.us/story/hillary-clinton-clarifies-transgender-women-comments

The way I see it, either she should avoid answering any such questions without Chelsea as a go-between, or she's leaving a JKR like trail of bread crumbs that eventually will lead to her actual views being declared more clearly.

[Jedi Guy]

20. I'm not sure what experience the author has with men's restrooms...

But in all my years of walking around on this cursed hellworld we call planet Earth, I have never once witnessed "bonding rituals centered around misogyny and violence" taking place within one. I'm not even sure what the described "bonding rituals" would look like.

When it comes to social interaction in a public restroom, there might be a "hey, how's it going?" to another fellow who is washing his hands at the sink at the same time. The answer will likely be "good, you?" and the response will be "good, thanks." And there the interaction will end.

I'm trying to wrap my mind around saying to another fellow in the restroom, "howdy stranger, care to engage in some bonding rituals centered around misogyny and violence?" My reward for this effort is a headache.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

21. That tweet was about all "gendered spaces," not just restrooms.

[Jedi Guy]

32. Okay, so... what? Men's locker rooms in gyms? Non-coed dormitories?

Having spent time in both places (admittedly not as much in the former as the latter), I can confidently say that I never witnessed any "bonding rituals centered around misogyny and violence." In the former, I mostly witnessed guys cleaning up after a workout. In the latter, I mostly witnessed guys playing video games, smoking dope, drinking alcohol, and once in a while they even studied for their classes.

I suppose what I'm asking for here is definition, or at least clarification, of these supposed "bonding rituals" the author is talking about since they're outside my personal experience.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

33. I'm not the author, but I read that to mean locker rooms, dorms, board rooms, business meetings,

sports bars, on the field, wherever. Gender- and orientation-based teasing, bullying, slurs, violence, hazing, and so on of men and boys who for whatever reason don't conform to the in-group's ideal of masculinity. The point is when society polices gender with laws and violence, cis people face enforcement as much as trans, GNC and NB people do.

[msfiddlestix]

22. Totally in agreement, but the effect makes feel cross eyed while reading this interview.

weird experience.

[Roisin Ni Fiachra]

23. Excellent post.

"All people are born equal members of one human family"

The bumper sticker on my old motorhome.

The fascists are scapegoating trans folk, and it's up to all good people to stop them.

[fescuerescue]

24. Would probably help if you don't call them "CIS PEOPLE"

and "CIS DUDES"

Folks who would be scientifically be termed "cis" don't think of themselves of "CIS DUDES"

It's like running around calling everyone you meet "Homosapien People" or "Homosapien Dudes"

[WhiskeyGrinder]

25. .

It's like running around calling everyone you meet "Homosapien People" or "Homosapien Dudes"

Except it's not. All people are homo sapiens. Not all people are cis. Cis people need to understand that trans issues affect them, even if they don't think they do; part of that starts with understanding that they are cis, whether they had considered it before or not.

[fescuerescue]

26. yes but Nobody calls themselves "cis"

Yes it makes sense is lab setting or scientific discussion, but in social circles folks it doesn't.

The point being is that the article automatically loses anyone who outside the trans community.

If your target audience is non-trans folks, calling them "names" isn't a great way to reach that audience.

I understand that you really want those folks to consider themselves differently. But I think that's a MUCH harder hill to climb than you think.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

27. The term for someone whose gender identity matches their gender at birth

Is indeed cisgender, or cis for short. Neither one is a slur.

There is indeed a slur for cisgender people, which happens to be "cissy." The person who wrote the post did not use that.

[fescuerescue]

29. I understand what it means

I think everyone here does.

But what I'm saying is that if you want to reach an audience, calling them something that they don't refer to themselves as, probably isn't the best vector.

I imagine that the bulk of the population would scan that piece and assume it's referring to different group of people.

Thanks though - I WASN'T aware that "cissy" is a slur. So I did learn something new.

[IngridsLittleAngel]

31. This is not unlike discussing other LGBTQ issues

And referring to those who aren't LGBTQ issues as "straight" or "heterosexual." It's not about "calling people what they don't refer to themselves as," it's pointing out the differences in what we experience vs what they experience in their day to day lives.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

28. .

Plenty of people call themselves cis. How does talking about cis people “lose” them? “Cis” is not a name. It’s like saying gay or straight, that’s all.

[fescuerescue]

30. I would say that for folks that already refer to themselves that way

They probably already are in lockstep with the article.

[madville]

34. A few questions since you seem knowledgable

So a cis person can be gay or straight, and a trans person can also be gay or straight, correct?

So where I get kind of confused, if a straight cis male transitions to a trans woman and they still like women, are they also now a lesbian? That seems logical.

Now if a gay cis male transitions to a trans woman and they still like men, are they now considered a straight trans woman?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

36. .

A few questions since you seem knowledgable

Thank you; there are certainly people more expert than me on this topic so I hope they chime in if I get something wrong.

So a cis person can be gay or straight, and a trans person can also be gay or straight, correct?

Yes.

So where I get kind of confused, if a straight cis male transitions to a trans woman and they still like women, are they also now a lesbian? That seems logical.

They may or may not identify as or call themselves a lesbian, so I would simply follow the person's lead in how they want to be referred to.

Now if a gay cis male transitions to a trans woman and they still like men, are they now considered a straight trans woman?

Same thing. It's certainly an option, but may or may not be how they refer to themselves. It can also happen when one person in a committed partnership transitions and the couple stays together; the person not transitioning may or may not change the way they describe themselves. It's a big world.

[KentuckyWoman]

35. What affects my neighbor, affects me.

I was brought up this way. My grandma told me we have to teach the bullies better because their mama failed.

I think a lot of these bullies are beyond help but I will keep trying.

[gulliver]

37. I'm not sure we should let Republicans set the terms of the "trans debate"

Republicans want to create straw man, slippery slope, fallacious and outright false arguments and designate fools on our side as the people they want to argue with. It's SOP for them to do that, and, unfortunately, it has been SOP on our side to let them. We need to stop.

What is the "trans debate?" Is there perhaps a prioritized list of objectives that trans people want the government to pursue? Who puts together the list? Who has that right? Does one trans person simply decide they want something done their way, for example, and the entire LGBTQ+ community, every supporter of that community, and every other human being on Earth simply has to hop to it? I'm sure that's not the case, but what prevents that if there isn't an orderly, fair, legitimate process (democracy, for example) for establishing advocacy?

In what ways do trans rights intersect with the rights of others and, therefore, must be balanced with those rights? Is that part of the debate? Not making that part of the debate shows a lack of compassion and due concern for the wellbeing of all fellow human beings. Failing to show that compassion, that mature level of respect and concern for all is a sure way to lose, not just the "trans debate," but all debates.

You see, Republicans, especially the now-dominant yahoo types, don't want a debate. They want a brawl. They want confusion. They want fog and chaos and flailing. We need to stop giving it to them.

[Hortensis]

38. Right. All people who think bigotry (racism being one type) is something

only OTHERS are guilty of and that they're allowed by society to indulge it against groups they have an antagonism against are also the problem. Inflamers. That goes for those who condone these behaviors by accepting them.

We only quash it by refusing to accept it.

[Initech]

40. I have to talk about my IRL encounter with a trans phobe.

So I was at a wedding last week. The bride was my brother's wife's sister. The two sisters have a mutual friend of theirs who recently came out as a trans woman who was at the wedding and the after party. Well during the after party, that's when things went completely fuck up. One of the people who was on the groom's side was obviously way over served. And after learning that the guest in question was a trans woman, he would not stop harassing her the entire night and eventually got into some really uncomfortable shit.

Eventually she (the trans woman) told the guy to fuck off, but he didn't stop there. That conversation went on even when they started kicking everybody out of the bar at like 2:00 AM. So during the conversation, my other brother's fiance is arguing with the guy about this and she texts him "help, I'm dealing with an idiot". So my brother, who is not afraid to call people out on their bullshit, basically let this guy have it. It was pretty awesome.

At one point the guy was like "We need to be more sensitive about these conversations!!!" and it devolved into a discussion about male privelege. That's when my brother was like "You do realize that we're having this discussion about male privilege while we're at *very exclusive member's only club*, right?".

Even better was the douchebag in question wound up getting locked out of his room at like 5:00 AM and wound up passing out in the hallway in his underwear, and almost got kicked out of the club. He probably should have been asked to leave sooner, and definitely would have been had it been my party.