Slice of Life: Why I am.

Today, I am launching my blog. Today is the National Trans Visibility March in Washington, DC. In solidarity, I am starting my blog off with my experiences and to shed light on how I, your author, experiences being trans. This will be rather personal, but I, as a writer, write about what I know, and I know myself quite well, not to be a bit arrogant. Personal experiences do shape philosophy and political views.

I do experience transmisogyny, as a transfemme nonbinary, not fully a woman, mind you. The most obvious example is saying that transfeminine people are “men pretending to be women” . It’s all funny yet horrifying to me as a NONBINARY PERSON, because I’m getting misgendered and erased. I look like a nonbinary person because I am one, the thing is with being nonbinary, is that you don’t have much frame of reference to integrate yourself into compared to a binary trans person, this is especially common in the so called western society, which enforces the gender binary. All trans people do break the sex-gender system, and even cis queer people do as well to a lesser degree, the sex-gender system is the basis of the binary, and having cisgender people as the norm, and then it prescribes gender roles for men and women, and heterosexuality is considered a norm, thus creating heteronormativity. This shows a connection with sexuality and gender. One example of gender in society is rampant. Any differences and divisions is all nurture, not nature. Go, get lost TERFS and find your “female essence” or unbirth each other. That does not exist. Even if there were a basis, should it matter? No, because Gender is a social construct

People like to think gender is something gender is something that exists since time immemorial, as if it were a god, gender is a spook, gender is a performance, gender is fake, gender is a drag, and so on. I know that I am nonbinary, and being trans, I experience a lot of weirdness from most other people. When I am with my gender-comrades, all is well, normal even. But among what cis-heteronormative society calls normal, the cis are not normal around me, it turns into a nerving mess of the abnormal. Cis people treat me as the weirdness, but they are going out of their way to do so. When they clock a tran, me, they ask a bunch of questions, normally not a bad thing per se, but it is always weird questions. Sometimes saying “are you a boy or a girl” is innocent enough, but if you were to inquire about the presence of a penis on my body, or using really antiquated transsexual terminology. Ha funny.

If you recognized me as transgender, congratulations, this should be no surprise, you ought to not make into a weird moment. I’m not your freak show, I’m not your geek pit, but, do listen to me instead, I’ll give you my name and pronouns. Use what I give you, don’t bother asking for me “name at birth” or whatever you want to call it, my real name is what I say it is.

Again, all transphobia is, is just a metaphysical hatred and lizard brain disgust, to phrase two great philosophical minds of the times of this document. There is a double standard, that is based in that, and in some specific cases, transmisogyny. (The latter which only applies to transfeminine people, such as trans women and amab nonbinary people, like me!). This standard is at the core of many anti-trans oppression. Why do cis people get to change their names, dress how they want, even breaking gender norms, get cosmetically altering surgeries, etc, and yet, trans people get gatekept and doubted for wanting to do same things? It’s all transphobia, no reason just, that disgust, but maybe because, cis people don’t pose an existential threat to the sex gender system. Sure queer and gender non comforming cis people do have some social ridicule and oppression on the basis of being not-heterosexual or non-conforming, but it is not transphobia they experience, their identities, at least, now aren’t in question. Cis straight people, especially do hold up the sex-gender system. Nothing ever is a clean binary, and there are many forms of intersecting identities and oppressions at play. Most so called respectable examples of the trans community are typically white and/or binary. Quite often transphobia and racism mix together. Most people know more about “mtf and ftm” rather than “nb” for example. Binary trans people do have a pre-existing social role to transition to, where as nonbinary people, like myself do not. My challenge is trying to build my own space to express my relation to the social construction of gender. I wholly reject living under the male and female labels exclusively. My gender is not a binary– nonbinary. It is not normative, it is queer – genderqueer. My gender is not consistent, it flows and changes– genderfluid. I am not male at all, but I am not female, but I can be feminine if I want– transfeminine. Gender discourse needs to never forget the voices of trans people, especially nonbinary people; for, they have experiences of directly rejecting the sex gender system, and for enbies, rejecting the binary. The binary is too simple for people. It should never be a surprise to realize that reducing people to just two roles and sets of norms does not work out that well, even if that were true, that does not mean that assigned sex will be a reliable predictor of someone’s gender throughout their life. Nobody has universally agreed on what gender even is, and to be repetitive, nonbinary people exist, and many cultures had specific identities that may count as that. Thus, modernity and tradition collide, but giving way to the discourse of postmodernity, where one ought to question and deconstruct the idea of worth and universality, especially with something that people take for a given. I get called too political, yet, I am political for daring to exist. How dare I exist?! I want to be me. Who doesn't? Everyone wants to be themselves.

Also read Julia Serano's whipping girl for more information on transmisogyny.

Thanks

-MxBdE