The gender realism that is populating transfeminist discourse right now is a huge, flashing "danger" sign and if you don't see the red flashing emergency lights you are either inexperienced in trans discourse, naive, or part of the problem.
It's really interesting the way this gender realism is manifesting though, because it's trying really hard to manifest through social sciences this time as opposed to the medical sciences of yesteryear. Like, not to be all "back in my day", but back in my day when I was a deeply insecure and uncertain trans teenager facing the first Trump admin, the way we tried to argue that trans men are just like any other man and trans women were just like any other woman was with brain scans, studies on the success rates of medical transitional care, and DSM definitions of gender dysphoria.
Of course we read studies wrong. Of course many brain sex studies have since been debunked because their sample sizes were small and skewed and it has since come out that the human brain is not all that sexually dimorphic in general. Of course we only focused on the transition success rates of binary gender conforming trans people, nonbinary people didn't matter. Of course we loved the DSM, we didn't care about the potential threats of medicalization like eugenics as long as it gave us our HRT. Of course we went out of our way to bully and name call and harass other trans people who disagreed with us, none of us wanted those nondysphoric theyfab transtrender tucutes to steal our precious precious undefined ~medical resources~ from us, the real transsexual victims of society.
Now I'm seeing a bunch of insecure and uncertain trans people facing the second Trump admin arguing that trans men are men just like any other man and trans women are women just like any other woman - actually - are the most women to ever women ever - with passing privilege discourse, studies on income rates in the trans community, and sociological / political concepts like intersectionality and materialism.
And it's just kind of like. Of course you're reading studies wrong. Of course passing privilege discourse is old and has been hashed and rehashed 80 different ways to Sunday over the last several decades and it's been bullshit every single time. Of course many surveys on income only reach certain demographics of trans people with higher income stability, who have more time to fill a nonessential survey, who aren't worried about sharing their information, who feel safe outing themselves even privately, who have other potential privileges like whiteness that also plays a huge part in their income, etc. Of course concepts like intersectionality and materialism are being misunderstood by people who have only just been introduced to those concepts in the last 3 or less years, have only engaged with those concepts online, and haven't actually read a book on the subjects once. Of course people are going out of their way to bully and name call and harass other trans people who disagree with them, they don't want those nonpassing lying transandro bro theyfab birthday boys to steal their precious precious undefined ~feminist resources~ from them, the real transsexual victims of society.
It's fascinating watching the same regurgitated talking points that came alongside this discourse resurface too, like "If someone calls it ~queer art~ it's probably bad and transphobic" (typically in reference to RHPS and other adjacent media) and "Queer is a slur" and really anything that deeply hates a more unified idea of queer identity in general. It's all shit that I used to parrot back in the day with a fresh coat of new gender realist paint. People who want to convince you you're just like a cis person are going to do whatever they can to cut you off from and target you against any sense of queer cultural identity. It's built on the false logic that if you find yourself aligning with queer culture, queer identity, then the cishets aren't going to accept you as normal, as one of them, as safe. Because obviously the path to safety as a trans person is trying to break our backs proving to cis people that we're just like them and we deserve safety because we're just like them, and not with our own broader queer community who has been fighting for unconditional acceptance for us all for decades.
It's the same shit. It's bullshit. It was bullshit when we did it 10 years ago and it's still bullshit now. Appealing to cis authority won't get you anywhere good as a trans person. I know because I tried and I ended up isolated and bitter and I actively hurt every trans person that stayed in my life during that time.
But it can get better! It really can! It did for me, it did for a lot of people I knew back in my transmed days, and it can for you too. But you have to realize your reactionary politics are the result of your fear and insecurity and put in a lot of internal work to improve your own sense of self as a trans person. And that's hard. But it's worth it.
