If you’ve seen my recent posts, you’ll know that I went on a rant about Current Events TM.
And I got a response that made me go, “Wow, that’s not what I meant.” So I reblogged and made an addendum, thinking (for some reason) that “clearly this will clear things up so that they know I agree!”
But then I got another response that made it very clear: my og post isn’t doing what I meant it to do. I don’t know if my reblog would have made it better or not, and honestly, I’m not sure how much that matters.
More specifically, in said og post, I had put a section that was meant to highlight hypocrisy in what’s considered gender affirming care, the whole “trans people are the only ones receiving gender affirming care, so if we actually applied full logic of “banning gender affirming care” it would really screw over those people, too, which is bad”-type statements that people make a lot.
…Except I didn’t word it like that. I didn’t come at it from a reasonable, sympathetic approach, rather an angry one. I was angry because I was thinking of the people I know who don’t give a rat’s ass about trans people (intersex or perisex) or intersex people (trans or cis) even if they are intersex themselves. Why? Because the specific people I know don’t consider themselves to be intersex at all, even though they are.
These people make up a small subset of their larger groups. I thought it would be clear that I was angry at this subset. After all, I’m also angry at subsets of trans people (especially perisex) that have rancid attitudes, too. <- EXCEPT… I didn’t include that in the original post.
And I thought about it. And I read the feedback. And I thought, “Why is my first instinct to write about this particular subset? A subset of cis intersex people?” Maybe it’s because that’s who I know. Maybe because their hypocrisy stings especially hard. But then, I should have ranted more at TERFs since I (nonconsensually on my end) know them, too. Or the subset of trans people, like I just said in the last paragraph. Plenty of hypocrisy there.
Are there assholes everywhere? Yeah. Sure. But right now, I could have had my rant without this, or if I really wanted to, I could have ranted about a subset in a group I belong to.
I came in swinging. I burst into the room angry and hurt, but what matters is that I ended up hitting vulnerable people. I ended up hitting people I didn’t mean to. I didn’t need to write something that could be read way too easily as “all these people are bad because I think they have privilege in some way!!!” I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of rancid attitudes like that. I didn’t need to make others feel the same way.
And I need to reiterate that this isn’t an issue of “other people not understanding,” but rather “yeah maybe some people can understand what I meant, but it is unclear and it’s my responsibility to be as clear as possible especially around a topic where people’s bodies and existence are at stake.”
In ranting about assholes, I became the asshole.
And I realize I shouldn’t have started swinging in the first place.
(I have deleted the posts from my own account in hopes to limit the spread of their harm. I know it doesn’t make them go away completely, given that they’ve been reblogged by others. If you reblogged my post(s) telling me what a huge dick I was being, you were right.)
(And if you saw my posts before and reblogged/liked them because you think cis intersex people “don’t count” or other such bullshittery, fuck you.)
