nicdevera replied to your post “I guess I’m not going to block somebody who apparently isn’t...”
people might follow to learn and understand, out of curiosity or a wish to hear another perspective
Yeah, that’s why I haven’t blocked them. I figure, if they’re not bothering me or exposing my posts to people who would be willing to harass me, and they’re not a danger simply to be associated with (the way, for instance, so-called MAPs are), then I might as well let them stay and learn something.
I mean, I do follow a couple people whose views I don’t agree with 100% of the time. Usually, though, it’s a matter of degree, not a completely opposing position.
Like...I think medicalizing transness just subjects us to ableism as well as transphobia, and that that’s really dangerous. I think that idealizing cis bodies as a form of gender performance/actualization just makes dysphoria worse, and that body dysphoria is the direct result of a mostly modern, mostly western social construct that posits the body as the seat of gender. (And what “should” be changed as “transition” also varies within this construct--for example, MTF-typical dysphoria was generally about the testicles more than the penis until somewhere between one and two centuries ago, and we’ve got a lot of literature implicitly stating this. I’d point to Catullus’ poem about Attis, for a start. Plus like everything on Medieval humoral theory wrt gender--extrapolate the “pop science” version of it. Again, lots of stuff.) Even setting aside for the moment the dangers of such an approach, I don’t think pathologization is the key to healthcare coverage, as opposed to legislative or electoral fiat, because plenty of insurance companies arbitrarily and explicitly denied coverage for trans healthcare even when “gender identity disorder” was still in the DSM. (I wonder if the college counseling center records on me have a GID diagnosis on them. I wonder if that will be a target on my back.) I know from a lot of first-hand accounts that the pathology approach as opposed to informed consent on demand severely slows access to care and speed of transition, with horribly negative consequences for affected trans people. I think transmedicalist trans people are either horribly naive and insecure in their identity and gatekeeping to “prove themselves,” or just completely detached from reality and have ended up believing the stories they told to transphobic, gatekeeping doctors in order to get treatment. So I really don’t get why professed transmeds would consider this an “agree to disagree” situation.
Similarly, I’m a nonbinary person. I exist. I reject efforts to label me as “just” a man or “just” a woman, even in the relatively rare cases where someone isn’t trying to paint me into a negative gender stereotype (aggressive man, know-nothing teenage girl) to discredit me. Not that this particularly should matter, since the very existence of a binary implies a third, but I even have dysphoria about wanting to have a sexually intermediate body type. So I don’t know how someone could be really “NB skeptical,” follow me, and not be disrespecting me, unless I guess they think they have magic GenderVision(tm) that gives them the ability to tell the “true NBs” from the “snowflakes”...which is also disrespecting me, because it means I can’t possibly be right about my gender without outside confirmation, or can’t be trusted somehow.
Is it just that I don’t like the fad for hyperspecific labels? Possibly, but that’s a linguistics-based position; I don’t think it’s morally imperative either way, except that trying to restrict such use is being a dick, just that the things won’t linguistically hold up, and that the usual generation approach is unconsciously colonialist and often poorly done at that. At any rate, I don’t think the microlabeled themselves are fakers; merely exuberant or unwise, concerned more with their internal meaning than with actually communicating it. Which is kind of a normal human developmental stage, ffs. They’ll strike a balance between specificity and communication eventually, and I’m actually really interested in seeing what makes it through that sieve, even while acknowledging I may not personally like it. Meanwhile, nearly every truscum I’ve ever seen thinks there’s some sort of existential threat from “special snowflake fakers” who “use nounself pronouns” who will “convince doctors we’re not serious,” as if nounself pronouns weren’t a three-months fad nearly 5 years ago and as if any doctor with such a flimsy excuse weren’t already transphobic. Again, kinda fundamental disagreement on the nature of reality.
IDK. I’m tired. I just want to know what’s keeping these people here, since I disagree with their main views on how the world works, and whether I’m doing something wrong if they want to be around me. Is this just the usual tumblr “fiscally liberal, socially conservative” crowd I’ve been dealing with a lot lately (albeit a segment of it that actually has manners), or do they think I’m conditionally trans enough for them and thus my opinions they agree with about another issue are sufficiently valid, or is it some kind of surveillance? I don’t know.
