On The Survivor's Network Admin's "Apology"
As many know, the Admin of the Survivors' Network made an awful post about me back in November. In the recent document from the Survivors' Network, it included the admin's "apology" to the server, and I wanted to address that.
The Original Post
Pictures of the original post are at the bottom under the Keep Reading. TW in advance for fakeclaiming, transphobia, misgendering, bullying, etc.
The "Apology"
When the post resurfaced this year, the admin had this to say in the Survivor’s Network: i am going to be fully transparent. i am the one who made that post, on November 28th of 2022. it was a shitty post. but ugh. i don’t know. i was in an abusive situation i was still in denial about and taking my anger out where i felt it was righteous. i had been trying to stay away from syscourse for similar reasons, but i’ve got a part i failed to keep track of there. and that is shitty. i was just so pissed that, just like she is now, she was only afloat after some terrible shit coming up because of claiming oppression she neither understands or actually experiences. i was so fucking upset, as a trans person, that she had repeatedly waxed about being and identifying as cis and then as soon as it benefit her claimed that she was oppressed in the same way trans people are. it fucking hurt to see that and to see so many people just accepting it— because that was why she said it. not because she actually believed it, but because it put her back in good standing to have a few more made-up oppression points. and then i did the Really Shitty thing and i decided to break through the Sophie Wall and talk directly to the host. and i got really fakeclaimy, and i regret the fuck out of that. if i could go back and have not made that post, i would. it’s private now, and, for full transparency, if any of you want to see the full post i can send it but in honestly ashamed by it now. i don’t care whether or not sophie is experiencing what she says she is, i don’t want other people to see that and be hurt by it. i just. ugh. i was being an idiot. in the place i am now, i’d never make a post like that. i feel really bad about it. it was immature and a very obvious display of lack of inhibition on my part. it does highlight where i think i’m still in need of s lot of growth, though, and reminds me i do need to continue to work with [alters name that I am not going to include in this incredibly public post, for system privacy] in therapy. i do also want to apologize to you all for doing this. i wasn’t leading by example. i wasn’t being mature. i was spitting vitriol, something that especially now, more than ever, with my current religious/spiritual growth and my personal growth in therapy, never feel is okay. i used to be a very hateful person towards people that i felt were wronging me and/or my community, and this is no exception to that. i regret it deeply, and can only rectify that by promising that i have been growing and will continue to grow as time goes on. i’m really sorry. and i’m sorry that i didn’t deal with that post sooner— i would have if i had remembered it was there. i actually need to go through all my oldest posts, some of them are pretty bad.
Who the apology was for...
To be clear, this was not an apology to me.
It did not express any regret whatsoever at how it might have affected me. They express that they're concerned about other people being hurt by it and that they're sorry to the Survivors' Network for not leading by example. But they don't seem overly bothered by its impact on the person it was about.
Which is fine. I don't care. I'm not asking for an apology, and certainly wouldn't want them to fake one for my benefit. But since that one ask suggested I was given apologies, I suspect they might have mistook this post made in the Discord server... which wasn't intended for me, didn't express guilt over how it affected me, and wasn't in a place I could even find it unless I had a spy in the server... as an apology to me. I just wanted to establish for the record that this apology was worded in a way that it was directed at basically everyone but me.
Reasons are given in the document why they chose not to reach out and thought it would be a bad idea. And while those may have truth to them, this post reads as if they don't feel guilt for how this might have impacted me.
Maybe I'm wrong, but if that is the case, then I'm genuinely thankful they didn't try to give me some fake apology they didn't mean. I don't need and don't want it.
That's not what I wanted to talk about though.
Yes, Cis-Identifying Headmates With Different Genders Than The Body's AGAB Are Still Oppressed In The Same Way Trans People Are!
Let's zero in on this...
i was so fucking upset, as a trans person, that she had repeatedly waxed about being and identifying as cis and then as soon as it benefit her claimed that she was oppressed in the same way trans people are.
Do you think that the reason trans people are oppressed is because cis people just really hate the word trans?
That if trans people just called themselves by a different label, they'd totally be accepted in society?
No. Of course not!
And likewise, just because cis-identifying headmates with different genders from the body's AGAB don't identify as trans, that doesn't mean that they aren't oppressed in the same way trans people are.
That doesn't mean they won't be directly impacted by the way society treats any GNC people, and even much of the transphobic legislation being passed right now!
Transphobia isn't actually hatred of just the people who call themselves trans. It's hatred of people with different genders from their AGAB and GNC people, regardless of if they call themselves transgender or not.
On Why I Identify as Cis...
First, the most obvious reason I identify as cis is because I am. As far as I'm concerned, my inner form is my true form. And it's always been assigned female. What our shared body's assigned gender is doesn't matter to me.
But I will make a confession: the reason I talk about being cis so much, the reason I flaunt it, is to make a statement.
There was a very infuriating bit of sysmed gatekeeping last year that argued that headmates can't identify as transgender if their gender is the same as their AGAB.
I found this incredibly hypocritical given that almost all systems have non-transgender headmates with differing genders from the body's AGAB, but they're not forced to label themselves as transgender.
At the same time, they also don't publicly call themselves cis despite feeling cis on the inside.
So my goal of bringing up being cis frequently is to challenge accepted norms for systems. To normalize publicly identifying as cis headmates, and by extension, to normalize headmates with the same gender as the body's AGAB identifying as trans.
If people have a problem with trans-identifying headmates with a different gender from their body's AGAB, then they should also have a problem with cis headmates with a different one. And that means the vast majority of the plural community.
I call myself cis, all the time, to get people to think seriously about how we conceptualize gender when it comes to systems.
But identifying as cis doesn't mean I don't experience gender dysphoria while fronting, nor does it magically stop me or any other cis-identifying headmates from being victims of the same oppression we would face if we identified as transgender instead.
On Having Room To Grow
It was nice to apologize to the other people who saw it.
But this apology still doubles down on some of the most harmful points. It denies the oppression systems with cis-identifying headmates face, and practically presents our gender identities as less valid than those of trans-identifying people.
And in this way, they fail to understand a huge part of WHY their original post was bad.
Yes, the fakeclaiming was awful, and could easily send people into derealization spirals. The language itself was cruel and verbally abusive.
But let's not ignore the huge problem with the premise itself. The whole ideology it's built on that the only way GNC people can be oppressed is by explicitly identifying as trans. That discrimination against systems for our genders isn't as bad as discrimination against transgender people.
And this is something that I sincerely hope the user and anyone in the system community who agrees with them, can grow out of.
The Original Post:
