Transgender is not a noun.

The ranting of a feminist transgender woman with not enough free time on her hands. If you want to help out with my transition:

[crunchbuttsteak]

Let's talk about Fisheye (content warning for misgendering, transmisogyny and sexual assault)

Please note: The following post is about the sailor moon anime ONLY.  I am very well aware of the Dreams arc of the Manga, and I have not yet seen any of the musicals (but they are on my to-watch list)  So again, this post is 100% ONLY about the subbed anime.

Okay let me get this out of the way, Super S is my LEAST FAVORITE sailor moon season, and the Amazon Trio arc is the worst of the worst for me.

Fisheye, as a character, makes me deeply uncomfortable as a trans woman.  I see a lot of people using her as an example of positive LGBT and trans representation.  This is something that I very strongly do NOT agree with.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Fisheye is about as positive a representation of trans and queer people as Lois Einhorn from Ace Venture: Pet Detective is.  That is to say, it isn’t a positive representation at ALL.

I’m using Ace Ventura here for a specific reason here.

Let’s get started, shall we?  The Amazon Trio arc of Super S has the trio of Tigers Eye, Hawk Eye and Fish Eye searching people’s dreams to find the Pegasus.  The modus operandi of the Trio is to attempt to seduce the victim in order to reveal their seasonal macguffin of the dream mirror.  The entire process is very DEEPLY meant to convey that the victims are being sexually assaulted.  And adventuresofcomicbookgirl has written about that in more detail here.

Word of god is that Fisheye is a cisgendered gay man who crossdresses very frequently.  Of course, many MANY people have interpreted fisheye as being a trans woman.  An interpretation that is responded to with “but he’s really a MAN!”

Here’s the thing though.  Trans women in media fall under two distinctive stereotypes:

The “Predatory” transsexual: A trans woman who looks identical to a cis woman, and “”“deceives”“” people into having sex with her and then it’s “”“revealed”“” that the character is trans, and thus “”“really a man”“” making the character who was deceived “really actually gay” for having slept with a trans woman.  These characters are usually cast as cis women to heighten the “deceptive” aspect of the character.  (see: The Crying Game, Ace Ventura, etc)

The “Pathetic” trans woman:  This is a character to be laughed at and pitied.  Transition and being treated with respect is seen as an impossible dream, and the trans woman is seen as a fool for even attempting it.  These characters are usually played by cis men and are meant to either revile the audience or make them pity the characters. (see: Dallas Buyers Club, Hit & Miss, Normal, Transamerica, etc)

Another common stereotype that gets thrown around about trans women is that we are all pedophiles and/or inherently rapists.

In the anime, Fisheye’s modus operandi is to seduce a male victim by dressing as a girl (except in one instance where she went after a gay fashion designer and presented as male).  Once she has her victim, she forcibly binds them to a table, pulls their dream mirror out of their chest and forces her way in.  This whole sequence is uncomfortably reminiscent of somebody being sexually assaulted, and ends up playing into the stereotype of trans women as inherently being rapists.

The other big issue that I have with fisheye as a character is that her MO of being stated by the other AT members as male, but dressing as a woman to seduce a male victim for a purpose, plays DIRECTLY into that stereotype of the predatory trans woman.  Sending the message that transgender women are “”“really men”“” out to trick impressionable heterosexual boys into having boners.

Which, obviously is in no way accurate.

Even her redemption arc and ultimate death is played as her chasing after some impossible dream, thought given that this is Sailor Moon, her impossible dream DOES become possible, again, showing echoes of the “pathetic transsexual” stereotype.

So overall, I would say that Fisheye is a deeply NEGATIVE portrayal of trans women and AMAB gender variance, stepped in stereotypes and really unfortunate implications.

[transisnotanoun]

reblogging from my personal blog

[transisnotanoun]

I love your posts!! I think I might have to show your blog to some ignorant cis people in my life who have a LOT of learning to do about respect. I'm so sorry you had a negative experience with Christianity. I hope you're really happy in whatever kind of spirituality you're practicing and/or not practicing :) thanks for this blog!

awwwww thank you!!!! /)u(\

and for the record, i'm still christian and i am a member of a united church of christ congregation

[transisnotanoun]

The Double Standard of Slut-Shaming, my story.

I remember in my high-school health class 10 years ago being told only about how abstinence was the only form of sex-ed and that condoms didn't work because HIV and other viruses could pass right through them. I still remember the slut-shaming "thought exercise" where they had a guy and girl stand up and talk about how when you sleep with somebody you sleep with everybody they've ever had sex with. I remember being asked to stand up and feeling awful inside because it made me feel like a slut in this hypothetical scenario, and the dissonance by the other males in the class cheering me on as a "player." I couldn't understand why I personally felt so awful at the idea of being a slut who slept around a lot, with the fact that my everybody around me encouraged me to try and 'get laid.'

[transisnotanoun]

The fight for bodily autonomy is on multiple fronts!

"You should have consulted with us." It's a sentence that no one wants to hear when they makes their own medical decisions. As a trans woman, I deal with people scrutinizing my personal history with a fine-toothed comb looking for reasons to keep me from making my own medical decisions. It can seem like the slightest imperfection, the smallest mistake in choosing a non-sympathetic medical practitioner or a deceptive organization that says they want to help, but only want to talk you out of transitioning. It's actions like this which have put me in further solidarity with the pro-choice movement. While on the surface, the right to medically transition, and the right to terminate a pregnancy can seem very different, the real fight beneath those is the same. We are both fighting for our freedom on the most basic level: bodily autonomy. The scare tactics used against us are almost identical. The same is true with the lies and myths propagated about us, as is the goal: denial of our freedom to control our own destiny. Let's look at these lies and myths: "You do it because you're selfish." "You're doing it for frivolous reasons!" I'm sure that all trans people are just itching to deal with humiliating medical practices, having to come out to our friends and family and putting ourselves through a living hell to get the medical assistance we need. What we see is others defending their selfish desire not to deal with our freedom. Likewise, I'm sure that the people seeking abortions are just DYING to deal with similarly humiliating and invasive medical practices to terminate their pregnancies, mandatory trans-vaginal ultrasounds anyone? "Most people who do it end up regretting it!" Again, another myth. The number of transgender people who regret transitioning is so low as to be statistically insignificant. Not to say that it doesn't happen, because there ARE people, no matter how few, who regret transitioning. However, if the people repeating this myth had ever actually talked to someone who regretted their transition, they would learn very quickly that those regrets were because of how people around them treated them for daring to undergo transition, not because transition is wrong for everyone. And of course, those who seek to deny reproductive freedom talk about people regretting abortion, and again it's a myth. Most of those who terminate pregnancies experience relief afterwards, and there is no medical evidence of any kind of "post-abortion syndrome." The fight against reproductive freedom and the force women into pregnancy is fundamentally about the right to control people's bodies, whether they're cisgender women, transgender men or otherwise. And as a transgender woman, I've had to fight for the same right to make medical decision about my body. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people tell me that they should have a say in whether or not I go through with medical transition, or that they should have a say in a specific medical procedure, or ask me to listen to ignorant unadulterated hate in order to hear "both sides of the issue." My friends who've elected to terminate a pregnancy have had the same things said to them, it didn't stop them... It's time that we stood together in solidarity and said "our bodies, our choice!" While the details may be different, the fight is the same. Trans* women, we have more in common with the pro-choice movement than we think. It's time to fight for the liberation of ALL women, to support freedom to do with our bodies what we will. A man's body is understood to be his own, but a woman's body is treated as if it belongs to the community. This is an outdated and offensive notion which I profoundly, and proudly, reject. Freedom is for every body...whatever its shape. Only we have the right to decide what's best for our bodies.

[transisnotanoun]

Excellent post regarding that whole "transtrenders" nonsense.

Awww thanks... I'm just posting my observations as an outsider really. Since as a trans women, it's not really my fight. However, I do see similarities to my community's struggle to fight back against the HBSers who think that anybody who isn't a straight white stepford wife isn't a "True Transsexual" and merely have "Transvestic Fetishism" and shouldn't be allowed to pursue transition because of let "THOSE PEOPLE" transition, there wouldn't be enough horse pee left for the "true transsexuals."So while our struggles are not the same, and I acknowledge that, I do see similarities from my own experiences.

[transisnotanoun]

“Trans-trenders” Misogyny and Victim Blaming

In the past few months there have been shortages of both testosterone and estradiol, the most common products used in hormone replacement therapy.  And yet in the rush to assign blame for these on people who had really nothing to do with the problems.  Only one group of people took the brunt of the blame, and surprisingly enough, it wasn’t use trans women, but trans men.

(As an aside, both shortages were caused by one drug maker having manufacturing issues and the rest being unable to pick up the demand)

But yes, trans women were NOT blamed for the estradiol shortage, but trans men, and specifically “trans-trenders” were squarely blamed for causing the testosterone shortage because they were using up the testosterone that they real trans men needed.  As odd as that sounds, it was the general attitude I encountered within some parts of the trans community.

You see “trans-trenders” are trans men or any other DFAB trans person who have been deemed insufficiently masculine to really be trans.  Hence these people are just jumping on the latest trend and aren’t trans enough to really be transgender, they’re just trying to participate in some form of queer rebellion.

Notice that I’m only talking about trans guys and DFAB non-binary folks here.  That’s because, while there is a metric fuckton of people in trans communities policing trans women’s identities and gender expressions, they rarely sink to the level of declaring a trans woman as not really being transgender.

So where does this all lead?  We live in an androcentric society, one that declares maleness and masculinity to be superior to being female or feminine.  Thus trans men are more readily accepted because they are seen as moving up the social ladder.  They leave behind the ‘inferior’ female role and take on the ‘superior’ role.  In this model, trans women and other AMAB non-binary folk are looked down on for wanting to descend this social ladder, and trans men / DFAB non-binaries who act masculine enough are praised for ascending it.

Which brings me back to the shortages.  Testosterone and estradiol are both seen as keys to transitioning from one gender perception to the other, and when those keys are seemingly taken away, people look to assign blame.  Thus the people considered “trans-trenders” are seen as using up a finite resource and depriving the “real men” of their testosterone.  Anybody not seen as “trans enough” is viewed with deeper suspicion because of this zero-sum outlook.

Except that in their trans-centered myopia, they don’t realize that trans people are not the only people who take these drugs.

Hormone replacement therapy is fairly common for post-menopausal cis women, estradiol is commonly found in many forms of birth control, used to prevent cervical cancer in cis women, and so on.  Perhaps it is the litany of “legitimate” uses for estradiol, and how common the knowledge of those uses was that kept trans women from being blamed for the estradiol shortage, we may never know.  However, people often forget that there is a large market for testosterone outside of trans communities.

The one that most people would be familiar with are bodybuilders athletes take forms of testosterone to boost performance.  However, that doesn’t compare to the massive industry propped up on convincing aging cis men that they aren’t manly enough, and that they have low testosterone. (which is probably true, but because of a natural function of age).

Here in the United States where prescription drugs are routinely advertised on national TV, I have seen plenty of ads for a testosterone gel that helps aging men restore their manliness from their naturally declining testosterone levels.  In fact, on the website for this product, there is not one single mention of it being used for trans men, or even any mention of transgender at all.  Now, plenty of men take it for transitioning, and more power to them, but the manufacturer in no way markets it as being for trans dudes, or even acknowledges its use as such.

So trans dudes, as far as people needed to boost their testosterone levels go, y’all aren’t even the biggest market.

So dudes, instead of shitting on people who aren’t ‘manly enough,’ take the time to figure out what’s really causing a problem, instead of blaming your usual scapegoats.

-Liz

[transisnotanoun]

The Problem of Socialization

As a trans woman, one of the most common excuses I hear for the exclusion of trans women from feminist spaces is that we somehow retain our "male privilege" or that we were "socialized" as boys, and thus have no place in feminism because we didn't have the right childhood experience to be allowed to contribute to feminist discussions. 

The number one problem with this argument is that it assumes a universal transgender experience.  From my own experience, there is no universal transgender narrative.  Some women I know transitioned very late in life and have decades of experience of what being perceived as male is like, and others transitioned so early in life that they never knew what it was like to be treated like a man.

When people make the argument that trans women aren't as authentic as cis women, it erases a lot of trans women's experience by assuming that all trans experiences fall under a single easily definable narrative.

This argument ALSO assumes that all cis women had a universal upbringing and subsequently erases the experience of women who aren't white first-worlders.  By stating that this white middle-class first-world experience is the only way to be a woman, TERFs exclude the experiences of other cis women.

When people say that because we've experienced this nebulous nonspecific "male socialization" their argument boils down to this idea that all trans women have this inherent maleness that cannot be washed off or escaped from.  In essence, we are not authentic women, and because we weren't born women and seen as female from day one, our gender is not as legitimate as a cis woman's gender, and that as trans women we can never truly be women, because a trans identity is inherently inferior to a cis identity. 

But when pressed to define what specifics constitute this "male socialization," there is never a clear answer beyond being seen as male.  This of course, ignores the fact that every culture defines masculinity in a different way, thus ignoring these cultural differences in favor of this narrative about a "universal malehood."

There is no universal concept of this nebulous "male socialization," and to assert that it exists as a way to segregate trans women as being inauthentic and somehow undeserving of the right to call ourselves women, and quite frankly, I don't buy that.

- Liz

[transisnotanoun]

The Femininity Trap.

What does it mean to be female? To be femme? Feminine? A girl, a woman, a mother. Women are straddled with social expectations and social roles about what it means to be a proper woman. Often these messages are contradictory if not downright harmful. As trans women we are often expected to be paragons of femininity and define ourselves according to these dangerous and harmful messages. If we don't embrace these social constructions of what it means to be a woman, we aren't committed to being trans and "passing" (can I just say how much I hate that word? Actually hate isn't strong enough, I LOATHE that word and the expectation that trans women must be indistinguishable from cis women to be worthy of basic decency). As trans women, anything remotely masculine must be stamped out an eliminated. We get this message from media portrayals of trans women, from gatekeepers in the medical establishment, and from other trans women who have internalized the message that to be considered women, we must embrace the social construction of femininity to be accepted as "real women." This form of gender policing most often comes in the form of unsolicited "passing" tips. Other women telling us we need to do this or that to be seen as women, and the stinging backside of this advice is that that we aren't "real" women of we don't do these things. Even if it's something that a cisgendered woman can do and not have her gender identity called into question. I am not less of a women because I wear jeans and a tank top, I am not less of a woman because I speak up if these is a problem and I don't act submissive and demure like patriarchy tells me to. It's a favored tactic of TERF's, to force us into the femininity trap. If we act submissive and demure, ie we "know our place," then we are simply agents of patriarchy trying to enforce gender norms by reducing womanhood to gender roles. By speaking up and making our voices heard, we aren't "real" women because by speaking up, we're still exercising our supposed male privilege by asking to have our voices heard. Trans women are gender policed from all sides, and it needs to stop. -Liz

[transisnotanoun]

Growing up Evangelical.

This is a bit more of a personal post for me. I thought I'd share a bit f my personal history of growing up in the Evangelical Baptist culture. Looking back, the number one thing I noticed about that culture is the sheer pervasiveness of it. It is not simply enough to attend church on Sunday morning. It expands outward from there, from AWANA on Sunday nights, to youth group meetings on weeknights and events, camps, and retreats to inundate me with Christian culture. I never really felt this oppressive pervasiveness growing up, mainly because I had learned to treat it as normal. But the sheltering effect, of keeping "worldly" things away from me because they weren't "Honoring God," had a major effect of keeping me socially stunted in other areas. After all, Evangelical Culture celebrated the naive ignorance of childhood, I SHOULDN'T want to learn about the world as that only exposes me to sin. I shouldn't want to engage in the same things as my peers because I'm a Christian and I'm better than that. Of course, the fact that I was struggling with ADD and Severe Anxiety didn't help, and my fears that I was going to burn in Hell for being a sinner weren't exactly assuaged by the messages I got from the church. Even though the message of the church was intended to be a positive one, a message of salvation and forgiveness, the overwhelming negatively that surrounded the narrative that I was inherently evil instilled a sense of shame that was compounded by my own anxiety. I was an elementary school kid convinced that she was so irredeemably evil that nobody would ever love me except God. This guilt and shame pushed me further towards church, the only place where I had a remotely function social group outside of family. By the time I entered sixth grade, my parents decided to homeschool me because of my ADD and anxiety. At first it wasn't that bad because we used the same materials and textbooks that the kids in the public schools used. I even attended a study group for other homeschool kids set up by our city's school district. The education I got here, was exactly the same as I would have gotten at the public schools, but at a pace that I could manage and by a teacher who I trusted and understood my educational needs. How this would change was so slow and subtle I almost didn't notice it. For science and math, my Mom tried to do her best at teaching me, but her own lack of experience in this made it somewhat difficult for her. She enrolled me a program for other home schooled kids set up by a nearby Christian university. One day a week I would go there for classes in math and science, taught by people who understood the material better than she did. However, our textbooks were from the textbook publishing arm of the VERY conservative Pensacola Christian College, A Beka Books. My science education soon consisted of facts like the earth being 6000 years old and that dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time as man and they were even mentioned in the bible. The latter half he class ended up being a from of health class about the life choices available to us an why we should choose abstinence and that abortions cause breast cancer. I believed all of this without question because it had fit with what I had been taught all my life leading up to this. I was still the same shy, nervous and anxious christian girl in high school, insecure about everything, and convinced that I would never be a good enough christian because I wasn't as evangelical as all the other christians I knew who were ministering and witnessing 24/7. I kept my church life and my personal life separate, and I felt immense amounts of shame for it. I was defying what I had always been taught, christianity must be in EVERY aspect of your life, and that compartmentalizing it was wrong. I compartmentalized my faith in order to function normally, and that copy strategy was inherently wrong. It wasn't until after I graduated from high school and I went t college that my religious and political beliefs began to unravel. And I couldn't be happier. -Liz

[transisnotanoun]

every time i see a post of yours on my dash it makes me think of the time i saw someone using "transgender" as a verb

how does that even work wow.

 thanks for reading my blog! 

[transisnotanoun]

A Reluctant Ambassador: Being The Only Trans Person in a Non-Trans Space

One of the hardest parts on being the only trans woman in a non-trans space, such as feminist discussions is that I am forced to act as a transgender ambassador.  My opinions are not seen as just my own, but as representative of the entire trans community.

Well what’s wrong with that?  It places an undue burden on a trans person to be a representative for the entire community when they don’t want to be, and it reduces the varied and wonderful transgender spectrum/community down to a single person, projecting their human flaws onto an entire class of people.

A trans person in the situation is aware of becoming “the trans friend,” a justification for oppressive behavior towards other transgender people based on their own personal beliefs.  This burden, pushes transgender people to close off to people and avoid giving any impressions that could be used to justify cissexist behavior.

When I am forced into this role of a trans ambassador, I am forced to regulate myself and control what a say even more than normal, because I am aware that everybody around me views me as speaking for all transgendered people.  It shuts me out of discussions because I have this acute awareness that no matter what, I am speaking for all transgendered people everywhere.

It dehumanizes me and makes me feel that I am thought of as “a transgender woman” and not “a woman who is transgender.”  I am not my own person, but this magical trans ambassador who speaks for all transgender people everywhere.

It’s not fun, it’s not good, and quite frankly, it’s getting irritating.

-Liz

[transisnotanoun]

TNG's "The Measure of a Man" as a Transgender Narrative

Star Trek: The Next Generation's "The Measure of a Man" is considered one of the series best episodes, and for good reason, it's a powerful and emotional episode that explores the character of Commander Data.

The plot of the episode is that Commander Data is transferred away from the Enterprise by a Commander Maddox, for the purpose of disassembling him and experimenting on Data in order to make more Datas.  Captain Picard objects to this and forces a court martial hearing in order to keep Data from being experimented on and dismantled.  Of course after an intense courtroom scene, Data is found to be sentient and able to refuse the procedure.

I also found it to be an excellent transgender narrative.

Seriously.

We open the episode with Data playing poker with the other crew members on the ship, but Data is shown to be somewhat alienated, even though his friends do try to be as inclusive as possible.  Data is beaten by Riker's bluff, showing that while he understands being human on a surface level, he is still trying to understand what that means on a deeper level.

Data's first introduction to Commander Maddox is when he walks onto the bridge, and circles around Data like a predator.  Data clearly has a history with Maddox, and from the second he walks in, Data is shown to be uneasy with Maddox's presence, with the music creating the tension that Data feels.  It can be inferred from this that while seeming nice and innocent, Maddox's very presence is intimidating to Data.

Maddox treats Data throughout the episode as a science experiment and a piece of property, never considering him to be a person until the end.  Maddox continuously uses the pronoun of "it" to refer to Data, has no regard for his privacy in his quarters on the Enterprise, barging in without asking, something to which Data objects to, and his treatment of Data as property, denying Data any agency about his own self.

Similarly, Transgender and Gender-Variant people are often treated with massive amounts of disrespect.  We are misgendered with pronouns and with attitudes, people have to respect for our privacy or dignity, given that the first questions asked about us is almost always about our genitals, and the fact that we are subjected to intense discrimination with very little recourse, leaving us feeling helpless and without agency.

Most striking is Maddox's use of the word "it," every time it leaves his tongue, I wince just a little bit.  It dehumanizes Data and expertly shows how Maddox feels about him.  To Maddox, Data is not a person, just a collection of parts.

Something that I very strongly feel when people talk about me and people like me and only talk about the physical aspects of our bodies, reducing us to our genitals and basing our entire worth on how well we pass.

Data is reduced to how well he functions as an android and how he operates as piece of machinery.

In the end, Picard makes a passioned speech about how it does not matter if Data is a machine or not, he is still a sentient being and has the right of self-determination.  According to Picard, it is irrelevant if Data is a human or a machine, he is a sentient person, and to deny him that personhood, to deny him the ability to make decisions about his own body and about himself would strip him of those fundamental rights, having serious moral implications.

If only the world had a few more Jean-Luc Picard's out there.

-Liz 

[transisnotanoun]

“The Overly Feminine Trans Woman,” Stereotypes, and Gatekeepers

One of the most common stereotypes regarding transgender women is that they act “overly feminine” and that our gender presentation is considered to be a ‘parody’ of femininity.

Sadly, it is a very pervasive stereotype that persists to this day, and one that nobody ever thinks to dig into why it exists or how it originated.  This harmful stereotyping is placed on us from all directions, from therapists who feel that there is only one possible way to be transgender, to outsiders who have this constructed view of transgendered people as deceivers built up from films like  The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Crying Game and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.  Even feminists seek to exclude us by throwing this stereotype in our faces and claiming that we want to revert to 1950’s gender roles.

How we act as transgender people in our gender presentation is for us to decide and not for outsiders to define for us.  For somebody to swoop down onto us and tell us that we aren’t women unless we dress a certain way or act or certain way is condescending as hell and reeks of privilege.

Speaking for myself, I would be perfect happy in jeans and a t-shirt that still felt feminine and made me look like the woman I am.  I don’t wear heels and I rarely wear stockings and dresses.  If a woman wants to wear clothing like that, however, it is her choice to do so, and not for outsiders to tell her that she’s too feminine or not feminine enough.

In fact, this external policing of our gender presentations is a no-win scenario for trans women.  If we dress too androgynous or masculine (such as the t-shirts and jeans), people will tell us that we aren’t feminine enough to be transgender and that we aren’t really women because we aren’t always dressed to the nines, even when doing something as mundane as going to the grocery store.  However, for those to do embrace their femininity, we are ridiculed as being ‘a parody of a woman’ and that we aren’t really women because we are trying too hard to be seen as one.

For a transgender woman, there is no way to win in this scenario.

So where did this stereotype of the “Overly Feminine Trans Woman” come from?

It has been built up from a variety of sources that have combined into this stereotype.  Many people’s exposure to the transgender and gender-variant are from performances such as drag shows.  The image of Tim Curry or Ru Paul in exaggerated stage makeup is often the only image that people have of gender-variant people.  In stage and performance venues like this people dress much differently than they normally would, a cisgender woman on stage performing would be dressed much more formally than she would be at an In-N-Out.  From my experience with film and stage productions, I can tell you that any kind of makeup needs to be exaggerated from what a person would normally wear in order to be read from the audience or on camera.  But this is one way that people get the idea that transgender women are “overly feminine.”

The other half of this is from how we have been treated by the medical community in the past.  Until fairly recently, there was only one possible way to be a transgender woman and all the mental health professionals would only consider you to be transgender if you fit that specific pattern, nudging generations of women into submitting to outdated gender roles in order to get the medical help they needed.  In Whipping Girl, Julia Serano notes that “trans women understood that they needed to show up for their psychotherapy appointments wearing dresses and makeup.” (page 123)  This culture of fear within transgender women forced us to act much more stereotypically feminine simply to get the help we needed.

Transgender women didn’t act this way by choice, it was forced upon us by a patriarchal establishment that unilaterally declared that there was only one way to be a woman, and forced us all to conform to that standard on the thread of withholding medical assistance.

Those who label and dismiss us as ‘acting like a grotesque parody of femininity’ should examine why that is, and not simply assume that it is something that is innately part of being transgender.

-Liz

[transisnotanoun]

Jenna Talacknova, Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, and “Women’s Spaces.”

There has been a fair amount of discussion being brought up about the exclusion of a transgender woman, Jenna Talacknova, from the Miss Universe Canada pageant.  Miss Talacknova was excluded from the contest, for no other reason than the fact that she was transgendered.

It has become predictably routine for trans women to be denied and excluded from women’s spaces, be it from domestic violence shelters, rape counseling, homeless shelters, or even the simple ability to use the restroom.

Transgendered women often face a situation where they are too feminine to use a mens space, but simultaneously too masculine to safely use a women’s space, leaving them without any sort of safe space.

Transgender women are excessively targeted for abuse and harassment, with 83% of trans women reporting verbal abuse because of their gender identity or gender presentation, and 37% reporting physical abuse, according to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and yet the available resources to help them with that abuse is relatively minuscule.

Miss Talacknova is simply one of many trans women denied access to a space that is rightfully hers.

Even places that purport to be feminist, most famously the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, exclude trans women from attending, citing fears that allowing trans women would compromise the safe space and be tantamount to allowing men in.

And they allow trans men to attend.

Ideas and attitudes such as these are inherently transphobic, because they reduce us trans women to our genitals, something that the feminist movement has been fighting as well, they presume that biology is destiny, and that because we were born into a role, that we should just accept the situation we were born into and not fight it.

Even worse is that by allow transgender men, but barring trans women, you are invalidating the identities of transgendered people.  You are telling trans women that because you are not ‘really’ a woman, despite that you have fought hard to be accepted as one, you can’t come, because you’re really a man.  But they are also telling trans men that even though they identify as male, they aren’t really men and that they are women at the core and should come on in.

On both fronts it’s disgusting and it erases our identities as transgender people.

We don’t want to force the cisgendered world to like us, or be attracted to us, we simply want to be considered as equals to out cisgendered counterparts.

[transisnotanoun]

"March Madness," Homestuck and the fetishization of Transpeople.

With the month of April gone, and March behind me, I can breathe a little easier.  I like Homestuck, and that's no real secret or anything.

However, the Homestuck fans make me fairly uncomfortable during the month of March.

The story goes, that the art team that produced different art assets for various flash animations in the comic decided to sell a calender featuring various pictures by members of the Art Team to raise money for themselves.  A good idea and most everybody liked the idea.

However with the inaugural calendar, the image for the month of March was a picture of one of the male characters in a tube top and skirt.

  Now, the technical qualities of the drawing aside (I think it's fairly sloppy on a technical level, over-detailed and over-rendered), the fanbase went ballistic over it.  Both from a standpoint of lashing out against the gender-variance, and the technical qualities of the image.

Of course, fandoms being what they are, it ended up becoming a yearly tradition to draw this character in that outfit, and other characters from Homestuck in gender-variant clothing.

The fact that people like me are not marginalized and shoved to the margins and celebrated should be good right?

Not necessarily.

I find the trend of "March Madness" in the Homestuck fandom to be problematic, and the majority of it makes me personally uncomfortable.

The majority of the March Eridan fanart that I see portrays gender-variance in a fairly sexualized manner WRT posting and artistic style.  This places focus on sex appeal and perpetuates the idea that gender-variant and transgender people are the way they are in order to attract other people, as opposed to doing it for the purposes of personal satisfaction.

It makes me personally uncomfortable because I feel that it fetishizes transgendered and gender-variant people by focusing of the taboo aspects of it, and it reduces me and people like me down to a punchline of "that dude is wearing a skirt lmfao."

The cross-dressing and gender-variance are not treated as a small part of a greater whole, but rather as just the punchline to a joke.

Because I am considered a joke.  Me and people like me are just one big joke.

One big disrespectful joke.

Well I'm not laughing. 

 -Liz 

[transisnotanoun]

Why a ferengi avatar?

The Ferengi avatar is just a bit of fun.  It's from the 4th episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called "The Last Outpost."  It was the episode that introduced us to the Ferengi.

So why make it my avatar?

Because the Ferengi were portrayed as brutally misogynistic in the episode, going as far as to say "Your females wear clothing?"

In fact the Ferengi characters in Star Trek almost always refer to women as "females," removing their agency as persons and equating them with animals and positioning them as an unknowable other.

So now, every time I see a "Mens Rights Activist" or PUA talking about women as an unknowable other or using the term "Female" instead of woman, I just picture them as Ferengi. 

-Liz 

[transisnotanoun]

Why I call this blog "Transgendered is not a Noun."

Why call this blog "Transgendered is not a noun?"

It's simple really, I made this blog to talk about issues that we as transgender people have to deal with on a daily basis, and to analyze it from both a trans perspective and from a feminist point of view.

The name was my way of venting the most common frustration I have about people's understanding of transpeople.  People see me as a transgender person first and a human being second.

I find it rude and disrespectful when people say that "[Liz] is a transsexual."

Because it makes my identity as a transperson subsume my identity as a person and a woman.

So welcome to my blog and buckle up as we go an adventure!

-Liz