Thank you for the interesting and informative reply! Is it right to say that "truscum" would say that a person using, say, a neopronoun without feeling dysphoric when called by their designated at birth pronoun is recklessly appropriating a thing that should be reserved for "true" trans people? And that the "tucute" response to that is "It's not my place to judge, I don't want to be a gatekeeper, let people use whatever they want”?
I feel that there’s some mischaracterization on both sides there.
As mentioned before, not all truscum are necessarily against neopronouns: I’ve met truscum who use them, usually non-binary ones. As for the argument of “true trans people” it’s more an issue with wording but I’ve mostly seen the word “real” instead of “true.” I think the difference is that “real” implies legitimacy based on (what they would call) sound evidence, where “true” implies more honesty which a lot of truscum don’t tend to see in other trans people right off the bat due to their beliefs. It’s nitpicky I know but despite the name “truscum” the word “true” really isn’t used very much to describe dysphoric trans people in the debate.
As for tucutes, in theory, yeah, that’s around what would happen, but not really in practice. While tucutes don’t consider dysphoria to be a factor in one’s gender identity, there are a lot of other things that they will make a fuss over based on someone’s gender identity. Some examples being looking down on masculine afab trans folk (trans guys in particular, but I’ve seen tons of non-binary trans masculine people spat on for their masculine gender identity), there’s also a lot of gatekeeping in that there’s the “you need to be x to identify with x” which does have a place in the conversation such as with intergender, but more often than not they cross lines or speak over people just to make sure that everyone is living up to the quota.
Tucutes are as heavily flawed in my opinion as truscum, mostly because they’re two sides of the same coin at the heart of it all. They tend to be very judgmental people who put their nose where it really doesn’t belong, and intentionally antagonize other people over very minuscule and mundane topics, yet they both think that they’re a godsend for trans people. They both demonize each other heavily, and do recognize that there are bad people in their community but are usually not willing to do much about it. Both groups are also really cliquey from what I’ve seen, the cliques circulating around one popular blogger For example, two infamous cliques in this drama would be Mari, otherwise known as agender-offender, who leads a very extreme group of truscum, and then you have Kat infamously known as idislikecispeople (IDCP), who I believe left tumblr, but she founded and lead a similarly extreme group of tucutes. In both communities really everyone outside of their cliques recognized that they were terrible and toxic people, but never did a whole lot to try to change that. The biggest thing that comes to mind is when the truscum community tried to separate the terms truscum (which would mean essentially the extremists that follow Mari) and transmedicalists (Who tended to follow the approach of other larger, yet more liberal blogs). It never really caught fire, mostly because nobody outside of the community recognized the difference.
But really, neither of them really do much of anything in the way of helping or hindering trans people on more than the individual scale.
Both sides tend to have extremists who go over the line often. In my time in the debate, I’ve seen truscum invalidate people, ask incredibly invasive questions regarding genitalia, and I have seen more extreme truscum go to such lengths as to actually call their victim’s therapist to ask for confirmation on their dysphoria. As for tucutes, I’ve seen no shortage of harassment, suicide baiting, manipulation, and calling more than two peoples’ work to try to get them fired for what they post online. While these extremists are not the majority, the hollow barrel makes the loudest noise. They get attention, and as far as the other side is concerned, speak for their entire group.
So, to answer your initial question… It’s complicated. It’s really on a case-by-case basis, because both sides will demonize and exaggerate what the other has done. There are truscum who are wonderful people and who I count as friends, and I have friends that are tucutes as well. There’s also horrible truscum and tucutes who go the extra mile to ensure that their bullying is as distressing as possible.The behavior of the group varies greatly because at the end of the day they’re both really only tied together by loose definitions while people try to constantly make unofficial rules for each faction.
Most things you mentioned in the scenario could go a lot of different directions based on who is looking at it and what their beliefs are. A liberal truscum might think nothing of it, assume that the kid probably has dysphoria but doesn’t know how to recognize it and move on without approaching. A moderate might approach, but I don’t think they would attack pronouns so much as the “then what makes you trans???” and a radical truscum would be the all-out “YOU’RE ACTUALLY CIS STOP APPROPRIATING TRANS PEOPLE!” As for tucutes, they also vary. There are those who will just silently endorse, others who might try to strike up a conversation, and the lovely stereotypical ones who are like are those pronouns and gender okay for them to use considering their race/agab/mental health/medical history/abuse history etc.? God help them if it’s not, because then it’s callout post and “kill yourself” time.
Tucutes are only slightly more united because their founder Kat released an official rule set for them, where truscum are a faction created also by Kat to demonize people who didn’t agree with her and essentially start this war. I would link it, but her account is on password and I can’t find any archives of the page she had for it.
Something to keep in mind, however, is that this debate is really nothing new. It didn’t start on tumblr, and it won’t end on tumblr. Before truscum/transmedicalists and tucutes, they were called transexuals and transgenderists. The debate has been taking place really since the trans movement was started way back when.
I tried to keep this as neutral as I could, though if you could tell I really don’t care for either faction. I only really “count” as truscum anymore because I believe that being trans is a medical condition at its heart, even if it means much more than that to me personally.
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