I’ve honestly tried to write this blog post like five times at this point and it always explodes in length to the point where editing it or finishing it becomes impossible. Honestly it’s more of a book than a blog post and maybe I’ll do that one day.
In the meantime, I’m gonna give up on giving you the full picture and instead talk around it or something here we go!!!!!!
There’s so much talk going on about trans people right now, all over the world. The arguments in the media tend to be about toilets or sports or healthcare or 👏 trans 👏 women 👏 are 👏 women 👏
and I find it weird / depressing that the base / core experience of being trans (minus all of that) is never talked about publicly, in both mainstream and in trans circles, because we’re all so focused on the genocide that’s going on instead. Does that make sense?
I think it would help to give people a greater sense of what it feels like to actually be trans, because it’s such an abstract thing, and it can sound ridiculous in a way. I mean, really, it’s kinda science fiction if you look at it from a certain angle. It’s a pretty trippy idea. It’s— Really, it is. Not to me. It feels very normal to me, because I experience it every day. But to many other people— I don’t think some non-trans people really realise how crazily and excruciatingly real it is. I don’t think most— I think that most people don’t really know what “being trans” means.
Maybe they “know” what it means, but I don’t think they really really “KNOW” what it MEANS, if you know what I mean?
Ugh…
Many stories have been told in attempts to explain what it MEANS and FEELS like to be trans, and I think they’ve all been really bad. They end up too simple or too apologetic or too inaccurate or they end up answering a different question.
When I was growing up, I heard the stories of “being born in the wrong body” told by “transsexuals” who were experiencing “gender dysphoria” or “gender incongruence”, and this formed the basis of my understanding of what it meant to be trans in a very harmful way. It took me decades to overcome and grow out of that.
Some people go the other way, becoming more radical and harmful in their views as they progress, and we refer to those people as “truscum” or “trans medicalists”. They end up internalising the transphobia and transmisogi— transmyso— I can’t spell it, but they end up believing the transphobic talking points used against them, and they join in: Excluding other trans people from the community, pulling up the ladder behind them.
Truscum think that “being trans” is a medical disorder or medical challenge or difficulty you face. It means there’s something wrong with you, and you need “fixing”, and there’s no “fix”, so you have to resort to medical transition instead, as a reluctant second best. You might be able to spot the short distance to conversion therapy from this viewpoint.
On the other hand, the newer younger generation of trans people take a more open minded approach. Sometimes affectionately referred to as “tucute” (as a riff on “truscum”), they believe that you don’t need to experience dysphoria to be trans, or rephrased: They don’t believe that “dysphoria” is a defining or universal feature of the trans experience, and you don’t need to do any medical (or even social) transition either. Some believe that “being trans” is entirely a choice. Others link it to the most neo of neopronouns, claiming alternative pronouns as a way of declining the standard options. Some take it further and invent their own. “Why can’t I base my gender around trains? What does it matter to you? I’m rejecting the norm and also I like trains!” (valid)
To me, tucute feels like an immune response to the truscum drivel. It means saying “No. I decide who I am. Your rules don’t apply to me.”
The truscum-tucute war is a largely western battle.
Other places and times present their own understanding of gender that I’m much worse versed / less familiar with. I hear about “third gender” and “two spirit” people who escape the gender binary and, in my deep ignorance, I wonder what that’s like. Do those people experience the same thing as me? Or is it something different? Perhaps there’s some overlap, or perhaps it’s something that I’m completely unaware of, with my limited western viewpoint. It feels like the elephant in the room in the communities and conversations I’m part of, or more of gaping hole where the missing elephant should be.
In the western world, we’re so— We’re so behind, in the western world. Patriarchy and misogin— mysogy— misogyny are so deeply embedded in our culture and roots. The romans fucked us hard, quite literally. They were so fucked up and I don’t think enough people know that. Rape and male violence wasn’t just common: It was more than that: It was the bedrock of roman civilization.
Then christianity happened, and those values got spread around and mixed up and muddled with all the roman bullshit and we’re still recovering, over two thousand years later! Fuck!
We live in the remnants of rape-fueled military empires. We’re in this sick cycle of expanding our colonial reach. History repeats itself. The roman empire, the british empire, the american one, and everything (everything) is seen in terms of battle and war and fight. Which side will win? The truscum or the tucute? I’m team tucute. What are you?
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