transphobia – Thoughtfulfangirling

lierdumoa:

kalipygos:

secret-knight:

areasontobreathe:

sari-y-fawr:

So very true

Kids that young are essentially gender neutral, and are still being taught ‘gender norms’ by adults who should know better.

I have the world’s most precious nephew. When he was 3, he asked his mom and grandma if he could be a girl. Now, my family is smart. Both his mom and his grandma asked “why?” He said it was so he could have long hair.

His mom showed him photos of famous musicians with long hair, along with Johnny Depp. His grandma showed him photos of Brad Pitt, Troy Polamalu, and Jared Leto with long hair. Then they told him “Boys can have long hair, see?” He said “oh” and went on about his life being a boy.

When he was 4, this same nephew decided again that he wanted to be a girl. This time, the reason was so he could wear skirts and paint his nails. Same reaction: his mom and grandma showed him photos of men in kilts, and men with painted nails, and said “boys can do that, too.” He said “oh”, and decided he was okay being a boy.

At the root of it, he didn’t really want to be a girl. He just wanted to do the same things he saw his mama doing. When he understood he didn’t have to be a girl to do those things, he shrugged it off and was cool with being a boy.

Now, if he ever adamantly decides that he is a girl, not that he wants to be a girl, myself, his mom, and his grandma will be okay with that. We just want to make sure he actually is transgender instead of deciding “oh he wants to do these things, so he is a girl.” We are extremely firm believers in making educated decisions.

I feel that a transgender four year old is more like a cat who is vegan because the cat’s owner’s misunderstood the cat eating grass to mean it is vegan.

👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆👆

well i was really hoping when i saw this on my dash it would be because someone was calling out this bullshit but i guess not

why are you people comparing a vegan cat (aka a cat who is malnourished and actively being abused) to letting a child experiment with their gender, causing NO HARM TO ANYONE, just because they may or may not turn out to be actually trans when they grow older?

its not like the four year old is going to get gender confirmation surgery at that age or any long-lasting life change that they may or may not regret later.

their parent isnt FORCING them to be trans like a person trying to make their cat vegan is forcing their cat into a lifestyle change that is detrimental to its wellbeing.

what the hell is wrong with you people? this is fucking revolting

Also, why is this parent waiting until their child says “I want to be a girl” to show them that boys are allowed to have long hair or wear dresses?

It seems like these parents were perfectly okay with only exposing their kid to the narrowest definition of masculinity, only to very reluctantly acknowledge that exceptions are “allowed” when their child seems like they might reject the box their parents have put them in.

Does the child know that these parents will be okay with them being transgender if that turns out to be true? Because based on @areasontobreathe ’s story, at no point did the parents ever say “you can be a girl” or otherwise indicate that trans people exist and that being trans is valid – their only response was to ask “why do you want that?” and then immediately explain why the child shouldn’t want that.

If a little girl asks “can I marry a girl” she might not actually fully understand what marriage is. She might not grow up to be a wlw.

But parents who aren’t homophobes will still use that question as an opportunity to let their kid know that yes, sometimes people mary people of the same gender, and that’s okay, and if she still wants to marry a girl when she grows up she has that option.

It sounds like these parents refused to show even this modicum of acceptance, and went straight to saying “WHY do you want that?? Give me a REALLY GOOD REASON why you think you want that. You probably DON’T really want that.”

And then they pulled the same evasive bullshit the next time the kid asked.

Just saw one of those ‘nasty women of history’ videos on Facebook that talked about this doctor who lived from like 18 until death as a man but calls him a woman throughout. Like, I’ve always kind of hated the claiming of ‘nasty woman’ for who knows why. I try not to bug people with that dislike of mine but wtf?? If someone lives their entire adult life as one gender, the genitals you find on them when preparing their body does not change that.

fuckyeahsexeducation:

riotrite:

riotrite:

I decided to make a cheat-sheet for why TERF ideology is just regular old misogyny as well as transmisogyny for those of you who might encounter one of these scumbags and have to shut them down quickly and efficiently.

1. Defining women by their genitalia and reproductive ability is exactly what patriarchy does for the benefit of men.

2. The idea of being “socialized female,” if it excludes trans women, completely excludes the individual’s experience and subjectivity, which is an incredibly paternalistic ideology that robs all women of any control over their identities and lives.

3. It is an indisputable scientific fact that genitalia, hormones, chromosomes, and physical traits coded as “female” all exist on a non-binary spectrum in the human population. TERFs’ fundamentally binaristic ideology ignores and excludes intersex women, in addition to all women who deviate from the physical norms established by patriarchy; norms which TERFs are against only nominally.

4. TERFs’ frequent willingness to welcome self-proclaimed CAFAB men into women’s spaces while excluding CAMAB women demonstrates their disregard for combating toxic masculinity and patriarchal behavior in favor of point #1, defining women by their genitalia.

5. TERFs’ total disavowal of trans identity specifically and consciously excludes all indigenous societies that historically welcomed and accepted (or continue to welcome and accept) trans people before European patriarchal gender ideology was forced on them by genocide and colonialism. This is not only racist and ethnocentric, but also a tacit promotion of the European gender norms feminists are supposed to be fighting.

6. Trans women and other CAMAB trans people are unquestionably one of the groups in our society most at risk for poverty and violence. TERFs’ insistence that trans women are statistically the perpetrators rather than victims of violence is demonstrably untrue and an obvious indication of a disregard for the actual facts about patriarchal violence. If TERFs are unwilling to confront the bare facts of misogynist violence, they can hardly be trusted to advance the feminist movement.

If anybody would like to keep the list going, please do.

I thought of another one, which is actually just a modified but more insidious version of #1.

7. Defining women by having experienced a universal “girlhood” is not only an idea that only gained traction specifically as a tactic to exclude trans feminists, but is also a logically inconsistent and white-western-cis-straight-able supremacist practice. It’s logically inconsistent for a number of reasons- one is that the only way to define “girlhood” to exclude trans girls is to implicitly call on argument #1, so it still shamelessly excludes many intersex women. Another is that it centers girlhood but presupposes who can have one, making it circular. But the main fucked up thing about the “girlhood” argument is that it posits a universal experience for girls, or at least some hidden and conveniently self-serving connection between all girls. This only serves normative interests. How likely is it that the girlhood being considered universal is that of a young, wheelchair-using Khmer woman dealing with the emigration process to leave Cambodia for the EU? Or a black lesbian South African girl coping with rural life on a farm? Or a First Nations girl living in Toronto and growing up navigating trauma, white supremacy, and legalized ethnocide/genocide? I think it’s relatively obvious that any time a “universal” experience is postulated, dominant power structures push that universality towards the normative and privileged positions feminists are supposed to be challenging. That’s privilege 101. We can celebrate connections and commonalities without homogenizing women’s experiences in an illogical way that just happens to exclude one very particular set of women. Trans women have girlhoods too. Ours are just different in some ways than cis girls. Deal with it.

reminder that TERFs can unfollow me.