lucypaw:

widdershinsgirl:

freedominwickedness:

lucypumpkin:

…needs to die a swift death. Because the binarist, cissexist, “copy our oppressors” approach to supposedly liberating trans* people from oppression is not going to work. Given that this is exactly what transphobic radical feminists did, and we see how well it’s worked out for them, why are people…

The idea that an intersex, nonbinary trans woman of color can be accused of being “binarist” — by a white trans person like you no less — is beyond ridiculous. Especially when it’s blatantly obvious that you’re only using this to further your absurd and offensive argument that CAFAB trans people are not massively privileged over CAMAB trans people, and your further argument that CASAB should be kept secret in a debate about CASAB related privilege.

Declaring CASAB irrelevant when it in fact has significant relevance to the way one is treated by patriarchy (i.e. “shitty” or “shitty with a side of diarrhea sauce and a tall glass of salty lemonade”) is disingenuous.

No, it isn’t.  Assumed CASAB has tremendous relevance but actual CASAB?  No.  Regardless of my CASAB, I am assumed to be CAFAB most of the time and so generally only get sexism and misogyny except when I’m assumed to be CAMAB when I get transmisogyny.  Both happen to me.  That is my experience of just being me.

So don’t tell me that my CASAB has significant relevance when people can’t even agree what my CASAB is.  freedominwickedness and some other trans women have decided that I’m CAFAB while bugbrennan and others have decided that I’m CAMAB.  I can’t help but notice that both groups have decided to assign me to the group of people they consider unnecessary to listen to.  It’s self-serving while also making it clear that my CASAB is not some universally obvious fact to everyone.

That you can claim that CASAB has relevance to how society treats us means you believe that you and society can tell what everyone’s CASABs are with perfect accuracy.  They can’t, as my and other peoples’ experiences demonstrate.  I’m sorry that you have bought into the cissexist and transphobic belief that people’s CASABs are obvious to everyone, but they’re not.  People assume a hell of a lot and treat people based on those assumptions.  This fact is being lost in a binarist, absolutist argument of privilege and oppression, which erases me and everyone who has similar experiences to me (as everyone who has ever been passed as another sex/gender/CASAB does).  While I understand (and agree with!) the complaints about people’s behaviour against trans women and those assumed to be trans women and otherwise CAMAB, this does not justify erasing people like me.

Yes, declaring CASAB irrelevant is disingenuous. Fortunately, THAT IS NOT THE ARGUMENT BEING MADE.

The argument being made is that assuming you know someones CASAB by their words alone is wrong. And I mean that as in factually wrong and ethically wrong.

The argument being made is that assuming you know someone’s gender based on what you assume is their CASAB is also wrong. Doing so is doing both you and the person you are making assumptions about a great disservice, as doing this is part of how trans people are mis- and degendered in a cissexist, white supremacist society.

The argument is that this way of talking about trans and nonbinary people is just another way of saying that our gender is determined by our genitalia at birth.

This is us saying that we can talk about the privilege you want to talk about, that we must talk about it, and that we must talk about it without mis or degendering the people involved because when we do so, we are using the very ideas that we claim to want to stop, and we are using them against each other.

I don’t understand why there is such a desperation to turn this into a question of denying privilege. We aren’t denying those privileges, we are connecting them to a different source. THAT IS ALL. Changing the source does not change your argument that these privileges exist in any substantive way.

bucklesinthesun:

telegantmess:

telegantmess:

have likely never felt the flood of relief that there is a WORD FOR WHAT YOU ARE after spending years wondering if you were broken, what was wrong with you, feeling ridiculously isolated and having other people complain about things you can’t change about yourself. If there’s a word for it, that…

I’m just gonna copy and paste this over here:

profoundish replied to your post: I agree! But I think a lot of people are raising the legitimate concern that labels can never be fully identifying. “Bisexual” is honestly not a comprehensive label for me; in order to describe my sexuality fully, I’d need to write an encyclopedia.

Its interesting to me how I never once in the post made a prescriptivist argument, suggesting that everyone must have a label or that they must like it. Nor did I suggest that labels are always freeing, or that coercive labeling is a good thing, or that discovering that you prefer to stay unlabeled is bad. All the post pointed out was that “why does everyone need a label” conversations are often tied into not wanting to recognize privilege, and when those conversations are used to identity police, they become oppressive bullshit pretty quickly (like this post here). Those concerns that you mention are legitimate, though they are reacting to issues surrounding labeling and not anything I actually said.

Because I had a similar problem for a really long time, not having a good way to describe myself and my sexuality and the way my brain works because a single word didn’t seem to be enough. Hell, I think I wrote something exactly like your response here in those days in an attempt to describe myself. So I understand the concerns, and I share them.

I’m just kinda fascinated how so many people projected the prescriptivism on my words. I think it says something about how we expect these conversations to go.

I’m also kind of interested at how the post has developed a bit of a life of its own. So I’m tagging some of the people who have posted concerned reactions in case any of them were curious.

As much as I feel that labels are kind of inadequate for a lot of things (and confining in many cases), there are moments when they can be therapeutic in that their existence indicates that other people are having the same experience as I am. That moment when you can go “I’m not alone” is a good one. Also, taking up a label that applies to you in the service of a good cause can be important.

exactly

(via bucklesinthesun-deactivated2013)

telegantmess:

have likely never felt the flood of relief that there is a WORD FOR WHAT YOU ARE after spending years wondering if you were broken, what was wrong with you, feeling ridiculously isolated and having other people complain about things you can’t change about yourself. If there’s a word for it, that…

I’m just gonna copy and paste this over here:

profoundish replied to your post: I agree! But I think a lot of people are raising the legitimate concern that labels can never be fully identifying. “Bisexual” is honestly not a comprehensive label for me; in order to describe my sexuality fully, I’d need to write an encyclopedia.

Its interesting to me how I never once in the post made a prescriptivist argument, suggesting that everyone must have a label or that they must like it. Nor did I suggest that labels are always freeing, or that coercive labeling is a good thing, or that discovering that you prefer to stay unlabeled is bad. All the post pointed out was that “why does everyone need a label” conversations are often tied into not wanting to recognize privilege, and when those conversations are used to identity police, they become oppressive bullshit pretty quickly (like this post here). Those concerns that you mention are legitimate, though they are reacting to issues surrounding labeling and not anything I actually said.

Because I had a similar problem for a really long time, not having a good way to describe myself and my sexuality and the way my brain works because a single word didn’t seem to be enough. Hell, I think I wrote something exactly like your response here in those days in an attempt to describe myself. So I understand the concerns, and I share them.

I’m just kinda fascinated how so many people projected the prescriptivism on my words. I think it says something about how we expect these conversations to go.

I’m also kind of interested at how the post has developed a bit of a life of its own. So I’m tagging some of the people who have posted concerned reactions in case any of them were curious.

fuckyeahqueerparents:

So you want to have a kid, or you want to interact with kids, but you’re not a big fan of the gender binary and the 10 trillion ways children are asked to conform to it, nor do you like the way that gender identity is offered to children as the primary way to make sense of themselves, and you’re also irked by the fact that even the children’s books that emphasize gender nonconformity (like My Princess Boy) fail to distinguish between “girls’ clothes” and “clothes marketed to girls”?  Ok, me too.  Read on!

This is one of the best resources I’ve seen on this subject yet.

Go read and add comments with suggestions!

outlawmidwives:

genderfuckandsecrets:

guerrillamamamedicine:

Doula Right Thing: About Purportedly Gendered Body Parts

About Purportedly Gendered Body Parts

I have been thinking about how much I would like it if people, especially health practitioners, exercise instructors and others who talk about bodies a lot, would adjust their language about body parts heavily associated with gender norms. Lots of people who identify as feminists and allies to trans people still use terms like “female-bodied,” “male body parts,” “bio-boy,”and “biologically female.” Even in spaces where people have gained some basic skills around respecting pronoun preferences, suggesting an increasing desire to support gender self- determination and release certain expectations related to gender norms, I still hear language used that asserts a belief in constructions of “biological gender.” From my understanding, a central endeavor of feminist, queer, and trans activists has been to dismantle the cultural ideologies, social and legal norms that say that certain body parts determine gender identity and gendered social characteristics and roles. We’ve fought against the idea that the presence of uteruses or ovaries or penises should be understood to determine such things as people’s intelligence, proper parental roles, proper physical appearance, proper gender identity, proper labor roles, proper sexual partners and activities, and capacity to make decisions. We’ve opposed medical and scientific assertions that affirm the purported health of traditional gender roles and activities and pathologize bodies that defy those norms.

As feminists and trans allies, we continue to work to dispel myths that body parts somehow make us who we are (and make us “less than” or “better than,” depending on which we may have). But feminists and trans allies sometimes (often inadvertently) prop up these sexist and transphobic ideas just by using language that is shaped by biological determinism.

I have heard language used by many smart trans people and allies that I would like to suggest as an alternative to language that is invested in the myth of biological binary gender:

1. We can talk about uteruses, ovaries, penises, vulvas, etc. with specificity without assigning these parts a gender. Rather than saying things like “male body parts,” “female bodies” or “male bodies” we can say the thing we are probably trying to say more directly, such as “bodies with penises,” “bodies with uteruses,” “people with ovaries” and skip the assumption that those body parts correlate with a gender. Examples: “Unfortunately the anatomical drawings in this book only represent bodies with penises and testicles, but I think this picture can still help you get a sense of how the abdominal muscle is shaped.” “People with testicles may find this exercise easier with this adjustment.” “Some people may feel a sensation in the ovaries during this procedure.”
2. The term “internal reproductive organs” can be a useful way to talk generally about ovaries, uteruses, and the like without calling them “female reproductive organs.” Example: “The doctor might think it is necessary to have some ultrasounds of the internal reproductive organs to find out more about what is causing the pain.”
3. We can use “people who menstruate” or “people who are pregnant” or “people who produce sperm” or other terms like these rather than using “male,” “female” or “pregnant women” as a proxy for these statuses. In this way we get rid of the assumptions that all people who identify as a particular gender have the same kind of body or do the same things with their bodies, as well as the mistaken belief that if your body has/does that thing it is a particular gender. Examples: “This exercise is not recommended for people who are menstruating.” “People who are trying to become pregnant should not take this medication.” “People who produce sperm should be warned that this procedure could effect their fertility.”
4. When we want to talk about someone and indicate that they are not trans, we can say “not trans” or “non-trans” or “cisgender” rather than “biologically male,” or “bio boy,” or “bio girl.” When we talk about someone trans we should identify them by their current gender, and if we need to refer to their assigned gender at birth we could say they were “assigned male” or “assigned female” rather than that they are “biologically male” or “biologically female.” These “bio” terms reproduce the oppressive logic that our bodies have some purported biological gendered truth in them, separate from our social gender role. Our bodies have varying parts, but it is socialization that assigns our body parts gendered meaning.

Is there a way to just keep this at the top of my blog forever? Like you can with sticky-ed dreamwidth/livejournal posts? Because I’d kind of like everyone that interacts with me, ever, to read this.

So important