novatorine 🏴🏳️⚧️It really pisses me off when leftists throw trans women under the bus. It really gives JK Rowling "if you actually were oppressed, I'd totally march with you, but you're not!" vibes.
If you're going to try to tell me that trans people aren't really *that* oppressed, that we belong to some upper echelon of privilege in society instead of being among the most oppressed — on average, and historically — then I'm not going to treat you as a serious interlocutor, because you're just being completely ignorant. Trans and gender non-conforming people have been the target of constant, endemic, ingrained hate and ridicule and disgust and — most especially — *violence* throughout much of Western history, the targets of eugenics — Sweden only repealed the requirement to have had bottom surgery or at least orchiectomy or hysterectomy (so, be sterilized) in order to change your legal gender in 2013 — and among the very first targets of the Nazis. We have to fear for our physical safety constantly basically everywhere we go, and constantly fear accusation and persecution as violent and perverted sexual predators no matter what we do, even our very existence can be interpreted as a threat or harm against those around us, and we have to also constantly worry about the social death and isolation and threat to the very means of our subsistence (jobs, homes) because of who we are. And we rely on life-saving medicine that we can lose access to at any moment for financial or political reasons — or just the bigotry of the doctors we are at the mercy of. Most of us inherently, by our very nature, have to suffer explicit and constant body horror the likes of which most people will never experience, in a way that is so existential it often makes us question our own realities and minds, and is constantly denied or ignored or pointed out with great pleasure by others, and the only way to relieve it is, again, a medicine that can be taken away at any moment. We do not have the privilege of being self-sufficient in any real way. And we are in the middle of an extremely specific, targeted and active genocide attempt by a multinational coalition of right wing fascist movements and ideologues with the explicit purpose of not just subjugating us, but utterly removing us from public life.
This is not to say that we have it worse or better than any other specific minority, because I'm not in that game. This is just to point out that claiming that we are as privileged as the average white cis woman or man, or even that we benefit from white privilege much at all (we do NOT get to feel safe with police, for instance), or saying we are "not the target of bigoted groups" or that we are overall particularly privileged, is a complete and utter lie, and a disgusting one.
Maybe you think we are privileged because you're not familiar with our day to day struggles and our history, but that's because we have only extremely recently begun to actually be vocal in advocating for ourselves and making our existence known! Maybe you think we are privileged because the only trans people you really know about are rich celebrities or well-off software engineers or something but you know why that is? Because those are the only trans people that can afford to be visible and out and the only ones that have the economic power to fight the automatic social isolation and exile that usually happens when you are trans.
And yes, black trans women are far worse off than white trans women. But that doesn't mean you get to paint all white trans women as privileged white people who don't have to worry about "real" oppression. That's solipsistic nonsense.
ᒪᐸᒋᓐ(:raccoon_x3:)PUNK
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