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I want to talk about something I just saw on Reddit. It was regarding the US election, and it was a Democrat saying something to the effect of how he can agree with “the other side” on one thing.

No prizes for guessing: it’s trans women. Specifically, he regards the idea that we can participate in society in any meaningful way (you know, like being able to use toilets in restaurants and stuff) as “insane”.

And of course, he got to talking about “penises” straight away, which tells us a lot about how people like him see us, because I don’t know about you, but when I think about women, “penis”. Is not my go-to. Hell, when I think about ANYBODY, I don’t tend to think about sex organs. Only really comes up in a sexual context.

Not only do these people not see us as women. They don’t see us as PEOPLE. To a considerable number of cis people, we are “some sort of weird sex thing”. That’s it. That’s the bit of their brain we occupy.

People have hopes and dreams and lives and people they love and who love them, and need to use toilets occasionally. Weird sex things don’t do any of that.

So of course the Democrats treating us as human is “weird” to them.

And he was massively up-voted, and congratulated about “finding common ground with political opponents”, and the comments saying, “what the hell? These are humans you’re talking about!” were all a long way down, and not popular.

This is how cis people see us. Not all of them, but a lot of them. An awful lot. Of the ones who don’t, a lot of them will only support us as long as it doesn’t require any personal awkwardness.

Anyway, my point here is not to wallow, but to present the context in which we fight for equality, because I think it’s clear that these people will never grant it to us voluntarily.

Not only are there no consequences for them to treat us like shit; they are CONGRATULATED for it.

And they will only stop if they are MADE to.

That’s the context in which our struggle operates.