I would like to rename this post ”People I know exist, but refuse to defend”. The voices of the people in this post are voices that should not be amplified. Literally every single statement made me uncomfortable, and I’m going to explain why below the cut. Please know that I am not in every group mentioned below, so don’t hesitate to message me if I said something incorrect/inappropriate. Each point is long enough to be its own post, but I felt like condensing it all into one. I apologize for the length!
!!! This post is about oppression in general, so trigger warning for #slurs #sexual assault #rape #transphobia #transmisogyny #homophobia #sexism #racism and many more things I probably missed
Starting with the Black person. Their statement reads: "I’m Black, but I don’t think I’m really oppressed. There are difficulties and prejudice, but oppression is too strong a word for it". As a Black American, this statement was like a stab to the chest.
Any Black person who thinks oppression is too strong a word for a POC living in America is either ignorant, whitewashed, or both. Why? 500 years of genocide, enslavement, and lynching. Generations of imposed unemployment, poverty, and mass incarceration of POC. Police brutality, medical abuse and apartheid, and dehumanization. Oh, but it’s all in the past, right? Hell. No. There are Black people who are fortunate enough to not experience the brunt of the oppression (myself included). However, their opinions derived from ignorance of the world around them and relative privilege should not be valued over lives in which racism takes prominence. To call me racist for disregarding this opinion is like calling me sexist for calling out rape victims who tell their cis male friends that they think rape jokes are okay, which further perpetuates the rape culture that they are a victim of. This is a disgusting, completely illogical “argument”, if I can even call it one.
The next picture on the top right reads: "I don’t find the word f*ggot offensive, unless it’s used in an offensive way".
This just in: not valuing the comfort of one non-heterosexual person over the thousands, probably millions, who are uncomfortable with this word is homophobic. Nevermind that this is a slur, meaning has the weight of centuries of oppression, and behind it festers a hatred that has dehumanized, oppressed, ridiculed, and killed non-het people for generations. Don’t be a homophobe by dismissing people who think oppressors using slurs that their group has and continues to destroy on a systematic level is okay! (sarcasm over) There’s a difference between reclaiming a word and announcing that if someone’s not saying the word with malice, it’s perfectly fine. Just as end notes, here’s a post about not being offended. It’s aimed at White guys, but it really highlights that you haven’t witnessed/been subject to the violence of a slur if you’re not offended by it, and it shows what you, as a queer person, contribute to when you let cishets think it’s okay to use f*ggot in any situation. Also, homophobia is not just conscious hate, so statements like “as long as you don’t mean it offensively” demonstrates a lack of fundamental understanding of what oppression is.
On the bottom left: "I don’t want trans to be popular, I don’t want it to be romanticized. My family and friends see it and relate it to me. I just want to live my life like the guy I am".
There are trans people who don’t get to just “live their life”. They have to live in stealth for safety purposes, otherwise living as the gender they truly are would get them killed. So that results in dysphoria becoming more crippling, mental health eroding, suicide rates rising. Trans people, especially trans women of color, are living in poverty, homeless from being disowned, being denied the resources they need, indiscriminately at-risk for STD’s and psychiatric illnesses, physically and sexually assaulted, murdered. Trans isn’t a popularity contest. It’s something that people are bringing awareness to in order to improve life for trans people. Your personal agenda does not supersede the dire need for this. Calling this and open support of trans people “romanticizing” is gross. Also, this excerpt about medicalizing transness ties in to the next point but is also related to this one, so I will post it with some parts redacted for length:
"They [trans men] have more social ability to make that gamble to be “utterly normalized” [hint: I just want to live my life like the guy I am]. Because, for trans women, assimilation is a lot more difficult, due to both the fact that we tend to be more visible (and also, transmisogyny) and that we’re also women (thus, misogyny), we have a much harder time attaining assimilation. But for trans men, they don’t often face as much of this bad visibility problem, and they don’t face misogyny, and for them, they can more easily “risk” their social capital and existing trans-structures by trying to fit into a cis-structure."
How this relates to the next point, the bottom right: "I experience body dysphoria, but also being pleased with my sex. I am what you could call a genderfluid, I guess? Being genderfluid isn’t about identity or gender roles. I find that cute pronouns and claiming this label without dysphoria trivializes my issues".
I have a lot to say about this.
One, this opinion about the cute pronouns is not an unpopular one. However, the only prevalent issue I see with the neopronouns is the fact that the majority of them are already words (bun), or have pronunciations that mirror existing words (ai). No one would be able to legitimately use bunself in a verbal conversation, and ai sounds like “I”, which is just plain confusing since pronouns are placeholders for other people. My suggestion wouldn’t be to make them less cute. It would be to integrate it with general English grammar, and use Latin or Greek roots of the themes you want your pronouns to embody to avoid making noun-pronouns. I could give a fuck less about how cute they are (my personal opinion, though). What matters is functionality, and right now they fail miserably in that area.
Two, medicalizing transness/nonbinarism perpetuates White supremacist, transmsogynist views of gender. From this post once again:
"The coding of transness itself as a medical condition was instituted by cis people in order to restrict trans women’s access to transition needs. Cis radfem Janice Raymond popularized that. Supporting the idea that transness itself is a medical condition is supporting something that was created to invalidate trans women’s womanhood. I don’t have a problem with gender dysphoria being coded as a medical condition, but I DO have a problem with transness itself being coded as such. Being trans in itself is not an illness and is not treated or cured". This was the platform cis people needed to institutionalized queer and trans people as mentally unstable. Psychiatric doctors have a history of being Mass-Murderers in White Coats (that’s a book on the Nazi genocide of psychiatric patients, it’s a good read). If you think this hasn’t and doesn’t happen in America, you’re sorely mistaken. Research the term "eugenics".
and from this post:
"The binary as a construct of whiteness, was needed upon the moment that white settlers and colonizers encountered Indigenous people embodying genders that were largely incoherent to them. The binary became necessary at this point so that they could: first, conceptualize these unknown and incoherent genders, second, that once ‘understood’, they could work to eradicate these genders… White people at these early stages and for centuries to come and up to now, were entirely and completely focused on the trans feminine. It is our bodies that they began to leverage essentialized notions of what it is to be a man or woman, our bodies that they sought to destroy and erase from history."
What does this mean? That judging the validity of one’s gender based on how closely they psychologically align with/desire cisgenderism is a belief rooted in the genocide of trans people, particularly trans women of color. It’s not trivializing your issues to see it as an identity (ie. what it originally was), or to believe that people can be queer without wanting to be cis. It’s viewing gender outside of a cisnormative framework, it’s no longer setting cisgenderism as the default. Viewing transness as a disease allows the most privileged to settle comfortably within cis structures at the expense of trans women and queer people of color. More people perpetuating oppressive systems for the sake of their own personal agenda.
Top left: "I don’t care about people wearing bindi!"
I’m not going to speak on the bindi portion because I don’t know too much about it. From what I’ve heard, it falls under the “perpetrating social injustice because I’m not offended” category. If you Google “bindi cultural appropriation”, you’ll find a plethora of articles on it.
Top right: "I don’t understand how dreads are cultural appropriation? It’s just a hairstyle, bro".
Normally, when someone doesn’t understand something, they educate themselves. Apparently we don’t do this in the social justice sphere anymore. I also didn’t understand this myself, so I LOOKED IT UP! Dreadlocks are a symbol of Rastafarianism, a pan-African spiritual and religious movement meant to decolonize, a form of resistance to a history of White supremacy and genocide. While it can be traced back to ancient Egypt, that’s still in Africa? This is culture, it’s tradition, and to be a White person appropriating it given its history is nauseating. It’s just a hairstyle? More like you need to utilize Google, honey. We all do. When YOUR OWN PEOPLE say that something is appropriation, it didn’t occur to you that maybe you should look it up? Our history is so diluted in the Whiteness we live in that there’s so much we don’t know, so much we need to learn. But nah, you wanna be that token Black person so White folks can say, “I have a Black friend who isn’t offended by this, so it’s okay”.
Bottom left: "I don’t think men are rapists or that they only want to hurt women. Just like women, they face difficulties and prejudice too".
It’s true that men do face prejudice. There are men of color, queer men, trans men, disabled men, men who have been physically and/or sexually abused. Ironically enough, these are not the men you have in mind when you say “not all men”. Not once have I ever seen this statement used to defend anyone other than cis White dudebros, which is why this statement and MRAs are a joke. Moving forward- those livelihoods are much more than “difficulties” and “prejudice” [if you want an example of trivializing someone’s issues, this would be it]. They’re oppression, and that oppression is caused by the patriarchy, whose creators, beneficiaries, and perpetrators are predominantly White, straight, cisgender, able-bodied MEN. You’re right, they don’t only want to hurt women and they’re much more than rapists. They want to subdue anyone who poses a threat to the system that grants them unwarranted privilege. Before you say NOT ALL MEN, have another quote:
"These days, before we talk about misogyny, women are increasingly being asked to modify our language so we don’t hurt men’s feelings. Don’t say, “Men oppress women” – that’s sexism, as bad as any sexism women ever have to handle, possibly worse. Instead, say, “Some men oppress women.” Whatever you do, don’t generalise. That’s something men do. Not all men – just some men.
What we don’t say is: of course not all men hate women. But culture hates women, so men who grow up in a sexist culture have a tendency to do and say sexist things, often without meaning to. We aren’t judging you for who you are but that doesn’t mean we’re not asking you to change your behaviour. What you feel about women in your heart is of less immediate importance than how you treat them on a daily basis. You can be the gentlest, sweetest man in the world yet still benefit from sexism. That’s how oppression works.”
Bottom right: "I don’t think cis people are terrible monsters and oppressors, or that they offend me by crossdressing. You shouldn’t bully them for being cis. That’s fucked up."
You don’t have to think cis people are monsters. But consider that centuries of White supremacy, colonization, and extermination is enough for the survivors to hate them. Consider how a Black Native nonbinary person (like me), who has the history of a 500 year holocaust (African slavery), genocide (Native American), and cultural imperialism (enforcement of the binary, meaning assimilation/destruction of nonbinarism) all enacted by the SAME GROUP OF PEOPLE might feel about that group. White cisgender people have committed some of the most heinous crimes in history. I am not interested in saying “not all of them”, effectively allowing White cishets who are a part of the problem to excuse themselves from it, to not think critically of it. I have no intentions of soothing their hearts and making the oppressive institutions that they contribute to and/or benefit from sound sweeter to their ears, while my Native history died with my grandmother two generations ago and my Black history is diluted with White achievement. Not interested.
I think the offense of cis people with nonconforming presentations isn’t that they’re cis. It’s that they’re heralded as heroes and brave individuals for it, while trans people are mocked for their presentation. Y’all don’t celebrate trans women the way y’all celebrate boys in dresses, which is just a testament to what you REALLY think of trans women and to how much more accepting you are of people who exist within a cisgender framework. You defend cis people who “crossdress” (I hate that term, ugh), but call the visibility and celebration of trans women “romanticizing”. Gross.
Sure, cis people shouldn’t be bullied. Bullying in all its forms is wrong. The problem is what you consider bullying, and when you pull terms like “cisphobia” out of your ass. Suicide threats? That’s bullying. “I hate cishets”? That is not bullying, and two paragraphs back explains why. This has gotten so long that I don’t feel like explaining why cisphobia doesn’t exist. Implying that your fear and hatred of your oppressors is irrational is disgusting. Need more of an explanation? For the billionth time, Google it.
So, to come full-circle, the opinions of “straw-people” do matter. They are the ones that oppressors value most. They will listen to one straw person over millions of people just to feel validated in their oppressive behavior/mentality without accountability or guilt, to use them as an example of why they aren’t oppressive. It’s this whitewashed, colonized, assimilated ignorance that results in people like “New Black” Pharrell. We know these people exist, but we refuse to defend them. Their thinking is toxic, and it does no one justice except themselves because they align themselves with their oppressors. The end product is this: