An open-source how-to guide for cisgender folks to support their trans friends and family.
"What's all this fuss about?"
An organized and secretive campaign is demonizing the trans community, originating from the authoritarian end of the political spectrum.
Being trans is like being gay or left-handed. It is an innate trait. Nobody chooses it. The proposed notions of "social contagion" and "rapid-onset gender dysphoria" were fabricated by cisgender people who feel threatened by any change to the social order.
- First and foremost, take trans people at their word. To even admit to being trans, in the face of the stigma of being trans, is incredibly hard and scary.
- Please don't use a trans person's former name ("deadname") without permission
- "Trans" is an adjective. "Trans women" and "trans men" are each two words. The non-word "transwoman" is akin to "tallman" or "whitewoman."
- If you slip up and use a deadname or an incorrect pronoun, simply correct yourself and move on. Making a big deal about it is awkward. Trans people are painfully aware that they're asking their community to make this effort, and calling attention to it is uncomfortable - but not as uncomfortable as being misgendered or deadnamed.
- There's no such thing as "transgenderism." It's like saying "biologyism" or "physicism." Trans people exist, and it's not a choice. We may choose to medically transition or not, but a trans person who isn't on hormone therapy is still a trans person.
- Nobody "identifies" as trans. They are, or they aren't.
- They aren't "preferred" pronouns. They're pronouns, just like cis people's.
The popular media exhibits rampant bias against trans people, and "both-sides-ism" is giving equal time to those who are actively working against basic bodily autonomy - not just over trans people, but cis women, people of color, and so on. "Just asking questions" is air-cover for anti-trans bias.
Please, please, vote every election, whether local, state, or national. Know the candidate's stand on the issues - Democrats are usually better than Republicans, but not always.
By and large, authoritarians do not argue in good faith, but it can be important to argue with them as a way to sway people who are otherwise unsure how to think about trans issues.
While humans are sexually dimorphic, the two-genders argument is blown up by intersex people and others with chromosomal abnormalities. There is no single for test for "woman" or "man." People with XY chromosomes can develop ovaries and a uterus.
This is a complex topic, but has become an unscientific wedge-issue. Trans people have been in the Olympics since 2002 without winning a single medal. Medical research supports the idea that people who medically transition
It's also straight-up demeaning to imply that athletic skill, effort, and training are made meaningless by hormones. Testosterone levels have no predictive effect on cisgender athletes.
Gatekeeping disproportionately affects cisgender people with outlier genetics.
This is just pure fascist bullshit.
A lot of the active legislation is allegedly "protecting children," but the goal of the anti-trans lobby is eradication. But, for the sake of argument, let's consider the kid-focused talking points:
Gender-related surgeries for minors are extremely rare, and on those rare occasions they are made after years of therapy. Bad-faith actors are conflating surgeries with other therapies such as social transitioning and puberty blockers, and seeking to ban ALL gender-affirming care, including for adults.
Puberty blockers have been used for cis youth for decades. They postpone secondary sexual characteristics.
Forcing someone to go through the wrong puberty is cruel. The "what if you make a mistake" argument is straight-up saying that it's much better for trans people to suffer than cis people.
Children are not property.
The idea that anyone would "recruit" kids to be trans is the absolute worst kind of bad-faith argument. Trans people suffer from dysphoria and seek relief from it. The idea that we would attempt to induce dysphoria in cis kids via social or medical transition is pure anathema. It's not simply immoral and unethical, it's absolutely antithetical to our lived experience.
- The National Center for Transgender Equality
- The Trevor Project
- The Transgender Law Center
- Trans Lifeline
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