• AutomatedPossum [she/her]
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    263 months ago

    I’m sorry to react this way to a shitpost, but there’s a lot to unpack here and somebody needs to do it, so:

    Actually that entire meme format is kinda harmful and feeds into transmed stereotypes about nonbinary identities as an inherently invalid intermediate coping step people go through and discard on their way to becoming “real” trans women. This shit also isn’t supported by evidence at all. I’ve recently looked at name change data from my country and by far the most common reason to change gender markers a second time is going from a binary M or F one to either “other” or “none”. Almost all the cases where people change their mind about this kind of stuff fall into that category. That mirrors my own transition as well: Originally i needed to process my gender as binary womanhood and needed to socially and physically transition to a point where i felt halfway comfortable in my own skin before i had the security to openly engage with more radical ideas about gender and define for myself what womanhood and femininity mean to me, and that the way i understand it, the way i can live it authentically, lies outside of restrictive binary boxes. But in a society as cissexist, transphobic and stuck in binary oversimplifications as ours, that was just too much to process for freshly cracked me. I just didn’t have the experience with living outside of gender norms and with how other people do gender to fully understand what i wanted for me. I needed to see all of that with my own eyes, settle in, and then move beyond the socially more accepted option of binary trans womanhood. I find that this holds true for a lot of other nonbinary trans people as well, but i know very few cases where the opposite holds true and people go from describing themselves as non binary to describing themselves as binary. It happens, sure, but it’s much rarer than the opposite development, and in our social climate, that shouldn’t surprise anybody.

    So these memes completely reverse how such questioning processes typically play out. They make up a lie that nonbinary identities are easier to accept, a lie that hinges on another transmed concept: That validity is tied to passing, that trans people should strive for looks that allow others to correctly guess their pronouns and that therefore an androgynous early-transition stage is better described with they / them or they / she pronouns, when i reality pronoun choices need to be viewed completely seperate from how people present physically and pronouns shouldn’t be assumed based on looks.

    So am i saying this is truscum shit? Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeell … yes, yes i am saying that. Sorry, no offense, but i have no other way to put it. These kinds of memes are really shit to nonbinary transfems, even those of us that use she / her pronouns like me, they feed into the insecurities of people that do not clearly pass as one binary gender, they are just all around harmful and prescriptive. I get that people are only joking, i do not think most posters who share these kinds of memes are truscums themselves, but the format relies on not questioning, but replicating transmedicalist and binary-reinforcing notions of gender, and i’m gonna call that out in all trans spaces i’m in.

    • queermunist she/her
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      3 months ago

      So subvert this or nah?

      He/Him -> She/Her -> She/They -> They/Them -> Xe/Xem

      And the pipeline is to enby and truscum seethe

      • Cromalin [she/her]M
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        103 months ago

        i think in general the idea of the pipeline is bad. it carries the implication that the journey presented in the meme is the universal journey for trans people, and that’s not good regardless of whether it’s about coming out as “binary” trans or not.

        • queermunist she/her
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          33 months ago

          I think you’re right, it invalidates identity no matter who it’s referencing. Scrap that meme 😅

    • Cromalin [she/her]M
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      63 months ago

      anecdotally i know several people who this meme format describes well. there are people who do in fact see nonbinary identity as a way to distance themself from their agab and then realize they would be more comfortable as a binary* trans person. people just looking for any way to escape the fate decided for them by their genitals before realizing what they actually want

      i want to be clear that this doesn’t change the fact that this meme is transmedicalist and bad. i think it’s important to note this because the problem with it isn’t that it doesn’t reflect reality for anyone, the problem is that it universalizes this and therefore plays into all the problematic stuff you get into and is indeed very truscum if you actually think about it

      *in as much as any trans person can be binary

      • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]
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        3 months ago

        Hey I’m going to be pedantic and say I don’t feel like my fate is at all decided by my genitals. Actually I think the desire the cisnormative society has developed to basically categorize my genitals as a specific gender is extremely annoying and I plan on never getting bottom surgery entirely out of spite for that. Thought you might just mean this in a personal sense in which case, sorry for breaking in for gross discussion.