Hello comrades!
I think it’s important for our comrades to have a safe place where they can ask questions about trans identities and trans issues in good faith.
The first step in garnering support is education, however asking every single trans person to constantly take on the burden of educator is, frankly, ridiculous, especially when so often the questions are not being asked in good faith, and there are very real consequences to the spread of misinformation.
As such, I know that there are likely comrades here who have questions they have been too scared to ask, or feel like it would be inappropriate to pose to some stranger.
Trans or questioning comrades are also welcome to ask questions here, of course, and are welcome to answer any questions they feel comfortable answering. The thing about the trans experience is that it is different for everyone. We all have different material conditions, we all have different interactions with ourselves and the world around us, and so, of course, there is no universal truth that governs what it means to be trans.
I can’t guarantee that we’ll have an answer for everything, and I can’t guarantee that the answers we do have will be satisfactory, but I can guarantee that as long as you are asking out of a genuine desire to inform yourself and learn more, then I will do my best to engage with you as a comrade and an ally.
Example question:
I don’t want to date a trans person. Does that mean I’m a transphobe?
No. No it doesn’t. While, if you get down into, the reason you don’t want to date a trans person is likely due to internalized transphobia, in the end, who you want to date is entirely your own business.
Trans people are not trying to force anyone to date them. That is rhetoric being pushed in order to make people uncomfortable with us and turn people against our very real desire for access to medical care and the same rights as everyone else.
The more important question is how and why you bring up the topic of not wanting to date a trans person. When there is a conversation about trans people struggling for access to hormones, and someone chimes in with how they’re not really transphobic they just don’t want to date one, you have to question: what is the motive?
When a trans woman is murdered by her boyfriend, and people say, “I wouldn’t date a trans person at all,” consider: the stigma against dating trans people can often have violent and disastrous results. Fear of being outed, the ostracization that comes after being outed; these are very real instigators for anti-trans domestic violence. So what effect could mentioning that you personally would never date a trans person have in a conversation about anti-trans domestic violence?
Not wanting to date a trans person isn’t the hallmark of a transphobe, but it is a talking point that is often leveraged against us to make us seem predatory, or that we have a vested interest in sublimating your autonomy to date whomever you’d like. So when that perfectly reasonable statement, “I don’t want to date a trans person” gets repeated, in conversations that have nothing to do with it, when no one was asked, you have to wonder. What purpose is it serving? What narrative is being built? Because that’s when you start to see patterns of using innocuous, personal sentiments to create a larger anti-trans picture.