Political Memes

hey as a trans person, respectfully, fuck off. we aren't gonna win our rights by "spreading kindness", we win them by pushing for laws protecting us. until i am not virtually banned in half of the states in my country, i am not appeasing bigoted assholes just to meet halfway on my human rights

the revolution will be won in thigh highs

Trans people don't exist to fucking teach you

If you weren’t taught, you won’t know.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/transgender-woman-from-nelson-house-attacked-1.3951040

"He started making fun of [a] friend for hanging out with me, saying, 'Oh I didn't know you were gay, I didn't know you were a fag'," she said.

As an activist for the LGBT community, Spence spoke up for herself and the man she was talking with.

Spence says it escalated quickly and the man punched her in the face. So, Spence says she punched him back and suddenly other people descended on her.

"One thing led to another and I was on the ground and the three of them were kicking me in the face," she said.

"They were saying things like, 'Faggot, tranny, bitch.' Really, really mean things, like misogynistic things."

While she was being attacked, Spence said she wasn't sure she was going to make it out alive. While the beating felt like forever, her friends later told her it lasted about three minutes.

Was the attacker in this story "not taught" it's not acceptable to assault people? Should the trans person have been calmly teaching him "this is unacceptable" as she was getting punched in the face?

If people need to be taught "punching people in the face is wrong" then they need to be locked up until they learn that, it's not the roll of the general public.

I have feelings about this, hopefully my venting can explain why this expectation pisses people off. Explaining this shit can be exhausting and just existing as someone who's trans leads to deeply probing questions both about trans people at large and also you specifically. Depending on context, they can be harmless or even supportive in intent. But too often they lead to more icky questioning, disparaging remarks, threats, abandonment, and... so on. Even in harmless cases it's fucking traumatic. I do have some cis friends who ask me completely appropriate questions, but I trust them because they're respectful of my boundaries. Most aren't.

yes, taking the time to level with people, educate, etc is a good ideal, but speaking from experience it's not something everyone can be expected to do right off the bat. The consequences of attempting to do so and receiving abuse in return can be too close to deep psychological wounds that require time to heal.

do consider there's less of us in general too. and explaining parts of the trans experience take walls of text like this one lol. In an ocean of bullshit, we can only do so much to bail ourselves out. We need help, or at the least, we need some baseline levels of empathy and respect from the people we're trying to educate. Or at the absolute least try not to blame us when we're grumpy or skittish about it.