The Journey of #GoodCisPeople

Hey, all~!

We have talked about #GoodCisPeople quite a bit, but we wanted to go a little more in-depth on what the original intent was, and what we have learned from the experience.

We originally created the hashtag because we wanted two things:

1. We wanted a place for trans people to vent about things cis people do that are microagressions they might not have realized.
2. We wanted to help cis allies get better at being allies. We had noticed quite a few things that allies do they don’t realize, and we knew the community would have more.

And, honestly, on both of those points, we totally succeeded. It was amazing. Then it started trending.

We then noticed a number of things at that point, and that’s what we are going to elaborate on here:

1. It became cis people attacking trans people.
2. We noticed the amount of allies trying to help trans people drop dramatically
3. Trans people were the ones being accused of being divisive.
4. Some people were seriously confused on the original intent of the hashtag

So, we want to hit each of these points really quick.

First of all, the hashtag became overrun with the “edgy” and “politically incorrect”. This was something we expected when it started trending. Despite “standing for free speech”, they tend to have a problem with other people using their free speech. It’s a pretty common trend, and the usual “tumblrina” and “I’m an attack helicopter” followed. Literal Nazis also showed up, calling to kill trans people, which was not chill.

In the beginning, we saw cis allies signal boosting the hashtag, and in general being supportive. Once it all hit the fan though, they dropped off. All we saw was trans people trying to defend themselves from the cis people invading the topic. A lot of blame was put on us for “speaking out”. And that’s honestly really sad. This type of hate speech won’t stop if cis people don’t speak up too. We need you, the actual good cis people to help us with this. This is very important.

A common refrain we heard was that we were being divisive. Trans people were putting people into groups. Which…honestly, we still don’t understand that. It makes no sense to us. We are different groups. Sorry? Cis people get to benefit from a cisnormative society, and we have to try and navigate it the best we can. Calling you out on how cisnormative society happens to be isn’t divisive. It’s pointing out an inherent truth. Sorry if that hurts, but we have to deal with the after effects of that.

And for the last one, we probably could have been more explicit, but #HeyCisPeopleDontDoThis is really long. Sorry, not sorry.

But, we learned a lot from this experience.

We learned that there are good cis people. Those that don’t take this personally and learn.

We learned that our experiences as trans people aren’t really different. We all go through a lot of the same things.

We learned that a community can come together and bond in the best way.

And we learned that we are winning.

The fact that cis people fought so hard against that hashtag, that we got so much hate from that shows it.

They know they’re losing.

And that’s reassuring. One day, we won’t need hashtags like this. We won’t need #sixteenandcounting. We won’t need #translivesmatter.

Because we will.

Society is starting to understand.

And that’s beautiful.

And inspiring.

Thanks to everyone who used the hashtag for it’s intended purpose. Thanks to all of the trans people showing that solidarity. Thanks for showing us that things will get better.

We love you.