Transphobia: An Action Pack (Pt. 2)

A knowledge-base on transgender issues, medical best-practice, public perception and backlash.

“Can you imagine a world without lawyers?” *shudder*

Hey, you! Yes, you. Are you normal? You didn’t change gender, or anything? Then you might have heard a lot of barking about those mean-old transes coming for your women and children.

Plenty of newspapers and TV shows go on about it — in fact, you’ve probably seen people getting super angry about it, mostly online.

Maybe you’re feeling just a bit intimidated by it all? You don’t want to upset anyone. This topic is loud, it’s confusing and you probably feel like if you ask for more information you’ll get yelled at.

Well, I’m here to help, best beloved.

This is for you. It’s an action pack I’ve put together. I’m not going to judge you or your current opinions. What I’m going to do is to lay it all out for you: the different terms, what people are arguing about and why one side actually has a heck of a lot more research and logic going on than the other.

All I ask is that you give me the benefit of the doubt for a little bit while I lay the case before you. We’re going to look at some stuff in serious depth, because you might want a lot of detail! You’re welcome to skip bits, skim them or take them as read depending on what you need.

I’d like to show you how people talk about me and those like me, what it means and where we are now.

Entries

Glossary entries

1. Gender Identity
2. GSM, transgender, trans man, trans woman, cisgender, anti-trans campaigner, biological essentialism, misgendering, deadnaming, dogwhistle (this part!)
3. Stochastic violence, conversion therapy, trans-away-the-gay, rapid onset gender dysphoria
4. Autogynephilia

The Arguments

1. Arguments 1 (Part 5 overall)
   “What about the minority who are dangerous?”
   “Calm down and stop being hysterical!”
   “I’m just asking questions…”
   “I’m not transphobic I’m just against extremists!”
   “We have concerns but the transes silenced us!”
   Some variation on “men”…
2. Arguments 2 (Part 6 overall)
   Linking together gay/drag/sex/kink/abuse/pædophilia
   Falling back on accusations of perversion
   Using Trans Rights Activists / Lobbyists as a derogatory term
   Appealing to “the gut” or common sense
   Likening trans people to a contagion
3. Arguments 3 (Part 7 overall)
   An appeal to ‘bringing reality’ into the conversation
   - Declaring that sex is ‘baked into every cell in your body’
   - Declaring that ‘you cannot change sex’
   - Declaring that ‘men will always out-compete women’ in sports
   Appealing to protecting women and girls
4. Arguments 4 (Part 8 overall)
   An appeal to “ineffable womanhood”
   An appeal to being generally “silenced” or “cancelled”
   Any line that starts with “Well why can’t I identify as…”
   Appealing to a shared experience that trans women cannot have
5. More soon!

To make it easier, we’ll need to share some terms. Like a little glossary. It’ll make everything a lot easier. You can review or skip these terms as you like.

In Part 1, we looked at “Gender Identity” and what’s so complicated about it. For Part 2, we have some much shorter glossary items so grab a beverage and dive in!

If there were a church of transness, this would be what all the stained-glass windows would look like. Also Michaela J. Rodriguez would be the saint.

Gender and Sexual Minorities

I heard this phrase recently as a stand-in for all the different variations on LGBTQ+ that are out there. I like it as a term.

See, the problems with LGBTQIA+etc. are that, as an abbreviation, it keeps getting longer… and it plays favourites: lesbians and gays are at the front, asexual people are at the back. Then we’ve got a kinda “see more…” in the “+” that covers miscellaneous. Yanno, “other stuff”. That’s not a great way to talk about human beings.

Buuuut, Gender and Sexual Minorities covers all of us. No “other”, no favourites. No alphabet soup. No loads of letters to remember. No “OMG what does it all mean!”

Additionally, it puts us all in together as people who break gender norms. A vocal minority of LGB people think that the “T” (for trans) should be separate. Usually this is for optics of respectability — “it’s the transes who are getting pushback for going too far, so why not kick them out?” Problem is, the crowd who think we’re “going too far” can apply that reasoning without alteration to anyone in the LGBTQ community because we’ve all committed the same basic sin of violating perceived gender norms. GSM formalises that and smooshes us together inexorably.

I like the term GSM, so that’s what you and I shall use here, best beloved: Gender and Sexual Minorities. Of course, you’re welcome to stick with LGBT, LGBTQ or whatever abbreviation you find best.

It’s like Wile E. Coyote when he runs over a cliff: as long as you don’t look down, you’ll be fine.

Transgender

This means someone whose gender identity is at variance with their physical sex. When we were born someone glanced between our legs and said “boy” or “girl”, but since then we’ve realised we’re not that in our minds; our hearts; our spirits… our experiences of ourselves.

I caption thee, simply, “bloke”.

Trans Man

The doctor said “girl” when this kid was born, but turns out they’re a boy. The junk is just wrong. Shit happens.

Please note it isn’t transman or trans-man — trans is an adjective and man is a noun. Remember it like this: you wouldn’t write “Blackman” or “Black-man” because that’s weird. Same deal here.

This is exactly, perfectly me. Except I’m probably twice her weight and wouldn’t want to be topless on that mountain — it looks cold. Also to hell doing that climb with high heels. Apart from that, though, absolutely spot on, no notes.

Trans Woman

The doctor said “boy” when this kid was born, but turns out they’re a girl. The junk is just wrong. Shit happens.

Please note it isn’t transwoman or trans-woman — trans is an adjective and woman is a noun. Remember it like this: you wouldn’t write “Blackwoman” or “Black-woman” because that’s weird. Same deal here.

He fell out of the cisgender tree and only hit male pronouns on the way down. Note: he was eaten by a squirrel shortly after this picture was taken. Bummer.

Cisgender

This means the opposite of transgender. Someone is cisgender if, when they were born, the doctor said “boy” and it turns out they were right… or the doctor said “girl” and it turns out they were right. For most people, the junk matches the inner person.

We have this word because the alternative would be to say normal, and that’s a bit mean, isn’t it? Trans people aren’t abnormal, that implies we’re freakish or unnatural. What we are is just less common, so it’s nice to use a different phrase. It costs nothing to be nice, and it’s a small way of being polite.

Some clever dicks will try to tell you cisgender isn’t a “real word” because it’s made up, first appearing in 1994. Firstly: yes, it’s a real word. Secondly: yes, it is made up… just like every other word. All words are made up.

Additionally, some folk will try to tell you that “cis” or “cisgender” is a slur. They offer no reason for this and no preferred alternative beyond “can’t we just call ourselves normal?”. The reason is usually that some trans person, sometime, probably said it in a mean way on Twitter; but if we let “someone said it in a mean way” define a slur, then most every word in the dictionary would qualify.

Slurs connote an allegation or insinuation and, when applied to a group, include overtones of aggression and oppression. The N-word, used by a White person against a Black person, is a slur because it insinuates inferiority, subservience and aggression. Cisgender is not — it is a description, like “tall” or “thin”.

OK, I genuinely told DALL-E to draw “a woman in her late 50s, wealthy, with reddish hair and the smuggest most hateable look imaginable on her face” and it draw this. I guess any resemblance is kinda on her at this point — ‘if the hat fits’ and all that…

Anti-Trans Campaigner

Also known as gender critical, gender realist, sex realist or trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF). These are people who do not believe it is possible to have a gender different from your sex — you are what your body and genetics say you are.

They like to change their preferred terms periodically, and that’s fine. We shall respect that, not least of all because their behaviour is often poor and it should be associated with whatever moniker they prefer.

We are more than the sum of our parts, otherwise nobody would ever “change their mind” or decide to do something different to how they normally would.

Biological Essentialism

This is the belief underlying anti-trans campaigner understanding: humans are no more than the sum of their parts and our biology exactly determines our behaviour.

Alternatively stated: humans can only do what our biology says we should do, eg: “All men are violent because their chromosomes and testosterone make them so” is biological essentialism.

Obviously genetic make-up may influence our lives, but that’s a different argument to “You are 𝑥 because your chromosomes said so”.

According to biological essentialism, you cannot change gender or even be transgender. It happily ignores every other aspect of gender and biological variance, for example ignoring the 2% of the population who are biologically intersex. See Part 1 on Gender Identity for more information about this.

“Candyman, candyman, candyman…”

Misgendering

Referring to someone using the wrong words for their gender — eg “he” instead of “she”. It can be done by accident, mistakes do happen and most trans people understand that fine, or it can be done intentionally to be mean.

Some anti trans campaigners intentionally misgender under the belief they are bringing ‘reality’ (biological essentialism) into a conversation. It also has the bonus effect of being distressing and disrespectful. Clever. Sigh.

*bing-bong* “Mr. N. Mesaenmome? Mr. N. Mesaenmome? Last boarding call for Mr. N. Mesaenmome…”

Deadnaming

Trans people often change our names to something better fitting our gender. Deadnaming is the act of using our old name. As with misgendering, this can be done by accident (which is fine, mistakes happen, just correct yourself and move on) or can be done intentionally to cause distress… I’m looking at you, Wizard C*nt.

“I’m a strong support of *wink* family values *wink wink*” — said immediately before disenfranchising queer people in some way. Sigh.

Dogwhistle

You know how dogs have super-good hearing? Dog owners often train their animals using a dogwhistle: it’s a whistle, but the noise it makes is only audible to pooches. Nobody else can hear it, so it’s a great way to get your dog’s attention without annoying other people who might be near.

Dogwhistle has a similar meaning in political discourse: it’s something that clever political actors can use to get the attention of certain people, whilst also being able to throw their hands up and go “What? Who? Me?!” when challenged.

It’s like a double entendre, an innuendo or an implication. The person can claim they didn’t mean it like that whilst winking to their supporters that they did, secretly. For example: “Cultural Marxism” sounds like a derogatory term for Socialism, but in actuality comes to us directly from the Nazis and is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory.

This is part of a multi-part series. New additions will appear when they are ready. All images used were created using DALL-E 3 via OpenAI. Use them if you like, AI sucks and should go in the bin.