Truly baffled by “transitioning does not make you trans” if like, we also all agree that you don’t need dysphoria to be trans and this person also said that closeted trans people are trans. What makes you trans then. If you don’t have to feel bad about your gender assignment and don’t have to do anything about it and don’t even have to tell anybody that you identify as trans then what makes you trans. Someone who doesn’t feel bad about their assigned gender doesn’t feel dysphoria does not change their gender presentation socially or medically in any context of their life part time or full time and does not outwardly verbally identify as trans to anybody but themselves.. then what is left???? Surely you need to do or feel or think something to be trans. Do you have to at least privately consider yourself to be trans to be trans or is that invalidating trans people who haven’t realized that they’re trans yet
If the question is “who is valid” or “who belongs in the support group” then sure whatever I don’t care about gate keeping someone who actually wants to enter the trans space or identify as trans. Like that really is quite immaterial to me and I don’t care about the crucial importance of accurate labeling like label yourself whatever it doesn’t matter.
But for there to be any coherent political analysis then we must at some point for the purposes of the analysis say that you must do or be something to be trans right? Because I can’t actually describe the political situation of a group whose definition has been entirely nullified. If we do not say that there is something that defines belonging to the trans community then transgender ceases to be a political class that can be discussed. It becomes impossible to actually make the argument that trans people are structurally oppressed/marginalized or to identify solutions and changes that would improve our material conditions as a class.
I don’t think you need to feel dysphoria to be trans because if you are altering your gender presentation anyway then I don’t care about your motivation for doing so. You transitioned. I don’t think you need to be diagnosed as trans to deserve to live your life how you want to live. It’s totally great to do it just because you want to and not because you can’t possibly imagine doing otherwise.
If they are joining the trans community and joining trans spaces then they are trans enough for me. I would condition that an active choice to affiliate with our community. That is an action. They are choosing to side with us and be one of us and to fight alongside us. I will not require any specific steps in their transition to be taken beyond that as long as they are not making themselves our enemy and working towards our active oppression.
I am not setting a high bar here. I’m not saying you have to take hormones. But you absolutely have to do something to in any way affiliate yourself with the community. Even if you’re closeted and donating money to TLC and privately supporting trans rights. You have to be on our side somehow. I’m not going to accept the transness of someone who is literally identifying as cisgender and voting for transphobes. Like what kind of bizarre philosophical zombie have we created here.
When I led a trans support group in 2014 in my trans lingo glossary I defined transgender as “Anybody who disagrees with their gender assignment and takes steps away from their assignment towards something else. This may or may not involve medical procedures to change their body.” And I defined “transition” as “any step taken away from your assigned gender, including something as simple as a name change or pronouns change.”
And this was considered a radically broad and open definition at the time. That it captured a fuck ton of people who at the time people were uncertain if they counted as transgender and I had insistently said that yes I believe this is what makes someone trans. Over time I’ve loosened it further. Maybe you can just disagree with your assignment and be a part of the community. Or take steps to change your gender presentation even if you wouldn’t say you disagree with your assignment per se.
But truly I cannot understand a definition of trans that includes someone who
- Identifies as their assigned sex at birth
- Does not transition in any manner, including using the same name, same pronouns, and wearing the same clothes.
- Doss not want to transition
- Does not feel negatively about their birth assignment/does not feel dysphoria
- Does not tell anybody that they are trans (fully closeted)
- Does not hang out with trans people and is not in trans community spaces
- Perpetuates transphobia at a systemic level from a position of power
- Does not even think of themselves as trans (has not realized any sort of trans identity, desire to transition, etc)
If someone who is all those things can somehow still be considered transgender then like. Fine. You can say that. But don’t complain when my response is to identify as transsexual as a word which actually does have a concrete specific meaning which describes my specific experiences as a transsexual. Which can specifically describe how gender affirming care bans specifically are targeting me as a transsexual. Which can specifically describe how people react to me and my body as a transsexual body and the specific dangers it puts me in.
I’m okay with ceding transgender as an extremely broad umbrella term encapsulating so many different experiences that many of them do not overlap in a single way. If that is truly what you want. But if we are doing that, then I will insist on using transsexual to refer to my specific experience. Transgender does not need to center the transsexual experience but the transsexual experience is a specific experience that needs to be discussed because as a political class we are systematically marginalized from public life in specific ways.
And this is also true for many transgender people who do not medically transition but who do socially transition in some manner. There is no word for them which distinguishes them from someone living as a cisgender person in all but online discourse.
So I think it’s necessary and fair to draw a line around the political category called transgender.
“A trans person is someone who transitions in some manner, even if it is small as changing pronouns, and who chooses to affiliate themselves with the transgender community and our liberation struggle” is a pretty good and fair line imho. I’m not requiring dysphoria I’m not requiring hormones I’m not requiring anything but that you do fucking something to move away from cisgender identity and most importantly that you decide to be in solidarity with other trans people when we are under attack, even if you yourself are unaffected by these policies targeting our community.
A trans person who doesn’t care about gender affirming care bans just isn’t meaningfully trans to me whether or not they are medically going to transition at any point in their life. What I ask of them is not that they be a transsexual but that they at least fucking care about us.
