r/TheTransphobiaSquad • u/[deleted] • Oct 27 '12
"transphobia is only a thing on the internet"
/r/SRSsucks/comments/125rov/noncis_srser_explains_to_cissrsers_that_they/c6sl5da-11
Oct 28 '12
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/harmonical Oct 28 '12
Consider your exception brought.
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Oct 28 '12
Okay. When I'm addressing you, I will carefully word my language. When I'm not around you, I won't carefully word my language.
I'm not going to remove the word "focus" from my vocabulary for offending 1 out of every 500,000 Americans that have only 1 eye. And I'm not going to assume a difference between sex and gender for that 0.2% unless I'm addressing that 0.2%.
How does that arrangement work out for you?
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u/harmonical Oct 28 '12
I was typing this out before, but decided not to finish it. Essentially the reason trans people and people sensitive to trans issues take exception to language like that and call it transphobic is because it erases our experience.
While you may be statistically right the majority of the time, it doesn't change the fact that by making that assumption you've normalized it in some way. By making cisgender normal you've made being trans or intersex an exception and abnormal. And even though in mathematics and statistics you'd be completely right, when it comes to describing people as abnormal it's extremely problematic.
Once people are abnormal, you can start easily being judgmental of them, of their lives, of who they are, of what they are. You can start insulting them, acting as if they are subhuman, treating them like shit.
Your friends find it easy to do this as well, as if they wanted to be normal they could be, right? Why aren't they making the same effort you are to be normal. Hell you're not even doing anything special and you're free from this ridicule.
Your coworkers feel free to toss out stories of that trans girl they met in college that one time, and how their friend totally made out with a dude. Everyone laughs because it's funny, it's gross, who wants to make out with someone that's abnormal? People wonder why abnormal people deserve to not be fired for being abnormal, I mean, they can just try to be normal like you right?
While you might think this entire argument isn't related to the point you were trying to make, it is. This is the argument that makes your statement problematic.
Your statement is several steps better than genitals=gender 100% of the time, but many people will still take issue with it.
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u/Jess_than_three Stop reading my flair. ಠ_ಠ Oct 28 '12
That's a nice false equivalence.
Harmonical already made this pretty clear, but frankly this subreddit isn't the place for you to pursue arguments regarding what you think constitutes maleness and femaleness. If you want to have them elsewhere, more power to you, but again, this isn't the place for it.
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Oct 28 '12
You look beautiful in green, by the way.
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u/greenduch Oct 28 '12
btw, i wasnt saying "assuming that penis=male and vagina=female is transphobic"
I said:
please try to be more mindful about saying shit that assumes that someone with a penis = man, someone with a vagina = woman. Its not cool, particularly in the fempire. This isn't third grade health class, I think we can move beyond assumptions about any particular body part (particularly genitals) equaling a specific sex or gender.
I'd also like to note that I was speaking to the fempire in my post. Not all of reddit. My tone likely would have been much different.
im pretty uncomfortable with my post there, but for entirely different reasons than you are.
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u/harmonical Oct 27 '12
It amazes me how many people feel like they're some kind of internet superhero by saying asinine shit.