The Two Sides of the Trans Community Should Respect Each Other | TE Report Trans S3 E10

Hi everyone, welcome again to the special LGBT season of the TaraElla Report. This is where we talk about the diversity of views in the community, to show that diverse views do exist, and to promote mutual understanding. Subscribe if you are interested. This show is brought to you by my new book, Postmodernism, Skeptics & Transmedicalists, which is all about the battle between postmodern and Marcusean ideology vs skeptics opposing these ideas, and how trans people got entangled in this battle and got misunderstood by the world. Link is in the description.

Today, I am going to again revisit my response to the Transtrenders video by ContraPoints from last year. As I said last time, the video actually talked about two separate topics, transmedicalists vs anti-transmeds, and assimilationists vs those openly queer, for lack of a better term. This time, I'm going to focus on the assimilationist vs openly queer thing. This is actually separate from the transmed thing, because you can indeed be transmed and also gender non-conforming and very openly queer. As we discussed last time, there's no incompatibility there.

I am, of course, closer to the assimilationist end of the spectrum. And I guess it makes sense for me. Everyone around me is cis and straight. In fact, I've never had a close LGBT friendship in my whole life. All my friends are cis and straight, in other words. Therefore, I practically exist in the cis-straight culture in real life. It's simply my living situation. There should be nothing taboo about stating this, it's the way a lot of LGBT people live out there in the real world. And given that we all like to fit in with our family, our friends and our social groups, I'm naturally not going to make being trans a big part of my identity. Again, this is simply real life, not some form of 'respectability politics'. The other thing is, I can only take being reminded of being trans in small doses. If I were always reminded that I'm trans, it would be very dysphoric for me. Again, it's not internalized transphobia or anything stupid like that, it's simply the way my dysphoria works. I can go for days without consciously remembering that I'm trans, and I like it that way.

Now, I understand that not all LGBT people, not all trans people, like to live life the way I do. Some apparently want to celebrate their queerness every day. If that's their thing, then more power to them. As a Moral Libertarian, I'm very pluralist when it comes to cultural and aesthetic matters. Each to their own. Surely, I'm not going to wear trans pride badges or any rainbow stuff when I go out. But if other people do, I certainly don't mind. I even think it looks great on other people. Just not me.

The problem, I think, is that there hasn't been enough mutual understanding, respect and acceptance, and this goes both ways. For example, I understand that some of my fellow assimilationists have bad things to say about the very openly queer, and I don't agree with that. On the other hand, some of the people on the other side think that we have internalized transphobia, that we pursue respectability politics, or that we don't have a spine and will always bow down to mainstream society. This biased view of who we are, and the resulting disrespect towards our needs, is equally uncalled for. For example, parts of the LGBT community that mainly lived in 'queer ghettos', for lack of a better word, kept calling gay marriage a respectability politics issue. This was very unkind to those of us who live in communities where rights and dignity are only conferred with marriage, whether we like it or not. Similarly, a trans person living in mainstream society wants mainstream acceptance because we want a job, we want friends, and we don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. Honestly, I don't think this is too much to ask for. As assimiliationists, we do have needs and priorities to help us integrate into mainstream culture, because that's where we live our life. If you respected us more, you may become more empathetic to this need. Trust me, if you were living my life, and you suffered from the disadvantages of not living in a very pro-LGBT community, you too would prioritize some of the things I prioritize too.

The fact is, we may live under the same umbrella, but we have very different needs. I think it's time to respect and support each other, though our lives may be different. Let's end the pointless cultural and asethetic wars, so we may achieve some practical progress together.