A Follow-Up

I feel like my last post set up being cis as some kind of default. So...it's not.

A lot of trans people argue that if you don't have dysphoria, especially body dysphoria, you're not really trans. They're called truscum.

Truth be told, I sort of see where they're coming from. I hate the idea of someone identifying as trans for "political" reasons, and I know that's something some people do.

And there can be some sexist motives behind choosing to take on that identity if you're not dysphoric and you're either masculine and DFAB or feminine and DMAB. There's no reason cis women shouldn't be masculine and cis men shouldn't be feminine. There's nothing wrong with being that.

I also agree with the truscum beliefs that we need to prioritize dysphoric people before non-dysphoric people and that cis people shouldn't get a say or an opinion in the fight between truscum and tucutes, no matter what their thoughts on the subject are.

But I also know that gender identity is way more complicated than discomfort with your chest and junk. Biological/assigned sex is a rather irritating social construct that, in a lot of ways, many people would be better off without. And a lot of intersex people feel that their intersex identity is directly linked to, or influences, their gender. A lot of neurodivergent people, myself included, feel the same way about our disabilities.

I don't identify my gender as my neurotype and I don't feel that my neurotype IS my gender. But the two do seem to be linked.

I hate the idea that only cis people should be able to feel completely comfortable and safe in their bodies or happy with their genders, and that trans people become cis after transitioning. That's transphobic and cisnormative as hell. It's not like oppression just magically goes away after transitioning, either.

There's an Ollie Schminkey slam poem where the writer talks about how they knew they were queer and transgender. They talk about how being trans is so much more complicated than being born in the wrong body, like a lot of cis people assume. How, for them, it's more like the problem is that other people use their body to "chain me to woman, to lady, to girl - silly girl, you don't get to decide". How they can only love their chest like a good cry, how they weren't born into the wrong body but into a world that doesn't allow them to define what that body means.

I love that poem.

Look, some trans people really do feel they were born into the wrong body. One trans man whose blog I read once said that he felt like "somebody ran off with my dick before I was born".

He's no less valid than I am. I'm no less valid than him. Being trans is different for everyone.

And no matter what our experiences are, there's no reason it should be a default for us to identify as cis. Because cis is not the default setting.