Perception vs. Identity

I know I haven't posted in forever, things have been pretty hectic in my life in the last year but it will be calming down pretty soon. 

So I think there's a lot of debate in social justice spaces surrounding people who are perceived as more privileged or more marginalized than they really are. This manifests in a lot of ways, including race, gender, sexuality, religion, etc, but today I'm going to focus on gender. Let me clarify what I mean.

For myself, I'm nonbinary. I honestly just kind of use gender nonconforming femme sapphic as my gender label but it changes. Basically I'm genderfluid and if you really want to put a label on every single part of that, I would say I'm fluid between female, demigirl, agender, gender apathetic, androgyne, neutrois, unaligned transmasc, demiboy, maverique, just sapphic, and sometimes more than one of the above. My gender is sort of half female, half transmasculine nonbinary, and the way I express it is about what you would expect from that combination. Womanhood often doesn't feel like a useful concept to me because even though I'm perceived as a woman and live as a woman and experience misogyny as a woman, I feel alienated from cishet women especially if they aren't disabled and are naturally thin, because the fact that I am not cishet and am disabled and have not always been thin has deeply informed my sense of gender just as deeply as the fact that I was assigned female at birth and honestly, cishet women really do seem to see gnc wlw as a different gender and they treat us as outsiders to womanhood. Now, I personally don't think that using a bunch of labels for every single variation of nonbinary is necessarily useful, so I don't describe myself the way I just did in every day life. But I do want you to get the picture of what we're working with. 

It's not really possible in a binary society to be perceived as nonbinary, and I don't think it's constructive to try and turn the binary into a trinary. So I'm not perceived as nonbinary, I'm perceived as a woman or as gender ambiguous (despite using he/him pronouns and masculine-coded terms for myself). A slightly off cis woman. Gender ambiguous. None gender, left woman. No gender only sapphic. I don't bind my chest, as even binders that are branded as more comfortable and accessible are not comfortable to me. I currently have shoulder length hair that I'm planning to put in a long undercut soon, but this is the longest I've had it since coming out 7 years ago - and last April, it was buzzed. I reluctantly tolerate she/her pronouns and female-coded terms a lot of the time for safety reasons, and it's something I've mostly numbed myself to. I don't hate living as a woman. I don't hate presenting myself as a woman. I would say that a lot of the time I am cis-assumed and relatively apathetic about it compared to some trans people, and that means I have conditional cis privilege.

Despite this, and despite the fact that my clothing style doesn't set me out much from your average cis woman - I mostly wear t-shirts and hoodies with either leggings or jeggings - the fact that I have had buzzed hair is something I've faced a lot of discrimination for. Until recently I worked at a restaurant with an extremely transphobic management team, enough so that a qualified applicant was rejected specifically for disclosing that they were trans. 

Coming out or going on hormones or being perceived as openly trans at all in that situation was not an option. But I still experienced a lot of discrimination for being perceived (and for some of that time, identifying, though not openly) as a butch lesbian, even though a lot of the managers were bi. I didn't get nearly the hours I asked for, despite having worked there for five years, being one of the only employees to know any ASL (two regular customers were Deaf), and training new hires. I would constantly hear supervisors having conversations about me in which they speculated about my sexuality, and coming from a group of mostly bi people this shouldn't have been threatening but I think you can see why it was. One of these conversations even included two people discussing what they would "do" about my sexuality, meaning that there was a real chance I could have been fired just for being gender nonconforming. I live in an at-will employment state in which even firing someone for being gay was, until recently, completely legal. And it still happens just as much now, but is hidden behind bullshit excuses like "not fitting in with the company culture" or "not being a good fit for this position" because at-will employment policies still leave so much room for discrimination.

It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that one manager, in summer 2020, the only one who had never made an issue of my gender expression or assumed sexuality, left her uniform in a box outside the kitchen door with no comment or warning and I haven't seen her since. It also shouldn't be surprising that a few months later, I found out from her roommate that she even was a she...because she'd started living openly as a trans woman. (I've since checked up on her to see how she's doing - she's great, in a healthy stable relationship with her girlfriend and has a job that is hopefully more accepting of her. She also seems like a really cool person when she's not stifling herself for a shitty job and I hope we can meet again and be friends one day.)

Knowing her has made me think a lot about the differences in our experience of gendered oppression. Because I'm perceived as mostly cis and can often pass as cis, whereas she very obviously doesn't. Because I'm assigned female at birth and have experienced a lot of harassment and even violence for being perceived as a woman, whereas she never experienced that same level of violence when she was read as male. Because there were a lot of times when I or the other female-read employees were sexually harassed by men while working, and I 100% believe that her stepping in and banning male customers for hitting on us or saying something about our bodies, following a female employee out to her car, trying to track me down and get my personal information by insisting he was my boyfriend, and making sexual comments in a review about my underage coworker, probably saved a few of us from way worse. I didn't witness this happening, but she also made sure that a white cis male employee who had been making racist comments about two South Asian coworkers would be fired.

I talk about her because even though she never openly identified as a feminist and never had political pins on all her stuff and never had a social science background like I did, she clearly was very conscious of the privilege she had living as a cis white man and she did her best to do her part. And the fact that she was conscious of that privilege, even though she was a closeted trans woman, and used that privilege to protect us is something I have respect for. I also think it's good she's not defensive about it and instead acknowledges it rather than try to insist, as I've seen many trans women do, that she's never had male privilege and has always experienced the same misogyny as an AFAB person or that trans men, cis women, and AFAB nonbinary people have always had and always will have privilege over her.

 Because yeah, she experiences misogyny NOW and I'm sure being a trans woman who doesn't fully pass as cis is a really vulnerable and dangerous experience, but two years ago? When everyone who looked at her saw a cis white man who wasn't visibly gender nonconforming in any way?

I'm not gonna lie, if any transfeminine person tried to tell me that I had gendered privilege over them when they were living their life as a man, as if I hadn't been sexualized and period-shamed by grown men before I even hit middle school specifically because I was perceived as female, as if it's not MY body at risk from anti-choice laws and other policies criminalizing female reproductive rights and not theirs, as if growing up perceived as a girl isn't horribly fucking traumatic for so many people, I would laugh in their face. Like I'm not kidding, I think the idea that everyone who's not transfeminine is privileged for that is fucking stupid and ridiculous.

A lot of it comes from trans women being defensive about the fact that a lot of them have experienced male privilege - probably in response of TERFs and other transmisogynists, something I don't blame them for - and about the fact that there are some things about misogyny that they need to take a back seat on and instead uplift the voices of people who ARE affected, even if some of those people are men or cis women. Like anti-abortion policies or lack of access to menstrual products or period stigma or lack of research on medical conditions like endometriosis or denial of access to procedures like hysterectomies - or forced hysterectomies in the case of many disabled people, poor people, and people of color. I'm sorry but if you don't have a functioning uterus your opinion on these things will NEVER be of value because it's never going to be your body that's directly affected. It doesn't matter how you identify, it matters that there are so fucking many life-threatening forms of misogyny intended to target people based solely on the fact that their bodies are perceived as female. The patriarchy doesn't necessarily care how you identify, it cares how you're perceived. I said what I said.

This post, if you haven't already figured it out, is going to be a rambly one, partially because I haven't had enough coffee today for it not to be and partially because I just saw something that pissed me off and I'm both looking for an excuse to rant about it and also just really think it deserves to be talked about. It was this comment on a TikTok channel that I follow, about a very chronically online nonbinary aroace 14-year-old telling an adult lesbian that they were "more queer" because they were aroace and nonbinary rather than gay (just to clarify I have no idea who this child is, I follow the adult lesbian - who is also nonbinary - and the video was about lesbophobia in the trans and nonbinary community). 

Now that would be annoying just by itself and I want to go back in time and smack 17-year-old me upside the head for thinking pretty much exactly like that kid, but the comment on the OP's that just really pissed me off said "you just know they're AFAB." On the video of an AFAB nonbinary person who mentioned nothing about the kid's assigned sex in the first place. Of course.

Like excuse me, what the fuck? As if AFAB trans people are spicy little cis girls too stupid to know what real oppression is, as if none of us have ever experienced real transphobia, as if being AFAB doesn't lead to gendered trauma for fucking everyone regardless of how they're perceived. As if it's being AFAB nonbinary, something people are ACTUALLY oppressed for, that led to this kind of behavior rather than the fact that the kid doesn't experience homophobia because they're aroace. As if it isn't considered more acceptable in many situations to reveal an AFAB trans person's assigned sex under the guise of wokeness rather than an AMAB trans person's, because with us it's just a fact that we're AFAB so it's fine and not really misgendering or outing someone or putting them in danger but if you do it to an AMAB trans person you're a TERF and you're invalidating them.

It is so fucking telling that AMAB trans and nonbinary people are never fucking told "oh of course they're AMAB" like we are by supposed progressives when they say something ignorant - even though some of them are perceived as cis men, some are comfortable living as cis men, some live partially as men, and some aren't perceived as visibly gender nonconforming any more than I am most of the time - shit, some of them are perceived as LESS gender nonconforming than I am, considering that I use pronouns and gendered terms that don't align with my assigned sex, that I'm growing out my body hair, and that I still am sometimes read as androgynous. But okay, you just KNOW that a teenager - a middle school-aged child - who's ignorant about oppression is AFAB. Speculating about a child's genitals in order to be transphobic and misogynistic, when whether or not they were actually AFAB is completely irrelevant, is definitely an appropriate thing for an adult to be doing.

Look, I'm not denying that a lot of AFAB nonbinary and transmasc people are less visibly trans and occasionally are more able to get away with doing things that transfeminine people couldn't (though definitely not nearly to the extent that people think we are). I'm also not denying that part - a TINY part - of why I'm so able to pass as cis and still be able to present more authentically than my transfeminine former manager was is that I'm AFAB and that I don't experience the same hypervisibility as transfeminine people if I, say, wear a button down shirt and a short hair cut (though I 100% do experience hypervisibility for being perceived as a butch lesbian). I know I'm less likely to be murdered than a trans woman. That I'm safer while dating than many trans women. That if I were to go to prison, I would be safer than an incarcerated trans woman.

And I 100% will use that privilege for good if given the chance, like if you're a trans woman and you ever need me to go to the bathroom with you and just happen to ask if you have a tampon when I see cis women staring? I got you, I don't care if you're my best friend or a total stranger or if I even like you as a person (though it obviously depends on WHY I don't like you). You're a trans woman being discriminated against and need me, the closeted transmasc with the social work degree and connections to help you fight back, you come find me. You're on a date or have a sex work appointment with someone new and need an emergency contact who will back you up and help keep you safe in case that person freaks out over learning you're a trans woman? I'm here. You need me to help you go to the cops to report after you've been sexually or physically assaulted? To defend you when people say stupid shit about how you not immediately disclosing that you're trans is somehow violent? To shut down transmisogynists who are acting like you're a threat to cis women in the locker room or on the athletic field? To testify for you and help you get placed into a women's facility if you get in legal trouble for drugs or sex work or defending yourself against a violent crime or being undocumented? To yell at transmisogynist cis wlw and cis feminists who think you're a threat to sapphic and women's spaces but are fine with me as long as I'm quiet about my own gender fluidity and don't expect respect for my own transition? I can do all of that. My ability to pass as cis, the fact that I have a foot in both worlds even if I'm never fully accepted in either, has its uses.

What I won't do, though, is tolerate people who act like me being an AFAB nonbinary person who doesn't always look GNC means that I'm trans lite or haven't experienced any real oppression. I can pass as cis and I have conditional (VERY conditional considering how often I'm assumed to be gay based off appearance) cis privilege especially as a femme, but I'm still nonbinary and still trans and that still plays a major role in my life. I don't have to accept anyone acting like it doesn't or ignoring the fact that I've gone through a lot, both transphobia and misogyny, and don't deserve to be treated like I'm stupid or ignorant or pointing out that a lot of why AFAB trans people are perceived this way is that y'all still view us on some level as women regardless of whether we're okay with that and you think that that means it's okay to speak over us and that we should be quiet and take up less space because living and having been socialized as AMAB sometimes means that you've internalized a LOT of misogyny and a lot of assumptions that your voice deserves to be heard more. 

AFAB people deserve to talk about all of this without being called transmisogynist and I am so fucking sick of any of us who try being immediately shouted down by wokesters who think we're personally fucking slaughtering poor innocent trans women by saying that baeddel theory is fucking stupid or that a lot of how we're seen in the trans community is informed by misogyny and transphobia - even if trans women are the ones mistreating us or even just using the words female socialization at all. You know what? I fucking WAS socialized as a female and it fundamentally changed who I am as a person and I have a hard goddamn time believing the inverse wouldn't be true of someone socialized as male, even if they are a woman or living as one now.

But at the same time, a lot of AFAB nonbinary people don't have the same hypervisibility or experience of transmisogyny as transfeminine people do. So a trans woman pointing out things like how I wouldn't experience the same violence as her while in prison, or how I'm conditionally more accepted than her in women's and sapphic spaces, or how my body isn't automatically perceived as a threat and hers is, 100% has the right to do that and that is a time when I should take a back seat and shut up and listen. 

I guess to conclude I just wish trans women and AFAB nonbinary people could coexist more easily and listen to each other's perspectives without one group getting defensive over how the perception of identity does lead to an experience of privilege, or thinking that pointing that out is somehow an attack on us as people and saying we're less trans or less women.