I Don't Do Much

gnarlystarships

quasi-normalcy

What I can tell you as a transgender woman is that occasionally I will read trans woman characters written by cisgender authors. And I can pretty much always tell when the author is cis, even if the character is portrayed respectfully, because they get some details wrong or something. But I certainly don’t think that they shouldn’t be allowed to take a stab at it, and I actually appreciate any representation that isn’t egregiously harmful. And I certainly don’t think that only transgender women should be allowed to write transgender women because then it falls on me, and that’s rather tokenizing, isn’t it?

quasi-normalcy

Also it seems like demanding that only #OwnVoices authors should be allowed to write certain characters is an excellent way to enforce a situation where most books are about cishet white people.

quasi-normalcy

And no: you probably won’t get all of the specific details of someone else’s lived experience correct, in much the same way that most authors don’t get all of the specific details about how, say, nuclear reactors or space work. But so long as your character passes as realistically human and not a one-dimensional caricature of what you think that other types of people are like, then I think that that’s reasonable.

arowace

theprideful

it’s actually none of your business or concern if a trans person decides to keep their birth name

theprideful

there’s this trans guy on tiktok (you might know him) who kept his birth name (sasha) and he gets shit for it all the time. people say things like “if you’re trans why did you keep your deadname?” “i would hate it if people kept calling me a ‘girl name’” and he has to say “it’s not a deadname, it’s just my name.” and when people find out he’s trans they’re like “oh so what’s your name?” and he’s like “sasha” and they’re like “no i mean what’s your guy name, like your trans name?” “…sasha” i remember he made a video about it and was like “are y’all trying to make me hate my name or something or make me feel bad for keeping my birth name? i like it and it’s who i am” and honestly i feel like a lot of people think trans liberation comes from changing everything about yourself instead of keeping the parts about you that you like. “well wouldn’t you feel more comfortable if you fit into this binary mold of gender and conformity?” no actually. a lot of trans people want to transition and get new names, and good for them! but it’s a personal decision and it’s not the only “correct” path and if they want to keep their birth name, that’s their choice and it should be respected

alarajrogers

So many names were for men and got given to women and now they are considered only feminine names. Joyce Kilmer and Evelyn Waugh, poets from New Jersey in the 1800′s or so, were men. (This greatly disappointed young female chauvinist pig me as a child driving on the New Jersey Turnpike. I’d thought there were four women honored by having their names on rest stops, and then I found out about these two actually being men, and now the only women are Clara Barton and Molly Pitcher, and Molly Pitcher isn’t even a real person.) John Wayne’s birth name was Marion. The comedian famous for the Church Lady and impersonating George H. W. Bush was Dana Carvey, definitely a man. Taylor is a man’s name in the process of becoming a woman’s name as it’s assigned to more and more girls.

“Sasha”, as was pointed out in the notes, is actually a male Russian name, a nickname for Alexander. It’s used as feminine in English because it ends in an -a, but worldwide it’s probably assigned to more men.

A trans man named Emily has a man’s name, because he is a man and his name is Emily. (Fictional example. I know no trans men named Emily. But if I meet one, I will absolutely support his right to be a man named Emily.) Just like that one guy, I forget who now but it goes around Tumblr as a gif set every so often, who denied dressing in women’s clothing just because he wears dresses, saying “I’m a man and they’re my dresses. I bought them for me. I wear them. They never belonged to a woman.”

The whole “men cannot have women’s names” things comes from misogyny anyway (the kind of perverse misogyny that restricts male freedom, like the misogyny of not letting little boys have Rainbow Dash bookbags.) It’s basically “women are inferior and men do not dare stoop to having feminine things or they mark themselves as inferior.” Obviously this is also homophobic and transphobic, and in a sense you could even call it misandry, in that society demands that men prove that they are not women before allowing them to be treated as humans. Think of the little boys who weren’t allowed to get facepaint of a pretty butterfly and who weren’t allowed to pick out a doll, or crafts involving glitter and sparkly pink things, when allowed to get a toy. Think of the men who’ve been assaulted for seeming even slightly feminine. That’s where this shit comes from, and if you support trans people, you need to knock it off.

arowace

queenlua

one time in high school, i got lowkey sanctimonious at a friend for something along the lines of “well if people really cared about [x], they would’ve taken the time to educate themselves about it.”

the look he gave me was like he’d been slapped in the face, and i realized all at once what a total bitch i was. turned out my friend did care a lot about [x], actually! and just because he wasn’t terminally online and ruthlessly adept at knock-down ideological spats didn’t make him any less moral than myself. basically the reverse, in this case. he’d expressed some curiosity and uncertainty, and instead of meeting his openness with some of my own, i used it as an excuse for some self-righteous dig. ugh!

so whenever i see shit online along the lines of “well if you aren’t actively seeking broader context all the time that’s lazy/immoral/ignoble” i’m always like… bro would you say that to someone’s face? would you really? maybe try it and see how it feels, huh

findingfeather

One of the most EXHAUSTING things for me about disability issues is knowing that so many of the people I deal with DO care but have not only literally not had the opportunity to learn but not even had the opportunity to learn that there’s anything they don’t know.

Like the other day single use plastics came up at work and it was actually super super fruitful! When I pointed out the huge problem with plastic bans from a disability pov, I got a whole collection of startled wide eyes and “I never thought of that!” and willing listening!

And YES it was super frustrating and tiring to explain the same thing AGAIN, and yes it is an issue of privilege that they could get this far without knowing, but also: where would they learn? How would they know there was something TO learn? These are people who DO make effort and they DO care and yet the state of GENERAL knowledge is such that you can do all that and yet not know you even need to learn more.

And right now as we speak there’s SOMETHING that you and I don’t even know we don’t know. And there’s someone out there who’s EXHAUSTED at having to explain again.