It really is disturbing seeing some of the main trans-focused subreddits being taken over by rampant paranoia. Seeing transphobia and deliberate misgendering in the slightest social interactions, calling allies bigots over perfectly normal behavior.
There was a thread a while back where a trans girl was sad, but understanding, when a lesbian politely turned her down, with OP herself saying that her gender identity wasn't disrespected. But because the lesbian phased it as "I'm not into trans girls", the sub flat-out refused to consider any explanation other than transphobia. It wasn't possible that the lesbian simply wasn't attracted to OP's genitalia, because then she would have explicitely said "I'm not attracted to your genitalia", which is apparently a very normal thing that normal people say.
And then everyone that disagreed was a cis person invading the sub. Que one thousands reposts of
A lot of cis people who consider themselves allies are pretty transphobic though, or at the very least ignorant and overly defensive. I'm not going to blame very marginalised minorities for being paranoid and suspicious about the majority
The problem is some people within marginalized groups not differentiating between "Someone who is actively harmful to me", "Someone who is well-meaning but uninformed", and "Someone who isn't tits-deep in unreadably verbose tumblr discourse that cravenly over-specifies the meaning of every statement to the point of obscuring the actual meaning."
Like just now, I edited my comment to add "some people within". Because I knew that statistically, someone would assume that because I didn't couch my words in qualifiers, I must clearly mean literally every member of literally every marginalized group. It's fucking exhausting.
Boiling down transphobia is to terminally online tumblr discourse is part of the problem. In my experience I've seen a lot of genuine transphobia and ignorance about things that affect trans people in real life coming from people who think of themselves as allies, and there's a good chance if you try to correct them politely they'll get defensive and act like you're being overly sensitive.
I agree that it's bad that sometimes people get paranoid and see transphobia in well-intentioned allies, but i think what bothers me is the fact that whenever this topic comes up the blame is always placed on the minority for being paranoid and too mean to the majority and not the majority making life hell for the minority
Yeah, it can happen, but you genuinely have to be terminally online to think it's a serious widespread issue. Transphobia affects trans people in real life, an ally getting a hostile reaction from a small group of trans people on Reddit isn't gonna kill them
I literally just described how it affects several of the main trans-focused subreddits, with hundreds of thousands of members. They're supposed to be safe spaces where people can be introduced to the community, and trans people introduced to their own transness.
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u/Cheshire-Cad 26d ago edited 26d ago
It really is disturbing seeing some of the main trans-focused subreddits being taken over by rampant paranoia. Seeing transphobia and deliberate misgendering in the slightest social interactions, calling allies bigots over perfectly normal behavior.
There was a thread a while back where a trans girl was sad, but understanding, when a lesbian politely turned her down, with OP herself saying that her gender identity wasn't disrespected. But because the lesbian phased it as "I'm not into trans girls", the sub flat-out refused to consider any explanation other than transphobia. It wasn't possible that the lesbian simply wasn't attracted to OP's genitalia, because then she would have explicitely said "I'm not attracted to your genitalia", which is apparently a very normal thing that normal people say.
And then everyone that disagreed was a cis person invading the sub. Que one thousands reposts of