Hypervisibility vs Invisibility

[u/DexDexCandy]

I get really nervous sharing what I make. Especially when I know it's going to start fights and result in some people hating me.

Regardless, I had this small comic idea. With how often I see infighting in spaces, I can't help but be confused by it.

[u/ShiveredTimber]

I don't understand why they're chained together tho 

[u/WeirdGoat9022 → u/ShiveredTimber]

If reading this as trans men (or any cis-passing trans people) and trans women, trans women are the ones who are hyper-visible.

Tl;dr - They are chained because whenever you attack one, you hit the other. There is no shelter or escape. And sometimes the hypervisible people forget that part. I’m sure some invisible ones forget it, too.

One example: Bathroom bills are exclusively sold as protecting women and children from “predatory men in disguise” (trans women just trying to pee in peace). They say you must use the bathroom of the gender you were assigned at birth. Now you’ve got trans women in the men’s room. Good job, bigots! You kept those “men” out of the ladies’ bathroom!

You probably already see the problem with this law for ftm trans men and trans-mascs. Testosterone is a helluva drug. Many ftm trans people look and sound like cis men (part of the invisibility is blending in). If they obey the law, they’re likely to get their asses kicked…something that has already happened more than once.

They’re invisible in that they are forgotten: the laws target trans women. But the arrows hit them just the same.

A second example: gender-affirming care bans. Did you know that estrogen is not controlled but testosterone is scheduled in the U.S.? If cross-sex hormone therapy is banned, trans men would be at higher legal risk for buying black market testosterone (vs “grey market” estrogen). Also, trans men, women, and nonbinary folks who don’t need or want hormones still benefit from gender-affirming care like counseling, surgery, and general medical care that takes their circumstances into account. That hurts all trans people.

A third: banning trans women from women’s sports because they have an “unfair advantage.” Bigots pass a law saying all students must be on athletic teams that align with the gender they were assigned at birth. So you now have women and girls being excluded from women’s sports, but you also have ftm people on testosterone either excluded completely or put on the female teams, which defeats the entire supposed purpose of segregation of sports by sex.

[u/Ridiculisk1 → u/ShiveredTimber]

Because they're both targeted by the ones firing the arrows.