Talking Trans: Carrd Project

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I've been working in a pride org at work to advocate for a better understanding of health benefits for trans people and more representative, humane language for trans people in general. I've been blessed to not have had to deal with much bullshit in my life, but nowhere have I dealt with as much bullshit than from: consultancy firms who ask for millions of dollars to misrepresent trans people's experiences and throw them under the bus for political convenience; HR demons who invoke those consultancy firms to speak over actual trans voices; and gay people who already got their bag and want to retire to drag brunch for ever and ever, amen.

I'm tired of this shit. I'm irritated that conservatives, liberals, and leftists alike willfully misunderstand our experiences. I'm angry that this 'misunderstanding' is the ideological foundation of how society mistreats trans people. Correcting the misunderstanding will not correct the mistreatment; rather, the misunderstanding emerges as a 'natural' rationale for the mistreatment. Still, what can you do? We at least deserve our own language to narrate our own experiences, rather than accepting language from on high which asserts an essential difference between us and others.

That's what I'm trying to gesture towards with Talking Trans. I'm not every voice, but at least I'm a voice and not an echo of the same ideological slop. Hopefully!

Comments

  1. Captain CrowbarDecember 13, 2024 at 8:08 AM

    I think a guide like this needs to be situated in the context of the author's lived experience, and the lack of any sort of biographical information feels like a bit of a red flag when you're serving takes like "transgender is a word that should be completely retired." which, like, I fully respect that take, but I've never met a single trans person irl who would agree with that.

    skimming over this I find lots of small things I'd disagree with or at least word differently, especially in the medical section. (yes, trans minors should have access to gender-affirming surgery! why is that so hard for us to say with our whole chests?)

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    Replies
    1. LunaDecember 21, 2024 at 12:19 PM

      Why is the author's "lived experience" relevant to her differences in terminology with other transgender people? I think it's more likely that it stems from a different analytic viewpoint. I am wary of calls for people discuss their "lived experience" for two reasons.

      First, I think people have a right to refuse to divulge more than they wish to about their lives. It strikes me as slightly intrusive to ask that one accompany any expression of their views with an autobiography.

      Second, I worry that it renders any analysis the product of personal experience, erasing the possibility that one analysis could be better than another because of how it explains broader reality. For example, if someone's lived experience leaves them with an intuition that transsexual people are more accurately considered our sex assigned at birth than our chosen sex, should we place that analysis on equal footing to an analysis that says transsexual people are more accurately classified as our chosen sex? I think the second analysis is more correct in a way that transcends the particular lived experience of the person making the analysis.

      Obviously our analytical framework ultimately stems from our experience, but I think the connections between one's biography and one's analysis are often oblique and hard to puzzle out. It would require a thorough psychoanalysis of the author, not just reading a short "about the author" page.

      Happily, Marcia's intellectual genealogy can be traced in part from this blog. If you're interested in understanding why she believes what she believes, you could look at which theorists she discusses on this blog and think about how they connect to her analyses. She does some of that explicitly in the essay "Against Gender Ideology" which she linked.

      It's unclear to me what biographical information want Marcia to include and how you imagine that would inform your or others' understanding of her point of view. Could you share what biographical information you think is important to share in this context and what purpose you think it would serve?

      Delete

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