Have you ever stepped on someone’s foot? It happens. They might get angry, it’s understandable. Just an accident, not your intention, but your fault nonetheless. Keep this in mind.
I’ll be using transphobia in this conversation, because I’m here and the discussion that moved me to write, but I learned the concepts from talks about racism and it applies to many similar situations.
What I am doesn’t matter right now. It’s not about about me, right? I’ll open up the most targetable part of myself though: my inner thoughts. Particularly my musings about gender, which are relatively recent (I’m 39). Nothing specific, just the possibility that they might be transphobic.
That idea was something I feared and worried about a lot. In open discussions, I’m always careful with my words, but I had private doubts for a long time that seemed ugly, plain and simple. Was I transphobic in the past? Most likely. Am I still transphobic on some level? I don’t know. I don’t want to be, and that’s the point.
We are all living our lives the only way we know how to. Sometimes accidents happen, people get hurt, we make things right. Sometimes the way we live our lives mean that we are stepping on people by design. It might still not be our intention, it is still our fault and the fact it’s not an accident anymore will mess with our minds when we realize that.
So, again, I don’t want to be transphobic. That’s not what I believe or how I live my life. Again, my intentions don’t matter if what I do hurt or endanger others in any way. I believe I can only say I’m not transphobic if I do the work not to be. If I accept my thoughts, words and actions can be transphobic, and that they are mistakes to be corrected. Being transphobic is about how I can negatively affect trans people, regardless of how I see myself or believe I’m doing the right thing. It’s about them, not me.
I ask that you look at the other person or group when you are in an argument, or just out in the world. See how your actions affect them. See if you care enough to do something about it. And, if you find out you don’t want to change, try accepting who you are, accepting any disgust you might feel without reinterpreting yours or other people’s reality.
edit: It was a mistake going with figurative language here in an discussion that intended to be inclusive. I know better. Also, I wanted people to see that the subject of the action is not always the important part. When there are victims, their point of view should be the one validated first, they should the ones we make sure are all right before we decide to seek punishment. And I don’t know if this will help, but the imperfect parallel with racism that came to mind was societal racism.
TL;DR:
Being transphobic is about how I can negatively affect trans people, regardless of how I see myself or believe I’m doing the right thing. It’s about them, not me.
Sorry if this is kind of patronising, but your post was pretty long and it felt like it took ages to get to the point, so I felt the point should be highlighted.
The point is educating and helping people understand my point of view. I can’t assume it’s obvious for everyone, so I expand and offer more digestible parcels. Or I try at least.
That’s absolutely fine and helps provide context, however it felt like you were burying the lede, from the title to the end of the second to last paragraph.
A good strategy I’ve been taught with writing is to say what you’re going to say, say it, then say it again. You introduce what you’re going to talk about, explain the details and the caveats, then repeat your main point in conclusion. This basically hammers home the point to the reader. That maybe would be excessive here, but the answer to the title should have been at least a little more prominent.
Most people with good intentions do something wrong at some point.
It is inevitable that people hurt people even if they never intended to.
Intent makes you transphobic. Just treat trans people like normal people. Especially apply the same boundaries. It is simple, no reason to overthink it.
What I wanted to express is the separation that exists between what a persons is and their actions. People find it hard to accept that there’s bigotry in their actions if there’s no bigotry in their hearts, and that it doesn’t matter to the people that suffer.
There is one thing though. Trans people are not all the same and have different ideas. I don’t agree with every person I have talked to and they can seemingly be as much of a bigot as any other person.
No matter what you try or do that’s an unsolvable problem as it has nothing to do with being trans in particular. There is no single truth free from bigotry.
As I said don’t overthink it. Just treat any trans person with the same dignity and respect as any other person. Really, that’s already the best you can do and all most trans people are asking for.
I thought using a specific example would be better than using X, but I’m not so sure anymore.
Think about internalized transphobia. Internalized anything actually. It doesn’t matter who you are. Being a trans person won’t make one immune. For some people, in some cases, simply making they aware of their behavior is enough to bring a change, although it’s potentially something really ingrained.
You can be genuinely nice and be a bigot, that’s why I would say treating with the same respect and dignity is not always enough. The sameness is the issue. You in particular might adapt to everyone, but, in my experience, people are much more literal.
I think the most important bit here is that you don’t intend to, and you intend on learning.
I would say that in itself makes you not a transphobic person.
I think everyone not a part of certain groups can unintentionally say something hurtful but not realize because some things aren’t really obvious if it doesn’t affect you.
This stuff wasn’t really mainstream not that long ago, so there’s a lot of cultural awareness and knowledge just not there, and you can’t beat yourself up about what you didn’t know you didn’t know.
Also, it can be obvious when somone is being a dick vs they just didn’t realize they said something hurtful. I tend to give the benefit of doubt on that (possibly too much).
I agree, but this time I’m writing not to ask comprehension from the people affected by the ignorance, but to ask all those that are called out for their behavior to stop and pay attention to what others are saying.
Hi friend. I’m going to be upfront that I didn’t totally follow your post, but I sense a lot of angst here about having thoughts that you believe might be transphobic. It’s okay to experience transphobic thoughts; it’s not okay to avoid critically examining those thoughts or to act on those thoughts. It seems to me that you’re committed to thinking critically about these thoughts when they come up for you, and so I think you’re doing great.
Before I realized I was trans, I was transphobic - not hostile, but fearful and basically ghosted someone who trusted me enough to come out to me. I regret that to this day. If I could meet that person again, and he still wanted to interact with me, we’d have a lot to talk about now. But I also understand if he wouldn’t want to interact with me ever again - that makes total sense. He trusted me with his truth and I failed him as a friend.
No one in this world is free of bias. No one’s thoughts are 100% pure and unobjectionable every second of every day. That’s just reality. What matters is our commitment to doing better and being better. What matters is how we behave - how we treat others in spite of the fucked up conditioning we may have had growing up.
Keep questioning, keep learning. You’re doing great.
Thank you for checking in. I really do need more kindness in my life. It wasn’t a personal post. I used myself as an example, and transphobia, so it wouldn’t be totally abstract. There’s a comment here that says what I wanted to express in a more direct way.
If you’re confused by gender stuff, then by all means avail of search engines for insight given to others with similar queries, but am unsure how one ends up being inadvertently transphobic?
To stretch your analogy, you seem to be wondering why people with injured feet who do their best to wear steel-toed boots & to frequent spaces where stiletto heels & hobnail boots are discouraged, might not be super relaxed when yet another pointy-shod clodhopper comes bounding all over their lives…
No matter your view of gender, or how perplexing you may find people who struggle with it, trans & non-binary people are only trying to feel ok in themselves. There’s more to it than that of course, but that’s all that anyone else ever needs to get their head around.
TW: examples of transphobic discourse
spoiler
Would you consider calling trans people cross dressers transphobic? Some decades ago, there were trans people calling themselves exactly that. The way we talk about gender nowadays is more widespread and saying something like this will invalidate a person’s identity. So, someone in their ignorance describes a trans woman as a drag queen or say they are the same. Is that transphobic? Is there a problem with saying it’s absurd to call women people who menstruate if the one saying it doesn’t realize how misguided they are?
It’s not about the person saying it, it’s about who has to experience this violence - over and over again.
And here is what I felt wrong for thinking. If you see gender as a social construct, why reinforce the norms in your transition? Why not just live without them? Which was my non binary brain trying to get in gear as I understand now.
Would I call those examples transphobic? For the questions about the labels used, I wouldn’t use the term “transphobic,” but rather misinformed.
For the question about the definition of a woman, yes it is transphobic. And yes there is a problem with it. It may be unintentional, and it may be misguided, but it’s still an example of an outward aversion to trans people. It is also something that continues to harm the trans community.
Now, I wouldn’t hold it against them at all if they listened to trans individuals and corrected themselves for the future. Just because you have problematic viewpoints, doesn’t make you a bad person. Open-minded people who can learn from their mistakes are what the world needs right now.
Let me give an example. When I was a kid in the 90s and 00s, we frequently used the terms “gay” and f** as an insult to each other or to say something was bad. That was homophobic even though we didn’t realize it was. It directly hurt the gay community by associating the term with everything bad. It made the actual gay people around us afraid to come out. As I got older, I (and most people I know) learned how harmful using those words in that way were and I corrected myself. I will break that history of homophobia by teaching my kids that kind of language is not OK. I think of that as a good thing.
Learning from our mistakes and teaching others to learn from our mistakes is the single best thing anyone can do. In my personal opinion, that is actually better than being a silent ally.
I definitely agree that you can’t change your ideas if you’re not willing to examine them. It seems to be quite common for people to hold, for example, racist or transphobic ideas, but to be unwilling to examine those ideas because they don’t believe that they themselves as a person are racist or transphobic.
The thought process basically goes: I don’t have active hate in my heart for X group, so my ideas about them cannot be problematic.
Basically it’s an error of attribution. They believe that bigotry is primarily or exclusively an active attribute of a person that’s essential to their Identity rather than potentially an attribute of ideas that a person might come to believe. Because the emphasis is on them as a person in their minds and they don’t want to be seen as ‘bad’, they become defensive and avoid examining the problematic nature of their own ideas.
However, if they’re not laboring under this delusion, they can actually examine their ideas freely and be prepared to abandon them. Then instead of making it about themselves and fighting to protect their self-image, they’re able to call out and adjust their own views and behavior.
In the end it’s the person who’s willing to see their own behavior as bigoted who is able to change that behavior. And in the one that isn’t, their anxiety about being seen as discriminatory becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as they treat their current collection of ideas as sacred.
Thank you for this comment. It’s a very clean explanation.