Re: Shit (Young, White, Class-privileged, City-based) “Radical Queers” Say to Each Other”
[…]I don’t know. I’m just not thrilled with the way some pretty blatant transphobia seems to have gotten smashed in between a bunch of valid points about transandrocentrism, racism, class privilege, and misogyny. I wish it weren’t being passed around so non-critically by many of the people I follow.
i agree w/ this completely. the repetitive “i’m trans” really bothered me but i thought maybe i was misinterpreting. i have no involvement with ‘radical queers’ and thought maybe i was missing something because it seemed…. too blatantly cissexist. but maybe that’s actually all it was and i should stop questioning my instant reaction to things. my gut response was “are they implying that people are adopting trans identities as a TREND?”
also like, i thought it was bizarre that they mentioned their privileges by name only. they didn’t touch on racism or classism at all. acknowledging yr whiteness does not an anti-racist ally make. when i see a video that says “shit white […] people say” i EXPECT racist comments and they were completely absent…? which seems appropriate in a sad unintentional way.
i also think it’s weird how people are taking something that started out as, basically, ‘oppressive shit privileged people say’ and turned it into something else entirely. like, ironic self congratulatory “see we can laugh at ourselves and how we are all carbon copies of one another” shit. this is an opportunity to explore how harmful dynamics have manifested within so-called radical spaces but people are just making it into a big joke.
the repetition of “i’m trans!” did make me uncomfortable and there’s some chance it was just straight up making some kind of gross butch-flightesque comment - but i also think it might well be referencing how a lot of ‘radical’ trans guys will constantly emphasize their transness in order to better weasel out of being called on their sexism and misogyny
idk, i do think a lot of white rad queer spaces overtly or subtly pressure butch or otherwise gender-variant people who get read as FAAB to not use female pronouns and not publicly identify as women, even if this often happens less with an air of actual hostility and more with a sense of “oh, you can’t really mean that …” or “your gender is too interesting for you to just be cis female!”
and i think they did touch pretty well on rad queer racism/classism a couple of times? most white rad kids are too smart too say many really overtly racist things and are often pretty invested in imagining themselves as ‘poor’ or at least ‘not-really-middle-class-and-too-cool-to-want-to-be’ - and yet still think ‘building community’ means putting a year or so of work into the local food not bombs franchise before moving on to chicago or the bay area or something for a while
i largely agree with youarenotyou’s last paragraph, though
(Source: fuguestasis)
from youarenotyou