Nerd is my Gender
What's yours?
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Things I’m Expected To Do for Cis People in Return for Their Not Hating Me: An Angry List
After seeing bidyke’s remix of sanctimonioussilentagony’s list, I thought I’d sketch out the beginnings of one for transsexual folk. Improvements welcome:
- Answer any and all questions about my body and my medical treatment no matter how invasive
- Answer questions about my partner’s sexuality
- Listen to their stories about other trans* people they know
- Listen to them talk and give them my opinions on trans* celebrities
- Celebrate with them all fictional depictions of trans* folk, no matter how misrepresentative or outright transphobic
- Congratulate them on their correct use of names and pronouns
- Obey when they refer to me incorrectly and tell me that I “must forgive them”
- Smile sadly and thank them when they tell me how brave I am
- Use the accessible toilet and be grateful
- Stay silent if they misidentify me as gay and cis
- Sympathise with their excuses for their and others’ transphobia
- Approve their use of the word ‘tranny’
- Act ‘gendered’ enough but not too ‘gendered’
- note: these prohibitions overlap with no middle ground
- Never, ever, express or articulate any kind of sexuality
- this one may be trans*-woman-specific?
- Stay quiet when cis-specific issues are being discussed
- Never raise trans*-specific issues
- Never get angry or upset about cissexism and transphobia
- Never call out cis people on cissexism and transphobia
- Not mention specific legal protections for transsexual people to my employers
- Only be transsexual without having any other identities
- Silently excuse myself from activities and events which structurally exclude me
- Do so without raising any attention or being noticed by anybody
- Not hang out with too many other trans* people or seek trans*-only space
- Never repost Asher’s “Die Cis Scum”
- If I die, die quietly, and never blame them.
And now the Nerd, for hir own personal amusement, presents The List of Things I Secretly Wish I Could Get Away With Doing:
- Answer any and all questions about my body and my medical treatment with “oh, you paying?”
- Answer questions about my partner’s sexuality with “but we are looking to experiment with a 3rd… interested?”
- Say that if I meet their trans* friend, we must battle to the death because like the Sith, there can only be one
- Admit I don’t know shit about trans* celebrities and really couldn’t care less to try to learn
- Laugh in their faces and ask them if they also learned everything they know about physics from the movies
- Never have to think about pronouns again
- Know how to remind others to think about pronouns without sounding like a schoolmarm
- Respond to compliments of bravery with “you should have seen the other guy!”
- Hog the accessible toilet like a boss
- Come out to the 100th stranger as though it were the first time
- Figure out a nice way to say “wow, that shit’s wicked bigoted”
- Strangle those who utter the words “she-male”
- Not have my gender expression be analyzed for “proof” of my identity
- note: cis people’s actions are generally excused by friends and associates as not invalidating to their genders
- Flirt with all the people
- and not worry about if I should know better than to think anyone would date someone like me
- Roll my eyes and sigh loudly whenever someone raises concern about a cis-specific issue
- Interject “and genderqueers” whenever someone says “men and women”
- Be the trans* hulk smashing cis-supremacy (and not even the pants would survive transformation)
- Set up a cis jar and collect change from people who say binarist things
- Get to walk into my office in a suit and tie like a boss
- Be a queer atheist white trans* parent with ADHD all at the same time
- Bust in and make space for other people of non-binary genders
- And be thanked for it too
- Get a rental on Trans Ally where all the cool peeps dwell (in my imagination)
- LOL forever at Asher’s “Die Cis Scum”
- If I must take one for the team, go out in a blaze of glory
- notesurl
Genderqueer with a touch of happy humanism.
