kwerey:

I haven’t ever seen any kind of Guide For Cis People the way I’ve seen Notes For White People or Anti-Sexism For Men. I saw and liked stfuconfederates’s list regarding racism, so this is an attempt at a first draft for my fellow cis people. Comments and criticism definitely welcome, especially from trans* folks.



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First: our whole fucking culture is alienating.



There are ways that I reinforce that which I can’t see ways to stop or avoid. By being cis in a cissupremacist culture we’re part of a massive system that delegitimises trans identities relentlessly until occasionally it looks up and points and laughs - pantomime dames, anyone? - and we can’t undo that by just no being transphobic. We have bodies it permits; our fucked up patriarchal culture might well spend hours policing them if we’re fat or women or not obviously straight, but for almost all of us, it doesn’t pretend we don’t exist except as fetish objects. If I question someone’s cissexist joke or correct someone who misgenders an acquaintance, I’m still not an ally. I’m just maybe waving back from where I’m walking along in step with a cisnormative culture where I can buy clothes and talk to strangers who’ll get my pronouns right and take time off dancing to chat with friends in the bathrooms.

That’s what we can’t fix. These might be easier:

1. Our alternative cultures could be less fucking alienating.



I don’t know any exclusively trans* spaces in real life. I know loads of queer and feminist and otherwise very carefully inclusive spaces, and many of those exclude trans* people. One of the ways we can help out is by asking those about that.

2. We can find ways not to fling gendered language at strangers



If you’ve managed to spend a day shopping or traveling or sorting out admin without being called sir or ma’am, I’m impressed. We can avoid gendering strangers, though! I use they as a default when people mention names I don’t know, unless a pronoun’s been mentioned. I say “hello, can I help you?” at work instead of “can I help you, ma’am?” or “sir”.

3. We can find ways not to fling gendered language at friends.

There are loads of other less overt ways language genders people who aren’t strangers, though: there’s loads of casual cissexism in idioms, in everyday phrases - sometimes I call people who aren’t dudes dude, and I’d try and remember that transfolk might mind that more than cis women. If we want to not be cissexist assholes, we should not just ask for pronoun preferences but do that and use that as a starting point and keep checking which kinds of words suit friends’ identities: do they prefer fem over femme as a label? do they see words like ‘guys’ or ‘[noun]master’ as dissonant applied to them?

4. We can respect trans* experiences.



Maybe some cis people are sometimes misgendered, but I haven’t been since I was a four-year-old tomboy with very short hair. I don’t know what that’s like. I don’t experience gender dysphoria. It’s a pretty normal conversation tactic when someone mentions something they’ve experienced to try and think of parallels from your own life, but a trans* person talks about discomfort they experience with their clothes or appearance or anysuch part of their gender presentation I’m being oppressive by going “oh yeah I get that too”. I don’t. I might have had similar individual interactions, but if so I’ve had them from a different perspective; I don’t need to offer a parallel to show I understand them, and actually don’t that is refusing to acknowledge that for them these things are part of an identity that doesn’t belong to me.