How To Spot A Transphobe

Here, in a new, expanded edition of four easy lessons, is how to spot a transphobe.

Transphobes are known for their ignorance, incompetence, dishonesty, violence, bigotry, prejudice, immorality and lack of ethics, but sometimes spotting the things that make those points true can be tricky.

So here are 40+ simple ways to spot a transphobe.

Lesson one:

1: If they think that cis has something to do with liking your body

2: If they think that cis has something to do with the clothes you wear or makeup

3: if they think that being trans has something to do with liking your body.

4: if they think that beings trans has something to do with the clothes you wear or make up

5: If they think that cis is a slur

6: If they think that gender is not composed of three to five distinct elements

7: If they think that being trans is a mental illness

8: If they think that being cis is a bad thing.

9: If they think that cis privilege has anything to do with someones’s sex or gender

10: If they think that biology says that trans women are male.

Lesson two:

11: If they think that the points above are limited just to trans women, since we are talking about trans folk. Note that these are exemplars based on actual ideas held by people who hate trans people, and so the assertions are equally valid for all trans folk along the spectrum.

12: If they make an argument against trans women that features the idea of “male socialization”, yet never note the way this argument relies on racism because they don’t understand how it does so.

13: If they think calling a trans woman a man or male is not violence. Bonus: they are not only ignorant, they are also violent.

14: If they ever say ” it’s not like i ever go out of my way to message anyone ever and trigger them intentionally”, and pretend like their stuff doesn’t show up in tags or is reblogged or is said in public on tumblr since tumblr is a platform designed intentionally to make things visible to other people.

15: If they think that “gender abolition” is not a dog whistle for genocide of trans people.

16: If they think that bodily autonomy is great for women, but bad for for trans women by arguing that trans women have no place in the pro-choice movement.

17: If they are against sex work and never speak about how trans women of color are driven into it by the same forces that drive cis women of color into it and at the same ages.

18: If they think that trans women cannot be lesbians or that trans men cannot be gay men.

19: If they think that despite holding any of the items in this list they are an ally of the trans community.

20: If they argue that trans women represent a danger to cis women.

Lesson Three

21: If they disagree with the term Cis.

22: If they think that Transness is a mental illness named gender dysphoria

23: If they argue that gender is a social construct but argue that sex is not a social construct.

24: If they argue against unisex restrooms because of risks associated with trans women.

25: If they argue for female only space instead of cis only space (these are two different things)

26: If they say they don’t hate trans people but use arguments that rely on seeing trans women as men, not only are they ignorant, they are also violent and hypocritical.

27: If they think that the treatment for trans children isn’t based on decades of research and study by experts in pediatric care.

28: if they think that Transness has always been a mental illness when it wasn’t introduced until after homosexuality was removed.

29: If they they think that trans women are just homophobic gay men.

30: If they say that trans women are not women because womanhood is not a feeling or identity

Lesson Four

31: If they don’t agree with Trans Theory and think trans theory is the stuff from lesson one.

32: If they say things like cis privilege has something to do with a person’s “mode of presentation”

33: If they say things like “How can I, as someone who doesn’t subscribe to gender politics and does not have a gender identity, be “cis”?” Right before describing themselves as cis people.

34: If they say terf is a slur

35: If they argue for separate but equal like trans woman/ cis woman restrooms

36: If They say that a trans woman Ina relationship with another woman is “straight”

37: If they get upset at the idea of a women’s space including trans women

38: If they think that trans men in a women’s space is ok

39: If they think that when people say they are being essentialist, they leap to the conclusion it is about biological essentialism and never think about what the person says routinely.

40: If they make a habit of being violent, dishonest, prejudiced, bigoted, aversive, anxious, incompetent, ignorant, immoral, and unethical when it comes to trans people.

41: if they post any quote from Sheila Jeffreys, Julie Bindel, or Janice Raymond on their blogs without pointing out how they are all deeply transphobic

42: if they think that it is reasonable for trans people to engage in dialog with people who are violent towards them but refuse to acknowledge that violence.

43: If they think “cotton ceiling” is about forcing lesbians to have sex. 44: If they reference “Gender Identity Watch” or “OWL”.

Note:

Any single one of those things is proof that the person involved has no idea what they are talking about and is actively engaged in worrying about the risks of, feeling disgusted or sickened by trans people or things around transness, fears being around trans people, or harbors an intense dislike of trans people.

All of which are forms of transphobia, an irrational mindset that affects their ability to accurately and honestly deal with the larger world around them. Transphobia comes from one or more of three distinct mindsets: Aversion, Anxiety, and Animus.

Aversion is things like being disgusted, in opposition to, identifying something as repugnant, and exhibiting strong feelings about this. Anxiety is distress, worry, concern, and overt anxiousness about something or someone that is strongly expressed in physical, literal, or metaphorical terms. Animus is a strong and intense dislike. It involves devaluing the lives of people, erasing their dignity, opposing their civil and human rights, denying them the ability to mark themselves,and outright harm to them. So any of those thing, either individually or in combination, is what makes up transphobia.

People saying the 40 plus things noted above are ignorant of that, and ignorant as well of their own transphobia, and so think that what they are saying has some sort of value critically. Since none of them are true, there is no critical value in the statements, since they are essentially making shit up as they go.

****WARNING*****

Transphobes are dangerous. They are violent, they are dishonest, and they are both immoral and unethical. Confronting Transphobes often leads to gang attacks on Tumblr, and so it is not recommended that you confront a transphobe directly, unless you have the stomach and time for it.

This is brought to you by:





The woman that transphobes think runs a whole bunch of different sites online, and whom they really hate seeing. Absolutely feel free to pass this around as broadly as you can. And feel free to ask questions if you have some.