I am surprised that so many people keep subscribing to this blog even though it’s been forever since I last posted anything. Well, queerspeak is something I love to complain about, so here is another post. If you don’t know what queerspeak is, it’s my term for all words/terms made up by queer/alphabet soup people that have to do with identity, as well as all pre-existing words/terms they appropriate and try to change the meaning of or suck the meaning out of altogether. Alphabetsoupism is the fantasy that all the letters in the alphabet soup (LGBTQQIA, and whatever else has been tacked on since I stopped paying attention) are one big happy family, have the same perspectives and goals, support each other in those goals, and NEVER question each other on anything even tangentially related to personal identity, and any one of the letters who dissents is a random hater who is automatically wrong without discussion.

Some moron called me cisgender yesterday. First of all, anybody who uses this word should know that it is a term that only a small minority are familiar with, and explain themselves accordingly, but this discussion took place in an alphabet soup (LGBTLOL) forum, and one of the epidemic assumptions of alphabetsoupism is that everyone thinks alike, so it was instantly assumed that I not only knew what this meant, but that I actually accepted it as a valid concept.

I have an idea of what this person meant (not trans), but so many alphabetsoupists can’t tell the difference between biological sex and gender roles that I couldn’t tell if I was being called not transsexual (as in not unhappy with my sex) or not transgender (as in not happy with my gender, which creates more confusion because, despite everyone in alphabetsoup expecting that they all think alike, they actually all seem to have their own definition of gender, all completely vague, of course).

Anyways, someone had started a discussion about “dropping” the B and T from LGBT, so I made a comment that T had nothing whatsoever to do with LGB, and that all these groups of people should not be lumped together willy-nilly, especially since some of them have totally incompatible sociopolitical goals (such as LG vs. homophobic and lesbiphobic trannies). Someone replied that they all belong together because they are all atypical in terms of sexual orientation, “gender identity,” or both, so, in order to drive home my point that we don’t all think alike, I let the person know that not everyone even believes “gender identity” is real.

But of course, EVERYONE MUST BELIEVE IN GENDER IDENTITY, so someone rolled out that old queer argument standby (or stand-in, I should say), comparison to conservative Christians. Apparently, everything that every conservative Christian ever said, every idea they ever had, is completely wrong, so it is somehow possible to “prove” someone else is wrong just by comparing them to conservative Christians, no matter how dissimilar the ideas being compared!

Think males can’t be females? You are just like a conservative Christian! Claim you don’t have a “gender identity”? You are just like a conservative Christian! Discussion over!

That’s when I was called cisgender. I don’t know what I’m talking about because I’m cisgender, apparently. The problem with that is that it doesn’t just mean not-trans. It implies something about my relationship to either my sex or the feminine gender role (depending on how being used) that the other person could not possibly know anything about. Ironically, it is a projection of the trans experience onto everybody else; they are unhappy about something, therefore, everyone else must be happy with it. Not true. There is this thing called indifference; not everyone thinks it is hugely important to be or appear to be either male or female. Of course, the response to this is invariably, “you don’t care because you are cis and don’t experience any mismatch between mind and body,” but these people don’t know how anyone is going to feel or act under any given set of circumstances.

With regard to gender roles (and yes, despite queer gospel that trans people are the most progressive people on Earth, there are some that actually support gender roles and want society to enforce them), the “cisgender” assumption is that people are either happy with their assigned gender role, or want to live in the opposite gender role; either trans or cis. Which of course ignores or pathologizes those of us who want all gender roles to disappear.