Delta

if i see one more binary trans person go on about how binary trans people or sometimes trans people who medically transition are "pushed out" of the trans community, i'm gonna lose it. pushed out by whom exactly? by the evil all-powerful nonbinary people? by the very people they spent so much time not even letting into the community in the first place? by the people they have binary privilege over? as if.

i have never seen a single nonbinary person tell a binary person that they're not trans and should go away, but i've seen that very thing coming from binary trans people towards nonbinary people, including myself, countless of times, often in much worse language.

and let's not forget all the more covert stuff! the trans community is incredibly centred around binary gender. and if it's not centred around binary gender, it's centred around genders related to the binary at the very least. nonbinary people are constantly erased and misgendered and reduced to yet another binary. it's also centred around medical transition, where transness is often equated to it. it's become much less acceptable to overtly exclude nonbinary and/or non-medically transitioning people, but the way the community talks about things makes it obvious that we're second-class transes.

all i've seen is more people realising they're nonbinary, nonbinary people demanding to be acknowledged, nonbinary people being visible, nonbinary people proudly and loudly claiming the trans label and participating in the community in the same ways that binary trans people have been for years. if the increased presence and visibility of nonbinary people makes you feel like you're being "pushed out" of the community, you have a binary fragility problem, and it's the exact same rhetoric as when cis people say that trans people are shoving their transness down everyone's throat because we're more visible, or that time when some monogamous queers claimed there's "pressure to be polyamorous" simply because polyamorous people are more visible now.

nonbinary and non-medically transitioning trans people have been kept out of the community for so long and all we're doing now is participate in trans community the same as you, asking for the bare minimum of being included and you feel threatened by us because you're so used to pushing us down.

it's such a clear case of people being offended that they're now only mostly centred rather than fully centred. it's kinda embarrassing, ngl.

the more we find out about Nex Benedict's murder, the more i see the similarities between their story and mine.

this could have been me a few years ago.

i was bullied by people i didn't know, which the transmisics are portraying as contradictory. they think because Nex said they didn't know the girls who killed them, it's untrue that they bullied Nex for months before, even though that's what they said. they completely interpret "i don't know them" in the most bad-faith way possible as "i have never seen them until today", because actually acknowledging the context doesn't fit their narrative.

a lot of the people who bullied me were people who weren't in my class, weren't even in my year. they were random younger people who would harass me as i walked through the school. at some point i recognised their voices and the kinds of comment they'd make, maybe even recognise what they look like. but i didn't know them. you don't have to know your bullies for the bullying to be real. especially in a society that teaches kids to "ignore their bullies" it's really not that unlikely for someone not to know who their bullies are.

Nex's story is a prime example of how teaching kids to "ignore their bullies and it will go away" is actively harmful because

a) the lack of action teaches bullies that bullying is okay, they will not stop,

b) ignoring bullies means bottling up all the feelings about being bullied until it's finally too much and the victim defends themself, which bullies use as an excuse to be more aggressive (and kids are still learning how to deal with their emotions too which makes all of this even harder) and

c) if the bullying ever escalates, you not knowing your bullies because you ignored them can be absolutely used against you by claiming the bullying wasn't actually real.

and children are inclined to take adults' bullshit advice on how to "deal with" bullies, none of this is ever the kid's fault.

and it looks like all of these points apply to Nex's case. society has utterly failed victims of bullying.

and we also need to acknowledge that bullying doesn't happen in a vacuum. bullying is a symptom of systemic oppression. most bullying victims hold some kind of marginalised identity and i don't know any marginalised people who haven't experienced any bullying. like, of course society teaching kids that marginalised people are bad will lead to bullying, and of course the anti-trans hate campaign raises kids to be violent.

looking back, it's so obvious that when i was bullied for being "ugly", they were referring to me being gnc, visibly blind and fat and they bullied me for being weird they were referring to me being gnc, ND and blind. the slurs and direct references aren't the only way that bullying is targeted at marginalised identities. and when i had too many emotions bottled up, i too would defend myself by shouting back at them or other harmless things. yes, splashing people with some water is HARMLESS, it's not assault and it's nothing compared to what these cis girls put Nex through months before, let alone literally murdering them. being both nonbinary AND indigenous, Nex was even more likely to go through this as a multiply marginalised person.

bullying is abuse. bullying is a direct result of systemic oppression and thus it is a human rights issue. and basically telling marginalised kids to suck it up ain't it.

Nex's case is terrifying because from what we know it went from being only verbal for months to immediately beating them to death as soon as they dared to defend themself. this could have been me a few years ago. i'm terrified for all our marginalised kids.

that's it.

there is NO safe way to be trans. we have to build our own safety.

but there is no safe way to BE trans, when even afab nonbinary people who don't medically transition get fucking murdered. the very group of people i've seen a lot of trans people claim have it easier, are safer, aren't really oppressed, for reasons none other than transmedicalism, exorsexism and misogyny.

i never want to hear about "afab privilege again. i never want to hear about how nonbinary people are safer because we're "basically cis". i never want to hear about how trans people who only socially transition aren't targeted for their transness again. i never want to hear the term "theyfab" again. i never want to hear about how "nothing happens" to afab nonbinary people who don't medically transition again. i never want to hear about how we're the biggest oppressors of "real trans people" ever again. i never want to hear about how the experiences of medically transitioning non medically transitioning trans people are so fundamentally different from each other that we're closer to cis than trans. i never want to hear about how us being the nonbinary stereotype somehow means we're not in danger.

i never want to hear any of this shit about how we're "the safest" again because that rhetoric emboldens people to be violent towards us, knowing we won't be believed. i never want to hear about our "privilege" again when they all see us as transes who should be fucking dead.

i don't want to hear it ever again. there is no safe way to be trans.

 being nonbinary is a contradiction.

not because i am neither a man nor a woman.

but because i am hypervisible while being erased.

because they paint me as a danger while claiming i need protection.

because they gawk at me for who i am without seeing who i am.

because one day i'm all-powerful and they laugh at my weakness the next.

because somehow i am too loud without ever getting a say.

because i get attention in ways i never wanted and told that's what i was seeking.

because i'm too "woman" to be spared from violence but too "man" to talk about it.

because they insisted i wasn't cis when i thought i was but once i knew i wasn't that's all they wanted me to be.

because the world is slowly breaking binaries while building new ones from their ruins and they call it liberation.

being nonbinary is a contradiction. not because i'm a living contradiction but because i live in contradiction.

you can't say "clothes have no gender" but then insist that certain kinds of clothes are inherently masculine or feminine (or very rarely androgynous). it's not just gendering clothes to call them male or female, calling them masculine or feminine is still gendering them! i've been wearing lots of skirts and dresses lately because it's hot out, shorts don't sit well on my body, it's now a personal choice rather than a gendered expectation and simply because it feels good. i don't wear them so that other trans/n-b and "allies" can misgender me as feminine. you're taking all the fun out of it. clothes don't have an inherent gender. they're interpreted in whichever way the wearer wants, if at all. some people will wear skirts and crop tops and consider them masculine. other people will wear big hoodies and loose trousers and consider them androgynous. i just consider all my clothes to be queer. not masc, not fem, just queer. if i have to choose to gender them at all, they're maverique, like me. and as a maverique, i don't want to be put into yet another gender binary based on something ridiculous like fabric covering my body. there's nothing inherently feminine about a skirt, you're just hanging on to gender rigid ideas of gendies and but honestly, i dress more for autism than for gender anyway.

 misgendering someone isn't

bad because it can cause dysphoria.

misgendering someone is bad because it's fucking disrespectful.

it's not somehow more harmful to misgender someone with dysphoria than someone without.

"but dysphoria can cause suicidality!"

ok. you know what can also cause suicidality? constant disrespect. which happens to marginalised people on a systemic basis. and all trans and nonbinary people are marginalised.

we already know what even microaggressions do to your mental health. and misgendering is a macroaggression.

  "gender binary" is the idea that there are only two genders, male and female. it's not the same as transantagonism, it's not the same as gender roles, it's not the same as the patriarchy. stop saying gender binary when you mean something else. being specific about what you mean matters, because it can make it much harder to talk about exorsexism and nonbinary-specific issues. cis binary women are oppressed by the patriarchy, but not by the gender binary. binary gender nonconforming people are oppressed by gender roles, but not by the gender binary. binary trans people are oppressed by transantagonism but not by the gender binary. this is obvious when you consider how many feminists only fight for women and think nonbinary people don't exist, how many people think people should be allowed to be gender nonconforming but nonbinary goes too far, how many trans allies happily support binary trans people while throwing nonbinary people under the bus. the gender binary is a specific form of transantagonism and patriarchal violence, but it's not synonymous. it's effects are exclusive to people who do not fit nearly imto either the male or the female box. all of these are strongly intertwined, but claiming it's the same erases specific issues, which already go unnoticed. being part of the gender binary, cis or trans, is an immense privilege that nonbinary people do not have.

 you might be a trans ally, but are you also an ally to nonbinary people specifically?

 

you might be trans, but are you an ally to your nonbinary siblings?

 

i've seen too many people be fierce allies to binary trans people but not to nonbinary people. or worse, they're outright hostile towards us. it's more common than you think. it's just erased, like us.

 

i've seen too many cis "allies" basically be like "of course you can identify as anything you want (as long as it's binary)", and tbh, i've seen binary trans people do the same thing.

 

i've seen too many binary trans people go "i'm not like those people".

 

i've seen too many people say "this legal thing is good for trans people" but 5 minutes of research showed it only helps binary trans people. people don't even actually think of us when they hear "trans".

 

there's also the whole issue of the trans community constantly throwing nonbinary people under the bus every chance they get, especially those of us who are not transmasc or transfem. 

 

i'm tired of cis allies being exorsexist and completely dismissing and erasing our existence but trans people happily accepting the allyship, because as long as it helps binary trans people it's good i guess, no matter how harmful it is to nonbinary people. i'm tired of cis allies doing nonbinary erasure is just seen as "nobody's perfectly and not a real problem", when it is literally further oppression. i'm tired of binary trans people being ok with cis allies being exorsexist because "got mine". exorsexism is real. it's not less important than transmisia against binary trans people. it's not "slightly annoying". it's fucking oppressive, as oppressive as transmisia as a whole. and we as nonbinary people face it in a community that should be ours, but makes it incredibly clear that they too think we shouldn't exist and that our specific oppression doesn't actually matter.

 

we cannot do this shit alone. we cannot fight for our rights of those who are meant to fight by our side ignore our existence, erase the very nature of our genders, talk about us like we and our struggles don't exist, treat us like we're not really oppressed, silence us when we talk about our specific issues, treat us like we're keeping the acceptable trans people from obtaining rights, deem us unreliable narrators of our lived experiences, exclude us from discussions about trans rights, ignore all the experiences we share with binary trans people and constantly misgender us in one way or another.

 

cis and binary trans people have the binary privilege of their gender being affirmed even within the gender binary, and they have a choice between using it to throw us under the bus or to be allies.

 

don't leave us behind. it's terrifying to know we pretty much only have other nonbinary people to have our backs.

 

 telling nonbinary, and especially abinary, people to "just make your own posts/spaces/whatever" when we dare talk about nonbinary & abinary exclusion in trans spaces is wild, because...

 

nonbinary people need to be included in all discussions on trans issues because we share so many experiences with binary trans men and women. abinary people need to be included because we share so many experiences with transmascs and transfems. we need to be included in trans spaces because many of us identify as trans.

 

but the reason we are excluded is exorsexism.

 

so we're forced out. we're forced to make our own posts and make our own spaces. and then what happens? we still don't get visibility.  exorsexism remains unrecognised as its own specific thing. exorsexism in trans communities remains unaddressed. 

 

it's not like we make our own posts and have binary & binary-adjacent trans people lift us up. that barely happens. it's more like we're either ignored or harassed for existing. people will seek out our spaces and our content to harass us.

 

many people don't really want us to have a space or a platform. they just don't want us "invading" theirs by challenging their binary worldview.

 

"just make your own stuff" keeps being used by queer exclusionists time and time again. it's been used against aces and aros in queer spaces. TERFs use it against trans folk. it's been used against bi+ folk too. it's literally just code for "you don't actually belong here, your issues don't matter, go do your stuff away from us so we don't have to see it", and it doesn't suddenly become okay when they do it to nonbinary & abinary people.

 

if you see a nonbinary or abinary person be angry at constant exclusion and exorsexism and your response is "just go make your own stuff", you have internalised queer exclusionist rhetoric.

 because let's be real, it's still often implied to be binary, medical or both.

so far, mine has been neither. medical transition steps are celebrated much more than anything else by the community, while i'm over here considering my legal name change, my voice training, my first short haircut to be just as big of a deal.

it's talked about in simplified terms of "pre-transition" and "post-transition". but when is it "post" when "passing" as nonbinary is literally impossible? how long do you have to be on HRT for it to be "post"? how can it ever be "post" if you constantly have to choose between coming out or recloseting yourself because no one just sees... you?

it doesn't feel like transition. it feels like being stuck in place, in a world that refuses to see me.