A lot will grab hold of anything that resembles love and acceptance and cling to it suffocatingly tightly like a drowning person who ends up drowning their rescuer.

But many such toxic people can de-tox. Given strict boundaries, given time to absorb new knowledge that will unravel the prejudices they have absorbed. Failing that there is always therapy for them.

For many the isolation and lack of a broad community is exactly the problem. No role models, no peer group, no guidance. In a broad community there will be all sorts of folk in their like-minded groups and plenty linking two or more groups together forming a broader interactive web just like other functioning communities. To function well it needs to be inclusive and to reach a critical mass of interconnected people.

For a group political or otherwise to deal with the toxic awkward and creepy folk strict boundaries of behaviour would be a minimum. A member or two with a mental health treatment background would be an invaluable asset I think. Personally with people as oppressed hurt and traumatised as this I think politics and support go hand in hand, each requiring the other. At the very least forming some partnership with mental health support services would be advisable. After all if these people are toxic because of trauma getting them to treatment doesn’t just help them but the whole community.

And don’t judge some too harshly, people often overdo the makeup as they learn or untill they learn better. Some people, cis and trans, just plain like minidresses. Some have developed internalised misogyny as part of their denial and it often takes time to break down. As for me, I’m a goth. Too much make-up is part of the style.

Transgender is a cross-cultural phenomenon involving people of all classes, ethnicities etc. People will carry the baggage of their communities, will have all sorts of styles prejudices and attitudes at least at first. It’s strength and weakness is that diversity. Any group would need to be able to be flexible enough to turn that into an advantage while slowly educating the people within it.

I’m in rather rural northern NSW surviving on a disability pension so I can’t help much directly, but I care about the issues and I’d like to be able to help in what small ways I can both the political activism and the community building.

<3

And you’re right - it’s really frustrating to deal with those attitudes (and a lot of others). Identity is such a charged topic sometimes that people impose their own choices on you or try to invalidate your choices for not being like theirs.

Well, yeah. The “transer than though” is kind of the other side of the coin there, and neither of them is very helpful in building any sort of useful community. It’s something I tend to escape personally, being young, entirely passable, and pretty gender normative, but that doesn’t make it helpful.

A lot of it comes from people being set in their ways, I guess. I mean, just being middle-aged isn’t a guarantee that you’ll end up being a misogynist ultra-femme with too much makeup. I think a lot of it also comes from being unable to accept that they’re going from a privileged to underprivileged state - as women, as trans, and so on.

I think that’s a large part of it: a couple of these people were just really creepy, but I think much of the behaviour of the people I described in this post could be caused by really struggling with that point. I get in an intellectual sense that this could be really hard to adjust to, especially if you’ve really absorbed that privilege (the woman ranting on about “special rights” was one example that comes to mind), and lived with it for a long time. I find it hard to relate to personally though; people have assumed I was queer ever since I was old enough for people to assume that, so I’ve never had the notion of not being treated as second-class in at least some way.

The existence of these people in no way validates The Transsexual Empire or Heart’s brand of transphobia - that still refuses to deal with us as individuals, and instead treats us as if we’re all the same person, and that person is the worst possible caricature, based on people who are only just starting to adjust to the idea of life as a woman.

I’m not saying it does, and I probably should have been more clear on that in my post. It’s just that their behaviour was so consistent with that stereotype, and so galling, that I had a visceral response that basically made me want to run screaming from the trans community - and yet I say this as someone who believes in inclusive politics generally. I think you touch on another good point there: you’re probably right in that, in many cases, it’s those people who are just starting to adjust who are well, responsible for a lot of the weird stuff. The problem is that, while they need a venue they can feel safe; the lack of any sort of space where they’re not around is not necessarily conducive to a lasting community. I’m not exactly expressing myself clearly here, as I’m a bit tired, but meh.

In response to Mrs. Madrigal, I believe there’s a difference between unifying the trans community and finding likeminded trans people interested in political activism, and it looks like Rebecca’s talking about the latter. We have some activists, could use more - our rights are a shambles and that needs to be taken care of.

That’s what I was going for, yes. There are too many ideological chasms within the trans community that will never be resolved; a “united” trans community is a pipedream. Rather, I’m talking about the mere concept of forming useful communities of some sort on a local level; it’s certainly something that’s possible, but it’s been pretty problematic in quite a few places, especially out here, due in a large part to the conduct of transpeople themselves.

Anyway, thanks for dropping by, Lisa - I always read your blog, and I appreciate you coming by to comment.

A lot of it comes from people being set in their ways, I guess. I mean, just being middle-aged isn’t a guarantee that you’ll end up being a misogynist ultra-femme with too much makeup. I think a lot of it also comes from being unable to accept that they’re going from a privileged to underprivileged state - as women, as trans, and so on.

The existence of these people in no way validates The Transsexual Empire or Heart’s brand of transphobia - that still refuses to deal with us as individuals, and instead treats us as if we’re all the same person, and that person is the worst possible caricature, based on people who are only just starting to adjust to the idea of life as a woman.

In response to Mrs. Madrigal, I believe there’s a difference between unifying the trans community and finding likeminded trans people interested in political activism, and it looks like Rebecca’s talking about the latter. We have some activists, could use more - our rights are a shambles and that needs to be taken care of.

Robbie: I think that’s a good idea when it can be pulled off, as some of the transmen have done. The thing is that it requires being able to actually find other transpeople in the first place, which is very hard when everyone has woodworked and there is no semblance of a useful community in existence.