Luminesa wrote:Auzkhia wrote:If one thinks transgender spaces online are "toxic" and "cliquey"
It's because we do have the bridge up. A lot of trans people are working with pain and trauma to varying degrees, but that's understandable.
Like I rather eat a bowl of thumbtacks than to engage in a Q&A session with a terf or any other two-bit transphobe with some "concerns" and to argue about whether people like me are real and valid, laboring over nuanced responses to each "concern". And it's kinda why so many remotely vocal trans people with any size of platform gets called an activist. Any trans person with an opinion is a trans activist.
Even within the trans community, it's ask four people and get five opinions. So, are we this united front? No, but maybe it could be, with the right organization , but that's another intracommunity debate, it seems.
If you’d rather eat a bowl of tacks than explain your views to someone else, either A.) you don’t have a whole lot of security regarding your views, or B.) you don’t value the person you’re talking to enough to help them understand your position. Neither of those things are good indicators. Having pain and trauma is understandable, but it doesn’t excuse toxic behavior, and if you’re not willing to put the drawbridge down, nobody is going to ever try to understand or even converse on the matter. And the result is a lack of unity and a lot of in-fighting.
You obviously have never been on the receiving end of concern trolling and harrassment from transphobes and TERFs. They aren't interested in, nor will they be "won over" by rational debate. They are unreachable, and trying to reach them only ends in pain and suffering. We know this from repeated personal experience. Its like debating Nazis. You're not going to change their minds, no matter how well-reasoned and backed up by facts your argument is.
Luminesa wrote:Necroghastia wrote:Or, y'know, C) you value your mental well-being enough to not want to engage with someone who is bigoted against you.
I’ve had someone call me the AntiChrist for real. A very big, very mean street preacher, too. You have to laugh when people say things like that, and then just hold your head up. And I’m not a particularly strong person, nor do I have the highest esteem all the time.
That's not remotely comparable.
We can't just "laugh off" our very real marginalization, no more than your Catholic ancestors in the US could "laugh it off" 100 years ago, when the KKK was actively promoting hatred and oppression of Catholics, when discrimination against Catholics was socially acceptable, etc.
People who are truly marginalized are, according to society at large, "acceptable targets". Anything done to us is "ok", even the most heinous of crimes (see: the Trans Panic 'Defense', and the entire reason for the existence of Transgender Day of Rememberance) and anything we do in response, no matter how reasonable or trivial, is "unacceptable", or otherwise used to justify doing heinous things to us in the first place.
Getting called a ridiculous name by some jackass with a megaphone (yes, I know that particular group eschews megaphones, but still) and a "ur goin to hell" sign is nowhere near the same level as having TERFs and transphobes incite hatred and violence against you.
Luminesa wrote:Necroghastia wrote:So you didn't have a conversation with him about how you aren't the Antichrist?
It was part of a conversation about Catholicism where he didn’t really wanna listen, and he was already convinced I was the AntiChrist for being Catholic. These were like...fire-and-brimstone kinda of people from some little church in backwoods Mississippi. The people around him were still interested in talking, however, so I kept talking. I kept talking to him as well, and he stood and listened. I made an impression on at least two of them. I admittedly like to hear myself talk and am an extrovert, but I do enjoy conversing with others about what I believe as well, even if I know they won’t always agree. You don’t have to convince people even, to enjoy a conversation.
Those same jackasses come to my campus, too, and they might pretend to be civil and willing to be "won over" by you, but when it comes to LGBT+ people, they have no interest in extending that same courtesy to us. I know, I've been yelled at by them directly.