#not to mention harry is a cis man that started dressing more femininely only once it was smth ppl could be rewarded for | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

liamau · 6 years

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If you have been on my blog lately, you can see that my friends and I have been receiving a lot of hate. We have been called evil, terrible, horrible, transphobic, and many other awful things over something very small. Something as incredibly trivial as friendly discourse about feminine versus masculine expression has resulted in a lot of backlash for not only me, but also my best friends.

Although it isn’t stated on my blog, I am trans. Therefore, no one knows unless I purposefully make them aware, including this anon who clearly doesn’t know me. I don’t like presenting it on my blog because on the internet, nobody has to know that unless I want them to. They treat me like anyone else; they see me as any other guy, and that makes it easier on me as a trans person.

Now that you’re aware of that- I’m definitely not transphobic. I live by the idea of treat people with kindness. Despite being called names, horrible things, slurs, and treated like absolute garbage, I was going to show some semblance of respect to that rude anon and set this argument aside. I didn’t want to call names, nor do I now. I was going to take a few days off tumblr after receiving a message that people in my community, my friends, and people like me, deserve to die. It made me cry and panic and shake and almost throw up, to be honest.

So to whomever sent that message-

I hope you’re happy. I genuinely thought if I left, if I turned off anon, if I avoided this website for a while, this would blow over and you would stop. You haven’t. You sent a message to another friend of mine saying you’re going to make a “transphobic” block list and told me and my friends we should commit suicide.

Now, you know I’m trans. I also went to college and am educated in gender studies. To clarify, I went to college and took classes that specifically talk about this subject. I took psychology, sociology, human sexuality, and even gender studies. I am educated and aware of what the differences between gender identity, gender expression, femininity, and masculinity are. You mentioned in another post that you yourself are trans and educated in this subject, and then decided to act like you were on a higher pedestal than me, thus I thought you should be aware that I am in fact in the same situation.

You keep mentioning that we made your friend have a panic attack, and as someone who had a panic attack as a result of your messages, I’m truly sorry. The difference is: you have a different opinion. You didn’t have to keep messaging me. I responded with polite messages.

The reason I had a panic attack? You called me slurs. You told me that those slurs aren’t slurs. You told me people like me should die.

The biggest difference between you and I is that you kept going, kept sending these hurtful messages, despite me not responding. I got seven more asks after not responding again. Seven. Syeda got eleven more asks after not responding to nine, and got more immediately when she turned anon back on at night. The only reason I didn’t get more is because I turned anon off, and once I turned it on again, I almost immediately got more asks.

It got to the point of harassment. “You're not a victim in this and if that offends you then you literally place your feelings over the ones you hurt” you say, but continue to act as if the words you say didn’t hurt me either. You act as if my feelings don’t matter because our opinions aren’t the same. You act as though your messages didn’t make me feel belittled, disgusting, awful, and less trans. I’m allowed to be upset, especially when you have decided to use hurtful language.

Regarding our initial argument, for you to say that feminine equals female, and masculine equals male, you are invalidating my gender. I identify as male. I am also androgynous. When you say androgynous equals nonbinary, you are identifying me as nonbinary when I am a binary male. To think that my femininity makes me less male and my masculinity makes me more male, you are insinuating that in order to be binary male or binary female, you have to fall into strict gender roles; when, in reality, my femininity doesn’t make me any less male, nor does my masculinity make me any more male. Gender expression doesn’t equal gender identity.

Saying things like “sparkles are feminine” and “boxing is masculine” isn’t transphobic because feminine doesn’t equal female and masculine doesn’t equal male. It’s not gendering anything because it’s femininity versus masculinity and that doesn’t refer to a specific gender. For you to gender feminine as female and masculine as male is in itself transphobic because you are the ones saying feminine equals female and masculine equals male. Feminine isn’t a gender, its a stereotypical descriptor of things. A description of how you express yourself does not imply your gender. The same thing goes for masculine.

Kaleigh, lesbianau, got a very long ask from “a trans mtf gal majoring in LGBT/queer studies” talking about their own experience. At one point they said, “Pink is not feminine, blue is not masculine, sewing is not feminine, woodwork is not masculine, certain manners of speech or dress or walk or physical features- none of these things that are gendered.” I’d like to point out that those thing are, in fact, masculine and feminine.

The color pink is stereotypically feminine but that doesn’t make it exclusive to females. A straight man can like very stereotypical feminine things, and those things have nothing to do with his gender, nor would it have anything to do with his sexuality. He would just be a feminine man.

Expressing femininity doesn’t make a boy a “femme boy”, or a lesbian, or a trans woman, or any other label they want to throw on Harry because he is an androgynous gay man.

Here are three of my friends with their explanations and arguments against what you said.

“Maybe a painful elaboration of our original debate will help clear things up about the argument that my friends and I have. Number one: cis equals cis, and not cis equals not cis. Number two: gender identity does not equal expression. For example, if you are a cisgender male, and you express femininity, you are not suddenly a girl- it is just an expression.

For example, Harry expresses both femininity and masculinity. That is called androgyny. Androgyny is not a gender, it is an expression. People can be one gender and assume stereotypical qualities, or do stereotypical things, that are considered stereotypically masculine or feminine, i.e. having long hair or boxing. Guess what? Harry does both! I do both! Yet, we both identify as completely different genders (from what we know publicly). His gender identity is not up for debate. Gender identity does not equal expression. Maybe next time before you try to assert your opinion as fact and tell my friends to die, you should read a book.” -bia, louisau.

“This is the ask that started on all this on my blog and led to me being called transphobic. It was never about gender identity, the main point was simply gender expression. Saying Harry expresses himself in both feminine and masculine ways isn’t false, nor is it transphobic, because he does express himself in both ways. What that doesn’t tell us is how he identifies, which as far as we know is as a cis man. Simply dressing in ways that aren’t stereotypically masculine or doing things that are stereotypically feminine doesn’t mean he does or doesn’t identify as male/female. Feminine and masculine are not gender identities, they’re only stereotypical descriptors of things.

My main point is that we all need to stop speculating about Harry’s gender, considering we don’t know him personally and how he identifies is none of anyone’s business. Exhibiting both masculine/feminine traits/behaviors does not mean he has had the experiences or struggles of a trans person, nor does it mean that you can project your own experiences onto him. He is a real person, unlike a fictional character unto which you can project your own feelings. But I was never referring to his gender id, I only ever talked about how he expresses himself, which is very androgynously. I was called transphobic when I said nothing about the trans experience, and when I wouldn’t talk about it, I was being ‘dismissive’ and ‘hurtful.’ All I did was stick to the original topic, it was other people who made it into a trans issue. I am not a trans person and I can’t speak for the experiences of a trans person.”- syeda, rosesau.

“It shocks me that we have come to this. The way this all happened, words being twisted and being blown out of proportion. You do not have to agree with us, just respect us and our opinion, seeing as that is what we did for all the anonymous messages we received. I am so appalled by what was sent to me and my friends. Messages sent to us, calling us evil, disgusting, pigs, and one specifically sent to me telling me and my friends to kill ourselves. We did not once call anyone names, and yet here we are. We are real people, with real feelings, and although our opinions and views may differ, the messages telling us to do terrible things still came.

The topic of debate was different for us and the people hiding behind an anonymous mask. We were debating Harry’s gender expression to the public, and the anons took the statements and twisted them in a way to paint us as transphobic. Harry’s gender was never up for debate. We were told that saying Harry seems to express himself as androgynously was transphobic. I am still not sure how they managed to twist these words, but it is a small, ridiculous thing to tell someone to kill themselves over, right?”- clara, eversincencwyork.

Just because you’re trans doesn’t mean you’re right. Just because I’m trans doesn’t mean I’m right. You said yourself gender is a unique experience for everyone. But you’re wrong to send hate and to tell people to kill themselves. And that is where I can say we’ve been entirely correct in believing that this didn’t have to lead to what it lead to. The fact that we are continuing to respect you, despite everything you’ve said to us, makes us the bigger people, and that’s what you should learn from this, if you choose to learn anything at all.

#please listen #also im so sorry to everyone who got involved

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