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This constant conflation of gender identity and sexuality is all the more damaging because it seems to rely on this weird assumption that trans people are socially accepted post transition while lesbians and gay men suffer from homophobia for life.
Obviously, the latter is still true. But the former is -clearly - complete self-revealing bollocks, particularly when it’s used by people, who are quite obviously transphobic.
But this attitude is also ignorant of a different aspect of trans reality because it doesn’t doesn’t take into account at all, who your support network is at the time.
Lets say you’re 14 and your support network is overwhelmingly straight. Straight parents, straight teachers, straight friends. Whichever road you *choose*, you’re alien to them either way. You’re the odd one out. Their default is “cis straight”.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it is indeed a *choice* you can make about what will get you more social acceptance (it isn’t): transitioning or coming out as a lesbian. Which, do you think is easier to sell to your parents these days?
Right! The trans thing. Because every Karen and her god-fearing husband will be thrilled when their little Janine asks them to call them Jonny now.
Of course, they also won’t jump up and down when little Janine tells them she’s gay and has fallen in love with Susan down the road. But overall, a lesbian daughter is something that they can hide from the neighbours and the rest of the family while a trans son is not.
Straight teachers will probably be as clueless as they ever were about LGBTQ issues but what little train they may have received is likely to relate to the LGB part, not the T part.
So they will be much better equipped, if they choose to do so, to combat homophobia in their classrooms than transphobia.
Your straight friends? TBH, at that age it probably won’t make much of a difference. If they like to “smear the queer” that will include the full spectrum. If they are open minded, they will be open to other sexualities and gender identities.
But the idea that your family/teachers/friends will accept you, if you’re trans, but shun you, if you’re a lesbian is just ludicrous. Rather, if they are homophobic, chances are they will also be transphobic.
None if this means that living as a lesbian or a gay man is always easy. It really isn’t. But if living as trans truly was the easier option, then y’all wouldn’t be so pissy about a trans woman walking into the Ladies.
And I say that as a not even very butch dyke, who sometimes gets the same sort of looks on days when I don’t look female enough. So thank you, Karen, for your sudden support of my sexuality after all those years of making me feel out of place.
But wait, there’s more. Because your support network may not actually be fully straight. Let’s assume for a moment that it actually consists of or includes a lot of LGBTQ folk.
This is where the fun really starts. Because while lesbians and gay men are very supportive of each other, we are not always that supportive, if you want to “join the other side”.
Think about it this way: if a person, who I know and love as a lesbian (I.e. a woman, who loves women) decides they want to transition, they “betray my tribe” twice. Once by becoming a man and once by becoming straight.
You may think that this should not be an issue, because, hey, we’re all people, aren’t we? And it shouldn’t. But saying that ignores how much even queer identities are bound to their own queerness. It’s a minority thing. You don’t want one of your own to join your oppressor.
So if your concept of “queer” doesn’t include trans, then a trans man who transitions essentially chooses to “leave” your community. And that hurts.
It’s a shitty way to feel and it’s not an easy thing to work through. I say this as someone, who spent a good decade doing just that back in the 90s/00s.
But it’s even shittier, if you are that trans man. Because while you couldn't choose your biological family, you likely chose your “logical” one. So rejection from them has to be even harder to deal with.
Meaning that whatever pressure you may feel from these people is more likely to be towards *not transitioning* rather than *transitioning*.
There is no trans mafia trying to lead our children from the path of righteousness by “converting them to transition”. But there are still a lot of “well meaning” gay and, particularly, lesbian folk out there, who will tell you how much it hurts *them*, if you do.
In my life I knew at least two trans men, who lived as lesbians for years/decades until they were finally able to transition later in life. One of them was in his late 40s when the medical establishment eventually relented.
They both knew who they were all along, but many of their (lesbian and gay) friends didn’t or didn’t want to know. And that made it difficult for them to get the support they needed, even in their own community.
So this claim that transitioning is somehow the easier option compared to living as a lesbian and that lots of little baby dykes “go over to the Dark Side” because of that, is just so much bullshit, whichever way you look at it. And someone like Rowling should really know better.
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