(((Jay Edidin))) Profile picture
Apr 28 9 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
So, the #PLANAct town hall last night was 🔥, but I want to talk about a specific thing I noticed re: who showed up and who *tends* to show up at stuff like this. (thread) (1/)
The organization spearheading the PLAN coalition is focused on justice-involved women and gender-expansive folks, who are primarily Black and brown. And Black and brown women turn up; and Black and brown men turn up; and white women turn up. You know who doesn't? White men. (2/)
I think that comes from a few things:
First: People who aren't white cisgender men are more likely to be at least marginally aware of intersections of marginalization and injustice, and to see problems that don't primarily impact them as nonetheless being relevant to them. (3/)
I don't think that's malicious, usually; or even particularly conscious. I think it's a byproduct of the way our society centers the perspectives and experiences of one group of people and implicitly deters them from empathizing with people closer to the periphery. (4/)
As a white trans man who transitioned in adulthood, I am acutely fucking aware of the ways in which I (or who I'm assumed to be) am now default-centered in social and political power and interest dynamics. But most cis men don't have that frame of reference. (5/)
Which brings me to point the second: It is 100% the responsibility of white cis men to unlearn their own centering. It may not be your fault that you started there, but if you're still there as an adult? You should feel some shame; and you should do some work. (6/)
Privilege carries responsibility, guys. You may not have asked for it, but you've got it, and it is your gddamn BASIC HUMAN DUTY to show up for the people who don't. (7/)
If you are a white man who sees an issue that primarily impacts Black women, you should not be asking, "What does that have to do with me?"

You should be asking, "How can I help?" (8/)
And if this thread makes you feel defensive or ashamed?

Good.

It's supposed to.

Now get over yourself and do the work. (9/9)

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More from @NotLasers

Apr 29
We talk a lot about paper mirrors in fiction, but there's also a very specific and reflexive joy that comes with finding them in autistic academia.
(I'm working on a thesis section about the impact of the Internet on Autistic organizing and currently citing an article on #ActuallyAutistic Twitter that's just spot fucking on in every way that matters.)
(This project switched from primarily oral history to primarily research pretty late in the game, and it's been nice to have a frantic scramble punctuated by a lot of moments of #AutisticJoy)
Read 4 tweets
Apr 18
I want to address one of the most persistent arguments against affirming trans kids' gender: "What if it's just a phase?"

Here is my compelling counterargument: "So what if it is?"
Nobody is suggesting medical interventions for young kids. If calling your kid by a different name/pronoun and letting them wear different clothes makes them happy, why the hell not? If it turns out to be transient, you can go back to what you were doing before.
See also "They're just experimenting."

Cool. Participate in the experiment.
Read 5 tweets
Apr 18
It's been really fascinating seeing whether/how other people gender our baby--we use neutral language to describe them, but a lot of people jump to gendered terms. (that they conclude "boy" and "girl" roughly equally probably means we're doing *something* right?) @teaberryblue
I don't think it's deliberate most of the time--I suspect people don't even quite register the language we're using, and just pick up on what they interpret as gender cues from name/clothes/descriptors.
K's actual name may also be a factor--it's divided roughly evenly demographically, but people's individual experiences/contact with it are probably more gendered (I know mine has been, which would likely influence my assumptions if I heard the name w/o gender indication)
Read 4 tweets
Apr 6
I think a lot of cis people are quick to accept "groomer" myths because they assume their own experience of gender is universal. For *them* to identify as trans would in fact have required abusive levels of social coercion; and they can't fathom that anyone else is different.
What's doubly ironic is that the coercion it would take is *exactly the same kind trans kids are subjected to in a cisnormative society.* But instead of recognizing and rejecting that, they double down because the coerced outcome is what comes naturally to them.
Growing up trans in America is living steeped in continual, low-key conversion therapy. At its gentlest, it simply ignores your existence and experience. At its harshest--well, you can read the news.
Read 4 tweets
Jun 4, 2022
Cis people: If you can't see the relationship between exclusionary and exterminatory anti-trans policies, now is a good time to sit down and listen quietly.
Pundits have been calling for our nonexistence for years; now they are explicitly saying that there's no place for us in a "sane" world and citing things like the complications of our medical care as we age. (cont'd)
State after state in the US is passing legislation based on those principles, even if they're not outright stated. They're forcibly detransitioning youth and--as of this week--adults; ignoring or twisting medical evidence and best practices and risks.
Read 7 tweets
Apr 18, 2022
One of the most violent, awful bits of TERF shit that's been going around is the assertion that transwomen shouldn't have access to resources for sexual violence survivors; and as a former crisis center advocate, I think it's important to both challenge and unpack this. (1/)
The conversation so far has focused--rightly--on the ways that this impacts transwomen--misgendering, lack of access to vital resources. Transwomen a) are women who belong in women's spaces, and b) experience sexual violence at a higher rate than ciswomen. (2/)
But there's another unspoken and incredibly fucked up idea scaffolding the whole argument that I think is worth unpacking, and that's that men don't deserve access to resources for survivors of sexual violence. (3/)
Read 7 tweets

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