On #Occupotty And The Privilege Of Passing

[suzifrommd]

On #Occupotty And The Privilege Of Passing

by Marcy Cook  Wednesday, March 18th 2015 at 6:30 pm

http://www.themarysue.com/on-occupotty-and-the-privilege-of-passing/

We don't we see photos of non-passing trans people in campaigns or online because it's not what cisgender society wants to see, and it opens ourselves up to mockery and potentially physical danger. Neither option appeals to me; I don't post images of myself online for a reason. If you don't meet the "acceptable cisgender level of passing," you can expect very personal abuse. Decades of the media telling us we're the joke, the medical profession initially labelling us as mentally ill, the police abusing us and the courts allowing men to kill us using the "panic defence" – all of this has made transgender people careful. Those who pass blaze the way for the majority that don't; we need them, but they are a double-edged sword.

[Devlyn]

I feel the complete opposite, those who don't pass, but don't hide, blaze the trail. Like the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence say, I look like this so you can look anyway you like.

Hugs, Devlyn

[mmmmm]

Those who pass blaze the way for the majority that don't; we need them, but they are a double-edged sword.

Media exposure in recent years is mainly reserved for passing trans men and women. Is it because cis media creators only really want to present to public an image of passing trans people, or is it mainly because non-passing trans people don't really want any exposure in any way (at least majority)? It seems like it's the combination of both... and while a creating of more positive image in public (compared to 90s) definitely helps to raise the awareness and acceptance of passing trans people, I'm not shure that it really makes that much difference to non-passing trans people. I think it will take a lot more of non-passing and not-hiding people before any significant difference will be made. Where most average cis people don't have a problem perceiving a passing trans woman as just another woman, even after they had been told they are trans, it's a completely different situation to how they percieve and treat non-passing women, as many will still only see them as men who are trying to look like women. It's about changing a societys view on what is gender, what is sex, what is masculine, what is feminine... and it's not something that can be changed anytime soon.. and I have no useful idea of how to do that...

[jeni]

It's a tough question. My inclination is to think that focusing on the more passing transgender folks in the ads right now may be part of the better long-term approach. It's frustrating and unfair because it really does not include or represent the whole community, but if the goal is to change the world, I think that P.R. principles are more important in the short run. IMO the goal is to change public opinion. Sadly, the majority knows very little about transgender people, and most people have somewhere between neutral and strongly negative opinions of us. As wrong as it is, images showing trans women who read as male is more likely to shock them and reinforce their prejudices than to bring them around. (I only mention trans women here because from what I have seen, responses to female-reading trans men tend to be dismissive more than strongly negative.)

Changing society is hard, takes time, and there are a lot of elements to be addressed. Trying to do that all at once is just not likely to work. By using images that help people develop sympathy for our cause (and I by this I do not mean sympathy for us[/]), we can help get rid of the bathroom discrimination. It does not help with broader acceptance of trans people who do not closely fit the cis-normative expectations for appearance, but it doesn't have to. That is a different enough issue that a different approach is really needed.

We do need to be careful though, and this is a worry that I had (and is raised by the article). The selfies flying around right now do rely heavily on "do I look like I belong," which is of course the opposite of the right way to frame the question. If we end up with rules that say you have to use the bathroom you most "look like" you belong in, that's not an improvement. But I still think that these images are the right ones to help people start thinking about this. They don't contain the whole discussion, but they kick things off by showing that the proposed discriminatory rules don't actually mean quite what they sound like they might mean.