Quote from: undautri on November 30, 2017, 01:34:05 PM
Because I look like a lesbian. That is how it affects me.
Beyond not being sure what a lesbian (or gay man or trans person) looks like, you know you do have some control of your appearance? If how you present yourself causes problems, presentation is in fact a hell of a lot easier (at least IMX) to change than say changing aggressive or passive aggressive behaviors or really any mental habits.
Also, I didn't bother to note this in my first response but you are aware of the irony in expressing both anger at a very large segment of the population, extending to some fairly harsh ideas about their effects on the state of the world and their effectiveness as activists (what some people now call she's).
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I disagree, anger has caused nothing but detriment to my life. Articulate and firm people are what we need, not necessarily anger. We are currently living in a culture of reactive, blind rage and fear. It seems quite hard to find someone who isn't angry these days, even things as simple as a hair style people seem to get angry over.
And I acknowledge that there is a time and a place for anger... but the time and place is not when someone holds a door open for you.
Undautri, Gertrude et al, I think you're rather confusing anger with aggression. To be sure, I agree that when things can get done without getting to a point of anger that's great and sure, we can all single kumbayah my Lord etc. MLK, Gandhi and others renounced violence and set an examples for the rest of us that continue to guide how activism and protest are most effectively accomplished (Huey Newton, Malcolm X and others did not and it would be hard to argue that they weren't effective in effecting social change). None of these people renounced anger, here's what Gandhi said about personal anger:
QuoteI have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.
If you only want assertive and articulate people in your movement then it's not going to be a very big movement. Yes we hopefully all strive for that
Important social changes anger has been a part of:
Compton's cafeteria riots, Stonewall, desegregation, the end of the Vietnam war.
About being part of LGBT&c, of course we are. We were at Stonewall. Because we tend to be more visible, especially when we can't or choose not to pass we are more likely to subjected to violence. We're also a much smaller demographic and while yes, there are trans specific organizations, we will never have the kind of lobbying or legal advocacy power of something like NOW. So having these people as allies is important I'm (ymmv of course).
I know the narrative is that it's not about sex or sexuality and that's true insofar as we know very well medically what happens in the brain in utero to make someone trans and that's not related to sexual preference. However many trans people are not sexually straight and probably the majority of transitioners can't strictly be seen as straight because, well if you change gender then unless you're asexual, you're probably going to be viewed and /or self identity as l, g or b at some point.
For my part, realizing I'm female has been a route to finally being comfortable in my sexuality and I count myself as lbpk. I came up in the queer leather scene and I can tell you that there are a lot of trans people in the lgbq arena, that's how I know so many personally.
For my part, I'm not at all a separatist and having identified as lesbian across a period when feminism was decidedly not intersectional and at least the lesbian groups I knew were open to time spent with ftm people, they pretty much excluded MTFs. So transitioning after so many years of that with local lesbian organizations having completely pivoted to being open to all feminine identified people has been a personally amazing thing.
