Dear Cis people,
i-sauntered-vaguely-downwards:
We need to stop this.
(Yes, “we,” not “you.” I am one of you and I can’t pretend not to be).
You know why cis people are called cis scum? You know why said scum is supposed to die? And you know why every single one of us is guilty by association?
Because shit like “dearnoncispeople” exists. Because there are cis people out there who whine and cry about having “cis” as an identifier because they don’t like being identified. Because when us cis people feel the discomfort of hearing examples of cissexism pointed out to us, we don’t think it applies to us.
The thing is, we may want to say that just because we remember someone’s desired pronouns correctly or we go out of our way to say “trans women are real women!” that we are some sort of revolutionary. We’re not. I am not. You know what that’s called? That’s called being a decent fucking human being.
And the problem is, for people like me who feel compelled to say “we’re not all like that” (and trust me, I’ve learned to stop fucking going to that excuse), we’re really over-simplifying. Cis people are not simply divided into two groups (people who openly hate trans* people and people who don’t). It’s a lot more complicated than that. There are people who recognize a trans* person’s right to exist but still go on saying that they have “mental illnesses,” that the desire for surgery or hormone treatment is “vanity,” and
A little while ago I came under some fire for identifying myself as “not scum” and at first I felt attacked. Then I opened my fucking ears and realized that what they were saying is true. We can’t just go around patting ourselves on the back for being begrudgingly tolerant.
You - and I - need to start here: instead of trying to just say that we’re “not all like that,” we all need to apologize for what we have done and let happen. And even then, we can’t just say something like “I’m sorry for what other cis people have done.”
And then we need to make it better.
Sincerely,
Bree
So if anyone wants an example of doing shit right, this post is a pretty good example.
- Leon
