- I really do wish that some trans people
would frankly wake the (censored) up and realize
that, yes, it's true, what @piggytaiwan says,
that a lot of us have to live in this certain way,
adhere to these certain standards in order to survive,
but that is oppressive.
It's oppressive to have to live in a way
where you must adhere to these narrow standards
or else you're not going to get the access
to the care that you need.
So, Hunter Schafer is a trans woman
who plays the role of Jules on "Euphoria",
and for that reason, a lot of people love her.
And as you guys know, I did a review of "Euphoria".
I watched the entire first season within a day
and I had my thoughts, especially about Jule's storyline
and things like that.
I enjoyed her immensely in the role,
and unfortunately she is in some trouble right now
because she liked a post that a lot of people
are considering to be transmedicalist.
So I wanted to read the post with you guys,
respond and just kind of like talk about it,
open up a conversation about how we feel about this,
because I have, I wouldn't say divided feelings,
but I definitely have complex and nuanced feelings,
so I figured that I would try to open up the conversation
by talking about this.
This is the post that Hunter Schafer liked.
It is posted by somebody named @piggytaiwan.
The post says, "I hope all of the people, enbies,
"who fought for trans identities
"no longer being considered a medical condition
"that requires dysphoria are happy because you've won.
"The red states are beginning to agree with you.
"HRT and gender affirming surgery
"are no longer deemed medically necessary
"for adults in Florida,
"and it's not going to stop there.
"That means more trans people
"will have to pay for their transitions out of pocket,
"forcing more of us into sex work.
"Y'all just couldn't stand to let binary trans people
"be the voice of this community.
"You had to dismantle all the guidelines
"around being trans to fit your narrative
"so you could feel valid,
"and then you demonize trans people who challenge your ideas
"and called them truscum slash transmedicalists.
"What you don't understand
"is that binary trans women and men
"don't have the luxury of playing around
"with what it means to be trans the same way you do.
"You challenge gender ideologies
"from the safety of a CIS body
"that requires no medical treatment.
"We have to play the game and live by the guidelines
"that CIS people have created for us
"because that's how we survive.
"You're not helping.
"You're not dismantling the gender binary.
"You're not expanding the minds of CIS people.
"You are making them hate us.
"For the last time, I'm begging non-binary people
"to take a seat and let binary trans people,
"and more specifically,
"Black trans women, be the voices of this community
"because they are the ones at risk."
Now, there's a lot,
there's a lot to talk about.
There's a lot of things in that.
There's a lot, it's a it's a lot, okay?
So I wanna start out by saying,
as I've said many times on this channel,
I've been blogging about being transgender
for over 15 years, right?
I've been on YouTube as long as I have lived
life as a trans person,
and I will start by saying that it's true to some degree
that the conversation has shifted, right?
The conversation has certainly shifted in a way
where it's a bit different now.
When I was coming up,
the people that you guys would now call non-binary
we would call gender queer,
and there were certainly conversations around people
who identified outside of the gender binary.
That's always been a thing,
and there was always this rift
between people who felt that way
and people who were very binary trans-identified.
A lot of that relates to the fact that for years,
transgender people had to assimilate
into this very specific way of being transgender,
have this very specific way of expressing their transness
and experiencing dysphoria,
in order for them to gain access to hormones.
And ever since I have been having these conversations,
there have been people who would identify themselves
as transsexuals, which they see as a more serious,
more committed version of a trans person,
and people who identify out of the binary.
That's always been a clash,
but the big difference between now and then
is that those conversations are now
a bit more of our public discourse.
We're having more public conversations
about being transgender now than we did 15 years ago
because we now have representation
and we've got "Pose",
we've got people on "RuPaul's Drag Race".
We've got a lot of different
trans people in the spotlight right now,
and so there are more conversations being had
about being transgender.
And as a response to that,
people have fought against transgender people
being able to have upward mobility.
And so I wanna start out by admitting and acknowledging
that, yeah, the conversation has certainly changed,
but here's where this @piggytaiwan person is very wrong.
At the end of the day,
when we're complaining about a transgender woman
no longer gaining access to insurance coverage
for her medically necessary trans-related treatments
for gender dysphoria, non-binary people
are not the reason why red states are fighting against that.
Non-binary people are not the reason
why people are deciding to move against transgender people.
What you might be led to believe
if your conversations are very limited
within this kind of truscum/transmedicalist thing,
where you think that, oh, they're embarrassing us.
These people over here who say
that they don't need dysphoria, they're embarrassing us.
But the reality of it is,
is that they hate all of us.
So this is the part that gets me, right?
In the same states where people
are moving against transgender folks, which side note,
if you guys are not aware, months and months ago,
we had a conversation
about the We Don't Say the Gay bill in Florida,
which was also connected to a lot of other things
that started as the whole, what about the kids thing?
We don't want kids to be able to be transitioning
and things like that.
We don't want kids to be able to have surgery
and hormones and all this fear-mongering
around trans kids transitioning and things like that.
And Florida, like a lot of other states,
has moved to criminalize in some cases
treatment of transgender children.
In Florida at least, that conversation has shifted
from we don't want kids to be able to gain access to care,
to we don't want adults to gain access to care.
So what they're fighting against right now
is insurance companies basically covering trans care.
And the way that this is gonna actually end up turning out
is that less people are going to be able
to have their care covered by insurance,
which means that there's going to be more people
who can't afford very low-cost transition things.
And that's the issue.
It's expanded from, what about the kids,
to basically trying to make it
so that no one can transition medically?
And the thing, I'm giggling, because, look,
this is gonna sound really harsh,
but I think you have to be
really disconnected from reality
to think that the Republicans who stood around
and wanna fight against the most idealized transsexual
are also going to be the people who look at you,
the idealized transsexual, and say,
oh, you're one of the good ones.
You get to have access to hormones.
You're one of the good ones, you did everything correctly.
No, these people who are fighting against treatment
for transgender people generally
are terrified of the idea of a transgender person
transitioning young being able to assimilate
into their gender, being able to be who they are
and grow up to be the gender that they are,
they're fighting against that.
They're trying to make that less of a thing.
So they're not going to be connected
to the conversation enough
to hear that you did all the things correctly,
you transitioned the right way,
you said all the right, like,
they don't care about that shit
because they hate all of us.
And I want for this to really sink in.
They don't want us to be here.
These people who are making these laws
are not making these laws
because they heard a non-binary person
say that they don't need hormones
or that they don't need dysphoria to be transgendered.
They don't fuck with any of us.
Something else that I wanted to mention
is I kind of felt like the mention
of supporting the voices of Black transgender women
who are binary to be kind of trite, honestly,
because this is my observation.
I'm not really speaking from facts or anything,
but the vast majority of transmedicalists I've known
have not been Black.
You know, a lot of them like miss @piggytaiwan,
at least from what I can see,
please correct me if I'm wrong, are white, right?
And I don't see this overrepresentation
of Black trans folks in those conversations at all,
probably because quite a few Black trans folks
deal with poverty, right,
on top of all the other shit that they deal with.
And so even this idea of trans care being accessible to them
is often very farfetched, right?
It's often not as accessible as it would be
to a lot of people who have more resources
and more access to medical transition, right?
And so I didn't really understand that particular point.
I didn't understand why that was inserted.
Probably because, yes, it is technically true
that we should highlight and underline
more Black trans voices.
But, you know, as a Black trans voice,
as a trans woman who's been making content on here
for as long as I've been making,
I just wanna say that my voice has almost never felt
like it was important, right?
Obviously people, you know, listen to me.
I have a fairly large following, right?
But for all the talk
of we need to center Black trans voices,
that really hasn't been my personal experience
with these conversations, right?
Should we center more Black trans voices?
Yes, but will we often default to white trans folks?
Yeah, that's been pretty much my experience,
and I'm sure I'm not alone.
And here's another layer of it, as well.
Non-binary has a lot of different types of people under it.
Some non-binary people are people
who don't experience dysphoria.
Some of those people do very much exist.
There are also quite a few,
quite a few non-binary people
who very much do live with gender dysphoria,
who very much do receive medical care
to treat their gender dysphoria,
who very much do need insurance coverage
for their access to care.
Those people are equally affected by these laws, okay?
It's not, again, it's not like they're sitting back
and being like, oh my God, oh my gosh, you know what?
We listened to the debate
between non-binary folks and binary folks,
and because the non-binary folks
said that they don't need hormones,
we're gonna make it so that none of y'all have.
That's delusional.
And this is the sad thing.
I get why this @piggytaiwan person
feels the way that they do.
I've said it so many times, but I used to be
as an extension of my own desire to be stealth
and to fade into the background
very much a person who felt this way, right?
And when you're in that head space,
you can really convince yourself
that you're one of the good ones if you act a certain way,
walk a certain way, talk a certain way.
And your experience is often going to be
that because you have assimilated, because you pass,
people are more likely to treat you better.
There is something to be said
about how true it is that when a transgender person
assimilates into their gender,
that often does indeed mean
they live a better quality of life.
However, the idea that these people
who are moving against your rights
are only doing so because a non-binary person
decided that they didn't need dysphoria
is just not being realistic.
I'm not gonna mention names.
I'm not gonna get too specific,
but one of the sad things that I've seen
with some of this transmedicalist shit
is that you see in some situations
that these trans women end up putting themselves
in positions where they're faced
with the right-leaning people who fucking hate them.
Yeah, these right-leaning people
will be there to support you
when you're saying all this sort of shit,
when you're using your platform to lambast
and disrespect other transgender people.
However, they don't fuck with you at all.
There's a very popular transmedicalist I'm not gonna name
who I remember they did a live stream.
They're on this panel
and there was this conservative woman on the panel.
And this transmedicalist trans woman was talking
about how she agrees that kids
shouldn't gain access to hormones and die,
and blah, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada, yada.
And then this conservative woman pulled back and said,
"If you agree with that,
"the best thing you can do is grow your beard out
"and start acting like a man, 'cause that's what you are."
You guys who believe that these people are on your side
because you did everything correctly,
because you agree,
'cause you went through the whole process,
you're not functioning in reality.
You're not functioning in reality.
There are definitely some people
who do see you as a more genuine version of a trans person
because you did everything correctly.
But at the end of the day,
the kind of people who wanna make it so
that a trans person can't transition young enough
to be able to experience their life in a certain way,
to be able to be the idealized transsexual,
these people are not going to be on your side in any way.
You're targeting the wrong people
by saying that non-binary people are to blame for this.
By saying that non-binary people
are the reason why you no longer have the access
to hormones that you need, that's just not true.
That's just not accurate.
That's just not being reasonable or realistic.
You just trying to attack somebody who also needs this,
in a lot of situations, the same care as you do.
It feels good to lambast and to dismiss
and to attack other people when you are down,
but I do think it's important to recognize
that even in the false scenario where a CIS person
turns to a binary person and a non-binary person
and hears the debate amongst each other
and decides based on what the non-binary person says
that transgender people in general
should no longer have access to hormones,
the person who has power
in that situation is not the non-binary person.
Even in that false scenario,
where we're using a person who doesn't experience dysphoria
to determine whether or not any transgender people
get to have access to care,
the non-binary person isn't the person in power there.
This CIS person is.
And I really do wish that some trans people
would frankly wake the fuck up and realize that,
yes, it's true what @piggytaiwan says,
that a lot of us have to live in this certain way,
adhere to these certain standards in order to survive,
but that is oppressive.
That is oppressive, right?
It's oppressive to have to live in a way
where you must adhere to these narrow standards
or else you're not going to get the access
to the care that you need.
And the thing about it is,
when you really look into the kind of questions
that people used to ask people
in order to you get them to qualify for hormones,
were really fucking bad, you guys.
Like one of the questions people would often get asked
is what about their sexuality?
And if you were a transgender woman
who for example was attracted to women, right?
If you were a transgender woman
who was anything other than this idealized image
of a heterosexual woman, right?
They could use that as a reason to not give you hormone.
And what I hate about this is as trans folks,
we often do have an understanding of ourselves
in a way that CIS people just won't,
but the reality of it is CIS people hold the power.
CIS people have the ability to decide whether or not
we have the access to care that we need,
and that's fucked up, you guys.
That is fucked up.
So why accept it?
Why embrace it?
Why even allow for CIS people
to have that much power over you.
We can't allow what they do, but at the end of the day,
you're attacking the wrong person.
You're attacking the wrong people.
And a lot of times when I hear a lot of this shit,
it just, it really does make me feel
a bit like this is a position,
and this might be really condescending and wrong,
of a person who just needs to grow a little bit.
Because oftentimes stuff like this
comes from a perspective of scarcity.
There's only so many hormones to go around,
so the people who have it have to be this and that,
but like, at the end of the day, at the end of the day
we should not be in the situation that we're in,
where we have to measure sex work
in order to gain access to hormones.
But the system that we're trying to work within,
the system that the idealized transsexual
is trying to work within, is oppressive.
And anything in my view
that breaks that system down a little bit
is better for all of us.
Transgender women should not have to consider sex work
because they have to gain access to hormones.
Transgender women shouldn't have to sit there
and have to qualify speaking to someone over and over,
a CIS person, over and over again before that person agrees
that they are actually trans
and should be able to live their life.
I just want for people
to think about this a little bit more.
I think that people really just need
to process this a bit more.
You're attacking the wrong person.
This is a misdirection.
Like, to me it's funny that this @piggytaiwan person
thinks that these Republicans are sitting around,
like, questioning the validity of non-binary identity.
I'm sorry, they're not even talking about that,
I promise you.
Like, they're probably not even aware of that.
They don't care about that.
As deep as it goes, is they don't want trans people to exist
because they fucking disrupt
their idealized vision of society.
They disrupt their idea that everyone
should be the gender that they were assigned at birth
and adhere very neatly to these very narrow roles
based on that identity, based on that designation.
That's why they wanna fuck this shit up.
That's why they wanna make it
so that less people are able to physically transition.
It's not because they're sitting there
and considering the nuance of gender discussion.
No, they think both you, the idealized transsexual,
and the non-binary person who's gender nonconforming
are freaks, weirdos,
people who shouldn't be able to exist or be seen at all.
And I think the sooner people recognize that,
the sooner that we can all come together
and work towards removing ourselves
from the standards that are oppressive towards us.