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Not at all. In almost every space I'm the wrong kind of queer and trans. Disabled, homeless, not passing in any way, and old. Fuck this state and fuck these privileged, exclusionary ablest, and classist assimilationists. Community? Doesn't fucking exist.
50/50. I live in a trans sanctuary city with a large LGBT presence. Pride events and businesses are welcoming, and people are generally nice. The cis friends I have left are really accepting. One of my best friends, who is a cis lesbian, stopped interacting with me after I came out. There's a local TERF activist who lives down the street from me who has a radio show that's fairly popular in our state. She does everything she can to make us feel unwelcome where we live. One victory: She used to vandalize stickers on road signs and buildings, put razor blades undernearth, and then the trans folks and allies put trans stickers over them -- this went on for years. Then I had the idea to put stickers of adorable kittens over her stickers instead, and that put a stop to the sticker war, seemingly for good. It's been almost two years now since we've seen any stickers.
I'm sorry your friend rejected you like that, wtf would THAT be something to end a friendship over? It's bigoted and awful. The terf activist sounds awful, how horrible it must feel to be so filled with hate. Nice plan with the stickers!
I in general tend to feel pretty included, but it's shocking how many cis LGBT people think they can reclaim trans slurs and try to explain to me why it's actually okay that the called me a trap or a tranny because they're reclaiming it. Like, even if you heard a trans person use a slur to describe themself, please, do not call me that. (I wanna be clear, not talking about this community, happens mostly IRL.)
In general it's pretty common to feel like people are trying to be inclusive, which is nice, but my god cis people just can't help talking over trans people about trans issues.
Ugh I hate that. I'd never refer to a gay man with a slur, it's not ok to do that. It's really not ok to claim a word for you
My policy with any minority is to not use slurs of any kind, "reclaimed" or otherwise. Precisely because the ethics and social dance around reclaimed slurs is very complicated and very easy to fuck up.
And there's no need for them. Anything that a slur, "reclaimed" or otherwise, says can be said without the "reclaimed" slur.
I think this is generally a good policy, but I'm going to add a tiny bit of nuance if that's alright. Language is changing and evolving constantly and nonuniformly: what might have been a slur decades ago is now a proper academic term ("queer") and what would have been lightly negative schoolyard insult is now pretty heinous in most circles (r* slur).
I think the important takeaway here is that you can't reclaim slurs for groups you are not a part of, full stop. If someone from a group requests to be referred to by something that sounds disrespectful to you (it/its pronouns is a huge one), it's not up to you to decide better for that person, you know? But you shouldn't also extrapolate that to other people of that group without confirming with individuals either.
For a quick example, when I came out to my mom she was horrified that I would use queer to describe my sexuality and my community, because she had only ever known that word as a slur. But we talked it out and she understands now that you can say queer with pride instead of hate, you know?
So I'm okay getting outpaced by folks who want to feel empowered by language that has been used to put them and their community down in the past (and I think little shits making people feel bad by saying they're reclaiming something they don't have a claim to should be told to fuck off and grow up).
All the power to the younger generations on reclaiming slurs, but as someone who is trans I'm not gonna be running around dropping the T word anytime soon. It's still a rather hurtful term for many per my understanding. Perhaps when I'm old and gray and the young adults have no clue it used to be one I will join in on using it.
I tend to feel included, it’s super UwU
Super. Was at a WLW meetup today that was like half trans and very comfy. I like my town
I'm not super out or involved in the community beyond here really.
IRL I have both het, bi, and gay friends and they are all very supportive and sweet! So I'm rather happy with that. The progress flag hasn't caught on much here, but I don't know that that means much. Some find it kinda messy visually and prefer just the rainbow.
I've noticed online that there are quite a few "allies" who are only allies to a point; other queer people who don't take us seriously when we talk about the issues we care about and face on the regular and excuse their apathy or transphobia by explaining that they are gay and an ally. I don't know if they are just a vocal minority or a more significant portion of the LGBT than I hope they are. Mostly it seems the LGBT movement is open to including us, at least in theory, so until I am proven otherwise I'm gonna hope that this is actually true, and that we won't be thrown under the bus in the name of respectability politics as we have been in the past. Quite a few stonewall inspired organizations ironically didn't support trans people or those doing drag.
Mostly I am hopeful, even if there is increasing violence and discrimination against us. People are more vocally supporting us now than ever it feels like.
I'm a big fan of just the rainbow it's all of us together. If we expand it to include groups we're by nature excluding some. I see it as we all stand together under the flag.
The silver lining to the anti trans bile is how many people stand with the T because they see what the community is dealing with. I think some of the reason the bile is so bad is people can see the world is changing, trans are accepted more and the bigots feel they're losing.
I think the progress pride flag is an acknowledgement of the unfortunate inequality present in our community specifically. LGBTQ+ has made huge strides in acceptance since the start of the gay rights movement, but most of those benefits have gone to cis and/or white members of the community, while trans people and POCs are the ones putting their bodies on the line for those rights disproportionately. I like seeing the progress flag out and about as a promise that we see those sidelined groups and we will champion their rights as hard as we champion our own. I hope there's a day when we don't need to make that promise explicitly, but I fear it may be a long time coming.
Those are great points! If nothing people should pick the version of the flag that's right for them. Self identification is crucial!
For me there is comfort in knowing for sure that people flying the progress flag support trans rights to some degree, but I do like the rainbow flag too! They fly it all around town in all of June and it really does make me happy to see.
Yes I get that
You know, I've been thinking of upgrading my personal protection a bit. Buying better kit and training in its use. I can't imagine a better reason to do so than to have something that will help me defend sisters who are even more discriminated against than I am.
In my shopping cart now.
I'll go looking for an instructor in July.