transzine: trains a guide for beginners

trains IT’S EA

a guide for beginners SIER T

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HOW HOW TO TO SUPPORT, SUPPORT, HUMANIZE, HUMANIZE, AND AND ADVOCATE ADVOCATE FOR FOR TRANS TRANS PEOPLE PEOPLE IN IN YOUR YOUR LIFE LIFE AND AND IN IN THE THE WORLD WORLD MORE MORE GENERALLY GENERALLY this one goes out to all my cisters!

e SL f dEfeN se self defense for trans and gender non-conforming people means something different than it does for cisgender and non-trans people. daily interactions with strangers, friends, loved ones, and family members can necessitate acts of self defense. trans people are often faced with having to defend their gender identity in the many contexts of their daily experience (depending, of course, on where they live, how they relate to their community, how they identify, as well as how they present themself, among other things). with this in mind, it is important and urgent that cis and non-trans allies hold themselves and those around them accountable for the explicit and subtle ways in which they put the onus on trans people to prove or defend their gender identity, or for the ways in which they let this very real and serious violence go unquestioned or unackowledged. this self defense takes many forms--for example, being misgendered is a very common hurdle that trans people have to overcome literally every day. being misgendered always prompts some act of self-defense, whether it be having to internally validate themself or externally correcting the person who’s doing the misgendering. how do you contribute to the violence, both on a micro and macro level, that trans people undergo daily? how do you normalize transphobia in your own communities? how do you “other� the trans people in your life, consciously or unconsciously?

check yourself language has words can be power violent think b4 u speak

LESSON #1

assumptions make an ass out of you and... you. you can never know someone’s gender based on the way they look, sound, or come across to you. unless you have explicitly asked someone what their pronouns are, anything you use to refer to them is an assumption. always ask someone what their pronouns are. it’s not rude or awkward to ask, but what is rude and awkward is misgendering someone! never single out people who appear gender nonconforming by asking them and only them what their pronouns are in a group of gender conforming people. especially in a classroom or recurring group setting, it’s important to ask everyone what their pronouns are. remember, you can’t know unless you ask. also, it’s important for the safety and comfortability of everyone in a group setting to know every individual’s pronouns, to avoid misgendering.

don’t don’t equate equate gender gender with with body body parts, parts, bodily bodily functions, functions, or or anything anything else else really really stop making art about period blood. find something more creative to represent your feminine experience / your womanhood. having a vagina does not imply womanhood or femininity experiencing patriarchal there are ways to talk about the social, political, and cultural regulation of certain bodies (that get periods) without perpetuating gender essentialism and the gender binary.

oppression does not necessarily involve any particular bodily function or body part and that way is not through equating period blood / periods / vaginas with gender

this also goes for other body-related stuff, like peeing standing up, having a penis, having boobs, having long hair, etc etc if you HAVE to talk about it, also “pussy hats” and any other form of find a way to do so without “feminism” that relies on pussy imagery implying gender and rhetoric is pseudo-feminist bullshit. it’s not progressive or helpful, it’s trans exclusive, transphobic, and concerningly backwards-minded.

LESSON #3 acknowledge acknowledge that that you you have have aa people are not the only people who have progender gender trans nouns, or a gender identity, or who are affected by / affect the gender binary

-G.L.O.S.S.

photo by kaija xiao

The difference between perspective and opinion

by natalie~milo~nico (soon) she/her~he/him~they/them

You’re not phobic, you’re an asshole You can’t read an ethnography/sociology/my history To understand Titles I hold In fact, you don’t need to understand anything even.

You just need to not be an asshole.

When Social Theory Tries to Teach Interpersonal Skills Today’s topic is language And aren’t pronoun changes profound!!

Because you’re asking someone to change their language!

What a noble endeavour!!!

To resist pronoun change is to deny an identity :(:( And I’m sitting there like why the fuck did she feel entitled to teach on transness rn But I can’t leave the class because the door is too far and everyone is frozen And i’m in a full blown panic attack that feels like dreaming.

The next class she asks for feedback and if anyone has felt abstraction.

So I ask her “hey bitch remember what you did in the last fucking class!?”

Understanding Teach a class on trans oppression But it’s not about me Transness is the tool you use To teach on other things lol whoops I spent a while using identities To get leniency in classes I couldn’t perform because Of those identities.

When she’s just an asshole My housemate said I won’t be able to manipulate people once I’m a man My housemate is PMSing When he’s an abstractor I like this guy and he noticed.

He thinks he’s into trans bois now (it’s me)

drawing by kaija xiao

stop making everything about you try hard to not feel personally victimized by trans people who complain about cis people, even if they’re being overly generalizing, even if they’re being accutely specific about something that you do regularly. even if it is about you, take this moment to not make the situation at hand have to pivot around your cisgender experience--for once. because literally everything else in society already does that for you. if a trans person is complaining about cis people or something that they experience, chances are there is some very valid reasoning behind it and they really just want you to listen and take their anger and pain seriously.

it’s not about you anymore

meme by femme4memes

LeS soN # 5 DON’T STARE OR GAWK AT GENDER NON-CONFORMING / TRANS PEOPLE it may seem like this is a no-brainer--i thought so too. apparently it’s not. staring is rude no matter who you are or how you identify. but trans and gender non-conforming people already (usually) feel hypervisible in public space. you may not realize it, but your prolonged eye contact is actually making that 10 times worse. stop. whether you’re trying to figure out their gender (ew?) or you’re super attracted to them (like ok, don’t objectify / other them tho), it doesn’t matter just stop.

Lesson Lesson#6 is free. while yes, trans people are the most knowledgable about their own experiences (as is any individual about their own lived experience), it is not our job to answer your questions and fill in the gaps for you about why or how something is transphobic. and remember, don’t take it personally. being trans can feel tiring enough as is, we don’t need any extra work expected of us. and that’s the distinction: if a trans person feels willing and able to share their experience or teach about something relating to their identity, then that is obviously fine. it’s not cool, tho, to expect trans people to do this work for you. literally, google is free.

It is hard to even begin to talk about the experience of being invisibilized. There isn’t one moment in which one comes to understand their place in the gender hierarchy. If you are non-cis, you probably learn it after years of “othering”, or being singled-out based on cis/het conventions that you fail to uphold.

The experience of being invisibilized is a subtle one, naturally.

It comes on slowly like a lead blanket, making it ever more hard to breathe. You might notice that you are never offered help at stores, that people unapologetically bump into you, or that your straight/cis friends never ask you about your sex life. And while each one of these moments isn’t enough to elicit a response, the constant bombardment by lessons of “your place” in society is enough to cause real pain. Because I am entitled to the same verbal, physical, emotional, and intellectual space as everyone else and am continuously denied it, I begin to believe that the space I am granted is the space I should take up.

When I go into a public place, I am ever more aware of the coldness with which I am received. I don’t meet the beauty standards of cis women, so I am not fit to talk to them. I don’t meet the hyper-masculine standards of cis men, so they won’t listen to me. This happens among friends, family, professors, peers, and strangers. I don’t think most people are even conscious that they’re doing it, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening and it isn’t harmful. When I enter a conversation among cis people, they nev-

er fail to remind me that they have welcomed me into their space and how selfless they are for shedding a glance at me. I want to tell them that I’m not grateful.

When I tell my mom and sister about my experiences, they say that the same thing happens to them, equating my trans existence with their cis-female existence. This effectually denies my experience in a way that is just as silencing as the acts themselves. Being invisibilized isn’t unique to being trans, it is something every marginalized group experiences, but those experiences are different and can’t be equated.

It is important to acknowledge that the experiences of being trans-masc and trans-femme are not the same. While transfemmes are commonly hypervisible-ized, being the center of the trans experience in the public eye, trans-mascs often slide into public invisibility. I acknowledge that being invisibilized is not restricted to trans-masculines. I also acknowledge that transfemmes, particularly trans-femmes of color, experience physical danger and fear in ways that most trans-mascs do not. However, I do think it is important to discuss how widely being invisibilized affects trans-masculines, particularly those that are non-passing.

Acknowledge Acknowledge trans trans people. people. It’s It’s not not that that fucking fucking hard. hard.

meme by goldnosering

LeSsOn #8 don’t privilege genders that conform to the binary don’t ever complain about having to use they/ them pronouns for somebody sounds like a you problem if someone’s pronouns confuses you or makes you uncomfortable, that is 100% something you gotta work out with yourself separate from said person. there is no such thing as “really” being trans, or being a “real” trans person. the only thing that qualifies someone as being trans is their own self-identification as so. nonbinary and gender non-conforming people usually face more resistance to their identity and gender expression than binary trans people do.

cut cut cutthis this thisout out out

What happens when we cast cis actors as trans people? A cis man playing a trans woman is using his craft to tell the audience that trans women are still essentially men. A cis woman playing a trans man is using her craft to dilute the complicated and diverse trans experience into an acting challenge.

What happens when we cast trans actors as trans people? A trans woman playing a trans woman gives a young trans girl a role model. A trans woman playing a cis woman affirms the often-attacked trans womanhood. A non-binary artist portraying a non-binary character shows the depressingly gender-traditionalist Hollywood culture that audiences want movies and stories as diverse as them.

-james doll

I definitely don’t want to tell trans people that they need to buy things in order to fully come into themselves as a trans person. But at the same time, you look at all of the images that are available in fashion and in the greater image industry, and you don’t see yourself. You kind of feel like you’re chasing something you can never attain. To see a trans body in this ideal space—on a cover, in an ad—these are spaces that have immense cultural power to dictate what is beautiful, what is glamorous, what is aspirational, what is sexy, what is clean.

That can be very powerful and helpful in the de-stigmatization of trans bodies.

-hari nef

never out someone’s trans status for them this happens in subtle ways that you may not even realize. for example, double checking someone’s pronouns with them in front of a group of people who they aren’t close with or who don’t know that they are trans. the intention here is good, but it’s probably safer to ask this person privately.

meme by da mothafucken sharez0ne