Rant

So first of all let me say, I fucking love tumblr.

(This is where I post pictures of really attractive people, kittens, and bitch about my life)

I also really like the blog MTF Confessions on tumblr. The basic idea is that MTF identified individuals can submit confessions anonymously, which I think is really awesome and empowering. But when I logged on to tumblr this morning I saw this.

"323) I'm tired. Every trans blog out there is run almost solely by trans men. Every trans meme focus on trans men (I can only think of Transrex as an exception). FTM confessions has three times the number of confessions here. Every new blog run by a trans person I find, they're afab and masculine. No one seems to care about us."

Feel free to bash me, but I really, really, think this is the wrong attitude for our community. I don't want to bash the person who wrote this specifically, but I feel like this sentiment is fairly prevalent within the MTF spectrum community, and really needs to be addressed.

Really I have two big problems with this notion.

First of all, it encourages oppositional sexism. Which is bad. We shouldn't judge our community of mtf spectrum individuals against the community ftm spectrum individuals. We are all fighting for the same thing. Trans* rights, awareness, and advocacy. This is not us vs. them. We are all on the same side as gender variant people. Although we may face different challenges and privledges, when it comes down to it, trans* people are one community, and we should support each other.

To foster an us vs. them mentality which splits between the sexes and genders of trans* people just seems incredibly counter-intuitive to me. We, of all people, of all communities, should be supporting our trans* siblings, regardless of gender or sex. This should be intuitively obvious, and if it's not I really think you should probably reexamine the way you think about sex and gender.

My other problem with it is that it seems very "Poor me" to me.

Know who this guy is?

Mahatmas Ghandi helped to free India from the British. He was generally a pretty good guy but also sort of a dick, considering he let his wife die of pneumonia because he disallowed her from having penicillin because he thought god would save her. He did have a quite a few good quotes though, and one of my personal is favorites is this "Be the Change you want to see in the world".

If you don't think there are enough blogs by MTF spectrum individuals, and you happen to identify as a MTF Spectrum individual, then it seems to me that the obvious solution is to start your own blog.

If you're just gonna sit on your ass and whine about how shitty our community is without actually doing something, then I'm not going to have much respect for you. You are not creating solutions. You are not creating a sense of community. You may not be part of the problem, but I'll be fucked sideways if you think you're part of the solution. And if you already have a blog, use it to encourage others to create their own blogs and/or events!

(This is where I'm gonna do the little "practice what you preach" thing, and encourage any trans* people reading this to create their own blogs, and help create trans-visibility, it's really not hard, and you'll be glad you did)

I'll be the first to admit, we, as a community (and not just the mtf community, but also the trans community and queer communities in general) need more vocal advocates. We need more noise. We have very specific problems that need to be addressed by society, and they're not going to be changed by us sitting quiet, and hoping that the government, liberals, the greater lgb community, or anybody else is going to help us. 

I mean Jesus-tap-dancing-Christ people! We need awareness! We need advocacy! We need intra-community support networks! We need more rainbows, Goddamnit!

(That's a little better)

But most of all, we need people like YOU. You are our community. If you see an aspect of the community you don't like then make an attempt to change it. If you don't think you're ready then wait. But there comes a time when just being a spectator isn't enough. Start your blog.

Again this is NOT meant as an attack for the person who wrote this confession. I've heard this sort of sentiment before, and I really think that this sort of thinking is a problem we as a community need to be really critical of, because I think it's a type of thinking we simply cannot afford to have. It's self-defeating, and not at all helpful to us.


Anyway, leave some comments, whether you agree with me or think I'm full of shit. Let me know!