TERF WARz

in which Faust entertains purposeful violence, presents as a gender-ambiguous menace, and wears PVC sweatpants.

A couple weeks ago, I posted a note on here with a photo of me showing my campus outfit of the day. I never really intended to use Substack as a sort of Web 2.0 social network (and I still don’t intend to, but recognize the value of certain W2.0 features) but I figured in an effort to ~build my network~ I’d share something lite that brings me joy: fashion, and by extension, outfitting.

Since largely abandoning algorithm-driven social media, I’ve quickly forgotten how you can post something and through engagement, it will keep going and going and going in terms of visibility. This isn’t inherently bad, but it does mean a casual or throwaway post can suddenly end up clogging your notifications for the next month because new people are constantly engaging with it.

So I post this photo in which I’m wearing a shirt that says “SAY THE GODDAMN PRONOUNS MOTHER FUCKER” on it in trans pride flag colors, a pair of PVC sweatpants, some leather gloves, and for good measure, a green toque. Oh, and I guess I took it in a public bathroom on campus. More on that, later.

Here’s the thing about inflammatory visibility to me: it is deeply performative (duh?), but it also makes abundantly clear what my stance on trans rights is: you fuck with my trans family, I beat your head in with a baseball bat.

I’ve seen a lot of posturing lately, at least more than usual, from both right-wingers and (generally) well-meaning liberals about respectability and finger-wagging about sending “the wrong message” that won’t “sway anyone to [my] side.” In case there is any doubt: I am not looking to change minds or engage in debate when I invoke violence or profanity with my clothing choices; I am making a threat. I am purposefully engaging in violent imagery because fundamental trans rights are not up for debate, ever.

“So much for the tolerant left,” both of these general groups retort, to which I remind everyone the left is not known for its tolerance! An understanding that humans, fundamentally, regardless of race, socioeconomic status, gender identity, orientation, or otherwise deserve to exist is not tolerance so much as it is just the bare fucking minimum. I’m not tolerant of anyone who objects to someone’s fundamental existence.

I don’t have to understand what it’s like to be trans, or to be Black, or even what it’s like to be truly poor to empathize with and support peoples’ fundamental livelihood. The concept of “walk a mile in someone’s shoes?” Irrelevant. Doesn’t matter. We will literally never know what it feels like to be someone else and that is okay. This is an acceptable, normal limitation of the self. But it doesn’t mean I can’t empathize and it doesn’t mean I vilify people for fundamental traits and experiences I don’t understand.

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So I post this photo, right, because it feels like the bare minimum right now for me to be violently and visibly in solidarity with my trans family. I always say allyship is farcical, because allyship so often centers allies rather than the groups allies claim to support, but if you wish to be an ally (to anyone, to any of us) I think doing it through potentially compromising visibility is a good start. Ask yourself if you’re willing to take the fall for someone. Ask yourself if you could redirect a punch, a gunshot, an assault away from someone, would you?¹

I didn’t share the photo to Substack Notes to receive praise or accolades or, as I said earlier, prompt debate. I did hope it would connect my platform with more of my people and intended audience, which I think it did to some extent. Of course, I did get some particularly pointed responses from our two favorite groups of people: TERFs and LGB losers².

The photo starts getting negative traction with these groups for a number of reasons:

1. Fundamental support for transgender people, full-stop.

2. Taking a selfie in a public bathroom.

3. Displaying intolerant, inflammatory, and ultimately unsympathetic/unpersuasive language on my chest.

4. My gender and sex are suspect, unclear, and in turn, I could be a predator using the restroom designated for the opposite sex.³

5. Minor, ultimately irrelevant concerns about my fashion choices, aesthetics, and whether or not I’m physically desirable.

I’m not sure what the TERF-adjacent obsession is with public restrooms. Really. Ultimately, we know time and again who make women unsafe: cisgender men. I’m not being reductive here and I’m not entertaining a Not All Men™ retort because that’s not the point. As a demographic, cisgender men make women feel uncomfortable and unsafe every fucking day. And bluntly, they don’t need to infiltrate women’s bathrooms or wear feminine clothing to do it. We’ve all seen it in bars, schools, offices, and even sidewalks; cis men do not have anything, as a demographic, preventing them from harassing or assaulting women. They don’t need to go to any extra lengths to accomplish this.

So please, stop mythologizing public restrooms as the abyssal den of trans people. Do you know what trans people do in public restrooms? They piss and shit like the rest of us. That’s uncomfortable enough without the gender dysphoria, so why make it worse for them when they probably just want to mind their own business?

My friend Kari recently wrote about how discomfort is not the same as danger, and I think that’s an important point when talking about people fretting over my apparently ambiguous gender identity and sex. Part of what boogeymans me (and by extension, trans people) in this scenario, I assume, is these commenters’ discomfort of simply not knowing how to perceive me. “Is he a man? Is he a woman? Is he a biblical horror? Where is his Adam’s apple?⁴Why is he wearing PVC incontinence pants?⁵” It really doesn’t matter, Brenda, because as we previously discussed, you don’t have to understand or even be able to perceive me to leave me be, much less demonstrate basic levels of empathy.

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But let’s pivot from TERFs for a minute to address the biggest losers in any room: trans-exclusionary gays. While this demographic does include lesbians and bisexuals (hence LGB w/out the QT), I am going to focus specifically on gay men because they seem to be the most prominent non-TERF-specific subgroup in this larger demographic.

A lot of trans-exclusionary cis gay man rhetoric, outside of the tired groomer tropes (of which they are also wrongfully subjected, so uh…), usually boils down to something along the lines of “queer and trans people have hijacked our civil rights movement, derailing our efforts all while threatening our legitimacy and ability to comfortably assimilate.” In other words, these gay men are different, you see. Different insofar as they’re not freaks like us! They just want to consensually love and fuck and enjoy first-class citizen status without having their existence threatened at every turn. Shit, you guys: that sounds a whole lot like literally every person on the goddamn planet.

Forget who threw the first brick at Stonewall, much less if someone literally threw a brick, because none of that changes the longstanding world history of trans existence, much less trans solidarity and support for the gay community. I chalk this up to education, at least in part, because even setting aside the problem that our LGBTQIA history isn’t taught in schools⁶, we are not properly taught intersectionality.

Babes: it all goes back to intersectionality and our collective understanding (or in this case, lack of understanding) that each of our facets, be it our race, our gender, our orientation, socioeconomic class–all of them–interact with one another. Our defining characteristics and backgrounds cannot be fully compartmentalized and separated into sterile containments.

So when the “I’m different, you see” gay men insist they aren’t defined by their sexuality, that they somehow are divorced from our greater culture and heritage (outside of fucking other men, of course), I call bullshit. Nobody’s forcing you to watch let alone enjoy RuPaul’s Frack Race, listen to Britney Spears, wear rubber, or go dancing in the clubs, but that’s also not what our greater culture and heritage entail.

By all means, be true to yourself: if that means watching football, washing your ass exclusively with DudeWipes, or becoming a venture capitalist, you do you!⁷But even if you present yourself exclusively in the most heteronormative, benign of ways, you as a gay man will always have fundamentally more in common with us degenerate faggots, queers, and trans folk than you think or perhaps want.

We are bonded, for better or worse, by our systemic oppression. We share a history that, yes, intersects and overlaps with our collective unique identities. Our differences make us stronger and, in the spirit of previously invoking Stonewall, unite us. And despite these differences, we are fundamentally all more alike than we are different. We want to be happy. We want to love and be loved. We want our physical bodies to reflect who we truly are. These are simple, uncontentious truths.

Usually, and especially lately, I see the framing of trans-exclusionaries with the “don’t think they won’t come for you next” rhetoric, which I dislike for a number of reasons, most of all though because I think it’s pretty lousy any of us need the fear that someone will come for us to stand up for someone else’s safety. So instead, I propose a subtle shift in framing: if someone comes for you, who will be left to stand up for you? Because time and again, our most marginalized are the ones that show up for the rest of us. They understand that united we stand, divided we fall.

So really, if you’re a trans-exclusionary gay man, let alone identify as any part of the overarching queer community and don’t support trans rights, I have to assume you are least in part deeply self-loathing. She’s just pieces of you you’ve never seen, babe.

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I enjoy the immense privileges that come with being a cisgender, able-bodied white man: relative fundamental safety (both privately and publicly), the fewest systemic socioeconomic barriers, and the inherent ability to mask my differences (being queer, bipolar, etc.). It is because of these privileges I take the opportunity to loudly and inflammatorily stand up for my trans, non-binary, and intersex family. It’s performative, surely, but it’s also genuine and true to my personal values, and I don’t think that’s worth nothing.

I’m well past the time for debate and persuasion. An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us and if you infringe on any part of our community’s safety, I will take respond in kind.

Violence might not be the answer, but it’s sure as hell a great opening statement.

1. I am not, however, encouraging you get yourself beat up–or worse yet–killed simply to prove your solidarity. What I am encouraging is that you be honest with yourself about how far you’d go to stand up or align with someone with more at stake (or more vulnerable) than you.

2. Trans-exclusionary feminists (this is a misnomer, because they’re fundamentally not feminists, but it is the term that stuck) and members of the greater community who only identify with and/or support Lesbian, Gay, & Bisexual identities (i.e. no TQIA/trans, queer, intersex, ace, etc – sometimes referred as “non-Alphabet Mafia”) respectively.

3. One LGB loser posited I was too pretty to be a biological man, but too butch to not be a trans woman and suggested I needed more T (testosterone), which really to me says they think I’m ambiguously very pretty, which I will take. I also think it’s very cash money they support me having gender-affirming care!

4. Genuinely, commenters expressed concern over my apparent lack of a visible Adam’s apple, to which I can only say I’m deeply sorry for presently having a fat neck.

5. This remark deadass made me snort. It’s called fashion, baby, but I am wholly okay if my shiny sweatpants aren’t your jam. They make more sense when I have the matching jacket on.

6. And yes, this is a problem, just as it’s a problem the current US administration is actively removing Black History Month and programs on diversity, race, and gender from schools.

7. Maybe don’t become a venture capitalist though, actually.