JK Rowling is a TERF

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

snip

thank you so much for saving me from having to get carpal tunnel from typing that all out myself

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Dumb drama

i love it when my civil rights counts as 'dumb drama'

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Dumb drama

i love it when my civil rights counts as 'dumb drama'

And which right of yours is in danger because of some author's tweets?

It's not just "some author's tweets" that put myself and every other genderqueer person on this planet in a position to get hurt. It's about how enabling this mindset makes the issue of trans rights seem less important in the public square than it really is.

Besides, when you're trans, or for the most part any queer identity, you have to put up with a LOT of this. It's not just J.K. Rowling. Millions of TERFs, transphobes, and misguided individuals trash on trans people all the time, and it definitely does do damage. To you, a cis person looking at this as an outsider, it's hard for you to understand how a few tweets from a children's book author can do any damage. However, when you look at it from my perspective, this is actually just more transphobic rhetoric that I have to deal with on a daily basis.

To help explain what I'm talking about, I'll try to use an analogy. If you've never heard of Chinese water torture, it's a process where cold water gets slowly dripped on your head for a prolonged period of time. For the first couple drops, it doesn't hurt at all. It's just water, it's nothing you can't brush off of your nose. But as the water droplets keep slowly dripping and dripping, it eventually starts to mentally hurt. Eventually, you go insane, to the point where one water droplet is enough to trigger a meltdown. To someone who hasn't been exposed to prolonged water torture, having a water droplet fall on your face isn't a big deal. But for other people who have gone through it, it can really make you break down.

I know it's not the perfect analogy, but it's one of the best ways to explain how transphobic rhetoric hurts trans people so much. To you, it's just a tweet. But to me, it's one of many pieces of bullsh!t I have to put up with regularly.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

How does one feel like a woman or a man? I'm not asking this in bad faith. I never "felt" male, it's just how I always was. I don't understand how male or female can be a feeling.

Completely understandable. How one perceives their gender identity varies drastically from person to person. It's perfectly fine if you're content with your assigned gender, even if you don't specifically feel like that's who you are. Heck, even among trans and non-binary people, gender perception is different. How I perceive my femininity might not be the same as how, say, Skunk or Peebs do.

However, one general overlap that happens most of the time is when people "feel" like they were assigned the wrong gender at birth. For some, it may feel like you're a woman trapped in a man's body, or vice versa. For some others, it might be because you'd feel more comfortable with living as that gender as opposed to a different one.

I can't really give you a concrete answer as to how myself or others "feel" like we belong to a certain gender. I guess it's really just a case by case basis. However, if you're unsure of what you are, try going by different labels. When someone refers to you using she/her, or maybe using a feminine name for you, do you gain a sense of euphoria? Does it make you feel uncomfortable? Do you just, sorta, not really care? Try experimenting and see which labels, pronouns, and names work best for you.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Uhh... no? Identifying as a male or a female doesn't mean that you reject people who feel comfortable outside the gender binary. If a trans person transitions, for example, from male to female, it doesn't mean that they don't believe there are other options for other people, just like we as cis people don't (have to) demand that everyone identifies as either male or female because we identify as males.

Before I respond to the rest of this, can you answer a quick few questions for me? I really do not understand how you are using the terminology here. Every trans person I know of is either a biological man transitioning to life as a woman or a biological woman transitioning to life as a man. Surgery and/or visual presentation are often involved. Do we agree so far? Now, in what way does this fall outside of the gender binary? Where are the "other options" for genders that you speak of, and why do transgender people never transition physically to those? See, it once again sounds to me like "gender" is synonymous with "biological sex" here, because I only ever hear of trans people transitioning within that binary.

One thing you have to consider when talking about trans and non-binary people is that the experience can vary vastly from person to person. Sure, a lot of trans people of a certain identity might want similar things. Some trans people take hormone replacement therapy to make their body more full of testosterone or estrogen, and some trans people may try to have surgery and/or bodily modifications done on their sexual characteristics. However, it's not always like that. Some trans people don't want hormone replacement therapy. A larger amount of trans people than you'd think don't want sexual re-assignment surgery. How one decides to present their gender through their appearance may vary.

When you consider that not all trans people want to transition the same way, it may make it easier to understand that non-binary people are just as varied, if not more. The definition of "non-binary" is literally anyone whose gender isn't strictly male or female. Under that umbrella is a giant myriad of people of vastly different identities. There are non-binary people who might have no gender identity, a mix between male and female, fluctuating between different genders, or maybe some completely different identity that nobody else has. Because of how much of a melting pot the non-binary community is, there isn't really one specific way to go about things. Like a lot of things about gender, it's on a case-by-case basis. One of the biggest parts of having an identity is that it's 100% on your terms. Nobody gets to choose what you get to do with your gender except for you. Don't wanna take HRT? That's okay. Wanna wear a skirt even if you're a male? That's okay too. Your gender expression is up to you.

Sorry if this doesn't answer your question the way you wanted it to. If you have any questions about any of this, please don't feel afraid of publicly or privately asking me. As someone who is trans and non-binary, I definitely wouldn't mind trying to guide you on how this whole thing works.