Plurans in marginalized groups that the body isn't
housetiger - 2020-05-16 12:08:19
how many other people fall into this category? how does it affect you?
im sure a lot of us have run into disclaimers about how we shouldnt insert ourselves into spaces for marginalized folks if the body itself doesnt experience that. and yeah, theres a point there - a pluran of color fronting into a white body definitely isnt gonna be targeted like someone who is bodily of color. but it often feels like a mental shortcut to concluding that we arent really that thing, and that theres no way we could be affected by our experience of being that thing at all?
when like, not only have i lived a life inworld where ive experienced intersexism, i definitely internalize messages im exposed to out here about intersex people. same goes for a bunch of people in here experiencing a bunch of different things. i think its part of a more general problem of people focusing on oppression as a material thing and forgetting or ignoring that theres an identity part to it too, but i think plurans are pretty uniquely impacted by this.
and it especially gets to me when im intersex because im nonhuman. and that very notion is offensive to so many people, like, how dare you compare your fantasy world to the horrible things that real people experience! but, actually, not only does the intersection of those things cause me unique issues, im also marginalized on the basis of the specific type of nonhuman i am inworld too!
and i feel like theres absolutely nowhere to talk about this kind of stuff, even in alterhuman spaces, even in - actually, especially in other plural spaces x_x so im pretty sure im not the only person who struggles with this sometimes and was hoping that making a thread for it would help a lot of people feel less alone and build a bigger picture of how exactly this kind of stuff affects people.
shield_badger - 2020-05-17 01:02:25
Oh I definitely have things to say about this.
As an angel, I was never assigned a gender. I wasn't made with a sex or the concept of it outside of nature on Earth. It wasn't until 5 years ago, really, that I had to actively give a damn about humans and being part of their world and culture because I crash-landed in a 'human' body. But in that time, and especially in the past two years as I've become a major front-runner and have really lived in this body and had to learn how I feel about defining myself in a world of human concepts, I've increasingly had to find out how I felt about sex and gender.
At the beginning of my time learning to be a front-runner, I was already somewhere toward the beginning of my transition. The vessel I got when I first interacted with Earth was … well, we'll say it looked like a body that would be AMAB, which meant that my transition has a lot in common with common transfem transitions in presentation, physical changes, etc.
But all of that was motivated by a sense of being happier that way, rather than any kind of dysphoria. I had never felt dysphoria … until I was exposed to transmisogyny while fronting. The more and more I saw it, the more self-conscious I got - of my voice, my body, how I dress, how others read me - and the more nervous I got that something bad could happen to me. Like, I live in one of the safer places in the US to be clockable as transfem, but I get nervous especially in lesbian spaces :/ Those are ironically … probably less safe.
And while our body is assigned female, being intersex and transitioning the way we have have combined to make us clockable as a trans woman. We're not sure how often we're read that way vs being read as some other kind of trans, but it's been multiple times we've noticed people saying things that clearly indicated they saw me as a trans woman while front - including direct transphobia.
And in all this, I've also talked to transfem people whose bodies were AMAB (both singlet and plural) and have found similarities in experience and feelings. I've had to ask for resources on finding breastforms, on vocal training, on women's clothing sizes, all kinds of things. And the emotional things I've been through, like the slow movement from "crossdressing" to actually presenting regularly as fem, and the embarrassment and nervousness I still feel wearing a bra and breastforms in public, and the genuine worry I've felt over wearing a dress thanks to my fear of looking like the "man in a dress" trope. And transfems I've known personally have really done nothing but validate me?
Point is it's hard to say I don't have many things in common with the transfem experience, and I think it's hard to say I don't internalize transmisogyny as being about me, but due to both the body being IAFAB and my lack of assigned gender/childhood gender socialization, I don't feel like I'll ever fit any trans narrative, let alone transfemininity. So I'm eternally stuck being too scared to talk about my experience to try and popularize neolabels like adfeminine, but also really wishing I could just call myself transfem and be done with it without needing a million disclaimers about not being a "real" transfem :/
I'm not the only one I've known with this experience. Others have internalized racism despite not matching the body's race, and have had inworld experiences that were confirmed to be really "realistic" compared to outworld ones. I'm not saying we can call that exactly the same as experiencing racism due to how your actual outworld body looks, but I think it says something about the nature of oppression and the way we internalize the messages we're all sent. I'm not sure what it says yet, but we all get told the same crap, and we process that crap differently depending on our unique and intersecting identities. I think that probably has something to do with it.
Obviously, we're still obliged not to intrude where our experiences aren't relevant or where we cannot honestly speak for an experience. And at the same time, I think our experiences should be counted more often among "real" experiences when they are the same or similar enough to be relevant. It's hard to gauge the individual responsibility of people to stay in their lane, and more importantly know where that lane ends in the first place. Because we aren't really given space for these conversations, it's hard to advise people on when to speak or not on an experience, and how to do that respectfully as a pluran who will have a different experience from a singlet of that experience. But with more room to talk, I'd hope we can come up with better solutions.
Clovers - 2020-05-24 01:17:26
I deal with internalized racism all the damn time. The body is white, but I am mixed race, Polish and Japanese. The United States has a particularly nasty flavor of anti-asian sentiment, especially toward Japanese people, so I get hit with it a lot. It was especially bad when I worked in a kitchen, because kitchens aren't usually the most racially sensitive places. People would make racist comments all the time, but it's that kind of 'equal opportunity offensive' kind of environment. And I couldn't do anything about it because the chefs and managers alike did it, and our Human Resources department consisted of one really incompetent dude. None of the management (all of whom were white men) was going to care about another white person (who they also perceive to be a man) being offended by racism. Especially when none of the people of color in the kitchen openly complained about it.
This intersects right with anti-asian racism in the gay male community. It's not uncommon to see "no asians" as a criteria on someone's profile, so that's an extra level of awful. But I can't really talk about it because my experience as a gaysian man is different because the body out here is white.
I'm also disabled inworld in different ways than outworld. Inworld, I have a lot of burn scars on my body from a traumatic injury and have needed to get a lot of reconstructive surgeries. I've come a long way, but I still don't look "normal" and I will never look like I did before. People treat me differently because of that while I'm inworld, and I have different health concerns I need to take into account (skin care routines, doctor's visits, different meds, etc). Out here, we don't have any facial disfigurements or prominent scars, so we are seen and treated as "normal". It's refreshing for me on a certain level, because when I'm in the outworld body, I don't have to feel as self-conscious about my skin and face making people uncomfortable. I can just kinda be out in public and it's nice to have that option.
It's good to be able to talk about this. I know it's an issue a lot of people face and it's reeeeeeally delicate to talk about, so thanks for bringing this up.
-Beyond