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Your lack of empathy makes me assume you haven't been through similar experiences as the commenter you're "replying", either because you're not visibly far off "normal", or lucky enough to have grown up in an environment which was supportive of you.
Any case, the earlier commenter is not assuming cis people are terrible and transphobic and whatever. It is a matter of trust and risk. You can generally trust other LGBT people to be accepting since they've been through the same problems as you, and of course, because they share the same differences.
So it makes sense to group together, it's safer in groups, and sometimes mentally healthier than falling in to a pit of depression feeling forced to behave or a appear a different way to how you want to.
You'll be making constant calculations on whether it's safe to show public displays of affection with your partner, or simply appear an act like you want to. The fears are exaggerated of course (we are all creatures of caution), but not unfounded, depending on where you live.
So yes, short-term, it's nice to escape to a place where you don't have to do that. Long-term, it's healthier to not autosegregate, both for the queer and non-queer person. It helps normalise things. But I won't put that on every queer person, to each their own.
Also this person has assumed I’m trying to fully isolate and that’s not even true. I’m out on social media and I have many cis followers.
Everyone needs to have a refuge and I share who I am when I want to. But I also want people who see me without needing an explanation.
Anyway I appreciate your support.
That's reasonable and I agree. And I am happy that you find it.
I do not assume you want to fully isolate. But you stated that when white people gather in a white supremacist culture, that is not ok. Neither is the culture homogeneus enough to be called "white supremacist", nor are white people to be prevented from gathering just by the fact that they are white.
Note: replace white with whatever other category du jour. Cis, non-vegan, right-handed, etc.
It's worse than that. It assumes x people, by virtue of belonging to x group, actively perpetuate x-group-favouring-biases.
Otherwise, your comment is reasonable.
> degrading
I disagree with the degrading, as I am talking directly to the commenter by showing them how I react to what they commented. Did you miss a "hello dear x, (...), best, ominous"?
> patronizing (telling people how they should behave), (...), and from a clear place of closed-mindedness
I see what you mean, but I have no problems with that. I am not advocating that one is patronizing nor close-minded, nor do I consider myself as such. But if the reaction to "whites together are oppressors excluding the oppressed and perpetuating a status quo that favours whites" cannot be patronizing, what reaction do you allow?
It won't surprise you that from the countless impressions this "signal" for progressivism made on my screens, I reply to very little. This Sunday morning I took some time to do it. You read it, and start to focus on the form of it, the timing, what it may mean, etc, as if you saw me engaging this all the time. The poster I replied to, on the other hand, is like that full time. Read this bit [0]. The user is educated in these matters, backed by scholarship. It's a whole worldview. It's not the intuitively "You'll be making constant calculations on whether it's safe to show public displays of affection with your partner, or simply appear an act like you want to. The fears are exaggerated of course (we are all creatures of caution), but not unfounded, depending on where you live." that creatures of caution have, but rather a whole domain of knowledge that accumulates justifications for behaviours.
It isn't a scared person hiding in the comfort of a safe space. It is a culture learning to hate.
> So yes, short-term, it's nice to escape to a place where you don't have to do that. Long-term, it's healthier to not autosegregate, both for the queer and non-queer person. It helps normalise things.
I agree.
You ask for empathy and compassion where you offer none.
I don't think you understood what is being written, and went for wiritbg a comment attacking rather than exploring.
Why are you writing this way? You’re in what is now an extended conversation with a person who is sharing their perspective with you, and you’re coming at it like you’re trying to humiliate them in front of an audience.
You’re not jousting in some epic debate chamber, you’re in the replies of a message board. Calm down.
> Sounds like a great book.
A great book because "every character was some form of LGBT or interracial or something". If you think it was a conversation to start with, you are simply wrong. It's closer to the delusions of someone who hypnotized themselves into their current worldview.
It amuses me to engage in this way. I am very calm.
I can understand what the other person is getting at. I literally just said I would like the book and my friends are actually like that, and you have to say I’m deluded? You’re not having this conversation in good faith. We are in fact having a conversation but you’ve imagined it’s something else and you’ve admitted from the outset you’re not taking me seriously.
When the person says “being this way” that’s what they’re talking about. You’re not treating me with basic respect. And to be honest I suspect the reason is that I’ve said I’m trans. Otherwise I can’t imagine why you decided I should be immediately dismissed.
EDIT: You know a major point you’ve tried to make is that I should be ashamed for wanting to hang out with trans people. But at the same time you’ve admitted that you’re not willing to treat me with basic respect. All you’ve done is concisely demonstrate why someone like me would want to hang out with people that get me. I don’t want to have to live my life constantly explaining myself to people who refuse to respect me on the basis for who I am. You’re exactly the kind of person I don’t want to associate with.
> that I should be ashamed for wanting to hang out with trans people
I do not think that. Rather, I used it to point out how you placed all cis in one category, and refer to them as all the same.
> All you’ve done is concisely demonstrate why someone like me would want to hang out with people that get me
"people that get me" does not necessarily mean "non-cis". But you happily used it like that. Using "being trans" as proxy for being safe will get to talking with trans people who believe in gender roles, and will enforce a gender-roles status quo. That you likely do not like.
> And to be honest I suspect the reason is that I’ve said I’m trans. Otherwise I can’t imagine why you decided I should be immediately dismissed.
Had I dismissed you, I would not have engaged. It's not because you said you are trans. It's because you seem to act as if identity drives knowledge (positioning), and as if whites and cis were to be seen as purely elements of the oppressor class that when coming together are only doing so to exclude the oppressed and perpetuate the status quo.
I said nothing re: you. Rather, your worldview. You feel attacked. I understand.
It is fine to amuse yourself with your speech, but it is worth recognising that it sounds like you are hosting a nature documentary about dumb animals, that exist beneath your own intelligence.
To think this person is deluded, but that you have saved yourself from the delusion all humans go through, is deluded.
> I do not view it. It is. (Speaking on moving from isolation to acceptance as an act of exclusion and chauvinism)
“It is” not. Perhaps it could be, alongside many other things - included in which are the benefits of doing so, such as acceptance, and internal peace. I implore you to go to any community around the world and try to fit in - chances are you won’t. You will then blame that community for not accepting you - or you will otherwise try to change yourself and only ever delude yourself that you are not just imitating them. It’s not racism, or anti-cisgenderism, to feel that you are not accepted where you are.
Maybe OP shouldn’t blanket talk about cis people - I understand your point. But my question is - do you only pick this fight with oppressed people? You yourself insinuate, in blanket fashion, “We have tried to get away from ‘oppression’ by giving the ‘oppressed’ the right to act out their chauvinism in public.”
Your words (and perhaps you, yourself) are very cynical. And it’s worth noting cynicism is a view on the world, not the world itself…
Ah, a request that I also punch up... I do punch up as well. Do you require a balance of punches for this specific round?
> To think this person is deluded, but that you have saved yourself from the delusion all humans go through, is deluded.
It is, but I didn't claim that. Rather, I have my delusions, but not this one: framing society (western, J assume? but isn't that self-centered to assume western? this is an international forum) as a cisheteropatriarchal normative society, and from that segmenting people into oppressed and oppressor as defined by intersectional characteristics, and from that to reach into the oppressor group, pick their elements, and accuse them of perpetuating the status quo, and so remove from them the agency of existing as a group and having a voice other than to help the oppressed.
Do you see people like this? In particular, when observing that a book has only characters of the oppressed type and so it must be great?
It is clear that trolling amuses you, and while you would never admit it, replying to another poster while pretending to talk about them like you are narrating an old-time documentary about "savages" or the like, is obviously trolling.
These documentaries are mostly seen as racist in our current time, and rightly so, as the staggering amount of condescension automatically implies that the narrator and the audience are seen as inherently superior than the subject of the documentary.
You might have enough plausible deniability to not get banned, but not much more. I don't ask you to stop because you might get banned, I am just suggesting you consider whether the joy you gain from treating strangers badly on the internet might not just as easily come from a more ethical source if you were to spend some time on thinking about it.
So you suggest I do not callout "cis and whites are oppressors and ought not to gather" in an amusing way, and rather find some sugar or dopamine elsewhere? When do you want to call it out?
After we find out if the slope is slippery?
There is this concept of the oppressor and the oppressed. In a patriarchy men as a whole oppress women. Individual men should not be judged by this but women will tend to stick together to avoid the high probability that men will mistreat them.
In a white supremacist society white people as a whole oppress people of color. Again people of color will want to stick together to find a break from the constant mistreatment by the white oppressor.
But there is a difference between white people wanting to stick together and people of color wanting to stick together in a white supremacist society. In this case the white people stick together to maintain their oppression and exclusion, and the people of color stick together to find freedom and respite from their mistreatment.
One of these is good and okay, and one of these is meant to perpetuate oppression. The oppressed wanting space from the oppressor is okay. The oppressor wanting to exclude the oppressed is not okay.
Because of this you cannot simply reverse the roles and say “see replace cis people with women/blacks and it sounds terrible”. Because what you have done is replace the dominant class with the oppressed class. You’ve changed the whole meaning of the thing.
In a cis heteronormative society the status quo is maintained by cis people constantly reinforcing gender and sexual norms. There is a long list of behaviors we are all taught as children that reinforce this, and we repeat those behaviors as adults to keep the system going. We do this unconsciously.
Trans people find that exhausting to be around. We have been around that our entire lives and many people we know have died trying to fight it. Finally we found the courage to push back and be ourselves.
We find it much less exhausting to be around people who have at least accepted our ways. And we find it positively rewarding to be around people that understand all the difficulties we are going through.
These are all things that cis people aren’t really going to understand.
Look - Imagine you’re a struggling writer. Your partner is a successful engineer. They don’t really understand what it’s like to be a struggling writer so when you talk to them about it their advice isn’t very good. You don’t feel any sense of relief from talking to them. Finally you end up at a bar and you bump in to another struggling writer who has recently regained some direction. You swap stories and feel positively encouraged!
If they told you about a writers group that would help, wouldn’t you want to join it? That’s not excluding others, that’s finding community! Everyone needs that.
I think the point they are making is that cis and trans don't work in this sort of class analysis, as the two groups are in themselves too diverse. They have to be further divided into subgroups for this to make any sense.
For example, take the most controversial subset of the transgendered: transwomen, i.e. males who identify as women. Then compare to actual female women ("cis women") - it is obvious that this maps onto the existing feminist analysis of sex class, with males being the dominant class and females the oppressed class.
Which is what makes it so problematic when these males try to impose themselves upon the spaces of actual female women, as they're engaging in male dominance behaviour that wouldn't be considered acceptable by any other man. But because we have this false cis-trans oppression hierarchy being presented to defend this, it pulls the wool over many people's eyes to what is really happening.