showing up late to a meeting with an iced drink is a power move. like with hot drinks the cup is opaque and people cant tell the temperature so they dont know how long ago you got it. maybe its hours old. maybe you just got caught in traffic. who can say. but iced drinks. its clear. they can see the ice. they can see if its still frozen. they look you in the eye and they know you were standing in line fifteen minutes ago and made the conscious, deliberate decision to get a mocha frap instead of being on time. and then you made ANOTHER conscious, deliberate decision to bring it into the meeting with you, informing everyone in attendance that on your list of priorities, each and every one of them ranks firmly below one (1) mocha frappuchino.
So much of the Euro-American understanding of being trans (or anything other than 100% constantly identified with your assigned gender) focuses on discomfort.
Some people take this idea to an extreme and claim you can’t be trans unless you hate your body and want every surgery available to you. As many other writers have said before, that’s not true. It’s perfectly possible to be trans with only mild dysphoria or none at all. It’s perfectly possible to be trans and have a mental map of your body that looks just like the one you already have.
But I’d like to push even harder against the idea that trans=discomfort. I’d like to offer this: sometimes the exploration of one’s gender can be motivated by pleasure rather than discomfort.
Let me give an example. Let’s say there’s a person named Cal. Most people think of Cal as a boy, and Cal’s all right with that. So far as Cal’s concerned, a boy isn’t a bad thing to be. But sometimes, Cal likes to imagine being a girl and being treated as a girl. Those fantasies are always accompanied by feelings of pleasure, satisfaction, anticipation, and warmth. Eventually, having had these thoughts for years, Cal asks people to use ‘she’ pronouns in private and to refer to her as a girl. Cal does this for another year before claiming the label “trans”.
Some people would say a person like Cal can’t be trans because there’s no dysphoria, self-hatred, distress, or even discomfort. There’s just a pleasure-based preference. But why is distress necessary? Why are trans people supposed to be defined solely by our pain and self-hatred?
It’s my opinion that defining trans people solely by discomfort is an aspect of transphobia. The idea behind trans=discomfort is that being anything other than 100% cis is so awful that no one would do it unless the alternative were unlivable. Think about that: defining trans people solely by their experiences of discomfort means believing that being trans is so awful that only misery could drive us to it. And to me, that sounds like the thinking of someone who really hates trans people.
So I’ll come out and say it: sometimes transition or self-exploration of gender is not just about lessening discomfort, but is about improving and deepening the pleasure we take in our lives.
“Think about that: defining trans people solely by their experiences of discomfort means believing that being trans is so awful that only misery could drive us to it.”
lmao im always in this dilemma where i dont want to say the phrase “dude chill out
its just a cartoon” because that would sound like im underestimating the importance of what animated narratives mean to people or it’d sound like i’d be saying that family content shouldnt be taken seriously
but at the same time, everytime i see ppl getting really mad about cartoons on an unhealthy life-consuming level i just have to say it. “dude chill out its just a cartoon”
just moving along like everyone else 