“Maybe you should never transition”: On the four cisnormative corridors of denial trans people face when readiness to transition is voiced.

|||| Patience Newbury

The great revelation of 2011: not every child is cisgender, and not every child has a cissexual body.

Stop the presses. Or something.

It should be qualified somewhat: this was the biggest revelation of 2011 to a cisnormative audience and to cis people individually. For trans people who have (with gruelling patience) watched all of this cis fascination over trans children suddenly entering the cisnormative consciousness, one superlative of all superlatives emerged: this was the biggest non-story of our trans lives.

As trans people, we’ve been shrewdly aware of this knowledge for generations. For many, that knowledge is pretty clear throughout our entire conscious lives. For others, it lingers, nudges, and prods in the background until something — a particular event or an epiphany — forces us to confront and affirm it.

From Reddit: Why trans people should not question cis gay and lesbian people.

|||| Patience Newbury

A Redditor named TeenageDarren, on the necessity for trans people to be grateful to cis gay and lesbian people for helping them in their own struggle for social-political acceptance and enfranchisement:

[This question-and-response first appeared here in a rough draft form.]

“I think the problem is that the transgendered/transsexual community is calling out or even out [sic] outright attacking prominent gay figures in the gay community.”

Indeed. Even prominent gay cis men can be dicks if they want to.

Foundation: defining gender.

|||| Patience Newbury

“A primeval, albeit universally intelligible language delivering the most rudimentary means of human communication upon which: social systems of order; divisions of labour; industry of culture; ways of perceiving the external world; and structures of spoken languages are founded.”

Entertaining a second definition for cisnormativity.

|||| Patience Newbury

The Bauer, et al., premier definition of record (or authority) for cisnormativity advanced the novel argument that such a social condition actually exists and is meriting of a name. While there had been unofficial uses of the word within online forums, it was only in 2009 that it was raised to critical peer scrutiny. It is likely to be explored in future papers to varying extents.

On a meta-note:

There is also a companion Tumblr set up for meta postings (sort of like this one). That’s where things will end up when they’re too brief to write about, but more important than that meant for a scrapbook. Comments, forwardings, and other nifty things will probably happen there.