One claim I see often from the anti-trans bigot crowd (ABCs) is that they don’t like being forced to accept beliefs they don’t agree with. They claim to believe that you can’t “change your gender”, i.e., that you can’t be anything other than what the hospital decided by looking at your genitals. They claim to believe that trans people are holding delusional beliefs, and that the ABCs are helping us by forcing us to accept reality.
How the ABCs treat me shows that the foundational claim here is false.
At birth, I was assigned male based on my genitals. I am nonbinary. I have not undergone any medical procedures, have never taken any hormones, to modify my body. I have done zero medical transitioning.
Here is what I expect all people to accept: I do not like being referred to with masculine language. Use gender-neutral language with me. That’s it.
I do not deny my body, but I do not like to be reminded about it. The only objective way in which my beliefs about myself and ABC beliefs about me differ is in my belief that I am not a “man” in the socially constructed context of that, and in their alleged belief that “man” is a physical reality and not a social construct. That has absolutely nothing to do with respecting my request to use linguistically accurate language about me: Gender-neutral language is not false, it can used about everyone. It is widely used when we don’t know someone’s gender, and in my case, there is disagreement about my gender, and so it’s appropriate to use it.
And yet… they won’t use it. I’ve been called every insult they use for trans people. I’m not telling anyone to use “she” (which is another, longer, much more vulnerable post), and I’m not doing anything remotely permanent to my body. I wear jewelry and nail polish and sometimes feminine clothing, but that’s it…. And yet, my telling people NOT to use masculine language is enough to get the ABCs upset.
So, as it’s said a thousand times, here it is again: It’s not about “You’re forcing us to accept your reality” anymore than it’s about “What about the children?” It’s 100% about “trans people are icky” and about reinforcing toxic social expectations.