Month: February 2015

“You Don’t Look Trans”

Dori Mooneyham, Leave a comment

Dear Cis Women,

If a trans woman trusts you enough to self-disclose, don’t say “You don’t look trans!” That’s not a compliment, it’s an insult to our trans sisters who apparently don’t meet with your approval.

Actually, we *do* look like trans women! Because we are trans women and this is what we look like. There is nothing wrong about looking like a trans woman unless you believe cis women to be superior. I’m sorry transmisogynist media has given you a very narrow idea of who we are, and I can understand that and try to be patient because it’s something even trans women have to unlearn. But rest assured, we’re just as varied in appearance as you are.

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“You Don’t Look Trans”
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The Etiquette of a Butch

Dori Mooneyham, , Leave a comment

One of the fun parts of being a butch lesbian is playing with traditional gender norms and making them our own weird and beautiful brand of expression. As a butch lesbian who is also a trans woman, I thought it might be especially cathartic to take all of the well-intended advice about “how to be a gentleman” and make it queer by replacing all male identifiers with “butch”:

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The Etiquette of a Butch

Dear Brooke Sopelsa: Stop Making Our Movement About Straight People

Dori Mooneyham, , 7 Comments

If there’s one thing I can’t stand more than a cis gay person telling me and other queers to calm down, it’s seeing that cis gay person get national attention on a Huffington Post article for telling other queers to calm down.

The examples Brooke Sopelsa cites as queer activists gone wild are:

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Dear Brooke Sopelsa: Stop Making Our Movement About Straight People

“Welcome to Womanhood”

Dori Mooneyham, Leave a comment

Dear Cis Women,

When a trans woman is complaining about men, sexual harassment, misogyny, and/or sexism, NEVER reply with, “Welcome to Womanhood”.

First of all, we don’t need welcoming. We’ve always been here, and your entitlement to believe you have the authority to welcome us to womanhood in the first place is a sign that your cissexism is showing.

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“Welcome to Womanhood”

Nuclear Weapon

Dori Mooneyham, 4 Comments

So the Pope has compared me and all other trans people to nuclear weapons because we have to power to go “against God the Creator”.

Bro, if your god is so weak he can’t even stand up to one of the most oppressed groups of people in the entire world, then you’re god ain’t shit to write home about.

Getting real sick of your bait-n-switch, Francis.

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Nuclear Weapon

Just Like You

Dori Mooneyham, Leave a comment

Nearly five decades ago, the modern queer rights movement exploded from the grief and anger of the most marginalized members of our community: queer people of color, trans women, sex workers, and other people starved for justice took to the streets. Arrests were resisted, fires were lit, cops were assaulted, and our mothers refused to back down. The revolution had finally come and straights were going to have to put up with our shit for once.

People who weren’t there got inspired. They threw open their closets and forced the world to realize we were far more numerous than previously believed. Slowly it dawned on them that we were not some faceless and malicious boogie man, but their children and their neighbors and their co-workers. We weren’t scary, we were just like them!

As it turned out, only some of us weren’t scary.

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Just Like You

Toxic

Dori Mooneyham, , 1 Comment

CN: Toxic media, transmisogyny, violence against women, suicide

I first learned about girls like me by watching an episode of Jerry Springer entitled, “My Girlfriend is Really a Man!” I might have been ten-years-old.

I saw the host introduce flamboyant women who the audience immediately booed. I heard the women try to explain themselves, but get interrupted too frequently to communicate anything. I watched in horror as their boyfriends’ reacted with more violence than I had ever witnessed between two real people on television. Never on daytime television had I actually witnessed a man punching and beating another women. But I did that day. And the audience cheered him on.

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Toxic