 Cool. Hey guys. I'm Brie. I'm going to talk a little bit about TransIdentities and how they intersect with like text spaces No, I think it just won't play through the speakers. Yeah, it's oh sure. Yeah I'm Brie. I'm going to talk a little bit about trans identities and how they intersect with Being in like text spaces and then progressive and feminist spaces So I think most of us When we think of oppression and marginalization Kind of think of it as something that like other people do In particular, we think of it as something that like Particularly like archetypically bad people do so it's easier to think of like racism as being Committed by like the Ku Klux Klan and homophobia as being committed by like the Westboro Baptist Church And I think there's it's sort of interesting that we do that. I think it is sort of based in Like being able to other other people like that sort of makes it easy easier to share an Identity of like okay. I'm against that. They are over there. I'm over here And you know, it's sort of mixed for the conversation occasionally But I think what's harder to do And what's maybe a little more ambiguous Is to sort of call out To call out and discuss the like the endless little streams of microaggressions That we all all commit, you know, sort of daily and That marginalized people just sort of face constantly and so I am a queer trans woman who is pretty visibly trans also and so most of the And otherwise pretty much privileged So most of most of the stuff that I face has to do with like gender identity and sexuality stuff So for example, like the biggest thing with me is misgendering, right? There's like this constant little little trickle There's actually There's a great little blog post that like compares misgendering to Chinese water torture of just like the like day to day a little drip of like these little slight You know, maybe individually annoyances That like over time or with like a few a few particularly awful instances can sort of just like reduce you to a wreck pretty easily so I wanted to talk a little bit about those and I Guess how you can recognize them how you can call them out So first I want to talk a little bit about My transition just so you guys I think have a feel where I'm coming from It feels really weird and vain and narcissistic still a little bit to talk about my transition as part of this talk But I think it's really important to I don't know to get an idea for where I'm coming from Maybe to Like have some kind of connection with a trans person if you don't Sort of get an idea of how that narrative is not the pop culture one necessarily and also because This week is my one-year mark for HRT. So I'm kind of doing it for myself. So, you know, no big deal Cool, so I'll try to keep this brief. I don't want to give like my entire life story here But in brief So at like 23 and in 2013 I had been feeling like these vague uneasy gender feels for like a decade or so that were sort of hard to define and sort of over the course of I don't know six months a year Very gradually came to Like the understanding of my identity as a woman And again, it was very gradual and that was very necessary for that to be gradual It was sort of like, well, I'm a guy who likes to cross-dress. I'm a genderqueer person I'm a trans girl, but I really don't feel like identifying myself as a woman publicly, etc. etc And Transitioning in that gradual process was actually fairly easy The hard part was actually coming out to people because for those that period of time It was like I don't know what to come out as Like, you know, once it's like, okay, I'm a lady like that's pretty easy to explain to people But if you're coming out as like, I'm a genderqueer person who like identifies somewhere in the middle of a spectrum And it's like most people don't don't even have that maybe baseline As to like what you are trying to tell them But so at work eventually I sent this email out. It's long. Yes I don't read it out loud, but it's just like hey, let's see you guys know. I prefer the name gree and you won't pronounce And yeah, if you look at the bottom, I made a really dumb naming stuff and cash and validation joke So that's cool Yeah, and so Part of the reason I put that there is because and I will obviously this will be posted up later but I put that there because a lot of Like when I was looking for a model for how to do that like how to send that email out. I had nothing to go on I would really like if more people had some kind of some kind of format for what to go on Yeah There were like a couple of things, but it's just it was very difficult for me to find something So it was it was actually a pretty smooth transition all things considered like I had very supportive Go-workers partners and my family was great But even like a smooth transition Is one that's pretty peppered with awful awful crap and so There's one instance that like I think kind of sticks out the most Which happened like I don't know four or five months into the transition I was at a bar here in like East Atlanta and We're standing outside and you guys come up like proven pass by One comes back and goes. Oh, hey guy. I'm sorry. Me and my friend were talking. You were wondering you're actually a guy, right? and like I was just like I Didn't even know how to respond to that. I think I just said fuck off really lively and like sort of pushed him Didn't really know what else to do So I was like, okay. This is a gay bar. I went around back. I was like that's some rando I will hopefully be a little safer around the back of the gay bar where like the pink the actual patrons are So then it's in like the next 20 minutes or so two more guys come up and start hitting on me But then say like oh hang on wait a minute I'm gay. So I want to I'm gonna make sure you're really a guy, right? Like like three times in a row this question So, you know by that point I'm getting pretty visibly upset. Someone asked me what's going on I tell them what I tell them that people keep asking me like I'm actually a guy, right and The person I tell this to you is like well you are right So I ended that night at Waffle House Which is a pretty good way to deal with that if you're wondering So That that incident sort of started me thinking like why do people think it is okay to say these things? Why do people think that these weird little microaggressions are like Totally fine to just come out of their mouth and not really really consider and the effect that has on people And so I sort of ended up compiling like a list of like here's all these shitty things that have happened to me and other people I know so that's really fun by the way So decide some me time after that if you're gonna do that for yourself But yeah, I sort of ended up putting it into a nice big rule of three pile and so You know until recently the biggest The biggest piece of it is this sort of ignorant ignorance like so many people don't know the language don't know Pretty much anything about trans identities And so that just leads to lots of weird stuff like just implicitly misgenerating people because you don't know that trans people Can't exist in that men can look a certain way that women can look a certain way that is not a way that you're used to So, you know, there's sort of the like Excuse me. You're in the wrong bathroom sort of situation and just lots of Stuff like that the biggest example is have you had the surgery? Don't ask this to someone if you don't know that already Because what this is what what you're actually asking is hey, what's your junk look like? I really want to know Don't do that to like anyone So thankfully this is getting a lot better there's been a lot more like pop culture awareness of trans people through like liver and cox and Janet Mock and Laura Jane Grace and all these people and That's been great So it's reducing this a little bit and you know that the answer for yourself if you feel like you are doing this kind of thing is to Read up on trans issues and like I don't know read a book read redefining realness It's great And I yeah, just just read things by trans authors things like that and I don't know Sort of get an idea of where they're coming from So that pop culture thing though has a flip side, which is a lot of people tend to start looking at trans people through like cliches and The big one here right is like the tragic trainee, which is like you're so brave Don't tell people that either. That's also weird Like I might be if I hear that again It's weird to tell someone that they are brave for having the identity that they have Yeah So yeah that I think the way to get to get past or through this one or whatever Is this sort of to lift the voices of trans people? So again, like There's a lot of a lot of things there where like people will people come to be friend of a trans person because the cliche is that it is very shameful and Anxiety inducing for a trans person to be trans in the public So like they'll go up to a friend or a lot of times people give up to one partner And so I never got the has she had surgery yet question, but I did get Has she had surgery said to my partner a lot and then told afterward and it's like why is it more? Okay, if you tell them that sort of thing Yeah, so just looking the voices of trans people being like hey talk to this person or you know Recommend these sources These books and whatnot by by trans people rather than speaking for them so that you can sort of kill those cliches So the the big one that I need to talk after is sort of just the fundamental denial of You know in the case of trans women their identity is women trans men as men Non-binary people as non-binary just sort of the be like absolute failure to recognize our existence as The identity that we say we are and so Me nice table so here's sort of Here's sort of how that plays out in language there's always You know since folks get the default and trans folks get a modifier So a lot of a lot of language until recently it was like, you know, you would say What are your preferred pronouns to someone who isn't like maybe does a leak or something? But you would say preferred pronouns to anyone else. You just say what are your pronouns? You know you see people identify as something trans folks self-identify so there's a lot of stuff that's like hey You know self-identified women welcome that sort of thing that's sort of odd because it's It's not a modifier that you would use in other cases. It's like women welcome So it's odd to say self-identified to I don't know to just mean if you're a woman Come to the space that sort of thing But yeah, I so I built that big table I'm sort of trying to get this point of large numbers of tiny tiny events affecting us I guess to make it clear that like there's a lot of work It is like a staggering staggering amount of work that needs to be done to improve this situation And it is large enough that like it needs to be Undertaken by like every single person actively and not just like I'm aware that this is a problem but in like calling these things out in I Guess having me uncomfortable Conversations with your friends that like hey the thing you said was awful. Here's why and I don't know. I don't I don't really have any tips for actually doing the calling out But I would appreciate it if anyone wanted to comment with them Yeah, that's it. Thank you