Welcome to Trans Tuesday! I wasn’t quite sure what to call today’s topic, as it’s something awful that can happen in a lot of different contexts. But we need to talk about it and it needs a name, so here comes: PUSHBACK OVERKILL.
“Tilly! The hell is ‘pushback overkill?’” I hear you furiously screaming in your head, because I might be mildly telepathic (hey, I could be, you don’t know). And so I shall endeavor to explain.
There’s this… phenomena that happens a lot in the queer and trans community, where people who are so used to fighting for basic things that they need (and deserve!) continue fighting even when it’s not warranted or required, to sometimes terrible outcomes.
And if that seems vague, it’s because it kind of is! This is a tough concept to explain, but I’ve seen it crop up again and again and again, and there’s one specific way it’s hurt a lot of trans people. Which meant it was something I wanted to talk about, but it’s really difficult to talk about a concept that’s so hard to explain.
I can spot it, and I can recognize it, but I can’t really describe it better than I have above. So the best way is to give you some examples, and then I think you’ll get the gist of what I’m talking about.
Let’s start with a non-trans example (although it does brush right up against it in ways I’ll talk about): polyamory, which is having (or desiring) more than one romantic partner at a time. These other partners may also have a sexual relationship, but they also might not. But it’s mostly about romantically loving and being in a relationship with more than one person at a time. The Wikipedia article on it is actually pretty good.
Right up front: I’m not poly. I have no desire to be poly. That doesn’t mean I’m not attracted to people who are not my wife (because I sure am, ladies are just so good and I’m very gay for them). But I do not, and critically, do not want to, pursue having a relationship with them.
I’ve thought about it, explored it to see if I might be poly. I’m surely not! I am hopelessly monogamous and madly in love with my wife. She is the one for me, and by “the one for me” I mean “the ONE for me” because there is but one.
But I have a lot of friends who are poly, especially in the trans and nonbinary community. Does that seem odd to you? It doesn’t to me.
Because trans and nonbinary people have to operate outside the transphobic system we live in, right? We see through the lies of SOCIETAL GASLIGHTING, and find our truths.
And I’ve said this probably hundreds of times in these essays, but I need to say it again here: once you see that the false cis binary matrix of society is a lie, it opens you up to allllll the other lies society tells you. Trans people can see those, and prove them to be lies, better than anyone (and it’s part of what makes us such a threat to Republicans).
So when you’re already outside the system of lies and can see all the other lies society forces us into (like GENDERED CHILDHOODS and THE FALSE DICHOTOMY), things like compulsory cisgenderness and compulsory heterosexuality, you notice there are other things we are compelled to be… even if they’re not true to our personal nature.
And one of those is, without a doubt, compulsory monogamy. Our white supremacist patriarchal society has a vested interest in providing a good woman to every man to do all the unpaid and unacknowledged labor of keeping a house running (and often raising children), which is all wrapped up in it.
So we’re fed lies, by society and the news and our media, that monogamy is the only way humans experience romantic relationships. But that’s demonstrably not true. I know a lot of polyamorous folks, and all of it is consensual with all of their partners. It’s not about cheating or wild sexual encounters (though I suspect some of those happen anyway!), it’s about being a person who falls in love with, and then continues loving and being in a relationship with, multiple people at a time in an ethical, loving way.
And so I get really angry when people try and force monogamy on them, because it’s not who they are. It’s not even a choice they made, it’s just how they experience love and if that’s different from me or you, that’s fine and good and lovely and wonderful.
But.
Ah, here comes the turn.
I have seen some poly folks in the trans community (here’s where it brushes up against transness) say things akin to everyone is polyamorous, being monogamous is just your choice and don’t force it on me!
Please tell me you see the problem.
Because if being polyamorous isn’t a choice, and being aromantic isn’t a choice…
why on earth would being monogamous be a choice?!
This isn’t even about if I’d choose being monogamous if I could, because I could literally no more choose that than I chose to be trans. It’s just who I am.
Sure lots of other mammals may have multiple sexual or romantic partners (if you can call love between two animals that… and I dunno, maybe you can), but many of them also pick a single other member of their species and mate for life. There are examples of all of this in nature.
And if polyamory isn’t a choice, and being aromantic isn’t a choice, if they’re just who you are, how how how how how can you claim monogamy is a choice?
Are there poly people who choose to have a mono relationship for whatever reason? Sure. But just because they’re in a mono relationship doesn’t change that they’re actually a poly person, right? Just like a bi person in a straight marriage doesn’t make them any less bi.
Do poly people experience discrimination from people who want to force mono relationships on society? Yes. But that doesn’t make mono people nonexistent.
Trans people experience discrimination from people who want to force cisness on society, but that doesn’t mean cis people don’t exist.
Estimates from studies in that Wikipedia link put the poly population at probably around 4-5%, not that much higher than the trans population in terms of percentages. And they’ve been discriminated against and can’t legally marry multiple partners (if that’s a thing they wanted to do), and have had to fight to be seen and recognized and treated equally.
And they’re so used to having to fight for those things that they deserve that sometimes some of them go too far, and right into… pushback overkill.
You’re so used to pushing back so, so hard and having to fight for every single inch, that the need to constantly push back to take up the rightful space you deserve spills over, and you end up doing to innocent people what was just done to you.
I, as a person who is monogamous with it most assuredly not being a choice, who has supported poly people in being treated as equally as mono people are, don’t deserve to be told that my state of being that I had no say in is a “choice” while their way of being is the one true natural one.
Do you see how that’s the exact same thing transphobes do to trans people? That homophobes do to gay people? You pushed back too far, and it went right into overkill.
See what I mean how it’s difficult to explain? In the example I think you can see it clearly, but summing it up succinctly is tough.
But here’s how it’s damaged part of the trans community, and why I wanted to talk about it.
You’ve seen me also say this a hundred times (especially in THIS IS NOT FOR YOU (YES YOU ARE TRANS ENOUGH)), you do not have to medically or socially transition to be trans.
Transitioning is what we do to make ourselves and our lives better, if we can, are able, and want to. But they are not what make us trans.
And we have had to fight so, so, so hard against TRANSMEDICALISM to get that thought into people’s heads. And even still (even still!) today it gets perpetuated in movies (see BAD REPRESENTATION: EMILIA PEREZ) and media, and even carried along by trans people who were taught that medical transition, full and all the way with HRT (and every surgery, was the only way to transition and was what made you trans.
Honestly I’m not even sure if we’re winning the fight against transmedicalism. Some days I think we are, some days I wonder if we ever will. But it is a long, hard fight that good trans people are involved in all the time, because there is no one right way to be trans. None of us without all of us (see TRANS INTERSECTIONALITY).
So what’s the problem?
Perhaps, I imagine, you have seen the threat that trans gender affirming care is presently under in the United States and other countries. Conservative bigots are doing their damndest to erase us from history and public life, and make our care illegal.
This has, rightly, caused a lot of trans folks to worry about the future and the loss of their care. Because for those of us on hormone replacement therapy, losing access to it would forcibly medically detransition us.
And this has caused some within the community, who are seemingly trying to help, to say, “Even if that happens, you don’t have to detransition. You’re still trans!”
Like, yeah, I’m still trans, and it wouldn’t force me to socially detransition… but it would one hundred percent medically detransition me.
Some trans or nonbinary folks are on HRT by choice, as a nice thing to have, but are okay without it. And that’s great! But as I mentioned in the Trans Tuesday on HRT, I (and many others) actually, legitimately need it.
We don’t need it to be trans, we need it to be us. To survive, to feel like we can exist in this world. To hold on to who we are, because without it, the physical and (for me especially) mental changes are key components of making us who we are. It’s a necessary part of our lives, of our bodies, of our very identities.
But some trans folks have taken “you don’t have to be on HRT to be trans” right into pushback overkill, and turned it into “if you lose your HRT it’s not a big deal” and holy shit that could not be more wrong for so many of us.
And the last thing any trans person needs, especially right now, is other trans people telling us that losing the very thing that makes us who we are isn’t a big deal or worth fighting to protect.
What I’m getting at, and it’s something I’ve said a whole lot of times (listen, I gotta repeat the important shit, you understand)… please lead with kindness and compassion.
Remember there is no one right way to be trans.
Remember there is no one right way to love other humans.
Remember that every marginalized community is worth fighting for, and must be fought for.
And remember they must be fought for up until true equality, but not so far beyond that it spills over into hurting innocent people.
None of us without all of us.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com