this comic is wild

i’m sure someone, somewhere, has used this argument in a demeaning way to trans people, but i can’t imagine that’s common among actual allies. it feels more like something that the right would use as a purity argument among itself, except they lack the logical rigor required to do so

and then it depicts the guy as actually being affected by that argument, as if he wouldn’t just go “yeah but it’s gender affirming care for my real gender that i really am” 💀

i poked around the author’s bsky a bit, and i think she must have had some shithead say something like this directly to her, because there’s a comment asking about using the same argument in a different context (“i was arguing that, since i have such easy access to testosterone, trans men / my trans son should” https://bsky.app/profile/warstrike.bsky.social/post/3mnaipvuvp22y) and she was like, yeah that seems fine

so there is some nuance here that i think is absolutely not being portrayed by the comic, namely that it’s implied this is a common part of this broader argument, rather than a specific, shittier flavor of it, where instead of trying to get people to empathize with trans people, we’re using trans people to imply certain cis people are shitty (e.g. “he’s not a real man because he got <gender-affirming procedure>”, with the implication that gender-afffirming procedures aren’t necessary for cis people of some arbitrary caliber)

i think this may also miss the usually implied “for cis people” that’s included with this kind of dunking? ofc, it’s logically consistent to interpret that as being demeaning towards trans people, but i think it’s mostly an acknowledgement that, ofc trans people (on average) need it more, we went through the wrong puberty (without addressing the nuances of how much an individual may or may not want to transition medically)

there are just different implications for cis people getting gender affirming care than trans people. it’s different if you’re unhappy about what you got as the result of the correct puberty (ignoring for a moment that there are some trans people who can/did go through the correct puberty and may still need gender affirming care)

ofc, we should be striving for a society where anyone can get the gender affirming care they need to feel comfortable in their body. there’s just a lot of nuance about this situation that i think is both not covered by the comic, and even more that is possibly missed entirely

I’m non-binary. Never once have I ever seen this argument used in this fashion. Nor have I ever talked to another trans-person who sees it this way.

This is poisoning our own argument that gender-affirming care isn’t some fringe, abnormal procedure used solely by people who’s body don’t match their gender but a normal, every-day thing that is, in fact, so fucking normal, cis people don’t even fucking think about it!

Everybody deserves access to gender-affirming care. Everybody, period. Full stop. Nobody is bashing bigots for getting it, they’re pointing out that they’re hypocrits for getting it and then trying to deny it for trans peoppe. That’s what the argument is, that’s what it has always been, it has never been this.

If someone ever makes the argument in this fashion, then they’re an unserious person; either a bad actoror fool to be ignored, or they’re ignorant and need to be corrected.

This is a silly take. The point is not to compare someone to something they hate, as if that is an insult in itself, to propagate their hate. The point also not to say that things that affirm the gender of cis people is the exactly the same as trans care. The point is the hypocrisy. The point is that their hate is baseless and irrational and they often share more in common with those they hate than they will even acknowledge. They don’t have to be hypocrites for their hatred to be irrational bigoted, but when they are, it make it all the more apparent and easily seen as egregious. There is value in highlighting the hypocrisy and those commonalities for them and others to see, and in normalizing things that affirm ones gender identity, cis, trans or otherwise. Why are we pretending that pointing out those things is somehow a microaggression against trans people or a sign of sharing in that bigotry?

For a much less loaded comparative example, If someone made fun of someone for liking comic books while wearing a batman/punisher tee shirt, you aren’t shitting on comic book fans by pointing out the contradiction. Yes, I’m aware that is a reductive comparison. It’s for illustrative purposes, not to reduce the plight of trans people to a hobby. Don’t come at me.

I don’t think the ideia is to bodyshame people, but to point out that Everyone has gender dysphoria (yt)

Pointing out that cis people get gender affirming care is not meant to degrade them but point out that it’s normal and usually not scrutinised.

Chill

We pretty much explored the entire planet (I know there’s a ton of the ocean we know nothing about, but let me finish).

So now the frontier to be explored is the interior of the human mind.

People who explore their inner selves and discover that they are trans or queer or some combination come out into society and say “Hey, here’s what I found, and I like what I found, and I want to share it with the world.”

And then there’s a chunk of humanity that looks inward and they do not like what they find. They find smallness and cruelty and vanity and emptiness and vulnerability and fear and confusion and a lot of things that they are not prepared to deal with, and so they turn outwards and they make life a living hell for the rest of us, rather than expend even a little effort to introspect and deal with the mysterious unexplored wilderness within their own minds.

Fuck those motherfuckers. Do the work. Figure out what you do and don’t like about yourself and then use that to make the world a better place. Fuckin’ hunkered-down-in-Plato’s-cave-ass motherfuckers.

The point the comic is making (Old meme, unedited):

Like the rainbow murals of Trump making out with Putin, where the focus of the art is clearly meant to be a gross-out effect.

excuse me, societies lowest creature is the billionaire. dont lump us in with those leeches.

I don’t think the point of that comparison is to put down trans people. It’s just pointing out that the same actions that trans people are criticized for are praised in another context.

I… don’t think saying looksmaxxing is in some way trans is meant as an insult? The way we tend to think of gender dysphoria is as a diagnosis specifically meant for people experiencing a different gender than the one assigned to them at birth, ie. trans people. A lot of people are now starting to point out that dysphoria is experienced by a lot of cis people as well. Although I suppose the guy in the comic almost definitely exists and I don’t want to run defense for him so: fuck that guy.

Seems mean spirited either way.