I don’t agree that there is no transphobia problem here on fediverse
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
I have in the course of the last 24 hours witnessed Ro, who runs a popular block list, attack at least two different trans people of color as white supremacists and what I have not seen, and granted I’m not monitoring anything beyond my own feed, is cis people of color saying or doing anything about that except telling the trans people they are wrong.
If I am at a feminist book club, abd a TERF is running her mouth at me in front of everyone in a publicly humiliating way, and that TERF suffers no consequences because “she means well” and “she is important to the cause” then the book club is transphobic
Likewise, it doesn’t matter if other cis bipoc folk privately disapprove of what Aer0h is doing or behave reasonably themselves, if the only action anyone takes in response to what he does is to tell trans people to stop complaining, that is transphobic
Compare: if we trans folk allow someone in one of our spaces to be nakedly racist all the time, then the space is racist
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
one of the core mechanisms of transphobia is that a trans person’s needs are not taken seriously.
So the misgendering is cast a mistake, but also Ro is not held to any expectation of correcting that mistake. People do not acknowledge any harm is caused because they do not believe any harm was caused.
Ro cast the races of the trans people involved as white because it fit his narrative better. Is Ro going to in any way be held accountable for that by people who aren’t trans? That’s racist just as much as it is transphobic! so where are the cis anti-racists holding him accountable for assuming people are white by default and erasing bipoc people from existence?
Yet again, because the people he hurt were trans the cis anti-racists seemingly have nothing to say about that, if they are even aware of what happened at all.
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
being quietly blocklisted en-mass and having all trans people cast as white skinned white supremecists by default is incredibly destructive to trans bipoc if cis bipoc stand by and tolerate that narrative.
It promotes the idea that bipoc can’t be trans.
That I saw two trans bipoc folks buying into what Ro said today and unwittingly casting David, Vanta and myself as white breaks my heart.
Trans people of color have been at the forefront of queer liberation struggles since before we were calling ourselves queer. Erasing trans people of color and taking our possessions has been one of the top priorities of colonial regimes when they have taken over countries.
And here Ro has been, doing that exact same thing in front of everyone, and the couple of cis bipoc I talked to tell me my issues don’t matter, and the couple of trans bipoc I saw publicly think only white people criticize Ro.
My issues *will* be taken seriously!
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
so yes, nobody has called me slurs or misgendered me, but they *have* whitewashed me because they think all trans people who aren’t obedient are white and they *have* done the old “what Ro did is not a big deal, and everyone who takes issue with it is white, so being upset with him is racist” routine.
And somewhere in that mix might be a trans person of color who doesn’t agree with Ro but is too afraid of being de-colorized or losing access to community to speak their mind quietly going along with it.
I know this, because until yesterday *I* was that trans person, fretting that, as has now happened, the moment I spoke against Ro he’d force transition my race.
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rato 🍉 kill transphobes todayreplied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
I'd like to also add that when my problems with Ro being racist against be for being Polish started, he explicitly stated that all of my objections are null and void because I'm not black.
But then, how does he know that? He never seen me. I had never mentioned it. What if I was black? Because you know, Polish black folk exist.
Such a fucking mess, this guy.
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to rato 🍉 kill transphobes today last edited by
@rad hey so, you keep saying Ro was racist against you, and I’ve been mulling this over in my head. I’m realizing I don’t understand where you are coming from, and I certainly remember a lot of “polish” jokes from when I was a child.
If you are willing to do so, could you explain to me how systemic racism affects polish people? I ask this genuinely, it’s not intended to be a leading question.
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rato 🍉 kill transphobes todayreplied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
No no, he called me and my other polish friends racist because of the politics employed by the previous law & order conservative-liberal government and concluded that we must be racist because we are polish and our government represents racism so we are racist as well. I know it's convoluted, but he basically said: polish = racist. And it's xenophobia bordering in racism, from my polish understanding of what racism means.
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to rato 🍉 kill transphobes today last edited by
@rad *nods* right. Treating polish people as a monolith. I see why you are calling that “racism”.
I’m wary of using that specific term here without more data because racism isn’t just person to person bigotry, it’s a specific justification of bigotry that has been encoded into an institutionalized power structure. That said, what he did is definitely a form of bigotry based on nation of origin as encoded into the power structure of nationalism.
I emphasize: that is not okay. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
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Mia Schambeck 🌈replied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
@hyenagirl64 @rad If you want to read into it a bit, there is a word: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment
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⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸replied to Mia Schambeck 🌈 last edited by
@miasb @rad I’m glad you posted this I’ve heard of Slavophobia before, I just don’t know a lot about it as a lived experience.
I’m being careful not to say Ro *wasn’t* being racist for a reason. I don’t want to jump in on this topic from a position of ignorance, but I’m well aware that “Slav” only started be counted as “white” recently 🩵
Like, I think about how Jules Verne originally intended Captain Nemo to be polish, but then made him Indian in the sequel because France allied with Russia and censored the book due to Nemo’s explicitly anti-imperialist stance. As a result, Verne switch the implied empire Nemo was seeking vengeance against from Russia to Britain.
I also think about like… Dracula. How the entire story of Dracula is about the fear that slavic immigrants to Britain corrupting impressionable Englishwomen.
But… I don’t know very much about what this looks in the modern day.
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Hrefna (DHC)replied to ⚡️Mage Miriam ✨💻 🇵🇸 last edited by
If I may chime in, I'd like to underscore that the Nazis in specific targeted the Polish people:
During the Cold War—even within my lifetime—Slavs have been regarded with suspicion and mistrust in the United States (I had a friend in college who would talk about this actively as something she'd experienced, by way of example).