Three days ago, in a Substack note, re: the possibility of persuading governments to implement an Israel–Gaza ceasefire:
In reply:
This is true in general, and it's also how a lot of transphobia works. The transphobe posits themselves (or some general idea of a normal, ordinary cis person, whom they claim to represent) as the arbiter of human reasonableness. The transphobe says: "Everything trans people say sounds unreasonable to me. Therefore, trans people's arguments are objectively unsound, and their claims are wrong. That's why trans people are unpersuasive to me and unpersuasive to just about everyone else too."
If this kind of person cared about whose arguments (or existence, or communications style, etc.) persuade whom, they'd look at the evidence. Lots of cis people say "I'm fine with trans people, thanks. Actually, I find trans people quite persuasive." Yet the transphobe discards that personal feedback, as well as the obvious fact that trans people simply are part of society, as well as any sociological data about what kinds of people accept whom and in what numbers.
This kind of transphobe is not a persuadable person. They're primarily interested in perpetually reasserting their own supremacy and their paternalistic prerogative to decide what's right for other people. In their mind and heart, any desire for equal rights and liberation for others is a distant second.
'No one ever asked women'
Germaine Greer wrote in The Whole Woman (1999):
"No one ever asked women if they recognized sex-change males as belonging to their sex or considered whether being obliged to accept MTF transsexuals as women was at all damaging to their identity or self-esteem."
To this, Serano notes that Greer's very use of a term like "sex-change males" shows that "she feels entitled to gender us in whatever way she feels is appropriate." She also uses the term "women" to refer only to cis women when the context of the sentence calls for a distinction between cis women and trans women. Furthermore, "Greer grants these [cis] women cissexual privilege when she suggests that they (along with her) are equally entitled to be consulted about whether transsexual women should belong to their sex or not. It is particularly telling that Greer uses the word 'asked' in this context. After all, nobody in our society ever asks for permission to belong to one gender or another; rather, we just are who we are and other people make assumptions about our gender accordingly." She's using "different standards of legitimacy" for cis and trans people, and thus she's "producing and exercising cissexual privilege."
(Julia Serano, Whipping Girl, "Chapter 8: Dismantling Cissexual Privilege," first published 2007, 3rd edition published 2024.)
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