1) Be willing to confront instances of transphobia, cissexism, cisnormativity, cis-centrism, cis privilege and other forms of destructive bias where you find them (especially when you find them within feminist, activist or queer spaces), not through “call outs” or other toxic, self-defeating or abusive strategies, but by taking the opportunity for genuine discourse.

2) Don’t take a purely passive, reactive approach. Rather than waiting for things like someone saying something overtly cissexist, or a trans person bringing up a particular concern, be willing to proactively introduce trans issues, or trans-relevant aspects of broader issues, to feminist discourse. Likewise, proactively treat possible consequences, perspectives and concerns relevant to trans people and trans experiences as being not only significant but essential to all feminist issues and conversations.

3) Don’t assume any given issue is strictly, or even primarily, relevant to cis women. All feminist concerns are also transgender concerns, and vice versa. There are no feminist dialogues in which trans voices “don’t belong”, or to which trans voices have “nothing to add”. There are nosocial issues related to gender that don’t have consequences for trans people.

4) Proactively seek out transgender voices, perspectives and input on all issues, not simply what you regard as “trans issues” or situations where the value of such perspectives is immediately obvious to you. Come to us, rather than waiting for us to come to you.

5) Don’t treat the larger social conflict of gender as being dialectic or binary in nature. Don’t assume a unidirectional model of gender-based oppression.

(Source: loveyourrebellion, via loversintransition)

I’ve been thinking a lot about my own gender recently, and wondering where I stand. I’m pretty sure I’m a woman, but I feel as though I’d be selling myself short if I didn’t truly examine my relationship with gender instead of just going with what society gave me.

Anyways, Girlfriend and I were talking today, and I was telling her about this. 

“How did you know?” I asked her. “What made you realize that you were a girl, even when society was trying to tell you to be a boy?”

She tried a couple of very simple answers that neither of us quite understood before saying that she was unprepared to put it into words.

And that’s okay.

Gender and our identity therein is such an abstract concept that putting it to words can be difficult. Talking to Girlfriend about our respective and unique experiences with gender has shown me that sometimes, words can make our identities more confusing. How can we accurately take our very personal, natural relationship with gender and articulate it so that it feels just as natural and understandable to another human being?

It’s okay to be wrong, to not know, to change our minds, to evolve, to question.

Seeing your lover as a person and just as they are instead of through the lens of their gender is a truly beautiful.

knowhomo:

LGBTQ* Theory Books (You May Want) To Know

• Queer Theory, Gender Theory - Riki Wilchins

• Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection between Queer and Feminist Theory - Mimi Marinucci

• Mad for Foucault: Rethinking the Foundations of Queer Theory (Gender and Culture) - Lynne Huffer

• Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity - Judith Butler

• Queer Indigenous Studies: Critical Interventions in Theory, Politics, and Literature (First Peoples: New Directions in Indigenous Studies) - Qwo-Li Driskill (Editor), Chris Finley (Editor), Brian Joseph Gilley (Editor), Scott Lauria Morgensen (Editor)

• Please Select Your Gender: From the Invention of Hysteria to the Democratizing of Transgenderism - Patricia Gherovici 

  
  

• Queer Cowboys: And Other Erotic Male Friendships in Nineteenth-Century American Literature - Chris Packard

  
  

• Aberrations In Black: Toward A Queer Of Color Critique (Critical American Studies) - Roderick A. Ferguson

  
  

• Queer Girls in Class (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education) - Lori Horvitz 

• Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation - Kate Bornstein (Author), S. Bear Bergman (Author)

(via loversintransition)