You want us to be visible, but you don't want to see us...
reflections on the not-so-subtle-subtle transphobia in feminist academic spaces, from me, a trans person in feminist academics
Okay so it’s Trans Day of Visibility and that’s cool. But every year I think “okay….and….”. Maybe you’ll get a text from one of your cis friends so that they can congratulate themselves on being an #ally. Maybe you won’t. This is not to say those small things are not meaningful, but man, look around — shit is BLEAK, and personally, my patience for cis people’s feelings is, well…..
I live in Canada and I am white. My experience of being trans is not universal, and I know that. I’m lucky. And yet I am still tired and worn down by the way that people treat me. So this will be a complaint newsletter, reflecting on my experience throughout my PhD and how I am continually astounded yet not surprised by the way that so many cis feminist academics really don’t have any political commitments beyond their own safety.
In the first year of my PhD, some classmates said that the change from “women and gender studies” to “feminist & gender studies” erased women. My self and another trans colleague said well, no…it’s a move to be more inclusive and also speak to the fact that we study FEMINIST theory — the “women” in women & gender studies was almost always white, and the shift away from that is not a move to erase anybody but acknowledge the full scope of who contributes to feminist theory. The two classmates, a duo that often Zoomed into class together, said that we were attacking them. Naturally? Mind you, that week was on intersectionality…
For the first three years of my PhD I was a very generous colleague. That is not arrogance, that is just true. I helped my peers with their papers, I spent countless hours editing their papers, their comp exams, and even helped one come up with comp questions. I was a good peer. For three years, these people — who were all women — refused to use my pronouns. For three years, I reminded them: do not refer to me as a girl, use they/them pronouns, please. I told them to add it to my contact in their phone. It is always in my Zoom name. It’s in my email signature — you know, the emails I would send with all their edited work lol. They knew when I was recovering from top surgery. But still….nothing. A couple years ago on TDOV, I texted them because I thought it was a good reminder: hey, I’m here, you clearly don’t mind asking me for help so why don’t you treat me like a person? I was met with the usual “oh IF I’ve ever slipped up, I’m sorry” “well, I just mean ‘sisters’ and ‘girls’ as concept, you know” “I’m trying”. Reader, they were not trying. Finally, my year three, I received a group text for International Women’s Day (LOL) and I snapped. I finally told them that I was done, that it was unacceptable, and that they needed to open a fucking book. I then blocked them all. I don’t regret this, even though PhDs are incredibly isolating as it is, let alone when you don’t have any pals in your cohort. But frankly, I refused (AFTER THREE YEARS OF CHANCES) to keep putting up with it. Also, somebody in this group uses she/they pronouns but was fine with being called a woman, and that’s cool — but that’s not me.
One day in year two, I was on a Zoom call with a peer who needed help with something related to their comps. At some point we got to chatting and I told them about how I was with two other colleagues and they kept using the wrong pronouns. She then immediately did the same thing.
I am not sure if the worst part of this is not just the fact that they continued to ignore who I am, or the fact that even the people who had been invited into my home — my safe space with my partner — who I had shared meals with, did not even stand up for me. Not only was I the youngest, the only trans person, and the (only person studying fatness) but I was the only one who would speak up. Some of these people I had helped outside of the classroom, too. I had supported them through personal issues. I had been there. And listen, that’s my own problem — I know I am not the only person with ASD and assorted anxiety disorders that tries really hard to support people even when they shouldn’t — but it was remarkable to be so fucking alone. That even though these people claimed to have a certain set of politics, that we read the same things (in this program at least) and had the same professors, they simply would not stand up for me or even give me the most basic level of respect.
In December 2024, I presented a paper I wrote about gender in Barbie (2023). My paper was titled “Genderqueer Reflections on Weird Barbie”, and I talked about BEING TRANS and also the way that white queers have dominated the idea of what trans “looks like”, of what a queer aesthetic is. I introduced myself with my pronouns, they were on my slides, and they were in my Zoom name. During the other presentations I was engaged, I was writing down questions I wanted to ask, but then we ran out of time. However, there was still time for one of the other presenters to refer to me as “she”. As soon as the Zoom closed, I had an anxiety attack. I completely melted down, because once again, even showing up entirely as myself — in an academic world which is already hard enough to navigate — my peers (in the broadest sense) chose to ignore all of that in favour of the idea that being in a feminist spaces = all women.
For cis people:
Memorizing pronouns is not solidarity.
You need to unlearn what you think gender ‘looks like’. If a person in your life has come out as trans and you continue to misgender them, you have not done the work to actually SEE them as they are. You think just memorizing their pronouns is ally-ship, that it grants you some sort of medal. It doesn’t. It is the bare minimum. You need to stop just looking and start SEEING, LISTENING, HEARING. You need to understand that YOU are not the arbiter of their truth. And you are not guaranteed access to them as long as you continue to ignore who they are.
It feels good to let it out — again. I understand the purpose of days like today, but sometimes I wonder what good it does, in real time, on a practical level. I know it does something, but it can be exhausting to see all of these people post about it, knowing full well they don’t really care to change how they address people on the daily.
Something I talk about a lot in my academic work — and in my personal life — is the fact that white Queers and white trans people owe everything to Black and brown trans and Queer activists (and btw whenever I post about this kinda thing on insta, it’s always the Black women in my life who jump at the chance to send me coffee money and I say no I owe YOU the money, pal). Our safety is because of their work, their history, and their activism. When I see white Queers who buy into liberal feminism I shake my head and mumble some cuss words, because it is unfathomable to me to be a Queer person and not be fundamentally against empire, racism, fascism, and white supremacist capitalism. It doesn’t surprise me that most of the peers who continued to misgender me were straight, and if they were not, they were not politically Queer.
For fellow white Queers
You may well experience oppression(s), but your experience of being Queer and your idea of what Queer is is NOT the experience of Queerness. You don’t get to decide who is Queer ‘enough’, you don’t get to use AAVE, and you don’t get to expect all Black, brown, and Indigenous Queers to be your friend. Queerness alone does not grant you access to Being Good and Having Good Politics. You need to go beyond that, and not rely on “well, I’m Queer so….” or “well, I’m non-binary, so…”. You are just as responsible for seeing other Queer people and listening when necessary. You do not get a pass solely because you are Queer.
Being Queer in academy does not mean you know everything or have all the answers. Listen to, read, and engage with a variety of Queer perspectives, feminist perspectives, trans perspectives — it will strengthen your scholarship and your life in many ways.
So, I don’t know, maybe save your functional cis-guilt texts and go donate to some GFMs??? Or send your trans friends $5 or subscribe to their work or stop expecting them to be visible if you aren’t going to bother to see them.
I’m so grateful and luck to be trans. I am so grateful to be able to be out and live my life — it is everything to me. To my trans comrades, you are beautiful and magnificent. And, frankly, you’re allowed to be meaner to cis people.
Fucking hell, these people sound so shit!! Sending lots of solidarity ♥️ thank you for sharing your experiences with us!