An open letter to cis people who claim to be trans allies
Trans people don’t owe you a certain presentation.
Trans people don’t owe you transitioning.
Trans people don’t transition to fit into your cisnormative conception of gender.
A trans person’s transition is deeply personal and intimate. It has nothing to do with you or your expectations.
Trans people transition to feel good in our bodies, to feel that we belong in our bodies. We do it for ourselves.
Many of us don’t care about passing, and that does not invalidate our gender identity.
If you think “Trans women are women, but they need to look a certain way,” you don’t actually think that trans women are women—what you think is that a trans person has to look a certain way to prove their womanhood/manhood, that a trans person has to look like the cisnormative expectation of their gender to have their gender identity validated. You’re telling us what to do with our bodies. That’s not allyship.
Stop claiming to be an ally—stop claiming that you’re trans-inclusive—when you’re not. Stop claiming that your “safe spaces” include us when they don’t include all of us. You don’t get to pick and choose what the “right” type of trans person is.
Trans women and transfeminine people can have facial hair. Trans men and transmasculine people can have breasts. You have no idea why we look the way we do. Maybe we’ve just come out. Maybe we don’t have the financial means to transition. Maybe we don’t have the social support and freedom to transition. Maybe we simply don’t want to. Every trans person has their own life story and experiences, every trans person has their own experience of their gender and their body, and it has nothing to do with your conception of what it means to be trans.
If you want to claim the title of ‘trans ally’, you need to do the work—including the internal work—of being a trans ally. You don’t get to claim to be a trans ally while holding beliefs that police our bodies and our genders. You don’t get to claim to be a trans ally while invalidating our identities. Being a trans ally requires work, and it can be hard work.
If you want to create a space with “no cis men”, you need to find a way to do it without invalidating the identities of trans people. A trans person who “looks like a cis man” is not a cis man just because you think they are. If you don’t want to give cis men access to your spaces, the only trans-inclusive way to do it is to believe trans people when we tell you who we are. And if that creates a loophole for cis men to invade your spaces, you need to find a way to solve this issue without throwing trans people under the bus. Don’t make trans people a casualty of the shit that cis men do. You’re marginalizing gender minorities that are already marginalized. That is not real social justice work.
“But I can allow whoever I want in spaces I create,” you might say.
Yes, you certainly can. But don’t call yourself a trans ally if you don’t want to listen to trans people on how to stop invalidating our identities.
If you don’t want to navigate the difficult questions that arise from being a trans ally, then don’t claim to be a trans ally. Be honest with yourself even before you’re honest with us. Signalling that you’re an ally, that you’re a safe person and creating safe spaces for us, when you don’t listen to us—all of us—is dishonest and deceptive. If you want to claim the label of ‘trans ally’, then listen to us and do better.