vriska: Nongender transidentities are a valid form of identification, their existence does not inherently harm minorities.
To first discuss this topic, we must answer the question of – what is a transID? As a prominent member of the community, I’d generally define transidentity as good faith identity, analogous to transgender, that deals with topics other than gender with varying causes and intensities.
Under this school of thought, one can theoretically identify as anything you feel dysphoria about. Any aspect of themself, real or fictional. Some, um, identities that have come under fire recently from the wider internet are the transrace, transabled, transharmful, and transtrauma.
And when you hear those terms you might have a knee-jerk reaction. ‘Whoa, transabled, isn’t that insensitive? Isn’t that ableist? Why would you want that?’
And to you I ask, why are disabilities a bad thing? Why should you be ashamed to have a disability or to want one? Why is that undesirable? What’s more ableist, someone genuinely feeling a sense of that they should be disabled, or what you just thought in your mind about hearing that process?
‘But isn’t it offensive?’ Surely to have authority over a community, especially a controversial one, you must have representatives of that community, in your community. So to, uh, kind of figure out if we have authority, I ran a survey. And here are the results.
Only 34 of the 227 of the respondents identified as cisgender. 5.3% of us are heterosexual. 78.2% of us face discrimination again– for our gender identity. And 68.6% face discrimination for our sexual identity. Only 58.2% identity as white, 45% as physically disabled, 68% as mentally disabled.
So it can’t be offensive. And even if it is, minorities aren’t a monolith. What matters is that our experiences are crippling real, and dysphoria and harassment are something we face on the daily.
Take me for example. I’m transcharacter. When I found out I’m Vriska Serket, I faced the worst dysphoria I ever felt in my life. Nothing could compare to what I felt on that day and what I felt since. It’s worse than my gender dysphoria has ever been.
And that feeling, that deep routed negativity towards a fundamental structure of my being, has never abated. I dare you to tell me that’s not real. I dare you to tell me that my lived experience is silly, stupid, ableist, or fake. When I only resist harming myself because I know that seeing the color of my blood, and seeing that it’s not blue, would make me feel worse.
Harassment is also a big threat to our lives. Given that the biggest gathering of transID individuals is on Tumblr, a website famous for its discourse, a lot of bad shit goes down over there. I will not be showing screenshots for privacy, but I will share anecdotes.
Someone I follow had to go to the mental hospital for almost a month because someone decided to traumadump their RA (?) trauma into their inbox when they have that themselves.
I’ve been threatened to have my eye gouged out because I’m transabled and transhalfblind. There are multiple accounts dedicated to burning and drowning us and other horrible death threats. We’ve been threatened to be beaten to death, or burned at the stake.
Someone on a Discord I’m in got DoXXed – their name and address – I’ve been DoXXed. We’ve been told to burn in hell, jump in front of a train, shoot ourselves, blind ourselves, drown ourselves – I could go on.
Right now as I stand here, I am afraid for my life. I am afraid that you’re one of the violent people I have met online and you will go through with your threats, all because I had the gall to express myself in a way you find personally distasteful. We face this on a weekly basis.
But why do they feel that way? Let’s deconstruct some of their arguments. Most of the time they say our identities are transphobic because we share terms with the transgender community.
And why is that? 85% of us are not cis, of course we’re going to find similarities. We’re not cis. 85% of us. We use familiar words that aren’t exclusive to the transgender community. That’s TERF rhetoric right there, that they’re exclusive to the transgender community.
These are words from the goddamn dictionary, they’re not inherently gender related. If you go by that school of thought: transformation – an offensive topic; transaction – to hell with that; transportation – sure as hell isn’t, you know, safe, might as well rename it to ‘crossportation’ am I right. Perhaps ‘arissoportation’, make a little less offensive, more digestible.
But that’s stupid. I looked through the Oxford Dictionary online for the earliest record of ‘trans’ being used and I came up with 1574. In contrast the word has only been used for gender since 1910.
The second argument is that it’s made up for oppression points, or that we’re attention seekers. Which is interesting because attention seeking is a sign of emotional neglect. Biological priming (?) is common throughout the community and I’ve seen this most often with transracial people of color feeling not dark enough, and that’s why they identify the way they do.
We’re also not stealing resources. Thick water – stealing thick water from a disabled person, yeah that’s a dick move but we don’t do that. We innovate, create.
Me wearing this eyepatch isn’t stealing from the blind. This piece of shit is held together by hot glue and a prayer. But they still want us dead. Which shows they haven’t developed a theory of mind surrounding this subject.
Which is the process behind nuance and understanding that other people’s emotions aren’t the same as your own and can have different opinions. This typically develops when you’re 4 to 5 years old. Which means scientifically you’re acting like a child.
So what’s the solution to this? In a word, education. Which is why I’m opening myself up for people on Tumblr to ask me questions.
And yes, we’ll offend some people. I’m not going to ignore that. People genuinely feel like we’re a threat to their existence. But we are not the enemy. We have methods for our madness and you need to accept that because you can’t block and report us forever.
Or everywhere. The person sitting next to you could be transID. Like it or not – I’m transabled, I’m transcharacter, I am Vriska, I am going to physically transition and you cannot stop me from piercing my flesh and dying my skin and gouging my eye and bleeding for the futures of those who have been shat on, stepped on, silenced and terminated. We just want to be our true selves. And your opinions change nothing. Thank you.
*noises of clapping and/or snapping fingers
Context:
Vriska apparently gave this speech at their university/college.