white people have this problem with code-switching that i’ve noticed. (this is going to be a thread about trans stuff, but it’s going to take a while to get there, so you’re going to have to bear with me until then!!)

usually i think of code-switching as something that marginalized people do as a signifier of comfort and mutual understanding, but white people do it too. when you think about it, this is obvious.

it's the same way that misogynistic men say horrifying things to each other when they don't think anyone else in the room will hold them accountable. it's what racists say behind your back. this is the most straightforward kind.

but there's a kind employed by more well-meaning white people as well — who become aware that they talk differently to other white people than they do to people of color, panic, and don't know how to navigate that disparity.

then a lot of them decide that the least racist thing to do is talk to everyone as if they're white.

this is not the least racist thing to do!

in fact it is the source of a phenomenon i think of as WHITESPLAINING, which is when a white person talks to me about racism as if it's something we both just discovered yesterday and we're still in the 101 level seminar.

i think of WHITESPLAINING as half of a two-part phenomenon. whitesplaining is like spending years studying oil painting — living the subject, breathing it, thinking about it 24/7 — and then being handed a box of crayons and told, WOW YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT I JUST DISCOVERED!!!

the other half of the phenomenon is like spending years studying oil painting only for a white person to roll into your studio one day holding a box of crayons and saying HEY I THINK WE SHOULD COLLABORATE CREATIVELY AS ARTISTIC PEERS!!!

this is GETTING TOO CLOSE — when a white person has been friends with, or related to, or around people of color for so long that they think they can talk about issues of race as if they too were a person of color, and then as a result they make an enormous ass of themselves.

(this is actually a concept @dylan_thyme first put words to — we talk about this kind of thing a LOT — in the context of jewish identity! we've since applied it to other subjects, because as it turns out a lot of human behavior is just pretty standard. nevertheless.)

"okay so i shouldn't talk to people of color like they're white but i also shouldn't talk to them like i'm a person of color??? how am i supposed to talk to them without being racist???" is a question that i suspect comes up around this time in the conversation.

the answer is that you should not think of it that way! if the only way you can treat someone like a person is to either assume you know as much as them or they know as little as you, then you... are probably not going to learn a ton from talking to them in the first place.

you can safely just go ahead and assume that someone else knows more than you, and that all you bring to the table is your own experience, and that all you can speak for is your own experience. you are just one person talking to another person trying not to be an asshole.

i think a big part, actually, of why white people get so weird about this is that it's the first time many of them realize that they're part of a race-defined class??? which is of course something that people of color learn pretty early on, for the most part.

but for a lot of white people this is the first time they feel like they're being asked to answer for the actions of all white people, for example, and view themselves as a distinct entity rather than the unspoken norm, and they get anxious and guilty and fucking weird.

and then they have a weird conversation with a person of color about it, and the person of color thinks "wow, this person is super anxious and guilty and fucking weird," and the white person thinks "wow, that was just a horrible time," and nobody gets anything out of it.

now to deliver on the parenthetical. obviously (OBVIOUSLY) there is very little if anything at all to be gained from comparing transphobia to racism. the two are different entities that are nevertheless intertwined in a way that magnifies their effects, etc. etc. etc.

the entire history of human hatred takes about 2.3 million years to tell and unfortunately we don't have that kind of time (sorry mr. siken!!!) BUT as i live every day with the effects of both racism and transphobia, yes, i do have some thoughts on their structural similarities.

there is... this thing cis people do that makes me absolutely crazy, where trans people spend all day every day talking about what it's like to experience transphobia and cis people nod along politely and go "oh yes, how awful," but clearly don't understand.

fine; we all have different lived experiences; it is difficult and often nigh-impossible to convey that totality of experience using inherently limited language to people who lack the basis to understand it in the first place. (largely i am talking about white cis people... lol.)

BUT!!! but then!!! one day something just clicks. maybe it's that a trans person who is white enough or educated enough or rich enough or attractive enough or polite enough or patient enough makes the same point that a thousand less palatable trans people have made before.

and then — and THEN — it is all that cis people can talk about! they have their little box of crayons and by god, they're going to be the next van gogh thanks to this attractive rich patient well-spoken unaggressive understanding white (ALWAYS white) trans person.

and then they become like the mom in mean girls, where suddenly they are the World's Coolest Trans Ally. "do you guys need anything? some meaningless affirmations? some tokenization? let me know!!!" which is, of course, the GETTING TOO CLOSE.

the basis of GETTING TOO CLOSE, in any context, is vastly overestimating your own knowledge and helpfulness and making it incredibly awkward for anyone to correct you because you're just SUCH a GOOD ALLY and it definitely doesn't have anything to do with ignoring your OWN GUILT.

normally the flipside would then be CISSPLAINING but actually when it comes to trans people that's usually just transphobia, because all people ever really want to explain is how we're delusional and dangerous to children and misogynistic and self-mutilating and blah blah blah.

the closest cis people come to straightforward CISSPLAINING is when they take the "trans women are women! trans men are men! nonbinary people are uhhhhh quick think of a nice thing to say because we have no concept of living outside the binary!!!" thing... way too literally.

so they're like, "okay, so we just treat trans people... like they're cis???" which is profoundly reductive and elides the whole point of saying that, for example, trans men are men. at least for me, the point is not that trans people replicate cisness.

you shouldn't try to make trans people fit into the same musty old categories that cis people use to define gender. the point is that we expand those categories. the point is that when you say men, you mean trans men as well, and when you say women, you mean trans women too.

i.e. your definition of men needs to include people who can get pregnant, who need abortion access, who are subject to sexual violence and misogyny. you need to update your definition of women accordingly, as well. you need to acknowledge that some people are neither, or both.

you don't get to pretend you accept and support trans people and then not do these things! you are not doing trans people any favors by pretending we're cis with an asterisk. you cannot rely on your cis experience of gender for insight into a trans life or identity.

cis people have real difficulty understanding this, i think, because we do all have gendered experiences with a certain number of commonalities, and so the impulse is (i assume) to try and relate everything back to your own experience. but this doesn't work if you're not trans!!

it is so hard to explain to cis people that they don't know anything about what it's like to be trans, and so cis people often alternate between CISSPLAINING and GETTING TOO CLOSE — either assuming that trans people know nothing about our own lives or that they know just as much.

i spend a lot of time trying to bridge that gap by pointing out the elements of the cis experience that have analogous structures in the trans experience, though i worry that this just reinforces the cis perception that the trans experience is perfectly equivalent to their own.

but ultimately, just as it's on white people to find a way to individualize their own experience of race rather than project it onto everyone else, it's on cis people to do the same with their experiences of gender.

the great lie of cisnormativity is that gender is "just the way things are" — that it's this great matter of predestination that has an existential basis in biology or god or what have you, rather than simply a trick of collective and cultural belief.

but we all know that isn't true. there is no universal experience of gender besides self-identification and what we choose to make of it, and how that plays into historical and ongoing narratives. trans people know this. cis people could stand to think about it more often.

so the endpoint of this, i think, is to say that if you're cis, and this thread feels uncomfortable or personal or pointed, then it has fulfilled its purpose. sitting with discomfort is always productive for me, and i hope it is the same for you.

thanks for reading! and please read other trans accounts and perspectives and take them as they are, without trying to break them down or fit them into the oppressive structures of cisness. we have nothing to lose and everything to gain by stepping outside those confines.