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Originally Posted by Phobia
I understand that UP just wants to feel and be treated like a normal person. Unfortunately, transgender operations aren't something that is normal for the average person. We don't have any way of processing it. So no matter how many times we're told how to be sensitive and respectful, it's impossible to phrase anything at all in a way that isn't deemed offensive to a transgendered person.
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It's not that hard to avoid saying shit that offends and upsets people whose life experiences are vastly different than your own. You know what this mystical secret is? Actually listening when someone tries to explain why the thing you said was ignorant and/or hurtful to them, intentional or no, and making an effort to avoid doing that in the future. I regularly interact with lots of cis people who somehow manage to not upset me or even remark upon my trans history without me initiating discussion about it. They're not superhuman, they just care enough to educate themselves and not subject me to exhausting, frustrating, endlessly repetitive conversations that I've had hundreds of times before.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Phobia
I feel like the best policy is to probably just avoid any aspect of that discusssion. If we had a rape survivor on the planet, we wouldn't say - "you probably feel this way about abc because of that brutal rape you survived in '97". Ultra Peanut just wants to interact here without the crap about her former peanus. I don't blame her for that. I'm extremely proud that I can even naturally call her "her". That took years for me to rationalize. I'm not trying to be a dick about any of this - just explain in 10,000 words or less that I think it's probably a topic that should just be avoided. Finally, I'm not taking any mod action or making any rules about it. This is just my random observation from where I sit as a user of this site. Please correct me if I'm wrong about something, Ms. Peanut.
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This is more or less the point I was trying to make, yes. Sometimes I feel up to talking about trans issues, but usually it's something I'm not thinking about at all until the discussion is foisted upon me completely at random by someone who has less than zero idea what they're talking about.
At this point I'm fine with sticking mostly to the soccer and wrestling threads, where the regular posters mostly get it and there's less chance of shit like the above happening. I was just popping in to share a glib anecdote about the awkwardness of that teacher-student situation while basking in the high of one of the best soccer matches I've ever watched, and I ended up spending a couple of hours and god knows how many words trying to explain to capone why his invocation of my trans status as some kind of bludgeon was unbelievably unwelcome to absolutely no avail. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn't have posted at all and would have spent that time banging my head against a wall. I'd have had less of a headache.