Shonalika

[ivyfic]

Shonalika is a nonbinary youtuber who blogs with a very leftist perspective. The title of this video is deliberately clickbaity, but it gets into some parts of the discussion on gender that often get overlooked, especially when responding to openly transphobic comments, like those of JK Rowling.

Comments

[pauraque]

After JKR said her shit, I started to outline a post breaking down all the problems with the "transition regret" arguments, but it gave me such a headache--and heartache--that I decided not to go through with it. People like JKR use an enormous number of underhanded, exploitative rhetorical tricks to invalidate trans identities, and fully refuting them all takes a level of time, effort, and emotional labor that most trans people can't realistically invest, while most cis people either don't have the necessary knowledge or (frankly) don't care enough. This can leave people with the impression that these points aren't being refuted because they're impossible to refute, when it's really just that nobody wants to be the one to wade into the garbage dump of disingenuous argumentation, smug paternalism, concern trolling, bigotry, and lies.

All this to say, while I haven't watched the video, kudos to Shonalika for going there. It is not easy or comfortable to stand up and publicly debate your own right to exist--and bigots actually depend on nobody being willing to do it.

[ivyfic]

One of the reasons why a lot of the channels I've recommended are people who talk about issues of race, trans identity, or other marginalized groups is because I really want to listen to the people who've done the heavy lifting.

On the topic of refuting the specific arguments of JKR, I've seen a lot (a lot) of videos about it, but Contrapoints recently posted an extensive one that does that work of picking it apart to point out all the dog whistles in there.

But yeah. It's also been interesting to hear different trans (and cis) creators have different takes on it (all of them against of course, but there are nuances).

[ivyfic]

What I liked about Shonalika's video in particular is that there can sometimes be a flattening of complexity when reacting to threats from the outside--ie, disavowing that there is ever any transition regret because that argument is used EXCLUSIVELY to invalidate trans identities by transphobes. But Shonalika actually goes into the fact that it does sometimes happen and talks about the why (spoiler--it's sexism).

[pauraque]

Also, sometimes people are so devastated by the level of transphobia they experience upon transitioning that they regret it for that reason alone. And sometimes people think they're binary trans but then realize later that they're nonbinary and would have made different transition choices if they'd known that at the time. But as you say, nobody wants to talk about any of these things because it's so likely that they'll just be used to score points against us. This was even more the case when I was transitioning in the 90s, and there was so little sympathy or understanding for us that we had to present an extremely simplistic view of our situation in order to get what we needed socially, medically, and politically. It's gotten better since then, but there is still a lot that we usually just don't talk about when cis people are in the room, because it makes us too vulnerable.

Not to mention an even deeper problem: Even if people were transitioning and then detransitioning left and right (they're not, but let's say they were), who says this needs to be anyone else's business but theirs? All of these arguments depend on the underlying assumption that cis people are (and should remain) in charge of what is okay for trans people to do with our bodies.

Maybe some of the videos you've seen did go into that. But personally, that's where I started to get too wound up and decided not to write a comprehensive post about these issues after all. :P

[jethrien]

Holy crap, the ad I got for this video was for "SneakPeek early DNA gender test" so you can start imposing gender roles on your unborn baby as humanly possible aaaaaaaaaahhhhh

I didn't move fast enough to report them. All I can think is that the algorithm matched "gender" into a horrible combo?

[ivyfic]

That is. Gobsmackingly bad. Wow. I have youtube premium now, so don't see ads. It's one of the more expensive subscriptions, but let's be real about how much youtube I watch. Worth it.