alyesque:

In response to Mike Cernovich telling someone to fuck off after that someone misgendered Chelsea Manning, someone responded this to Mike’s tweet. There are several other comments getting at basically this same point.

Why do I post this? Because this tells us something about why men behave the way they do towards trans women. For men, there is a fear of contamination. A sort of: If I am nice to trans women does it mean I am one?

And of course, who would want to be one of us? Who would want to be such a reviled thing. And so, cruelty towards the thing reviled is a means of distancing oneself from that thing.

Trans women present men with the fact that they *could* be something else. And that to become that something else they would lose their social status. Our existence denaturalizes patriarchal domination. It tells them “your power can be taken away”

And so, when men see a trans woman like Chelsea hurting, they spit on her and take the time to attack her, to call for her suicide. Because they can distance themselves from the possibility of ever being the one spit on and abused.

And men will always suggest that those who don’t treat us like shit, even if only for a brief moment (like Mike here), must actually be one of us. They have to maintain the distancing act and police each other. Its pathetic and sad.