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Trans Express on the transmedicalist transgender separatist debate

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On transgender people who think they are better than other trans people.

The existing transphobic cultural system of oppression thrives on the idea that there is a clear gender binary, where real men watch football and drink beer and women wear lipstick and drink wine. To be accepted into world view, you'd better spend a lot of time and money trying to live up to the stereotypes.

Needless to say,  nonbinary and transgender people often find it harder to live up to the expectations. The demand to "pass" as a "real" woman or man is stricter for them. Not only are they supposed to look the part. Their motives should be pure, and their feminine or masculine behavior impeccable.

Most trans people, including those who fully identify with their target gender, realize that gender is not a strict binary, and that this applies to both transgender and cisgender people.

That does not mean that trans people cannot identify as men or women. Gender dysphoria is often a sign of someone being misplaced in the wrong gender. They fully think of themselves as men or women. And that is all right.

Some, however, have adopted the conservative views of the peers and their parents, and therefore insist that only those who fully or exclusively identify with the gender binary are the “real transgender”. 

Indeed, some of them try to monopolize the term transgender, dismissing the old tradition of transgender being an umbrella term for all kinds of gender variance, nonbinary identities and expressions included. 

Those who explore the shades of purple or who – God forbid! – get aroused by the idea of being their real gender, are dismissed as "transtrenders", "tucutes"  “performers” or “transvestic fetishists”. They often use political terms adopted from anti-trans activists and some of them revert to the old idea that being trans is a mental illness.

These are the modern transgender separatists, trans people who think they are too good for the wider transgender community. They call themselves “transmedicalists” or “truscum” (The latter is a slur they have appropriated. Bad idea, if you ask me).

Blair White (photo above) is one of the most vocal transmedicalists on YouTube, expressing – at times – extreme right wing views about the kind of trans people she does not like. Not all transmedicalists share her political beliefs, though.

Here are some of the posts on Transgender World that explores the truscum controversy.

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