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.
- When Trans People Use Transphobic Narratives – The Buck Angel Tragedy (August 2021)
- The transgender scare and the transgender separatists (December 2019)
- You do not need dysphoria to be trans (January 2019)
- A response to some truscum memes (2018)
- Yes, You're "Trans Enough" to be Transgender (February 2016)
- No, you do not need dysphoria to be trans (December 2015)
- You do not own the term transgender, truscum (June 2014)
- My problem with truscum (May 2014)
- Questions for the anti-truscum answered (May 2014)
- Dear truscum: Defining who is gender dysphoric and who is not, is not an easy matter (May 2014)
- Do you need gender dysphoria to be trans? (March 2014)
- How to Effectively Invalidate Marginalized People! (March 2014)
- On the concept of "cissie" (March 2014)
- Dear Truscum: This is What the Word Transgender Actually Means. (March 2014)
- Must read on the history of trans terminology: transgender vs. transsexual (Dec 2013)
- Truscum and the Transgender War of Words (Dec 2013)
See also:
- Truscum and the Transgender War of Words
- Survey of truscum transsexual separatists
- The Harry Benjamin Syndrome transsexuals (on the previous generation of transgender separatists).
For more, see: The Very Best of Trans Express Directory.
