The Acceptable Tranny
Why Centring Cis Acceptance Hurts Us
Commonly for many minority groups, there are factions that splinter off and look to attain safety by appealing to oppressors and re-packaging themselves as “One Of The Good Ones". We see this, for example, with right-wing cis gay men, and we only have to look to the US to find various gay Republicans who support a party dedicated to erasing them, or simply to the UK where Wes Streeting is all too happy to throw trans people under the bus for the sake of furthering his career as a white gay cis man.
Pick Me!
A prominent example of this within the trans community is Caitlyn Jenner, who has been vocal about her distaste of trans women in single sex sports, has been known to misgender other trans people, claims to have “the balls to stand up for women and girls in sports” and frequently engages in rhetoric which is harmful to the trans community. This is made worse by the fact that she is known to be a MAGA supporter, and voted for Trump, despite the fact that it was known he would move to strip trans people of their rights from day 1 of his second presidency. She even praised both Trump and Musk in 2024, claiming them to be able to “single-handedly save western civilization”.
There are also some well known trans individuals who take it upon themselves to be extremely verbal about their distaste for their own community, and their rejection of “trans ideology” [reminder that “Trans Ideology” does not exist, see my Instagram post here for more on this]. These same individuals tend to pander to cis-supremacist viewpoints of biological sex being “binary and immutable” [again, it isn’t, sex is bimodal at best], and often utilise their birth sex as part of their identity, whilst still claiming transness for themselves. Whilst this last part is fine, to some extent, placing that same standard or belief on another is not; our identities are not for someone else to dictate to us, and I would no more want to force my opinion on how they see themselves, than I would want my identity forced on me by someone else.
Both Buck Angel and Blaire White are prominent examples of this. For example, Blaire White upholds a strict binary as she believes there to be only two genders, chooses the terms transexual over transgender, and argues that whilst her driving license says “female”, that she, and other trans women are not women. Buck Angel is well known to use derogatory language about other trans people, often misgendering and invalidating the identities of others, as well as perpetuating the pseudoscience of Autogynephilia (the notion that trans women are trans because they’re aroused by being a woman), going so far in 2021 as to be a signatory on a public statement called “Trans Men Fight Back” arguing a large number of transphobic talking points including reaffirming Autogynephilia.
And whilst having an individual view of ones identity that doesn’t fit how the rest of the community sees themselves is fine, it is this notion that they somehow have authority to dictate to others, and to work with cis-supremacists to inhibit us. The rhetoric they push fuels fake news and false narratives from cis people who claim to know trans people better than they know themselves. It argues that there are some “good” trans people, but that most of us are perverts or mentally deluded in some way, or that we’re violent individuals; just this week we saw Joe Rogan pushing this exact narrative.
The aim of the “Pick Me” is to portray themselves in a way that is acceptable, in the hope that when the inevitable stripping of rights, or even our genocide, comes (we’re there already), they will be spared. If the viewpoint of cis-supremacists is that all trans people are perverts and dangerous abusers, then it’s easier to say “it’s everyone else that’s the problem, not me” than it is to challenge this false belief and stand united with your community who is being significantly oppressed.
This comes with an additional benefit though, because they can cosy up with oppressors, and feel more safe and secure, while the rest of the trans community fights for our rights and our freedoms. And when the day of our freedom does come, the "Pick Me” will benefit there too.
Transmedicalism
This kind of pandering to not only cis-supremacists, but to the patriarchy, isn’t the only kind of “Pick Me” behaviour we see in the trans community. The other is transmedicalism, though we do find that those who are Pick Me’s tend to also likely be transmedicalists.
Transmedicalism seeks to pathologise transness by ultimately labelling trans people as suffering from a sort of diagnosable “transexualism”. People within this subset see Self-ID as something inherently wrong, and that you must either fully transition from one sex to another, or intend to. Furthermore the expectation is that trans people must have debilitating dysphoria, and a common trope is that it’s depressing to be trans.
They further extrapolate this notion by relying on scientific evidence that our brains are different to cis people, and our nervous system is wired different, resulting in us recognising our incongruent genitals. To them, these factors justify trans existence from a medical standpoint, and whilst it can be well-intentioned (because there are surely biological reasons for our transness), it seeks to look for answers as to why we are trans, and as a result maintain a strict box on what makes a person acceptably trans, resulting in the term “True Trans”. Those who do not fit this standard of acceptability are seen as delusional, or fabricating their identity for attention.
The issue is that many of us know we are trans, before we even have a “dysphoria” diagnosis (if we ever do), and that there are no scans or tests conducted at any point, nor are trans people diagnosed as trans anymore [reminder; being trans is no longer classed as a mental illness]. As such, requiring pathologisation in order to be valid presents a myriad of issues, like;
Gatekeeping the validity of our identities behind cis standards of transness
Invalidating our lived experiences, especially of those historically who did not have the level of knowledge we do today
Ignores financial, social, or political barriers to gaining a diagnosis of dysphoria, or even transition itself
Creating a roadblock to bodily autonomy
Completely invalidates non-binary and gender diverse people, particularly those of indigenous people
If we consider for a minute the autistic community; many are aware, or come to learn of their autism, long before a diagnosis is made (though not always). This does not make undiagnosed autism any less valid, all it does is confirm what the individual likely already knew, but our treatment of people should not be based on whether or not they’re diagnosed or how severe their diagnosis is; their lived experience should be enough. The same could be said about depression; we do not require someone to be diagnosed with depression in order to treat them with kindness, nor do we care what is going on biologically to cause it.
Or if we look at being LGB+: for a long time this was pathologised, and people labelled as “inverts”, because they were seen to have something “wrong” with them. But even if there were a “gay gene” or a cause for people to be LGB+, it frankly doesn’t matter, and claiming that “well I’m diagnosed gay so you should be more accepting of me” is just moving the goalpost, when what we should be striving for is acceptance of people on the basis of simple humanity, and compassion for our differences.
Why?
A lot of this stems from the fact that historically, trans people would have to want full transition, and they would have to present very strongly in line with a binary gender identity for appointments. This idea would be pushed on them by medical experts who would gate-keep treatment for those who they deemed “acceptable”. Trans women would be expected to wear a dress and make up, claim attraction to men only, to want rid of their penis, and to want to fit into the lifestyle of a “typical” housewife. Trans men would be expected to wear a suit, have short hair, carry themselves in a masculine way, be attracted to women only, to hate their vagina, etc… So all that was happening is one box was being traded for another, one prison cell for another, and many would lie or present in a set way just to jump through the necessary hoops.
Certain trans people then can hold on to this dated idea (whether consciously or not) that in order for us to be accepted, we have to perform this certain standard of cisness, and that we must be medicalised, but this has a couple of really important impacts:
It completely invalidates and damages non-binary and other gender diverse experiences
It limits our personal freedom and bodily autonomy
It fails to move the conversation, or our rights, forward
It focuses the discussion on keeping everyone in-line, and that we will be safe so long as we do as we’re told, and conform
Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot like it’s leaning towards fascism. As such, it’s no wonder that many of the prominent Transmediclists tend to lean more to the right, where order and structure are more important than individuality.
Both the Pick Me and Transmedicalists seem to stem from different viewpoints, or different origins, though there is clearly crossover when we consider that both tend to uphold the binary, both reaffirm biological sex as superior, and both play into right-wing ideology and the notion of “The Dangerous Tranny”. They seek to distance themselves from the wider community in order to make themselves appear safer, or more acceptable, but in doing so, they simply damage our collective ability to reach a better future for everyone. Their rights have been, and will continue to be stripped, regardless of whether they take the position they have, but these individuals do far more damage to our community than good.
The sad thing is that they could be making a difference with the rest of us, but choose not to. Our acceptance won’t come by pandering to cis-supremacists, and fitting into the binary created by cis people, it will come when society learns to embrace those who are different from themselves.
Wonderful article 💕
Thanks for writing this great article Robyn. Dr Webberley mentioned you and this article in one of her recent articles.