Chapotraphouse

Calling a trans person a transvestigator is despicable shit, especially when transvestigation is premised on erasing trans identity, a practice that you are more closely aligned with. Absolutely abysmal thing to do, to try to leverage language developed by the trans community against trans people who have needed to carve a historical narrative of themselves through an oppressive history that refuses their legibility.

So much of our history rests on finding connection beneath the surface layer of the hegemonic "truth," finding throughlines that transcend linguistic limitations and cultural understandings that are in constant flux as they navigate a status quo that seeks their assimilation. Joan of Arc was executed for wearing men's clothes, refusing to apologize for it, and saying that she would rather die than dress as a woman. Hatshepsut was often depicted as a masculine figure, with beard, short hair, and without breasts, and used masculine language to describe herself. Ashurbanipal was describes spending a great deal of time wearing women's clothes. Elagabalus used feminine pronouns, dressed in women's clothes, and preferred likenesses to be feminine.

Traditional historical accounts would say that Joan simply wanted to fight, so the clothing was armour, not cross-dressing. Hatshepsut fostered a masculine identity to be accepted by the patriarchy. Ashurbanipal and Elagabalus were described as effeminate as a way to attack their characters.

We can't know for sure, of course, and modern linguistic ideas of transness can't apply across time and space. But that it is only acceptable to default to cisness, that transness can only ever be established through indisputable evidence, that any evidence of transness is first explained away, is a time-honoured traidition of insecure cis scholars who use language of impartiality and empiricism, logic and rationale, as a way of erasing the possibilities of trans lives and denying trans people the space to find connection through history that cis people are allowed at all times.

And frankly, to compare that desire to allow for a potential trans life to be honoured, preserved, and entered into the tenuous and besieged trans historical record to transvestigation of all things (when, by the way, you could conversely be accused of transvestigating a person who has documented evidence of using a feminine name and feminine pronouns by trying to prove this person wasn't really trans because there isn't "enough evidence") is disgusting. The fact is, whether Aaron/Lilly was a trans woman, the bare minimum of evidence would show someone who used two names, and used two sets of pronouns, which is definitionally trans.

So quite honestly, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself on subjects that you don't actually know anything about, and stop insulting trans people with your bad faith usage of a term we coined to point out the nasty behaviour of cis people who deny our selves.

If I was a he/him I would simply not argue against trans women when they explain shit rather clearly?! What the hell? Why is it so important to you that she is remembered as a cis man??

Cool cool now we're equating trans people with transvestigators. Fuck you. Just fuck off, cissie. You do not understand the tiniest bit about any of this.

was in “denial” about their gender identity

sigh