this post was submitted on 12 May 2026
402 points (87.8% liked)
Trans Memes
3058 readers
457 users here now
A place to post memes relating to the transgender experience.
Rules
- Follow lemmy.blahaj.zone community guidelines.
- Posts must be trans related.
- No bigotry.
- Do not post or link to pornography.
- If a post is tagged with a specific gender identity, keep the conversation centered on that identity.
- Posts that assume the viewer’s gender and/or contain potentially triggering content must be spoilered and tagged at the beginning of the post title. Example content-warning tags that you can copy include the following:
[CW: Assumes Viewer is Transmasc][CW: Assumes Viewer is Transfem][CW: Assumes Viewer is Nonbinary][CW: Transphobia][CW: Violence][CW: Weapons/Firearms][CW: Disturbing Imagery]
- Mods can be arbitrary.
Because it apparently has to be said, this community is supportive of all forms of DIY HRT.
Recommendations
- Include other tags in posts for example:
[Transfem/Transmasc/Non-binary]
- Include image description when possible.
- Link to source
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I get what you're saying, totally. And it is perfectly acceptable to disagree with aspects of a "cause" while still supporting the people involved.
But (hah) that's not really the point of the comic.
It's when you feel the need to throw in your "but" after a statement of support that is at issue. It's not the fact of being free to have objections to the pharmaceutical industry using animals that's the problem in your example. It would be, in the context of this post, that you felt that your objection was tied to the right of trans people to exist with equal rights.
See, objection is to a completely separate issue. You can focus on reducing or eliminating the use of animals in medicine without tying it to the right of trans people to have access to gender affirming care. If your objection is to the animal issue, great, wonderful. That's a separate conversation.
And I'm only using that example because it's the one you used. It could be anything, any "but".
Like, my little issue that intersects enough that it could be a but is allowing dedicated spaces. There are times and places where a branch of cis gendered experience is being shared, and someone that isn't part of that group is going to be extraneous or possibly disruptive. Like, you don't have a support group for men that survive testicular cancer and think it's okay for a cis woman to show up. It's okay to exclude women from that. It's also okay to exclude anyone that hasn't had testicular cancer, even if they have testicles. It's also okay to exclude people that never had testicles at all, even if they're men, regardless of being cis or trans.
That, however, is absolutely unnecessary to bring up when I say "I support trans people". There's no but there. The support is full stop. No buts. There's zero need to drag that separate issue that just happens to intersect in a peripheral way with some segment of the trans population.
That's what the comic is about, not blindly accepting things. What it comes down to is that if you think your "buts" are more important than supporting the rights of trans people, you aren't really supporting them. And that's what adding that "but" means. It's saying that whatever your issue is is more important, that it overrides that struggle.
That's it. The presence of the but in that statement indicates it isn't true. And that would be the case for any "I support" statement.
I understand what you are saying. The issue is if someone were to say, using the example, "I don't think we should use animal based hormones" without a qualifier they run the risk of having to fight off allegations of not supporting or discriminating against trans people when that clearly isn't what they belive.
So they start with the qualifier. However now people claim that is disingenuous.
Honestly it's something I've seen develop more and more over the years. People like to ignore all of the context of any given conversation.
Obviously if the qualifier is followed with something actually unsupportive you're right, but based on the comic we'll never get to know what that but was.
I tend to be the sort that if I voice something akin to this subject and it gets twisted into an allegation, I'm going to explain what I mean more fully, or determine if the person just has an axe to grind, or at least take the time to examine their take and see if I should change my thinking on a subject. If they just have an axe to grind, I'm out because I don't have patience for zealots. If it was a misunderstanding, then it's easy to fix. It is also entirely possible that someone could come up with something I hadn't considered.
I'm old as fuck though. It makes me a bit more willing to listen than when I was younger and might have gotten het up over someone bringing up a tangent to a big issue. And, I'm also less willing to tolerate when someone is just looking for an argument by throwing an allegation and assuming the worst rather than just talking like a decent human being. I'm too old to argue with a zealot, so I just walk away. Even online, I have to be in a foul mood before I'll give energy to someone that's not acting in good faith with me as a fellow human being. In meat space, I have body language, tone and such to help make that determination, so I tend to walk away quicker (though often with an eye roll and some muttering about wasted time.)
Legit though, in the comic's scenario, there would be nothing that could come after the "but" that would be germaine. Hypothetically, yeah, a person could be coming up with something that wasn't going to negate the original statement. It just doesn't work out that way when it comes to discussion of marginalized peoples. Like, since I first became aware of humans being shitty to groups of humans they don't like, it's a thing. Nobody ever throws out "I support gays, but...", or "black people deserve civil rights, but..." without following up with something that works against their previous statement.
Folks bringing up stuff like your example? They're not going to say it the same way. "But" is used in a way that negates more often than not, and when it's about supporting a marginalized group, I have never seen anyone throw a but without negating their supposed support. Worse, it's fairly common in my experience that the "but" ends up being a dog whistle or outright bigoted.
Going back to the vegan example (and let me interject that this conversation has been really awesome, I love it when people engage the way you are), if someone says "but animal hormones", they're effectively saying that their belief in appropriate manufacture of medical products is more important than the rights of trans people to access gender affirming care.
If they didn't think that, they'd most likely, go with "and it sucks that trans people have reduced access to ethically sourced hormones". It's a different way of thinking about a given issue. There's ways to expand a conversation to include one's related thoughts without using a negating conjunction. You know in role play and improv, there's a guiding principle of "yes, and" instead of "yes, but"? It applies in this kind of situation, with the choice of but rather than and pointing to a less humorous situation.
Like, in running over this example, if I had an objection to the source of the hormones, my way of expressing it would come out "I support trans people. I really wish the pharmaceutical industry would support them in a way that reduces harm to animals as well. We can have both." That's the phrasing that came into my head when I put myself in that hypothetical vegan's place.
It's a different way of communication, it's a different way of thinking.
Excellent response
Very well put.
I felt it in my gut that "but" was wrong but I hadn't sorted out exactly why yet, and you reasoned it out perfectly.
To me it seems like the obvious point of prepending a support statement to a separate objection would be to clarify that what you mean by that objection is not broad hostility, if it seems people might confuse it for that otherwise. There's better ways to word it (maybe split into multiple sentences), but I don't think someone saying "but" necessarily is trying to convey that the thing they are objecting to competes with or outweighs their support.
With most things, I would tend to agree. It's just that with marginalized groups, that "but" is only rarely going to be something that's not just a dismissal of some part of the fundamental issues that make the group marginalized in the first place.
Not sure who has experienced what, but here in the south I have lost track of how many times I've heard things like "black people are great, but...." or "I don't have anything against gays, but..."
There's a way of thinking behind buts when applied to this kind of matter that's different from "I like shrimp, but..."
People making that kind of statement disingenuously is definitely a negative trope for a reason, and because people are likely to interpret it in light of that trope it is bad etiquette. The reason it's misused that way though is because it is one of the simplest ways to frame a statement of polite disagreement. If people not wanting to attack marginalized groups avoid saying it, that's probably more because most of them have picked up on the etiquette rule rather than because the inherent meaning of such a statement is an attack.