What is Internalized Transphobia?
When we, as trans people, direct transphobia toward ourselves, we are actively participating in internalized transphobia, which differs from externalized transphobia: transphobia directed at people outside ourselves (though this is not to say that internalized transphobia does not affect those around us as well).
Because our society is inherently transphobic, absorbtion of transphobia into our worldview is impossible to avoid, whether we are cis, trans, or otherwise. This also affects how we view ourselves whether we are cis, trans, or otherwise, but it is often most actively, consciously felt by trans people.
What does Societal Transphobia Look Like?
Below is a list of examples of societal transphobia. This list is not exhaustive, but serves to illustrate the ideas that contribute to how we view ourselves, and the ways in which our freedom, and ability to understand ourselves and our bodies is impinged on by strict gender roles and implicitly or explicitly anti-trans sentiment.
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Sex/Gender designation at birth
- Without this practice, transgender people would not exist, because we would have no designated sex to transcend.*
- This practice contributes to scientific ignorance by relying on an outdated framework of binary biological sex ("male or female") that ignores biological reality at best, and at worst actively seeks to change biological reality to fit the preconceived notion of binary sex (for example via coercive surgical sex assignment of intersex infants).
- Assumption of cisgender heterosexuality "until proven otherwise" (aka cisheteronormativity)
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The restriction of access to medical care and/or social safety nets for transgender people
- Barring trans people from access to safe shelters (whether for unhoused people, those fleeing domestic violence, those kicked out of their homes for being queer, etc.)
- Denying gynecological or other necessary medical care to trans people, for example, in a well known case, Robert Eads (content: cancer, medical discrimination, death, transphobia)
What I Wish Trans and Cis People Knew
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That there is much more overlap between the experiences of trans people and cis people, And various kinds of trans people than we often assume. For example:
- Trans women, often have the same or similar experiences of societal pressure to adhere to beauty standards or gender norms that cis women do, although for trans people the pressures are often conflicting. For trans people, that pressure comes from both directions: pressure both to adhere to the norms of your assigned sex, as well as to adhere to the norms associated with your gender identity (at least insofar as norms exist, depending on the gender identity or lack thereof of the trans person in question)
- HRT is the same process as "natal" puberty for cis people, and has the same effects
- Nonbinary and binary trans people have many overlapping experiences. I, as a nonbinary multi-gendered person, often have just as much in common with binary trans men and women as I do with other nonbinary people.
Footnote(s)
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*Whether gender* ** could, or would be assigned in this scenario is not something I would or could answer.
- * **Which I'm here using to mean the non-physical/non-biological lens through which traits, characteristics, and roles are interpreted, both by