So here is my problem with the “by virtue of being a man, you have to make your peace with the fact that some people will be uncomfortable with you, and thus you have to make yourself a safe person”
I’ve heard the same thing about being black. A lot of people have taken my very presence as hostility. I have had people escalate situations just because I am present as a black person in front of them. Before, and after transition.
You know what the problem with bending over backwards to make other people comfortable with your presence even though you haven’t actually done anything to them besides breathe the same air?
It’s never enough. You can be One Of The Good Ones for ages and at some point you will fail your Good One inspection and people will turn on you at the drop of a hat. People who you thought you had a good rapport with. People you thought were your friends.
I have *experienced* this, both online and in person.
The onus is on everyone to be safe people to be around. Singling someone out and blaming them for daring to share a demographic with someone else who has caused harm isn’t cute when people do it to me because I’m black, and it’s also not cute when they do it because I’m a man.
People are uncomfortable about my blackness all the time. I didn’t magically stop experiencing racism when I started taking testosterone. So it’s absolutely wild to me that people think “well, you know, with what you look like, some people won’t want you around” is going to fly when I was explicitly taught *not* to tolerate that shit by every single one of my black relatives.
Someone doesn’t like that I’m occupying a space? Well I’m not hurting them, so that’s a them problem and not a me problem. That’s how I’ve learned how to exist as black in white-majority spaces. Why do you think you can change the demographic and get me to agree with you?
Similarly scrolling past a post that was effectively “trans mascs should sit down and shut up and let other people do the talking” and I WISH that I was exaggerating but the post did literally use the phrasing “you need to sit down and shut up” and here’s the thing.
Every single one of the women in my family whether they consider themselves feminists or not taught me to never tolerate someone telling me to sit down and shut up and let someone else talk over me. That my voice is my power, and that I should never let someone take that power from me.
Why do you think I’m going to tolerate it now?