Thorns

Following on from my post about monster women and again via the_school_of_philosophy: the seam of skin and scales, in which a trans woman refuses to be see her body as a trap.

She doesn't mention disability explicitly, but almost everything she says rang very true for me, and trans people and disabled people are both very much left on the outskirts of white-young-feminist ideas about "loving your body". (In different ways of course, and I don't mean to flatten out the differences, especially since my disabilities are frequently invisible)

I am having a very interesting discussion with capriuni on a post she made about disability and monstrousness, and realised it may not be entirely a coincidence that I felt like drawing monster girls shortly after starting to go out more in my wheelchair and having to deal with the way that makes people look at me (and the way it makes me look at myself).

I don't believe in fate, but enough "random" things have happened to point me to posting about trans* issues that I'm going to give in to destiny :)

It's the transgender day of remembrance, a day made necessary by the horrible numbers of trans* people killed just for not being cisgendered. See also this list of participating webcomics.

Also, to (afaict unrelated, though one led me to the other) articles about trans* issues I read in the last few days: Describing the "always was" gender-swap fics, on "gender-swap" fanfic which fetishes trans* issues in a shallow and exploitative way, and Rethinking Sexism: How Trans Women Challenge Feminism, on the various attitudes to trans* people in the feminist movement, from "Gender is a social construct, you're just a guy in a dress", to "It's cool when people transgress gender boundaries. So why are you wearing a dress? Be all cool and ambiguous!" etc. Some lovely examples of these attitudes can be seen in the comments :/

Thinking about it, I guess (as is so often the case with prejudice) the issue in a lot of cases is that trans people are not seen as people. Their feelings and experiences are not considered or understood, they're instead punished or praised based on whether or not they fit a given person's ideology. (Sorry, that wasn't very deep, I'm pretty sleepy. But if I wait until tomorrow it won't be the right day!)