I hate how "transphobia" implies I'm not a misanthrope

What, you thought I cared about Mike Johnson, did you?

There is so much online discussion lately of transphobia and transphobes. And hey, I’m glad the problems of trans people are getting more attention than they used to. That’s a key step towards solving them. But also being the irascible and crotchety pedant that I am, I’ve disliked the word “transphobia” and its etymological relatives for decades now. In its place I tend to use “cissexism”.

Sure, I think that a lot of people would say that the words are being used to describe the same thing. In other words, people would object to my pedantry saying that the denotations are the same. Ah, but the connotations are different. With “transphobe” there’s an implicit assumption that I care what’s in a person’s heart, about what they feel that motivates their statements and actions. Honestly, I mostly don’t. And that’s not even down to my wicked and spiteful misanthropy. That’s just down to the fact that there are 8 billion of you fuckers out there, which is too many to know. And if I don’t know what’s in your head or heart, I can’t very well care about it, can I?

Of course, pedants other than me (pedants who are wrong) sometimes also deflect characterizations of transphobia as inaccurate since “phobia” means “fear” and they aren’t literally afraid of trans people. But of course they’re engaging in two informal fallacies at once: that of composition and that of etymology. So let’s all feel superior to them for a moment.

Didn’t that feel nice? Right, let’s move on then.

While we are of course correct that “phobia” is not an unmodified translation of the greek “phobos”, the word transphobia was derived by variation from homophobia. That word was coined to ironically medicalize anti-queer hatred at a time when some (mostly gay and bi men) were fighting to demedicalize same-sex attractions by removing gayness from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The coining of homophobia was in short about psychoanalyzing the people fighting against queer rights. Transphobia was derived from homophobia and with largely the same intent at a time when trans people were also fighting the APA over the inclusion and nature of any trans-related diagnosis.

My position is that I don’t give a goddamn whether transphobes fears are logical or not, rational or not, founded or not. I don’t give a goddamn whether their fears exist at all.

Let me explain by way of an analogy: there was a time period after a long relationship with an abusive partner where my PTSD would trigger at seeing a certain colour in a corner of my eye. It made sense to become vigilant at that signal, because the colour was that of my abuser’s hand, a hand that often struck me unexpectedly, with little warning and from the edges of my perception. My abuser was African (having emigrated from Nigeria as a child). This meant that my reaction triggered around certain Black people, but never around caucasian people. And again, it was a fearful reaction (making phobia a reasonable descriptor) but also a somewhat rational one (my abuser still lived in the same city and striking when I least expected it was a deliberate strategy on their part).

The problem for me (or one of the problems and the one relevant to this discussion) is that it didn’t matter whether my response was or wasn’t “phobic” according to either popular usage or technical definitions. My reactions showed fear around Black persons that I didn’t show around white people. Stopping to explain my idiosyncratic history would not have been feasible in most cases and would not have helped in most of the rest. Black people are used to being disproportionately feared, and this social dynamic curtails both the extent and nature of their otherwise full participation in society. By displaying more fear around Black persons than I did around white ones, I contributed to the marginalization of Black lives. I was causing and perpetuating racism.

I didn’t work to minimize my PTSD because I felt fearful. What motivated me to work on this was my commitment to ending racism — a systematic diminution of the rights and privileges of a racial group. I had to get over my shit regardless of whether it was based in fear and regardless of whether or not it was rational. The etiology of my behaviour didn’t actually matter at all, but use of “phobia” might suggest that it did. The socially important issue that affected people outside of my own head was racism, not colorphobia.

By extension, when I think of Mike Johnson, I don’t give a shit whether he quakes in fear at the thought of two men kissing. I don’t care if he shivers with irrational revulsion at seeing two women holding hands in public. I certainly don’t give a flying fuck whether he really believes that there are only 2 genders or if he’s cynically using popular prejudice for political gain.

The issues I have with Mike Johnson are about the actions he takes that harm other people. If he voted like a decent human being and convincingly portrayed one to the people around him, any private demons he might have to fight to pull off that act are none of my business. If he doesn’t want to feel that uncomfortable mess, he can go to a therapist. If he was my brother or my fuckbuddy or my best friend I might feel different, but he’s not.

What matters to me is that he’s sexist, he’s heterosexist, and he’s cissexist. If he also happens to be transphobic in the psychological sense (or more properly I suppose, the psychologizing sense) I wouldn’t know it and it ain’t my problem anyway.

Sure, in important senses cissexist and transphobic describe the same thing, but I would never want to accidentally give Mike Johnson or his ilk the gross misimpression that I actually care what’s going on in their heads or hearts.

In other words, “transphobia” is in my opinion far too generous to the transphobes. So cissexism it is.