A big part of why I enacted my "no shittalking trans people in public" policy was in response to this dynamic which seems only ever to grow within our communities: https://twitter.com/Calliethulhu/status/1248692430901297157

There are a lot of reasons behind why this affects our community in particular. Trauma is hard to ignore here. But also the figure of the 'bad transsexual.' We internalize transphobic discourses that tell us trans ppl are inherently suspect, deceptive, and (sexually) threatening.

The figure of the 'bad trans' is so painful for us because we have been taught to fear them, to fear becoming them, and to fear the damage their behaviour could do to our community in the ever-watchful eyes of the cis public who largely determine our fate.

Fear of the 'bad trans' is a trauma response, really, to moving through a world thick with transphobia. It's also a way for us to release hurt and frustration more-or-less horizontally because we feel powerless to change the systems of domination that subordinate us.

Two shifting, occasionally overlapping groups of ppl get lumped into the 'bad trans': 1. trans ppl, largely amab, behaving badly in public (criminals, ppl w/ bad politics, hysterics); 2. trans 'stars' (creators and artists, but also activists, group leaders).

These two groups are made bad through their visibility. They are visible to the cis public and within our communities. This visibility forces us to either identify with them, or to disidentify with them. Disidentification creates the 'bad trans.'

The culture of hypercritique aimed at visible trans people by other, usually less visible, trans people is a way for us to say "hey! this person doesn't represent me! They are bad and I am good!" It is a strategy for assimilation/self-protection that can only ever fail.

As Callie pointed out in the thread above, this is also a carceral logic. We become the police and dole out punishment within our own community - and I would argue we do so in order to demonstrate to outsiders that we are less bad and more acceptable than those we punish.

The strategy fails because ultimately we can never control what every other trans person does, and the idea that we would need to gives in to the transphobic logic that the right to life of our community rests on the good or bad behaviour of any individual within it.

The sooner you route out the transphobe inside your own head, the quicker you can create a healthy relationship to not only yourself but to trans people as a whole.