I’ve seen quite a few jokes about how twitter apparently assigns you a gender (based on your “interests”), and I just wanna talk a bit about joking about gender/gender identity.

Can you joke about gender identity? Should you? How should you joke about it?
THREAD: https://twitter.com/igelkottenskamp/status/1254480375507824640

Now, first of all: I’m not gonna tell anyone what they can or cannot say. This is mostly meant to make you all think about the implications about what you’re joking about.

The gender binary that exist in most societies** assumes that all people are male or female, and they based on their body morphology identify as men or women and act masculine or feminine.

**I say most bc loads of societies have traditionally not seen it this way. But bc of...

...colonialism and globalisation western views on sex/gender/sexuality has spread throughout the world. Loads of activists as well as scholars have written about this, if anyone’s interested I can find links.

Anyway, this gender binary often has violent consequences, such as the forced “corrective” surgeries of intersex babies, discrimination and violence against trans folx etc.
It also manifests in what you could describe as a constant “hammering” at your sense of self (Ahmed 2016).

So, a lot of anti-trans rhetorics takes the form of jokes. A common example is the “I identify as an attack helicopter” joke. Loads of people have written about that, such as: https://medium.com/@eaton/youre-not-an-attack-helicopter-you-re-just-an-asshole-1c0cda89cbd3
Basically the joke serves to ridicule and dehumanise trans people.

So that’s one thing to consider: does my joke about gender/gender identity (accidentally) belittle or ridicule actual trans identities?

I’m not saying that you can’t make jokes about gender/gender identity, I make them and share them all the time. For instance, memes like these: https://twitter.com/queerkhazad/status/1252488175634784257

But the difference is 1: I’m trans, 2: a lot of these revolve about joking about the rigidity of society’s view on gender, and how it’s forcibly assigned, not about TRANS PEOPLE and our identification.

It’s honestly a bit hard to explain... But if you’re not trans, think hard about how the joke about gender identity you’re about to make will hit. Does it sound like you’re joking about TRANS PEOPLE or about THE GENDER BINARY/PATRIARCHY?

(If you are trans then it’s more fine to joke about trans people, I’d say, similarly to how it works with other groups... Some jokes only comes off ok when someone from within the group makes them.)

Look, these things are complicated. And it’s not like I can speak for all trans people!! I’d just appreciate if people thought twice before joking about gender/gender identity sometimes, and don’t accidentally reproduce the same toxic discourse that we’re already surrounded by.