There were some threads recently that I thought about retweeting, and then fell into a pit of worry because retweeting them would bring more anguish and require more emotional labor from the person who wrote them than I wanted that person to have to give in the moment.

I’m gonna tell you where to go look at the end of this, because I will never be able to put this as well or as eloquently as someone talking from lived experience.

But I want to do a little heavy lifting on my own, so that the burden is not on someone else at this point.

Cis women in Romancelandia, we need to stop using genitals as a shorthand for gender. We need to do it ourselves. We need to remind each other when it happens to do better. We need to do that work, because it’s not fair to expect trans people to do it for us.

I know I have done this, and I am extremely grateful to those who have helped me understand why this is hurtful. I am trying to do better at noticing when I see it fly by on Twitter and saying something.

It may not seem like a big deal to you, but what you’re doing—among many, many other things—is making people in Romancelandia, including people you care about and respect, wonder if maybe you are secretly (or not so secretly) a TERF who will hurt them at the first opportunity.

It makes people panic and feel hurt.

There is no reason that we need to make good people feel hurt or have to deal with panic, and we *especially* should not expect them to educate us at the time when they’re most hurt.

As cis women with privilege in this regard, it will not hurt us to have this conversation. It will not make us have to grapple with dysphoria. We should be the ones who are doing the lifting on this.

People make mistakes. People may not know what’s going on. And yeah, some people out there really may be secret TERFs. But nothing is going to change unless we, cis women, decide to change it. So let’s do that.

In any event, if you want to read more about this, go back through @maidensblade‘s timeline. But please don’t demand education from her, or question that she is hurt by this.

Thank you.

I promise that we as a community are clever enough to be able to say what we mean, in a funny way, while still being kind. It’s possible.

If 5% of the cis women in this community took the time to say things like, “Hey, can you please not use the word “pussy” as a synonym for “women,” I think the other 45%* of the community would start getting it. So be the 5% and let’s fix this.

* About 50% of the community is going to Get Mad, but they’re already mad and are mostly already in their separate Facebook enclaves anyway.