There’s a big difference between a trans person policing themselves, and cis people policing us.

We gotta stop beating one another up over this stuff, as trans people, and we gotta stop acting like passing is desirable or important…

There’s a big difference between a trans person policing themselves, and cis people policing us. Sometimes trans people do put the passing lens on one another, and it’s horrible, and this piece does exist in part to push against that. But that kind of policing is akin, if you will, to an abused elder child repeating their abusive parent’s words to their younger sibling. Not the same thing as the original abuse itself. The abuse and the structures that enabled and empowered the abuse need to go away, that’s the most vital change that is absolutely necessary for us to survive.

We gotta stop beating one another up over this stuff, as trans people, and we gotta stop acting like passing is desirable or important. But to act like cis people’s gender policing and trans people’s gender policing are equivalent would be utterly disingenuous of me, and would be blaming victims for internalizing their abuse. It’s on a totally different scale and has a totally different kind of impact. Even when trans people do this stuff in trans spaces, it is open to some degree of discussion and pushback; when cis people do it, they do it with the full force of society behind them and it has much larger teeth.