Kim,

You came into an ongoing fight, without doing your homework and without recognizing that the whole thing was about angry cis folks trying to drive trans folks away from the Blend. And then you started yelling primarily at the trans folks.

I gave you a link in private email to Questioning Transphobia, which you could have read. I don't think you did.

Your comments kept adding insult to injury, after people like you -- yes, you're still cis, you're not automatically trans because you're the parent of a trans person -- kept doing some pretty awful things to trans people.

Here's a hint: Context matters. You showed no sign of that; you only came into the argument when Autumn Sandeen had already made some particularly preposterous statements -- and people were reacting to that. The people reacting were trans, because what Autumn said was both offensive and reinforcing of cis privilege to silence trans people. So of course those are the only ones who were "upset" in that post.

Did you see the post where labeling someone as "cisgender" was considered a slur? That someone being John Aravosis, who in 2007 argued that trans people should be shut out of ENDA in a piece on Salon? Do you understand why cis gay men said that was supposedly "offensive" to them? Do you see how such a redefinition of "cis" as a "weaponized" term has the effect of shutting down trans people from talking about the oppression we face?

Did you catch the cis gay man who asserted that talking about anyone as cisgender was akin to what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany? Did you see the folks who claimed that "cisgender" was a fake term made up by mean trans people to oppress cis people, and cis people don't need any word to describe their cis status, they're "just people?"

Did you catch how Autumn Sandeen deliberately fabricated a provably false story in order to support her bizarre notion that this whole thing was the fault of angry trans people? And then when called on it repeatedly, declared that "it doesn't matter" what the actual facts were (i.e., it doesn't matter that I lied) and implied that any trans people who were still harping on her deception (which she refused to admit to) did not care about the murders of trans women and other "important" matters?

You didn't do your homework. Nearly all of your comments, because you were offended by the idea of "ZOMG people arguing," were directed against trans people. Why? Because trans people are the ones who are being attacked and villainized on the Blend, trans people are being marginalized, silenced, and thrown off, while cis gay men are encouraged to continue their cissexist, transphobic attitudes and never check their cis privilege.

If you're really an ALLY of the trans rights movement, and not a self-appointed Queen Mother, then you need to listen to what the trans people on the Blend were TRYING to tell you. You need to, when the people you fight for tell you that you're not helping, put aside your ego and your pride and even your hurt feelings, and realize that you are a cis person, with cis privilege, and you WILL at some points do more harm to the cause than good, because that's how privilege works.

You need to realize that trans people on the Blend are not children, and coming in and telling people to go to their rooms and stop fighting isn't any real sort of peacemaking effort on your part -- it's yet another case of a cis person on the Blend trying desperately to get trans people to just shut up and stop talking.

You were given a privilege check, and in return you cited all of your good activist work (which I have applauded and which I have continued to applaud) and your feeling that you're basically some sort of honorary trans person. None of that matters, though -- cis allies, by definition, are not trans and do have cis privilege and they WILL make mistakes. To be an ally not only means fighting the fight that YOU think is necessary, but also listening and supporting trans people when we fight OUR fights instead of joining with the status quo to shut us down.

That's where you went wrong, Kim.

--Kynn