Is the sun transphobic? Does the sun fat shame? Has the world gone mad?

[QuizteamBleakley]

The sun - that big shiny orb in the sky is dangerous to gender non-conforming folk, apparently. Still, you should see me in ma sleeveless & backless sundress, I get called all sorts, some of it quite clever, mostly just crap. Having had a lifetime of name-calling, I just plod on and avoid wearing a bikini to the corner shop.

Travis is an idiot. Travis is probably just trying to drum up more fund for their taxi go fund me

It is sort of a fascinating commentary on modern life that a person can make an entire career out of this sort of thing. Not a positive one.

Women face this shit routinely, especially if we're black (because of misogynoir, black women are assumed to be hypersexual and summer clothes magnify that by showing skin), fat (how dare I show my non-model body), big-busted (most strappy summer clothes won't cover them properly and big breasts are assumed to mean hypersexuality and stupidity, so summer clothes mean showing big boobs and hence open season), disabled (how dare we reveal a deformity or surgical scar), etc. But these people seem to think that they are the first and only people in the world to experience this. It's another way they colonise womanhood, by acting like they are the first people to find something and name it, when actually the women who already live through this crap have ben talking about it for ages and ignored and the fact that we knew this first is now erased. The parallels between trans colonisation of womanhood and e.g. white colonisation of Africa are clear to me: Livingstone "discovering" a big waterfall and calling it the "Victoria Falls" and the indigenous people's name for it "Mosi-oa-Tunya" ("smoke that thunders") is ignored even though they lived next to it and had done for centuries.

Travis maybe thinks that women dont get judged or harrassed if they go out in crop tops and shorty-shorts , and its just the trans laydeez

What's all this "was a goth", you lightweights? Goth doesn't go away, not at heart
My soul is black and remains so, even when I'm in a pink tea dress

My wardrobe still remains distinctly non-cheery, it has to be said. Can't be arsed to do the full makeup very often though, especially when it's hot and it all gets a bit "help, I'm melting!"

Also what bd67th said. Travis has discovered street harassment? Really? Pull up a chair, mate, and let me tell you what happened when I was 10...

I'm not a fan of Travis but he has a point, if people were allowed to wear what they wanted without childish name calling and vicious slurs then the world would be a much more accepting place for gender non-conformity and people may feel less pigeonholed.

I can't abide ignorant people who police the streets calling out anyone who doesn't look how they think they should whether it be fat, thin, trans or just plain flamboyant. I think he is correct that people should just be allowed to wear that pair of H&M shorts and be left alone - because unless they are streaking down the street what bloody business is it of anyone else.

I don't think this policing and abuse if limited to trans or gender non-conforming people though I think some idiots just abuse anyone they don't 'approve' of. Most of them are men but in my experience young girls can do it too - which is upsetting given the pressure they are under to conform to certain standards themselves.

Oh how I wish we could edit our posts (or I could learn not to press post too quickly)

I want to add that women are policed in this manner all the freakin' time; wearing clothes too young for them, too tight, too revealing, too baggy, too dark for not having the right body shape; too thin, too fat, too pale, too hairy...

This is nothing new to women and Travis doesn't acknowledge that and it would have made a good parallel but I'm not sure he thins outwith his 'community' or cares about those outwith the 'community'.

And the above should have said is not limited to in the final paragraph.

My soul is black and remains so, even when I'm in a pink tea dress

Yes, this is very true

Maybe I was never a real goth in the first place as I desisted in my early twenties^ and went for a look that was more hooker-in-a-70s-blaxploitation-movie-crossed-with-Ronnie-Spector...^

And Danielle Dax was freaking amazing, she had a great song called Jehovahs Precious Stone about FGM and this was in 1990. And I think she won Changing Rooms at one point too..?

An hugely underrated talent imao.

Travis has discovered street harassment

it's not just Travis - before #MeToo channel 4 did a new piece along similar vein. If I had ever worn what the transwomen were wearing I have no doubt I'd have been told I was asking for the street harassment - mainly as I have never dressed so skimply in my life and still found that.

Doesn't mean I condone the harassment - random men shouting sexual comment feeling free to grab and fondle l - I know how unpleasant that can be. I've had it since I was 11 - over 30 odd years off it – and now have the joy of having a 12-year-old DD who will be starting to experience this – who I can’t protect form it either.

The piece left me irritated and less sympathetic. Then #MeToo happened and it became clear many men are ignorant about what women have to put up with – or claim to be.

Travis has discovered street harassment

it's not just Travis - before #MeToo channel 4 did a new piece along similar vein. If I had ever worn what the transwomen were wearing I have no doubt I'd have been told I was asking for the street harassment - mainly as I have never dressed so skimply in my life and still found that.

Doesn't mean I condone the harassment - random men shouting sexual comment feeling free to grab and fondle l - I know how unpleasant that can be. I've had it since I was 11 - over 30 odd years off it – and now have the joy of having a 12-year-old DD who will be starting to experience this – who I can’t protect form it either.

The piece left me irritated and less sympathetic. Then #MeToo happened and it became clear many men are ignorant about what women have to put up with – or claim to be.

Sorry about double post - posting and previewing seem to be playing up at the minute.

When men experience something that women have been experiencing most of their lives (personally, I was first whistled at in the street when I was 12, waiting at the bus stop in my school uniform), it is supposed to be shocking and somehow worse because it's happened to them

Travis does give good DM sad face, though

Nobody dresses like that if they don't want attention.
Nice. Can't possibly think about where I've heard that before

This person has just shared their experience of harassment; we know that this has been happening since forever. But this article is talking about something that a lot of its readers will be able to relate to and I don't see the harm. A woman could post an article on a feminism blog about how she got catcalled in the street last week. It wouldn't be news but we wouldn't belittle her for it and the readership of that blog would be able to relate to what she's saying. A lot of trans people are probably finding comfort in the article knowing that they aren't alone in being ridiculed for the same reason as the person in the article. I find the laughing on here about it very nasty actually.

When men experience something that women have been experiencing most of their lives (personally, I was first whistled at in the street when I was 12, waiting at the bus stop in my school uniform), it is supposed to be shocking and somehow worse because it's happened to them.

Yep! Like I say, "Welcome to gender. What did you think it would be like? Because I could have told you this is what it is like and so could the other 3.5 billion women on Earth."

Male experiences something women have been having to deal with for all of time and that makes it news.

Welcome to the club kiddo!

Male experiences something women have been having to deal with for all of time and that makes it news.

Welcome to the club kiddo!

Women get catcalled and stared at without wearing outlandish or revealing clothing.

I actually find the equivalence of a man dressing in wildly quirky clothes being stared at and noticed for his quirkiness with a woman dressing as she pleases and getting unwanted and perhaps sexually threatening attention rather appropriative. But what's new there, eh?

Something happens to a man and it’s the worst thing ever
Something happens to all women for most of their lives and we are being hysterical

Young people always think they are the first to experience everything.

Lee Bowery in full on Kinky Gerlinky mode, dripping in sweat, make up smeared everywhere, getting out of a mini cab on Shaftesbury Avenue is so firmly imprinted in my memory that I am left entirely unable to sympathise with a youth in a rather conservative boiler suit and up do combo.

Maybe the sun is making me especially cranky but I feel old today.

www.reflektmag.com/blog/2016/12/12/know-your-icons-leigh-bowery

The thing is, Travis and Alok don't dress in a 'gender non-conforming way' they dress in an attention seeking way. And if that is what they like to wear then absolutely good luck to them, and people who comment on that are dicks.

But I think the point is that people aren't really shouting stuff because Travis and Alok are 'trans', it's not really a 'trans' issue. Both of them are very obviously male who call themselves 'non binary'. No one can be non binary, you are either male or female (or intersex which neither of them are). They are men who dress in an unusual way, particularly for the gender stereotypes of their sex - that is as 'special' as it goes I'm afraid boys.

As an aside, Travis Alabanza comes across as one of the most self absorbed narcissistic people ever.

Travis and Alok are quite simply tiresome young ego inflated narcissists which would be fine if they didn't also appear to be claiming some kind of oppressed status.

Moonkissedlegs post sums it up very well.

As pointed out by myself and FireFarting, women are catcalled and harassed no matter what they wear - personally the worst incident of verbal abuse I experienced was in the middle of winter while wrapped up head to toe for the weather.

Isn’t it funny how men always think that no one has it as bad as them and nobody could possibly understand how hard is it?

Travis and Alok are quite simply tiresome young ego inflated narcissists which would be fine if they didn't also appear to be claiming some kind of oppressed status.

This.