There are undoubtedly social norms regarding what one should say about oneself in public.
I choose to ignore them in favor of what I think is ethically and morally right.
While you may think it is rude to talk about money,
I think it is rude to wield institutional power over others.
Being transgender is not, in and of itself, performance or art;
but it is permissible to be performative, to create art, to portray oneself as art, with art, within art,
without having one's identity questioned or negated.
In the same vein involvement in kink does not make one's gender a fetish.
Hell, if I have to spell it out, gender identity has nothing to do with fucking, except
that fucking in a body that doesn't work for you is like trying to move all the sand on a beach with a teacup
and gender-affirming sex is a therapeutic, healing act.
But also it is perfectly fine simply to be horny:
In my community when we discuss sexual behavior in a positive light it is implied that everything we are talking about is consensual,
and I have come to understand that in yours, you do not differentiate between a pervert who engages in fetish play consensually and a pervert who doesn't understand (or understands, but does not care) that he has to ask permission, in an appropriate setting, with appropriate power dynamics, to touch your feet
So you imagine — besides all the media indoctrination on the subject — that if your sexuality isn't normative you must be a predator.
(There is, of course, no community in which predators do not exist, and they tend to prey on newcomers who are isolated in the community, who haven't heard about them yet: so upon entering they will likely be the first people you meet, causing you to exit the community in disgust soon after, unable to alert anyone in it to the problem, allowing the cycle to continue.)
It is possible to play with gender without one's gender being play,
to wear costumes that play up gendered attributes without one's gender being a costume.
A trans person can portray a character or persona as performance: this does not mean that their actual gender, or being trans, is a character or a performance.
I hope that you can understand this distinction.
I hope that you can understand that gender can be simultaneously a painful and joyful thing and that both experiences exist within the same people.
Neither negates the other.
When simply being transgender is pathologized, every behavior that would, in a cisgender person be considered a bit odd but perfectly healthy is equally pathologized;
interpreted as a symptom of mental illness,
assumed to be part of some grand delusion, obsession, uncontrolled sexual urge:
everyone wants to psychoanalyze and solve, perhaps because their first impression of what it means to be trans is based on stock villains from psychological thriller novels.
Counterculture fashion and hairstyles are — in many places — a part of queer culture.
Mainstream culture (the US in particular) associates these things with teenage frivolity, with "phases"
and comes the conclusion that being queer, being trans, too, is something we will grow out of.
Dyed hair is one of the few aspects of their bodies trans youth can directly control, and it is constantly used as evidence that their genders are false:
that they have made childish, impulsive changes to their bodies and therefore cannot be trusted with hormones.
The visual language we create to signal to one another that we are family is labeled "attention seeking" as though it is a performance we put on for you.
The inevitable PTSD from a childhood under transphobia is either treated as something we deserve for our depravity and a sign of our inherent inferiority,
(we are told that transitioning "doesn't work" because it doesn't completely heal the trauma caused by being prevented from transitioning for years, decades; because it doesn't end societal transphobia)
or an outright lie — we are told, when we quote suicide statistics, to stop being so dramatic.
And it is true, many of us do not die, but simply become wraiths;
externally normative and hollow and messy and constantly breaking down and lashing out.
I am not sure why anyone would consider this a desirable outcome but I suppose wraiths are obedient, disposable workers.
Cishet culture sees queerness in general as immaturity;
assumes we will grow out of promiscuity, nonmonogamy, and kink, and settle down with one monogamous partner,
(or die, young, tragic, fell in with a bad crowd! — desecrated and buried under the wrong name)
move to the suburbs, two kids, golden retriever,
develop a gender-conforming presentation for the sake of looking professional,
one we don't take off when we come home,
to the delight of our relatives who told us over and over that no office job would hire someone who looked queer.
And what I see happening is queer polycules, yes, moving out to the country, to found spaces for rural communal living, to be naked in the woods.
Plenty have kids,
some just have chickens, goats.
And many staying right here, too.
The city is indeed a place that human beings live for their entire lives.
Our bodies, our lives, are not theoretical
they are right here, right now.
Please stop asking, "what if we existed?"
And please do not assume that when wealthy liberals uplift the voices of trans celebrities, trans people with money, that the vast majority of us aren't broke as shit.
The argument that supporting trans issues alienates the working class creates the illusion that trans people are not, ourselves, overwhelmingly the working class.
Let's hang out eat and work and fuck (or not!) and have a good life
in a place where the cis gaze can not touch us.
Look there is a whole lotta context you're missing out on and you are just dismissing entire fields of study as delusional symptoms because they involve ideas you're unfamiliar with, so chill.
If you have decided not to hire me because of something you saw on this page, I guarantee you your reasons are discriminatory.
If you have decided not to hire me because you're offended by the mere suggestion that you're capable of employment discrimination, your workplace is toxic as fuck and your employees are afraid of you.