The Passing of Matt Kailey

The news is beginning to make it's way around the cyber world that Matt Kailey died over the weekend, on Saturday, in his sleep, of a heart attack or heart failure.

If you didn't know, Matt was the highly respected force behind the Tranifesto Blog, the "Ask Matt" series and the Author of  Just Add Hormones.  

And, by the way, Matt was a transgender man.  Unfortunately I never had the occasion to meet him and felt lucky enough when some of my off the wall comments made their way on to his blog when I sent them in.

What always struck me about Tranifesto was how Matt addressed both transgender men and trans women.  I found that to be remarkable and a rarity in our community where so many are out to protect their "little mound of sand" at all costs.

Finally, I know a little about how much of a commitment and effort it takes to put the amount of work out that Matt did at such a high level.

Indeed a man's work is his legacy and Matt Kailey's is a huge one!

Cis Privilege?

On occasion I recommend and quote from a really good blog I follow called Ask Matt.  Matt Kailey is a trans man but never really limits his scope to men and includes trans women too.

The more we all start to venture out into the public we naturally seek acceptance or some sort of understanding from other human types. This is often very difficult to find even from "friends" in our own LGBT "community" as seen in this comment from a FAAB (female-assigned at birth) genderqueer individual who is also gay  This person got a kick in the gut from very good friends (four lesbians, one gay guy) when they completely slammed the whole trans umbrella:

 “They essentially said that they do not believe that trans women belong in spaces such as the women’s group at the LGBT center, and same for trans men with the men’s group. I asked where I fit, and they were like, ‘You have a vagina, don’t you? With the women, duh.’ I felt like my entire identity was invalidated in that moment by the last people who should be doing that. “But then they made what some would consider a valid point: trans women grew up with male privilege, and that is something cis women have never had. Trans women wouldn’t know anything about menstruation and other issues that happen in that department that cis women want to discuss."

I am passing along a very short excerpt from the post and an equally short portion of Matt's answer. After which, I will give you the link for more.

"The reality is that most gay men and lesbians understand about as much about trans issues (and probably about as much about genderqueer issues) as non-trans, straight people (and those with a binary gender identity) do. Your friends probably don’t even realize that they hurt you, misgendered you, and pretty much discounted and/or trivialized your entire sense of yourself. What this demonstrates is not necessarily that your friends don’t care about you. What it demonstrates is that they can’t wrap their heads around who you are. They don’t understand your identity, they can’t relate to it, and they might not be all that interested in trying – or they might be."

The entire post is here.