groups based on interest/activity vs groups based on identity?

[gender_euphoric]

Do you think the future of trans and nb community will have more to do with actions/interests/activities vs groups based around identity words? I noticed on the soon-to-be gone Imzy.com a community based on binding was more successful than most of the trans groups I could find. And while it was definitely trans inclusive/friendly, it didn't assume anything about the ppl posting's identities. It was purely based around the activity of binding.

On facebook there's a particular top surgery group I'm in and they've become more committed to being inclusive of nonbinary, nonconforming, and similar people. There are also people out there who are or live as binary women who want top surgery. There's been minor controversy about whether those folks should be in the group.

Also, sometimes trans women ask about binding in trans male-leaning communities--usually they are needing to hide breast growth for various reasons. I also assume some section of trans women and amab NBs might want to take hrt but might not actually want breast growth, so for them, top surgery and/or binding could be a solution.

I also wonder about the future of trans X, exclusive community/support spaces. Does birth sex assignment matter as much as previously thought?
anyway, just opening a discussion topic
-jay

Comments

[kindkit]

I only have a tiny amount of experience with trans* communities in meatspace or online, and that's partly because of some of the identity issues you touched on. The one time I went to a trans* support group, I felt kind of excluded because most of the other men there seemed to be living the dominant narrative of True Transness: they knew from childhood that they were trans*, they were straight, their behavior/personalities fitted pretty well into conventional masculinity, they looked conventionally male thanks to hormones and/or surgery and weren't at risk of being misgendered. None of that is true for me. I could see something like a binding community being less intimidating, more open to people who, for example, are still in the process of working out their identity, or people who are trans* but don't necessarily want to adopt conventional gender roles the way trans* people are still pressured to do, or who (like me) have body shapes that are hard to reshape into what would feel right. All this in addition to being welcoming of nonbinary etc. people, as you mention.

There's still a role for communities based on gender identity, I think--for instance I can absolutely see why trans* women would want to be able to have communities without men in them. Trans* women's and trans* men's issues aren't identical, and sometimes we need to focus on particularities. I guess ideally there would be a lot of different kinds of trans* communities, so that we can support each other without any pressure to fit into some One True Way.