According to an article on Social Justice Internet, too many phrases used by the body-positive movement are actually super transphobic and must never be used again.
“Our ‘body positive mantras’ seek to only validate cisgender people, effectively turning trans people away,” Sam Dylan Finch writes in an article on Everyday Feminism titled “4 ‘Body Positive Phrases’ That Exclude Trans People (And What To Say Instead)”
For example: “Your body is already perfect” is offensive because “for some of us, we see our bodies as completely misaligned with who we actually are — and this is anything but perfect.” Instead, he suggests, people should say “Don’t let society tell you that your body makes you feel less than,” which doesn’t exactly have the same ring to it.
Another apparently transphobic phrase? “All bodies are good bodies.”
“Many of us feel betrayed by our bodies…. and the last thing trans people want to be told while we struggle is that our bodies are still somehow ‘good.’”
#share#Finch writes that he also has a problem with the phrase “There’s nothing wrong with your body – there’s something wrong with society.”
“I interpret it one of two ways: either you’re erasing my experiences as transgender, or you’ve made the assumption that I am cisgender,” Finch writes.
Finch is correct about one thing: Generally, people often assume that the people around them are cisgender. But here’s the thing: Most people are. Finch is convinced that the reason there are so few trans people compared with cis people involved in the body-positive movement is because sometimes people will say something that could potentially be construed as offensive to them. But maybe, just maybe, it’s actually because there are fewer trans compared to cis people overall?