#ALSO: trans women are women and trans men are men.

[bisexualgenderfemme]

In many many ways I agree with this post, including the most important thrust of it, but I have to strongly disagree on one small point.

full out saying this:

"when someone knows we're trans we're treated like a woman no matter what." (emphasis mine)

IS NOT TRUE!

maybe this is nitpicky, maybe this is just bad phrasing, but as this is? this is self defeatist, basically doomerism, & honestly makes me really dysphoric. like apparently everyone all the time is thinking about how I'm a woman just bc they know I'm trans? that's not true, plenty of people gender me correctly & actively think of me as a man, even when they know I'm trans.

YES! trans men face abuse & assault & job discrimination & all the other /specific examples/ listed, but this isn't it. Trans men are not doomed to be judged first as a woman in every situation they're in. there are absolutely times when, even though someone knows you (the general 3rd person you) are trans, you are still a man to them.

in fact, this is /part of/ why trans men face unique oppression, to some people you are not a woman, you are a trans man, and /that/ is what is being oppressed. that's part of why anti transmasculinity is its own thing & not just a copy of what cis women face.

This idea that everyone treats me like a woman "no matter what" upon learning I'm trans is directly contradictory to my lived experience. I am personally beyond the point of being viewed as a woman by most transphobic peoples standard bc I've 'ruined' my body so much that the judgement on my being trans I get the most is a third gendering/degendering/monsterizing experience. This is a reality many trans men, myself included, face & saying that everyone always views us as women actually prevents us from seeing our selves represented or getting the help we need.

again! maybe op meant something more like "often times when someone finds out you're trans they treat you like a woman after that no matter what" or "when someone is transphobic & they find out you're trans you often are reduced back to woman." which are both definitely true things I have experienced (tho more earlier in my transition) & I want to give that the benefit of the doubt, but I also don't want trans mascs/trans men to see this, read it as I did, & internalize the idea that everyone is secretly thinking "woman."

You can be viewed as a man! there are many people who will view you as a man whether they know you are trans or not, they will treat you like a man, (though unfortunately that sometimes means some of them treating you like a TRANS man) they will allow you to move through the world as a man. That doesn't mean everyone always will, or that passing isn't context dependent, or that passing privilege is real, or that passing isn't conditional: those are also all true! this is a complicated & nuanced subject where many things are true at once, that's why the finality, the totality, of

"when someone knows we're trans we're treated like a woman no matter what."

rubs me wrong. I don't want other trans men to give up hope.

im not sorry the truth of the transmasculine experience is ugly. i'm not sorry that we have to frequently discuss sexual and physical violence and abuse. i'm not sorry that we have to discuss violent physical abuse and death. i'm not sorry that we have to discuss homelessness, mental illness, addiction, disabilities, and other challenges in life.

we struggle. we do not instantly gain male privilege the second we come out. even if we pass. when someone knows we're trans we're treated like a woman no matter what. we can sometimes get lucky and pass with strangers but eventually people around us find out because people tell each other without our consent.

we face all kinds of abuse due to the fact that people feel entitlement to our bodies, regardless of what our AGAB is. they feel entitled to our faces, our hair, our entire appearance. they focus on the face that we're ruining something "pretty". they threaten corrective sexual violence to remind us that we're "just women". it happens constantly. this is not an isolated incident and virtually nobody wants people to talk about it when it comes to transmasculine people.

trans men often get injured for one reason or another. usually because someone wants to make them "prove" they're a man, to "toughen them up" or to "prove to them that they're a woman". sometimes this results in sexual assault. other times it results in physical assault. and sometimes people just kill trans men. all because they hate that a "woman" can transition into a man.

it's an ugly part of our reality but it needs to be discussed because otherwise people use the lack of that conversation as ammunition to say transmascs don't struggle.

transmasculine people struggle to stay housed. transmasculine people get kicked out of their living situations very often for many reasons. it's hard for transmascs to get jobs because often times people want either a man or a woman for a specific position and fuss over what they think the transmasc's gender is. misgendering is a huge issue at work. going stealth at work can be painful. being in the closet at work can be painful

transmascs are often disabled and struggle to get care due to people not taking AFAB patients' pain and symptoms seriously. this is a huge issue with any kind of AFAB person or any woman. all woman and AFAB people struggle with having their symptoms taken seriously when seeking serious medical attention to the point of possibly being undiagnosed for life, thus being unable to get on disability. trans women face this just as much as AFAB cis women, it's a huge issue in the medical industry

transmasculine people struggle to say on their hormones (or access them at all). testosterone is a controlled substance in many countries which means that you need a prior authorization to get the medication and need to consistently see a provider to get blood tests and check ups. it can be difficult to do so if you are low income and sometimes certain pharmacists will intentionally find ways to withhold hormones due to their own prejudices

transmasculine people struggle to get pregnancy support and care. it is very difficult for transmasculine people to figure out how to navigate their pregnancy, either due to their HRT provider not knowing much about pregnancy, or having a gynecologist who's not familiar with transmasculine health.

transmascs get denied from spaces made for men constantly. even if they pass, if word gets around that they're trans they can easily be kicked out of a space. transmasculine lesbians are often removed from lesbian, transmasc and/or non binary spaces. transmasc butches are often ostracized from all communities their identities correlate to. trans men and transmasc enbies are seen as a threat to women.

there is ugliness in every pocket of the queer community when it comes to how cisheteronormative society treats us. we all face disgusting treatment that needs to be addressed. it's important to consider how this system affects everyone underneath it. we need to talk about the positive things, it's good to help those are questioning, but we also must discuss what struggles we face in order to humanize ourselves and show that we people, too. none of us have it easy.

[rabid-catboy]

Okay first off please don't take this the wrong way I promise I'm not trying to say trans women all have male privilege or something. I think it is perhaps important to consider that while trans women do make up the majority of trans homicide victims, generally (cis) men make up the majority of homicide victims. In 2020 in the US, men made up 82% of victims.

I think trans women being killed more than trans men isn't necessarily because of transmisogyny being so strong or w/e, but a combination of people being more okay with killing people *they view as* men, and because transfems are much more likely to be sex workers than transmascs (though that may be caused by transmisogyny). Gay men are also killed at much higher rates than lesbians, and usually most homophobic rhetoric and laws and tropes are targeting gay men specifically, but I haven't seen this used to say lesbians have it significantly better, or have structural power over gay men, the way I have seen the same used to say that about trans men

Obviously, trans women are not men and trans men are not women, but to transphobes enacting violence, they are. Imo, it's important to keep in mind that transphobes do not actually view trans people as the gender that they are, and this means that the mistreatment of us will mirror the mistreatment of the gender we are transitioning away from, not towards.

I'm not saying that trans men have it worse, or that trans women all secretly have male privilege or something, just that less overt obvious violence towards trans men does not mean we have it significantly better, just as lesbians facing less overt obvious violence does not mean they have it much better than gay men. If you argue that gay cis men have it worse than lesbian cis women because of this, fair enough, that's consistent, but you can't define male privilege as "the privilege men of any group will always have over women of the same group all else being equal" if you do. (Or you could argue cis gay men are also affected by transmisogyny, I guess?)

Genuinely please don't bite my head off for saying transphobes don't actually view trans women as women (and vice versa) and that affects how they're treated skdkfkdjxhd if you have a good faith criticism of this post I'm all ears

[doberbutts]

I also think that when I see people demanding a *unique* oppression, that they are asking for something impossible and also are very much misunderstanding intersectionality in the first place.

I don't believe any oppression is truly unique. I do think there are faces of oppression that change with the demographic, but more likely than not you as Oppressed Group X have way more in common with Oppressed Group Y than you might think.

But also, Crenshaw's original paper on intersectionality discussed a specific context: black women being skipped over for hire where black men and white women were both getting hired, making that specific context unique to the intersection of black womanhood.

People get skipped over for jobs they are more than qualified for all the time. Even within the paper itself, there is discussion about this happening to black men and white women at other companies, just that this specific company was excluding specifically black women from its pool of candidates due to their specific bias against black women.

Experiencing workplace discrimination and hiring discrimination is not at all unique to black women. The *context* was. It was not "just racism" because black men were being hired, and it was not "just misogyny" because white women were getting hired. It was the intersection of both that resulted in black women being excluded.

When a trans man states that he is being removed from, say, a reproductive rights conversation and it's happening specifically because he is a trans man, what's meant shouldn't be that no one else struggles with reproductive rights. It means that it's not happening to the cis women who are actively leading the conversation, nor is it happening to the cis men who are pitching in. It is, however, happening to anyone with a uterus who is deemed as too "gender devient" to count: trans men, trans women, intersex people, and nonbinary people. Albeit, for different reasons, and the face of which changes depending on the demographic of the person receiving it.

But the conversation around reproductive rights is also one that must include disability, must include race, must include sexuality, must include class, must include age, because these things also have a direct effect on discrimination within the medical field and whether someone truly has access to the autonomy needed to make reproductive choices of their own without others choosing for them.

Similar to how we can understand the context provided in Crenshaw's coining of intersectionality to examine how black women specifically were experiencing something that neither black men nor white women were victim to within that specific example, so too must we understand that these are contextual and circumstantial conversations that will not always be truly unique.

After all, black men and white women do both get rejected for jobs on account of race and gender. Cis women and other marginalized genders frequently must battle for their right to make their own reproductive choices.

But when someone says "this happened to me due to the combination of my race and my gender", we must understand that likely the combination, the intersection, created a unique scenario that cannot be understood by only examining a single piece of that person's identity. So, too, must we understand the same when someone says "this happened due to the combination of my transness and my gender".

So when I see a challenge to name something unique from someone also flinging around the "learn intersectionality" phrase at those who are trying to describe the things that happened to them that hurt them, all I can think is that clearly that person does not understand interaectionality. Nor have they ever actually read the words of the woman who coined it. She's still alive. Her TED talks are on YouTube. Many of her essays are online for free.

Finally, I must remind these people that Crenshaw is not the woman who coined misogynoir, and while both Crenshaw's and Bailey's theories do work in conversation with each other, being discussed by different people does mean there is not a 1-to-1 basis to compare them to. There will be disagreements and inconsistencies between the two because they are two different people.

[genderqueerdykes]

i need you all to realize that man hating & antimasculism disproportionally affects trans women & transfemmes.

not always, but much of the time, before trans women and femmes figure out their gender, they will likely be identifying as cis men before exposure to queer community and terminology. like i really don't get why people understand that in all likelihood, the trans woman that came out 40 years ago identified as a cis man before realizing they were a trans woman. like i hate to break it to people, but a lot of trans girls identified as a cis man at one point in their life.

this hurts trans women and transfemmes who are closeted or trying to come out. this creates a space where trans women and femmes who haven't come out yet don't feel safe to. this creates a space where masculine and butch trans women feel unwelcome and like they will be misgendered and treated like men. this means that a lot of trans women and femmes either stay in the closet/never come out, or struggle to find community, because we feel alienated by the fact that our gender assigned at birth is somehow a problem for everyone else.

this also affects trans women and femmes who don't/can't pass, don't/can't take hormones, don't want to socially transition, and so on. this also REALLY hurts trans women who are bi/multigender and still identify as a cis man on some level. this hurts intersex trans women. this hurts trans women who still consider themselves gay men. this hurts two spirit trans women. this hurts nonbinary trans women. this hurts butch trans women. this hurts so many more trans women & femmes than you realize.

like idk maybe it's because the people behaving this way aren't trans women, but i don't know why it's hard to grasp this. most trans people identify as cis before we realize we're trans. it's how we're conditioned. many of us are not aware that you can even BE trans until we meet other trans people. stop chasing away the questioning tgirls who aren't sure yet. stop chasing away transfem eggs who need exposure to other transfems. stop chasing away multigender trans women who identify as cis men as well.

some women used to be men. don't shame them for that. some women are also men at the same time. don't shame them for that.

stop this behavior. it affects all queers, but it hurts trans women way more than you realize.

[scentedluminarysoul]

But also a lot of trans men are intimately familiar with experiencing misogyny, especially when they transitioned later in life, and I'm kinda tired of people pretending they're not just because they transitioned to men (not you OP, I've seen post float around)

Getting mad at trans men for calling what they experience 'misogyny' because it's "appropriating women's struggles" or something INSTEAD of getting mad that there isn't proper language available for most trans men to express their experiences is transphobic

[doberbutts]

So I'm going to ask an honest question here and ask you please explain in layman's terms. Every trans person I know irl has no concept of the transandrophobia discourse but every time I see more of it online I'm...unsettled, and it takes a lot to power through all the terminology.

I initially was really receptive to transandrophobia because the rationale behind being against it sounded stupid and akin to label discourse in the queer community. I saw "being a man is not an axis of oppression therefore you don't get your Own Word" and thought that was pedantic nonsense, that language doesn't need to adhere to that rule, and that it's helpful to have a term designated towards transmasculine experiences so people can find those experiences easier. Not that trans women's experiences aren't also beneficial! But that, well, obviously no matter how similar the experience birds of a feather and that sense of comfort of sharing identity still matters. This is true for other issues of identity too, I find, weather that's a good thing or a bad thing idk, but it is human.

The thing is I follow a lot of transwomen and have been seeing some alarms being raised about the community being formed around this word. You blocked one of the most egregious offenders so I trust you (which is why I'm asking sorry) I've seen a lot of misogyny and essentialism from people using the term "transandrophobia" and more egregiously "transmisandry." Idk your opinion on the latter term (I haven't scrolled down far enough on your blog, sorry if you talked about this before) but to me it's unconscionable. I was taught that transandrophobia existed as a term specifically NOT to use that term, that elevating misandry to a legitimate issue was dangerous for obvious reasons and it was one of the reasons why I was so supportive of transandrophobia. To me, it seemed like an awareness that misogyny was the prevailing issue behind all issues of gender oppression, but when I actually look at the tag I...get uncomfortable.

Blogs I follow have repeatedly been upset at misogyny from this community, and have been using the term "transandrobro" to describe behavior they find akin to cis MRAs. I've truly seen horrible things with hundreds, sometimes thousands of notes to it that do, unfortunately, feel like women are being blamed for the plight of trans men. I've seen cis people say they were originally on MRA reddits and then came to tumblr to "confront the misandry directly" only to wholeheartedly adopt transandrophobia into their worldview. It's hard because I KNOW I shouldn't judge a community based on a few crazies but it truly does feel sometimes like "transandrophobia" gives misogynists a venue to air their woman-hating to an eager audience, kinda like how "Karen" has been co-opted beyond the og meaning of being for racist white woman to any woman being mildly rude.

So like, here it is: can transandrophobia exist without being co-opted by misogynists? Is there a threshold of proliferation for misogynists destroying this word until a new one needs to be made? Or will every word trying to identify the transmasculine experience be inevitably co-opted by misogynists because misogynists are just that powerful, so people should double down harder on the word and work to push misogynists out?

(Also am I going crazy, or did this word a year ago used to have a WAY better community than the one I see nowadays. Back then I could find your blog and really compassionate people easily, and now it's just...bad.)

It is a little hard to understand some of this post but I will do my best to answer what I think is being asked.

To put simply, I think the reason why it was better a year or two ago is because the majority of the people who were actually trying to further the conversation and not just circle jerk in the echo chamber got chased off. Transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, transandromisia, transmascphobia... the guys who coined these are largely either not posting at all anymore or post far far less than they used to. They were harassed and the constant exposure to transphobia made them shut down their blogs for their own mental health. Not all of them, but a lot of the so-called "big names" had this happen.

Even I stopped posting for a while and shuttered the doors for a bit outside of a long queue of dog photos because of how much it was affecting my mental health.

In their place remain people who are not committed to the same conversation. Perhaps they are younger, or less familiar with the building blocks of theory that really should be required reading, or are still stuck in their "everything sucks and it's YOUR fault" phase. Maybe they do come from different places, like 4chan or reddit, which are less prone to this sort of discussion. A lot of the original crowd had been on tumblr long enough to remember when we could still edit posts, and I keep seeing people who would have been in elementary school at that time posting to the tag nowadays.

I was discussing this problem on discord with a small group of friends and one of them- a trans fem- called it second wave transandrophobia discourse as a bitter joke. I think she is more right than wrong, regardless.

I'm not sure who you believe I've blocked- in general I don't air out who I block on this blog because at nearly 12k followers there are too many people who would love to dogpile someone for the sin of disagreeing with me and I do my best to prevent that. I don't want anyone to be harassed, after all. There's a lot of assumptions that have been made about my block and follow behavior that vary from "hilarious but untrue" to "outright offensive slander".

People are people, and some people are shitheads. Trans mascs and people who want to support trans mascs are not exempt from that. I say this all the time- Kayne West is objectively a shitty person but his existence doesn't prove the concept of antiblackness to be a myth. Caitlyn Jenner is objectively a shitty person but her existence doesn't prove the concept of transmisogyny to be a myth. So why do shitty trans mascs prove our own theory to be dangerous or nonexistent? Why hold us to a higher standard than any other marginalized group?

I could ask you the same question- there are posts on here with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of notes made by trans fems and cis women who blame their problems with transmisogyny on trans mascs. There are people coming from reddit, Twitter, 4chan who are being actively transphobic and misogynistic and claiming they're doing it for the good of transfeminism. There are posts filled with misogyny and bioessentialism and gender essentialism and even interphobia and racism and transphobia being left completely unchecked. Do you think it would be acceptable for me to ask if that means transmisogyny theory should be abandoned or if we should just accept that it will draw people with bad intentions?

Or do you think the better answer is to focus instead on finding those with a good head on their shoulders, and making sure it's them who has their voice heard? Do you think we should maybe not judge entire demographics because there exists some shitty people who claim the same identity?

[plaidos]

I hate this narrative that trans girls shouldn't want to like. actually transition

I've been on hrt for 2 years and I feel genuinely hopeless and my dysohoria is taking a massive toll on my mental health because it's done next to nothing, and people keep feeling the need to tell me that it's okay to "not pass" because patriarchy bad or something. I never said anything about how I want society to perceive me, especially not men

I shave and epilate, I want to learn makeup, I want all these gender affirming surgeries, I want to voice train, because I want to like my body for my own sake

but people keep telling me that's somehow transphobic or sexist of me

I hate my body so much it makes me want to kill myself but people keep telling me I need to actively try not to pass for the sake of making some progressive point

nobody has to do anything to be valid of course, but it feels like a lot of people are saying I have to not do anything

sorry I just needed to vent

you should kill them. also it’s not misogynistic for YOU to be held to misogynistic body standards that make you feel like you have to (or want to) perform femininity these ways like it is literally exactly the same as cis women who wear makeup and shave. so tell them that you don’t see them criticising cis women for the same thing, so it seems like they actually just have a problem with trans women having agency of their bodies 🤷‍♀️ KILLING THEM!!!

[luxiomahariel]

i see trans women/fems talk extensively about how they have never had access to male privilege and i wonder why its so difficult for many to accept that trans men/mascs also never have access to male privilege

both of these things can and should coexist

[mychemicalraymance]

You guys CANNOT seriously keep making this argument. "What if the jokes were about people of color or lesbians" THEY ARE! THEY ARE! You can't throw a stone in any direction and not hit someone joking about gay and trans people, calling us groomers!

Stop moving the fucking goalpost for these people, stop doing the legwork of advocating for the most protected class of people who EVERYDAY treat us like shit in OUR REAL, MATERIAL LIVES. WHY ARE YOU GOING TO BAT FOR CISHET MEN? WHY DO YOU THINK WOMEN WHO HOLD DISDAIN FOR MEN DESERVE TO BE SHAMED FOR WHAT MEN DID TO THEM AND HOW THEY MADE HER FEEL? WHY DO YOU USE THE MOST BAD FAITH, FAR OUT EXAMPLES TO TRY AND ARGUE AGAINST WOMEN?

The argument that "well if you changed the circumstances, it would be different and you wouldn't like it" is HIGH KEY akin to the reverse sexism/racism fallacy and comes straight from the mind of an arrogant high school sophomore who thinks they got the whole "social justice" racket worked out and is very pleased to leave smug comments in their wake about it.

You cannot make this argument and hold genuine feminist beliefs, imo. It's ASININE.

Men are human beings who, in my life, have been very important companions and friends. I would also always hold room for conversations about the fact that the category of men as a whole includes men of color, who have historically been oppressed and categorized out of their fair claim to manhood. It includes gay men, who are my brothers and sisters, it includes trans men, who have been some of my closest friends, it includes men who are denied housing and other human rights, workers, artists, activists. But I would never hold that room to DENY other women the right to hold ANGER for the very LARGE CONTINGENCY OF MEN WHO USE THEIR GENDER TO ABUSE US. As human beings, men hold and exercise an immense capacity for doing harmful, evil shit, and they have, they are, and they will.

Women are oppressed by men and a patriarchal society, and you guys have GOT to stop devil's advocating away all the room that notion needs to hold. It's complex, but things like highly pervasive sexual violence CANNOT BE WAVED AWAY. we're not having a debate in the cafeteria of your high school anymore. Have some fucking perspective.

[corinescorner]

Biases That Doctors Can Have

Doctors, like all people, carry biases. They influence how they perceieve and treat patients. These biases may be unconscious or consious, either way they impact the quality of care that patients recieve from them.

Appearance-Related:

Weight: Patients with obesity might be stigmatized, leading doctors to attribute all health concerns to weight.

Age: Older people might face ageism, with symptoms dismissed as "just aging," while younger people might be seen as less credible.

Disability: Patients with disabilities may have their health issues minimized or overlooked entirely.

Hygiene: Disheveled appearance or poor hygiene can lead to assumptions about the patient's responsibilities or mental health issues.

Identity and Demographic:

Racial and Ethnic: Patients of color, especially Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic individuals, often report being dismissed or disbelieved. Research shows that they might recieve little to no pain medication or aggressive treatments for serious conditions.

Gender: Women may have their pain minimized or attributed to emotional cases. Men, on the otherhand, might have emotional concerned dismissed as physical.

Queer: Queer individuals may face ignorance, prejudice, or assumtions about their health based on their identities. For example; trans people often have barriers when seeking gender-affirming care.

Socioeconomic:

Income: Patients with a low-income may face assumptions about their ability to follow treatment plans, access medications, or prioritize health.

Insurance: Those without insurance may experience rushed care or not have their concerns taken seriously

Behavioral and Communication:

Mental Health: Patients with psychiatric conditions might have their physical symptoms dismissed as psychological.

Substance Use: Individuals with a history of substance use may struggle to have their pain or concerns validated.

Communication: Patients who are overly assertive, passive, or emotional may be judged negatively.

Bias Based on Health Status:

Chronic Illness: Patients with chronic conditions may be viewed as "complainers."

Rare Diseases: Symptoms of rare conditions may be dismissed as "all in their head."

How Can We Combat This?

To limit the biases in healthcare, it is crucial to promote sensitivity and cultural competency training for medical professionals. It would help them recognize and address their own implicit biases. We should also increase the diverisity among healthcare providers. Patients should be encouraged to advocate for themselves, ask questions, and seek second opinions when they feel like their needs aren't being met or addressed.

Remember, not every doctor is trustworthy and free of bias. We shouldn't be ignorant against the healthcare that people can receive. This is why research self-diagnosis is very important.

[sundancefemme]

i cannot believe this has to be said. men are not the primary victims of a system that oppresses women in order to advance the social power of men.

[trans-androgyne]

“Women and non-binary people” stop. Do you mean people with marginalized genders? Do you mean gender-oppressed people? Then say that. Stop refusing to recognize the very much gendered oppression of other trans people. There’s not some chasm of difference between how our oppressors treat a very masc non-binary person and a more binary trans man. I’m also non-binary and very much oppressed for my gender but because I’m transmasculine I could never feel comfortable in a space that marketed itself like that. Tell me what the real harm is of letting gender-oppressed mascs into spaces discussing gender oppression is. Because the consequence of not doing so is denying them space for their experiences just because of their gender identity. Do better.

[cassolotl]

Time for a late night post-migraine ramble!

I wonder about this scenario as well, and about how it *should* play out even in our current sexist society. How I unfold it in my head is like this:

If there's a cisgender woman who has trauma that means she can't undress around people who look like men, that's basically PTSD or similar, which is an anxiety disorder.

In the UK at least, we have the Equality Act 2010, which requires organisations to provide "reasonable adjustments" to people with disabilities, and disability has a specific but quite broad and inclusive definition that totally includes things like long-term mental illnesses such as anxiety disorders.

But the reasonable part of reasonable adjustments comes into play here. When I imagine a cisgender woman with an anxiety disorder attempting to use a changing room...

Let's say she's arachnophobic and there's a spider in the changing room, I'm sure it would be reasonable for a member of staff to remove the spider, because it doesn't cost anything and it's quick and easy and the spider probably shouldn't even be there anyway. But if she had a phobia about other people's nudity, the staff would probably be like, "yeah it's a communal changing room, you might well see naked people in there, there's not a lot we can do about that." Let's say she takes the leisure centre to court for being in breach of the Equality Act 2010, and the courts would deem it unreasonable for the cisgender woman to ask the leisure centre to build a whole private changing room with direct access to the pool just for her. (The court might suggest that when they remodel they consider installing private changing rooms or cubicles in addition to the communal changing rooms, but they wouldn't enforce it.) The staff could go out of their way to ask other swimmers to try to cover up more in the changing room, or to allow a solo swimming session, or to host a "very covered up changing room" session, but that would be very generous of the leisure centre and not expected.

Ultimately, the mental illness that is preventing the woman from using changing rooms would be the responsibility of the woman, not people around her. Similarly,

If a swimmer who was agoraphobic asked for a solo swimming session, they probably wouldn't get it, or they would be asked to pay a very high fee to hire the whole pool.

If a cisgender woman felt anxious in women's changing rooms because she was assaulted by a woman, she would not be able to expect the leisure centre to remove all the other women from the changing room.

If a cisgender woman felt anxious getting undressed around people who were taller than her, and while she was getting undressed someone taller walked in, she wouldn't be entitled to ask the tall person to leave.

All of the arguments that people use about trans women not being allowed in changing rooms really all end up in the same place for me.

If you feel it's undignified for you to undress around someone who looks male to you in a place that you go into voluntarily, don't do that.

If you have PTSD from a sexual assault, which would obviously negatively impact your life in a lot of ways, that's awful and you have my sympathy, and you can ask for adaptations from others and/or make uncomfortable adaptations to your life and/or seek treatment and recovery.

If you just think that people who have or used to have penises are inherently more dangerous and you don't see a problem with that, that's fine and all you can really do is avoid half the population.

If you think genitals are disgusting or offensive you have bigger problems and you should probably also avoid places where people's genitals might be incidentally visible, like changing rooms and also art galleries and such.

Obviously if someone comes into a changing room and they're doing something antisocial or harmful, yes, they should stop or leave. The staff can remove them, you can call the police... Anything that an evil trans woman might do to a cisgender woman in a women's changing room is already illegal, and would be illegal if a cisgender woman did it too. The only way keeping trans women out of women's changing rooms would be an appropriate and preventative response to this is if trans women were inherently, universally and inevitably dangerous to cisgender women, which is to say... they're robots/animals with no control over their behaviour. It is ridiculous that I feel like I should point out how absurd this is.

[The way TERFs talk about trans women, it really seems like they believe this to be the case. I would put this in the "anxiety disorder" category myself, which is not to say it's not based in reality - anxiety disorders form within societal norms and systems and life events, and you don't have to look very hard to see how often women are assaulted by men and how often the men get away with it while the victims suffer if they try to get justice. The belief is understandable, and it is also disproportionate and life-impairing. And, for example, I also think that gender-neutral changing rooms would seem a lot less scary to a lot of women if there was any confidence whatsoever that sexual assault in a changing room (by anyone of any gender) would result in arrests and punishments with minimal harm to the victim.]

I can imagine that to many people this is going to sound like victim-blaming, and I do think there should be more accommodations and more compassion for people with PTSD. For most people taking your clothes off around strangers does make you feel a lot more vulnerable, the "people of all genders use your bathroom at home and you have no problem with that" argument doesn't fly with me, and those vulnerable communal spaces should be made safer regardless of gender inclusivity/exclusivity. Toilet cubicles and changing cubicles are kind of barbaric when it's fairly easy to build them to be and feel safer! If you get a lot of reports about sexual assaults in your changing rooms, install small rooms with locks and/or hire an attendant!

But.

When a victim of sexual assault who has PTSD complains because a trans woman is in the women's changing rooms and in this case the Equality Act 2010 requires the leisure centre to make a reasonable adjustment and the leisure centre can provide an alternative changing room for someone, the staff should not ask the trans woman to use the alternative changing room. The trans woman has done nothing to warrant this. The staff should offer the alternative changing room to the person with PTSD.

If you are afraid that a total stranger in your vicinity is going to do a sex crime when you've had no interactions with them whatsoever and they haven't done anything obviously suspicious, even if it's because of a disability (e.g. mental illness following previous sex crime), that's a you problem.

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[same-pic-rick-roll]

Greetings trans MEN

*epic rock music plays*

Seeing as I am a cis MAN born as a MAN I figure I am a MAN expert.

So here is mu guide on becoming a MAN.

Step 1; Decide you are a MAN.

That’s it.

Thank you for coming to my talk.

[lazylittledragon]

my absolute favourite genre of transphobic propaganda is when the caption is like “look at this poor, confused little girl who was forced to mutilate herself :(” and the picture is just the hottest man you’ve ever seen in your life with a full beard and a body that would make thor weak at the knees

[idolomantises]

i never liked the idea that good trans rep has to be so subtle its easy to miss. nothing wrong with a character saying "im trans" or dealing with their experiences as a trans person.

just let them have a personality too, don't tokenize them. And make them a weird freak. we need more trans characters that are weird freaks.