#anti transfeminism

[gremlingirlsmell]

hey just so y'all know, rhetoric like this:

is anti-transfeminist dogwhistling.

the "radfems" they're talking about are transfems trying to define and use language about our own opression like "transmisogyny" and who is targeted by it.

"gender essentialism" is used to mean different things. for one it's meant to denounce tme/tma language, saying that everyone is targeted by transmisogyny the same, and depraving us of standpoint epistemology. a second meaning i often see is: it's "gender essentialism" to say "we live in a patriarchy that benefits men over women"

this tactic is used mainly to paint transfeminists as dangerous and transmasc-hating, for applying intersectionality and materialism to feminist theory. it's to shun us by calling us terfs (a hate group primarily centered against transfems) which will immediately mark us as unsafe for other transfems and trans people in general. this is done instead of calling us baeddels, because calling us medieval slurs has fallen out of fashion and has become too obviously transmisogynistic

[taliabhattwrites]

I don't think there is a significant or notable number of people who believe transmascs are not oppressed.

I feel slightly insane just having to type this out, but this is rhetoric you inevitably come across if you discuss transfeminism on Tumblr.

The mainstream, cissexist understanding of transmasculine people is the Irreversible Damage narrative (one that's old enough to show up in Transsexual Empire as well) of transmascs as "misguided little girls", "tricked" into "mutilating themselves". It is a deliberately emasculating and transphobic narrative that very explicitly centers on oppression, even if the fevered imaginings misattribute the cause. As anyone who's dealt with the gatekeeping medical establishment knows, they are far from giving away HRT or even consults with both hands, and most transfems I know have a hard enough time convincing people to take DIY T advice, leave alone "tricking" anyone into top surgery.

Arguably, the misogyny that transmasculine folks experience is the defining narrative surrounding their existence, as transmasculinity is frequently and erroneously attributed to "tomboyish women" who resent their position in the patriarchy so much they seek to transition out of it. This rhetoric is an invisiblization of transmasculinity, constructed deliberately to preserve gendered verticality, for if it were possible to "gain status" under the sexed regime, its entire basis, its ideological naturalization, would fall apart.

Honestly, the actual discussions I see are centered around whether "transmisogyny" is a term that should apply to transmascs and transfems alike. While I understand the impetus for that discussion, I feel like the assertion that transmisogyny is a specific oppression that transfems experience for our perceived abandonment of the "male sex" is often conflated with the incorrect idea that we believe transmasculine people are not oppressed at all. This is not true, and we understand, rather acutely, that our society is entirely organized around reproductive exploitation. That is, in fact, the source of transfeminine disposability!

I know I'm someone who "just got here" and there is a history here that I'm not a part of, but so much of that history is speckled with hearsay and fabrication that I can't even attempt to make sense of it. All I know is that I, in 2024, have been called a revived medieval slur for effeminate men by people who attribute certain beliefs to me based on my being a trans woman who is also a feminist, and I simply do not hold those views, nor do I know anyone who sincerely does.

If you're going to attempt to discredit a transfeminist, or transfeminism in general, then please at least do us the courtesy of responding to things we actually say and have actually argued instead of ascribing to us phantom ideologies in a frankly conspiratorial fashion. I also implore people to pay attention to how transphobic rhetoric operates out in the wider world, how actual reactionaries talk about and think of trans people, instead of fixating so hard on internecine social media clique drama that one enters an alternate reality--a phantasm, as Judith Butler would put it.

Speaking of which--do y'all have any idea how overrepresented transmascs are in trans studies and queer theory? Can we like, stop and reckon with reality-as-it-is, instead of hallucinating a transfeminine hegemony where it doesn't exist? I'm aware a lot of their output isn't particularly explicative on the material realities of transmasculine oppression despite their prominence in the academy, but that is ... not the fault of trans women, who face extremely harsh epistemic injustice even in trans studies.

The actual issue is how invisiblized transmasculine oppression is and how the epistemicide that transmasculine people face manifests as a refusal to differentiate between the misogyny all women face, reproductive exploitation in particular, and the contours of violence, erasure, and oppression directed at specifically transmasculine people.

You will notice that is a society-wide problem, motivated by a desire to erase the possibilities of transmasculinity, to the point of not even being willing to name it. You will notice that I am quite familiar with how this works, and how it's completely compatible with a materialist transfeminist framework that analyzes how our oppression is--while distinct--interlinked and stems from the same root.

I sincerely hope that whoever needs to see this post sees it, and that something productive--more productive dialogue, at least--can arise from it.

[agendercryptidlev]

There's this weird disconnect I see from people against transandrophobia theory where they seem to think people speaking about transandrophobia are anti-feminist, even going as far as to say "You dumb boys just need feminism!" as if transandrophobia theory isn't part of feminism, the same way transmisogyny or misogynoir theory are part of feminism. Feminism has always been necessary for the liberation all trans people, yes even trans men!

I've talked with a LOT of people about transandrophobia theory, and you'll find most people talking about it are doing so through the lens of trans feminism first and foremost.

[corvid-on-the-rock]

look im sorry but im sick to fucking death of people who were raised & socialised as boys and men never taking a fucking second to analyize the lens they view the world through like. half of the younger amabs, and yes i mean that, ive met never learned how to stop seeing afabs, and yes I mean that, as little girls who need to shut up. you just havent taken the time to unlearn that. it's fucking infuriating. im tired of not saying it. transitioning into womanhood doesn't baptise you of the patriarchy you've been taught to perpetuate your whole life, especially if you're white, or the behaviors you learned to do that. you have to actually look that in the eyes and deal with it and stop treating the LGBTQ+ community as a whole like it's our job to deal with the "complexities" of intersectionality while you just get to focus on yeah pretty much JUST white transmisogyny. Y'all are still fucking sexist deep down.

[knightsbestowedbeauty]

On the Topic of Misgendering from "Allies"

Anti-transmasculine "allies" (both cisgender and transgender) will accuse transgender men of having "penis envy" (a misogynistic Freudian concept on WOMEN), accuse transmasculine people of weaponising their AGAB and ironically insult them through derogatory terms based on their AGAB (e.g., theyFAB), accuse white transgender men of weaponising white WOMEN tears, tell transgender men to "man up if they WANT to be men", etc...

BUT the moment a transmasculine person talks about their experiences with misogyny, they have to walk on eggshells and cannot acknowledge they were raised as girls and are forced into womanhood by society, because then, they "MUST" be implying transfeminine people do not experience misogyny*.

So, it "IS" acceptable to misgender (and malgender, another topic) transmasculine people when someone is doing it in the name of "feminism" ("calling transmasculine people out for their alleged (trans)misogyny"), yet a transmasculine person saying they were AFAB or explaining the reality of how society treats them as "failed women" is them "misgendering themselves for malicious reasons"?

To anti-transmasculine people, the context of transmasculine people's gender identity depends entirely on whether depicting them as women or men is more convenient than the other.

*Misogyny is far more complex than, "I identify as a woman, therefore I am affected by misogyny". It is also not exclusively, "Society views me as a woman, therefore I am affected by misogyny". You do not have to play Ren�� Descartes here. Misogyny affects all marginalised gender identities, including transfeminine people, and entails many, many experiences.

[anarcho-catboyism]

Hey so it's actually wild that the two responses I'm seeing to the trans man who debated Ben Shapiro are

Transphobes: You can obviously tell that's a woman bc only women talk that much!

Trans "allies": You can obviously tell that's a man bc only men talk that much!

Wild how the response to transphobia / misogyny is repackaged transphobia / misogyny! Us trans guys would like it if you stopped that.

[intersexcat-tboy]

⚠️Reminder⚠️

⚠️Women are not the only marginalized gender ⚠️

[soaplantro]

Blaming the radicalization of reactionary men on man-hating feminists is the anti-feminist position. Blaming the radicalization of reactionary men on the left is the right-wing position. Seems obvious to me, but after being told to "Come back when you’re ready to respond to what I’m actually saying," it's only natural that I should rather make my own post, thank you very much.

[k0rnym0thafucka]

If y’all can call TERFs “TWERFs” and completely ignore their transandrophobia, then I can call TIRFs “TWIRFs” bc they actually only include trans women in their shit radical feminism

[trans-androgyne]

Okay, a lot of people who use “transandrophobia” don’t like when people use “tme/tma” terms and vice versa. We call each other’s terms inherently transphobic in one way or another. But clearly nobody who’s genuinely using those terms is trying to be transphobic, that’s not why they’re using them. Can some of us who are willing get together and discuss why each other feels the need to use these terms, what they mean to us, and problems with their use that could potentially be worked on? I don’t think everyone is just going to stop using these terms overnight. Instead we can try to figure out which parts of them work and which don’t together. Some people could clearly use a term to discuss the specific ways transmasculine spectrum people face oppression. Some people could clearly use a term to describe the way they experience transmisogyny. I feel like these things can coexist. Feel free to constructively talk about them with me.

[taliabhattwrites]

The Sexed Regime, or: You Probably Have the Wrong Critiques of "TME/TMA" Terminology

Let's begin by looking at an interesting dichotomy.

There's an oddly pervasive idea in queer spaces that a truly progressive trans or post-gender politic underscores the irrelevance of sex. In contrast to patriarchal society's utter fixation on "natal sex", queer existence must be transcendent, a space in which one's bodily configuration is understood to be entirely under one's purview, where presentation is simply something we inhabit and implies nothing about our sexualities or embodiments. It is an idea of emancipation rooted in agnosticism, an anti-patriarchal revolution spurred by the lack of belief in our cissexist society's deranged emphasis on knowing what's in our pants at all times.

It's a very appealing idea, I'll admit.

Here's the thing, though.

The naturalization of sex is the foundation of patriarchy, as well as the basis of the heterosexual regime it instantiates. Humanity is cleft in twain, with one sex marked for reproductive-sexual exploitation by the other. Like most other regimes, this one is also powered by belief--belief in the superiority of the 'male sex', the unfitness of the 'female sex', and most of all: absolute belief that sex is immutable, exhaustively binary, and non-overlapping.

What this also means, ultimately, is that those of us who dare to desert the sex we were conscripted into face different pressures and violence. It is obvious that many trans people are also subject to reproductive injustice, as cis women are, and consequently the transphobia they face is very acutely a regendering impulse, a patriarchal desire to drag them back to the confines of womanhood to fulfill their patriarchal purpose. There is, understandably, a certain amount of solidarity between cis women and trans people who have suffered these aspects of the heterosexual regime.

This is in fact the understanding that gives rise to even liberal-progressive uses of 'male socialization' directed at transfems. Trans women are understood to have been spared certain excesses of misogynistic violence and therefore expected to see and approach the world differently. It is simply a neutral observation, of course, no judgment behind it ... well, until it comes time to deny trans women epistemic authority over experiences of misogyny or womanhood, even their own. After all, can transfems really be said to have a full understanding of patriarchy? They weren't 'raised AFAB'!

Oftentimes, this becomes a double bind of proving that transfems did experience trauma, feminization, and abuse even pretransition, often as children, which is then usually dismissed as "trauma dumping" or "equating womanhood to being abused"--despite the minimization of our experiences being predicated on our "lesser" understanding of the trauma of being "misogyny-affected". So let's not retread that.

Instead, I'll point out that people assume a symmetry, a complementarian equivalence, almost, between the experiences of trans people. What I would like to stress is that there is no such thing as a coherent "AMAB" class or a shared "AMAB solidarity" based on shared experiences of oppression, because I have some shocking news that readers may wish to sit down for:

Trans women are oppressed by cis men.

Cis men are overwhelmingly the ones who rape us, beat us, kill us, and seek to abuse us. When we were children, we were bullied and violated for our perceived effeminacy, largely by the cis boys we were most proximate to. Most of us have been around cis men when they've voiced their most dehumanizing, misogynistic thoughts about women, and have been punished for not participating in these rituals of misogynistic rhetoric, too. The trauma of our upbringing involves being locked into spaces with those who sniffed out our differences, our non-conformance, and routinely punished us for being deviant. When we grow up, they are the ones who largely continue to prey on us.

The chief characteristic of transmisogyny is the presumed artificiality of trans womanhood, the idea that we are mimetics, and our womanhood is a farce, a costume whose only purpose is sexual. This dovetails with our disposability--our inability to be women who can bear children, further patrilineality, and secure what minuscule respectability is afforded to the domestically-confined women who continue the male line. As such, our hyperfetishization marks us for extreme violence, as sexual objects that can be freely used and discarded, guilt-free, because after all ... We asked for it.

Why would we "choose" womanhood if we did not want this?

Which, ultimately, brings me to my point: Sex is a social regime of difference imposed on us, but it is, unfortunately, a regime still in existence. My sex is the basis upon which my womanhood is denied and my disposability justified, because the transfeminized are degendered--we are not, as a rule, provided a path "back" to manhood. Our "effeminacy" ensures that we are 'failed' men, because gender is ultimately hierarchal. Losing status, being unmanned, is frankly trivial, and is what underlies the oppression of queer men--trans men included. Most of us are ultimately subject to some kind of degendering, largely due to how a patriarchal society regards those who defy the reproductive mandate, but transmisogyny is a specific manifestation of degendering that trans women experience.

"TME/TMA" may well be an imperfect categorization--all undertakings in boundary formation are imprecise, though not always violent, given that we need descriptive terms to communicate--but the real issue with it is that it's an overly-ponderous and ultimately clunky terminology for the frank reality that the binary sex imposed on us shapes the contours of the violence we experience. I have never experienced the specific kind of misogyny that sees me as nothing but a broodmare, because I'm a filthy troon, that dehumanized abject thing whose only purpose is absorbing (sexual) violence. Yet the acknowledgment that transfems experience forms of violence that others do not--or sometimes, even the acknowledgment that transfems face violent misogyny at all--is much less forthcoming.

Our struggles are indelibly connected, of course, stemming from the same source and promulgated by the same regime that seeks to define us as nothing more than male property. The shape of each is distinct, however, and because people frequently misunderstand the shape of mine, the idea that my struggles are even connected to theirs, that I experience misogynistic violence homoousian with that which they experience, is frequently dismissed, or considered outright offensive.

This is why I talk and write about transmisogyny, and why more people need to become more familiar with how the naturalization of sex and the regime of heterosexuality under patriarchy necessitates our common struggle.

And unfortunately, in order to properly express these ideas, we do need to talk about the regime of sex.

[agendercryptidlev]

One thing that really sucks is the expectation in feminist spaces, even supposedly "trans inclusive" ones, for trans men to avoid "taking up space" when it comes to issues that directly affect them as to avoid making cis women uncomfortable. Trans men are expected to just nod and go along with exclusionary language, never correct statements that directly erase their experience, and to see their right to exist in conversations about oppressive forces that directly affect them as a gift, and to never ever "take attention away" from cis women who are seen as so much more important to advocate for. And when you do call it out you're told "I thought you wanted to be a man" as if being a man is about pretending your life is at all similar to the life of a cis man, as if the closest a trans guy will ever be to a "real man" is when he's the closest imitation he can be to being cis. Trans men deserve better from mainstream feminism.

[pringorr]

"trans women face way more sexual violence than TME trans people"

That's not true. Learn to shut the fuck up and educate yourself before speaking over us and downplaying our oppression.

.

.

"Non-binary participants who had been assigned female at birth were most likely to report sexual violence (66.1%) followed by trans men (54.2%) and non-binary people assigned male at birth (44.5%). Whilist trans women least commonly reported sexual violence (36.%)"

Most reliable data on this subject show the same trend.

[knightsbestowedbeauty]

On the Topic of Infantilisation

One aspect as to why the prevalence of anti-transmasculinity is easily dismissed in transgender and ally spaces is the way infantilisation is not properly understood as a direct product of misogyny, a tool intended to impose control, not "offer leniency".

Being treated as "deluded women" entails being violently stripped of all agency, not only when it concerns reproduction & anatomy and transitioning, but life, as well. It bleeds into the treatment of "hysterical women", where transmasculine people, as all marginalised people experience, are considered both pathetically weak and repulsively dangerous. Even if transmasculine people are not primarily seen as "predatory" by certain transphobes, they are still upheld as a direct threat, both to womanhood and manhood.

There is no "concern" or "support" behind viewing transmasculine people as "male-impersonating women poisoned by testosterone" or "self-hating girls being lead" to such a path, because there is an explicit element of oppression that subjects them as beneath cisgender people, including cisgender women. Forcibly detransitioning people & all its attempts and the arrays of mistreatment it encompasses will never been anything but transphobia manifested in a psychological & physically and often sexually abusive form.

Do you know how insane it sounds to say, "being oppressed explicitly because you are perceived as a failed woman needing to be retaught her place and punished for her misconduct is NOT AS bad as being perceived as a rapist, pedophile, etc. because some mask it by saying they are merely fighting for women's rights! That's support, as you are still extended full feminist activism!"?

No, transphobic acclaimed-feminists do not care about transmasculine people; they never have. In fact, some openly approve of anti-transmasculinity as a means to suppress & eradicate transgender manhood and subject cisgender womanhood, even if it involves corrective rape and forced impregnation.

Edit: If you think anti-transmasculinity is "not as bad" as transmisogyny, or vice versa, this is not the place for you. Specialised forms of transphobia are neither better nor worse than counterparts. I do not promote this childish behaviour in any way.

[anarcho-catboyism]

As a trans man, I do not experience gender euphoria from being treated as "just another dumb man"

I do not get gender euphoria from being treated like I'm a cis man, because I'm not one.

I grew up with and still get periods, many of us face Endometriosis and pink taxes. Cis Men make kissy faces to me in the drive thru when I'm working. I don't walk alone at night. Doctors try to explain what anxiety is to me while walking out the door only 10 minutes into the appointment I've waited months for. Men catcall me as they drive by and laugh at my embarrassment for being called a "fatass piggy" in public. There is a trend of chasers who fetishsize baby trapping us so they can force us to detransition and this has only increased as abortion rights are under attack. We grew up arguing with the boys in class because they thought Assault jokes were funny. We dealt and deal with the creepy bosses and teachers and coworkers who seem to touch us every they pass by. We go on dates texting our friends who we're with, what they look like, and where we're going in case they decide to kidnap and kill us.

I'm not a cis man. Cis manhood is not the default I have to transition into to be a man. I experienced and still experience misogny, and they 100% are things I will always remember no matter how much Testosterone I inject.

So yeah, I am a man. I'm a boy. But I'm not a cis man or a cis boy. I am not "just as bad" as other men, and Malgendering me doesn't make me feel euphoric, it makes me feel like shit bc I'm being directly compared to the people who oppress me too. Stop trying to "validate" trans men by implying we are something bad and to be avoided.

[intersexcat-tboy]

Saying "you're not a woman so it's not misogyny" doesn't make something not misongystic

(Doesn't matter if it's said to a trans man or a trans woman, for different reasons)