#but saying trans men are 'exempt' from transmisogyny feels wrong to me

[tibli]

ngl i reeeeeeaaally dislike the term tme. like, i get what the term means and is supposed to reflect, but idk if labeling someone as being 'exempt' from this specific prejudice is necessarily someone else's call to make.

for example, a butch cis woman is harassed in the bathroom because others believe shes a trans woman (which has happened before!). is she exempt from transmisogyny, despite being directly impacted by it? dont get me wrong, i DO think the term transmisogyny is important, and describes a very specific prejudice against a group of people. but to say someone is 'exempt' from it makes a LOT of assumptions about a person's experiences that im just not comfortable with. if someone is being attacked due to another person's transmisogynistic beliefs, even if they themselves are not a trans woman, i dont think they should be considered 'exempt' from it. bigots rarely care for those distinctions, and all it does is further divide an already divided group of people into an 'us-and-them' dynamic

to me, it would be like saying a feminine straight man was 'exempt' from homophobia, despite the fact that we know homophobes dont typically care about a person's specific sexuality if they 'act' in a way that seems effeminate. that probably sounds silly, but i dont think we should be so quick to 'exempt' people from prejudices that could very well be impacting them, even if they arent actually a member of the typical target group.

[himedanshicult]

I'm going to try and explain to you, as a trans woman myself, why you're wrong about transandrophobia advocates. I've never once seen a single one of them, and I've interacted with many over a long period of time nearly every day now, claim that transmascs cannot be transmisogynyistic, and I feel you're very deliberately conflating that with "transmascs don't have structural power over transfems", which IS true. They don't have power over us. They can be transmisogynistic but that doesn't mean it's systemic on their part. If anything, we have power over them, because transmascs are constantly shut out of queer spaces, taunted, told they should all die, have jokes made about them being forcibly impregnated, and harassed in attempts to force them back into the closet because everyone thinks transitioning to "man" is a morally bankrupt political choice. When they try to complain about these things, they're told to shut up and stop deprioritizing the real victims. They're told they have to consider themselves transmisogyny exempt - which is truly, I mean truly just a euphemism for hating on them regardless of if it's /supposed/ to include cis people - but when they try to come up with their own word, that's also wrong. And everyone is just...fine with "TMEs" who buy into that nonsense practically worshipping transfems to a degree I find skin-crawling. It's a bad situation.

if it seems like I'm conflating the two, well, that's because I am. i don't think it's a meaningful difference. simply saying that transmascs are capable of prejudice is an empty admission when you follow that with "but they can hold no meaningful power over trans women nor can they benefit from or weaponize systemic transmisogyny". not even getting into how these admissions often coexist with attempts to redefine transmisogyny into a "transphobia + misogyny" that can be experienced by trans men and women alike, emptying it further of credibility. the moment you start arguing that trans men have no power in the relation, you are downplaying the violence and exploitation that trans men exact upon trans women, particularly within transgender and queer spaces (which is funnily enough, what you are trying to do in this very ask!) and at that point, you might as well be denying trans mens capability of transmisogyny wholesale. at least, it would be more open and honest about what is being accomplished.

and like girl, im not even gonna touch the rest of this ask because I'd need to write a full essay just to drive home how wrong you are, like you are fucking conflating forced impregnation of trans men with tme/tma signifiers, like think abt that for a minute. there are cities whose entire lgbt scenes consist of large numbers of trans guys, but like 1 or 2 trans women- are those cities just barren of trannies, or is something else going on here? how does the average queer space or feminist org react to a rape accusation by a trans girl against a trans guy vs the other way around? for that matter, how does the legal system react to it? how did michfest treat trans guys and how did they trans lesbians? is every trans girl who talks about their local feminist or lgbt scene embracing trans guys while shunning them just lying out their ass? more to the point, why are these men you associate with hellbent on convincing you, a trans woman, that not only do they possess no systemic power over you but that you have systemic power over them? trying to ingrain into your mind that you are by default the aggressor? like, doesn't that strike you as a little akin to male/female socialization, especially since a lot of popular bloggers in this sphere openly espouse that concept?

for fear of getting my words twisted, let me be clear that i detest transphobia against trans men, and especially the proliferation of demonization towards testosterone hrt and phalloplasty thts spread like wildfire in lgbt spaces. trans men are subjected to a lot of horrific bullshit and there are trans girls who actively participate in that. im not opposed to that oppression being given a name. but none of that justifies this outright rejection of their capacity to perpetuate societal transmisogyny to their benefit that is championed in transandrophobia spaces. that only serves to allow trans men to turn a blindside on their own ability to hurt and oppress trans women and to obfuscate their actions when they do so. there are a ton of trans guys who hate transandrophobia bloggers for precisely that reason and feel deeply uncomfortable with their oppression being used to downplay and obfuscate transmisogyny

[a-faggot-with-opinions]

It isn't asking your agab you idiot cis men are literally tme

I didn't really elaborate on why I dislike tma/tme in the original post tags, but I'll do so here because I'm sitting at an airport and have literal hours of nothing to do.

First, a disclaimer: TMA/TME are actually helpful in discussions of transmisogyny. I'll admit that, and I think that they should be used in those types of discussions, however I am against how prevalent they are in other types of conversations that aren't centered on transmisogyny, and how they are used as sort of a litmus test of how oppressed one is.

It's very unclear to me and many others who exactly counts as TMA. Do cis GNC men count as TMA? What about transneutral AMAB people? There isn't really a clear line between "directly targeted by transmisogyny" and "not directly targeted by transmisogyny", just like there isn't a clear line between "man" and "non-man".

The AGAB thing was specifically about transneutral people being expected to identify whether they're TMA or TME. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's literally asking about AGAB, no? I don't care if it's "progressive" or whatever, it's an invasive question and nobody should have to reveal their AGAB unless they so choose.

TMA/TME could very well stand for "transmisandry affected" and "transmisandry exempt", and while us transmascs don't use similar terms, they could be easily mixed up.

As I said earlier, TMA/TME is often used as a litmus test for whether or not someone is really The Most Oppressed™️, and claiming that AFAB trans people have privilege over AMAB trans people is absolutely ludicrous. We too experience an intersection between transphobia and misogyny (that we decided to call transandrophobia), that is different from what transfems experience. However, trying to claim that transfems in general have it worse than transmascs is very oppression olympics-y, and it's a claim that cannot be made without erasure of transmasculine struggles and oppression. We struggle in different ways. No one group of trans people (except maybe enbies & transneutrals) struggles more than all others.

These are basically my thoughts on TMA/TME, if there's something I don't understand or got wrong about how the terms are meant to be used feel free to correct me! Anon, if you really think that your claims are correct and that I am an idiot for disagreeing with you, I dare you to go off anon. If you're that confident, you shouldn't need to hide behind anon in order to say what you think.

[stars-and-soda]

Maybe a hot take, but I really feel like tme/tma are terms that lack a lot of nuance. Like just say trans misogyny or transfemmes. If there's a societal hatred towards a group, the effects of that are not limited to the hated group. Straight cis guys get made fun of for acting gay, I know an Ukrainian who was called anti-Native slurs, etc.

There are cis women who get told that they look like men, are treated as a threat, get kicked out of bathrooms, denied entry to women's carts. They technically experience transmisogny.

Yes, transfemmes are the target of transmisogyny, so other groups aren't going to be as discriminated against even when mistaken. So, why not just say transfemmes? Hell, I even like "amab trans people" better.

When talking about racism, I just say racism or poc or whatever ethnicity (like anti-native). When talking about misogyny, I just say misogyny or women. No one says homophobia exempt, they say straight, they don't say homophobia affected, they say gay.

It rubs me the wrong way because it creates such distance from transfemmes to everyone else, like it will never affect you if you're not transfemme and it becomes a barrier to realizing that transmisogyny affects everyone who lives in a transmisogynistic society. Like how homophobia or racism affects everyone in an inherently racist society.

It's not just for trans women to fight, it's a widespread societal ill that needs to be dealt with by everyone, like every other discrimination. Yes, you should be in support of people on the basis of their humanity even if you're not a part of their group and obviously not everyone (maybe not even the majority) are even hurt by transmisogyny but it still is affects everyone, and must be dealt with so.

Atleast I think so. I'm really tired and don't know if I explained myself well

[doberbutts]

Feel free to ignore this ask but I'm too scared to say it off anon but like.... the absolute audacity of people to say "all problems trans men face are ACTUALLY misdirected transmisogyny and are about trans women" while ALSO insisting on using terms TMA vs TME is insane to me... Like, which is it? Are trans men all TMA or is transandrophobia a thing? Because it very literally cannot be both.

Well this is information from 10 years ago so take it with a grain of salt but like. When I was being taught trans theory as a scared 18yo in my college's GSA by a trans woman who was directly mentoring me, her opinion was that all trans people are affected by transmisogyny for exactly that reason, and that transmisogyny would literally be the correct word to describe what is now being called "transandrophobia" and "enbyphobia" and even parts of "intersex-phobia" because the problem is that our genders, our sexed bodies, and the way we related to the world causes oppression based on the intersection of misogyny and transphobia (as well as intersex-phobia and homophobia) (and a lil bit of racism to go with it especially for trans people of color and intersex people of color).

Again, this is back when the correct term was trans*gender, to include those who considered themselves outside of the binary but not transgender due to lack of interest in transitioning or lack of dysphoria or because their cultural understanding of gender does not include what American society would consider "transgender" or simply because. I... still know people to this day who fit under that label, and it seems those advocating for the removal of the asterisk have sort of left them behind. I understand that transmedicalism poisoned the waters, still don't love the immediate accusations that I was A Bad Person Oppressing Non-Binary People when the script flipped and suddenly the asterisk was not inclusive when my non-binary friends were very much thankful that I was still using it. Now I don't, and I had a few ask me about it, and when I explained they understood, but...

So like. A large part of my protest behind the whole TMA/TME thing is that I literally am listening to trans women, the trans woman who helped me gain the confidence to be who I am today, and that trans woman negated the idea of "trans men aren't affected by transmisogyny and thus are exempt from harm by it" literally before those terms even existed.

BTW this is why people keep stressing that we need to actually like. Take a moment and listen to and learn from our LGBT elders before running off at the mouth taking potshots at people who are part of this community an receive much of the same harms as everyone else.

And this is why when I learned those terms back in May my instant reaction was "uh... no?"

So like. We are. We are affected by transmisogyny. And if we're not allowed to use that word anymore, then we get to find a different word to use that describes our very real problems with both transphobia and misogyny. But we're not allowed to use that word because "misandry isn't real" (it is, MRAs are just using it wrong, again poisoning the waters literally never helped anyone) and we're not allowed to use that word because "OP had a personal dispute with Blogger A and his consensual sexual history makes me uncomfortable" and we're not allowed to use that word because "it looks like it's not a real word and anyway people who believe this is true are transmisogynists" and we're not allowed to use that word because "it's not the right time" so it's sounding an awful lot like people just don't want us talking about what we go through or finding support in each other to me.

[nothorses]

hellooo so i have a question and idk if i should preface it by stating that im tranfem enby and well past my 20s but here we go: how can a trans person be transmisogyny exempt? i always thought tm was just an overlap between transphobia and misogyny, not transphobia specific towards trans women and tranfems but ive seen the latter be used as its definition more lately. i would say i experience tm, but having irl transmasc friends has thought me that they too experience it, sometimes in a slightly different form but it was still something that would be considered tm. i just dont understand where all that came from. i would honestly argue that cis people can also sometimes experience transmisogyny in cases such as being gnc or having stronger/softer features associated with one or the other cis binary gender. especially black women who are athletes and woc in general. so idk it feels like ive missed something? has it always been like that? i remember discussions about how you can experience transphobia without being trans being held so how is that (tme/tma) different? im sorry if i sound rude or condescending, it wasnt my intention!

You don't at all sound rude or condescending, and I appreciate the insight a lot!!

I think there are a couple of definitions of transmisogyny that sort of float around:

It seems like the original concept was that transmisogyny = transphobia + misogyny, which obviously would impact the entire trans community in some way.

Julia Serano's work seemed to cement the idea that transmisogyny is specifically about the oppression trans women (and most transfems) experience, and people bought into the idea that because trans women experience misogyny, trans men do not and cannot.

Thus, "transmisogyny" evolves to describe a specific set of ideas, and a specific kind of oppression, which lies at the intersection of transphobia and transmisogyny and specifically targets transfemininity.

Which is a perfectly reasonable outcome, imo, even if I disagree with some of the ideas that got us from Point A to Point D. Having a term that names and describes the arm of transphobia targeting transfemininity is genuinely useful and necessary.

That said, "targets transfemininity" is verbage I choose very carefully: I think it's important that we put the onus on the oppressor, and that we describe the intentions- and the beliefs that go into them- rather than the outcome.

"Transmisogyny" is not trans women being brutalized, it's the thing causing trans women to be brutalized. We need to be able to point the finger at the person doing the brutalization and to talk about why it's happening in the first place, or that person scampers off into the shadows to brutalize more transfems.

Which also means we need to acknowledge that sometimes, that person is going to be wrong. They're looking for certain traits they associate with transfemininity (stereotypes), operating on a internal set of motives and ideas (bigotry) that are, by nature, incongruent with reality. They're going to brutalize the wrong people sometimes. Those people will still be brutalized in the end. They were still brutalized at that person's hands, because of their bigotry. Because of transmisogyny. They are affected by transmisogyny.

I'm totally here for the current definition of "transmisogyny"; and I think it actually helps to have other terms for other arms of transphobia, because it means we preserve the (extremely useful, extremely necessary) specificity of "transmisogyny" rather than trying to expand it to cover a much wider range of experiences than most people understand it to cover nowadays.

Now we have a way to differentiate between the motives, patterns, and actions of our attackers, and a way to talk about them in greater detail; and that's really, really helpful in keeping them out of the shadows. That's a great start to keeping more trans people safe.

[the-ace-lesbians]

From u/HomoExtraordinaire. Transcript below!

This is a beautiful post that I asked to share here. It really does feel like, most of the time, you can never reason with transphobic women no matter what you do, what you say, what you bring up. I’m transmisogyny exempt, so I can’t imagine the pain that goes along with having that hate thrown at you, and I can’t speak on it, but I do know that I get harassed constantly for not agreeing with transphobic ideals.

In the comments, the OP, a self-proclaimed Ex-TERF, says that the reason she took a step back and made her examine herself is that she saw similarities between herself and incels-- Something I think a lot of us can see, but unfortunately not many of those who shared her ideals. She also said that her DMs are always open to current transphobic radfems who want to talk, judgement free. She’s truly trying to help others understand why the hate they’ve been taught is wrong, and she’s promised in the comments to help the trans community and repair the damage she’s done.

I never encourage people to argue with bigots, because it’s never something that will end well-- they hate you for being you, but it is a beacon of hope to see that they can learn more about what they’ve been taught and choose a path of peacefulness and kindness instead of hatred and violence.

[Transcript:

I'm sorry. I was in a bad space, mentally. I felt lonely, isolated, and full of hate. I'm sorry about the hurtful things I said. I'm sorry for gatekeeping, for being an asshole, for kicking you while you were down. I'm sorry I let them radicalize me. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to the women I argued with. I'm sorry for the women I hurt.

Now I know. Why have a heart full of hate when you can have a heart full of love? Why gatekeep when you can welcome? Why ruin someone's day when you can make it awesome?

To all the TERFs, I know it's exhausting being so filled with hate. I know how lonely you feel, how isolated, how you feel like your identity is challenged. It's not. You can accept that trans women are women and still be a lesbian. These people are literally just trying to be themselves and they don't deserve all the violence, harassment, and hate they get for that. I promise once you let the negative feelings go, you'll feel a huge weight lifted off your shoulders.

But back to my point. I'm sorry. I probably don't deserve to be forgiven. But I just wanted to let you know that TERFs can change for the better. It's difficult to accept that you were wrong,but it is possible.

-an Ex-TERF

PS: Trans women are women. Trans men are men.

EDIT: I know there are TERFs lurking. If you want to talk, judgment free, message me.

Edit 2: I've had some heartfelt conversations, and I've had TERFs send me cryptic messages and deactivate their accounts before I can reply. Ya win some, ya lose some

End transcript]

[fu-si-un]

drafted an fb post abt transmisogyny, partly prompted by jk rowling being more blatant about it (so sick of seeing ppl advocating transmisogynistic politics oh my god... at least w/ nina paley i found out abt this before getting to her films on my watch list). anyway. it’s not the first time i’ve talked abt transmisogyny on fb, but this post would definitely talk abt it at more length compared to previous ones.

in case any trans women / transfems would like to look at it & let me know if u think there’s something in there that’s unhelpful or would be better written differently, or if there’s sth u think would be good to add, the draft is beneath the cut. (will probably post it at some point later today.)

(content note: terfs / terf apologists; transmisogyny; abuse; sexual violence)

When people appeal to “[cisgender and/or transmisogyny-exempt] women’s safety” while, explicitly or implicitly, positioning trans women’s presence (e.g. in women’s shelters, restrooms, etc.) as something threatening... they might as well be claiming that we need to protect rich women from poor women. This would be no more divorced from actual power dynamics. (Certainly, trans women as a demographic experience significantly more risk around poverty when compared to cis women, due to factors of employment discrimination, familial abuse or ejection, etc.)

When someone who’s doing this is a feminist, they might as well be insisting that feminism desperately needs to center the needs of rich women. Of course, there is a long, unfortunate history of feminists prioritizing the needs of comparatively well-off women while harming women who face increased oppression along lines of race, class, etc. But due to differences with regard to how transmisogyny is reproduced and legitimized by cissexist language use, you’re far less likely to see self-identified feminists explicitly saying “listen to rich women” than you are to see reactionaries type-screaming “LISTEN TO [CIS AND TME] WOMEN.”

The trans-women’s-presence-as-threat narrative feeds into violence against our trans sisters; it is simultaneously used to justify and whitewash this violence.

Women who don’t experience transmisogyny are major enactors of this violence (physical, sexual, verbal, etc.)—transmisogynistic violence is in no way something we should predominantly only understand as committed by men. Certainly, male perpetrators are fully culpable. Further, their behavior should be met with far more condemnation and resistance than it currently receives. At the same time, men’s violence is often not ignored/excused using the same means that tme (transmisogyny-exempt) women’s is; this is one of the reasons I’m particularly talking about tme women in this post (an exception to this would be that this kind of denial/justification may also be seen in response to violence enacted by trans men, as a result of people more-or-less misgendering them). As you might have guessed, J.K. Rowling’s recent, more explicit reiteration of her transmisogyny on twitter was one of the things that prompted me to write this post now. I feel my being a part of the demographic of tme women comes with a responsibility to speak about the violence we both perpetuate and turn a blind eye to.

Disturbingly, one can easily find instances of tme women rationalizing the sexual violence our demographic does to trans women. The two cis women who groped a trans woman in a North Carolina women’s restroom (pinknews.co.uk/2019/01/10/two-women-detained-groping-trans-woman) represent just one example, one more publicized than the majority of what falls into this category of violence. My demographic also enacts transmisogynistic sexual violence and coercion within the context of intimate relationships; this too should not only be understood as involving male perpetrators.

Then, of course, there is terf harassment, involving transmisogynistic hate speech often heavily interwoven with sexual harassment. It’s fucking evil that this is such a regular experience for trans women—or, and this is even more evil, trans girls. It’s fucking evil that transfem people have to deal with this.

At one point I technically received said harassment in my pms before going for the block function; some terf had assumed me to be a trans woman after I pointed out a blogger’s transmisogyny. Of course, I wasn’t victimized as an individual. I knew I wasn’t the intended target, and that this was not a reflection of people’s hatred of my demographic. The words did no direct violence to me. What I felt was disgust at people’s cruelty, and later, an awful sense of powerlessness to stop them from hurting people.

But “powerlessness” isn’t the most helpful or productive framing, especially when there are many ways I am afforded power compared to others. I can’t control other people’s actions. But I have a responsibility to do what I can, when I can.

Anyway, I’m not saying anything new here. Many trans women have talked about these issues; my limited knowledge of these topics comes from witnessing trans women who I share some form of online community with discuss their experiences. As always, one should listen to oppressed groups about their own experiences moreso than to others—like me in this instance—who talk about those experiences. But I do think it’s important that the rest of us talk about these things. I don’t wish to merely be a bystander to oppression.

If you have questions/comments about what I’ve said in this post and are potentially open to learning, feel free to pm me. Meanwhile, and this shouldn’t have to be said, DO NOT comment on this post in support of (or “devil’s advocacy” for) “the other side” / “both sides” with regard to whether trans women belong in women’s spaces; I’ll unfriend you.

If you hold that trans women’s presence is in any way inherently threatening to women who don’t experience transmisogyny, I am not your friend.

Yes, in the case that someone doing this repents and puts effort into combating transmisogyny, I will be glad to see it (of course, I am not in the position to forgive these wrongs, and forgiveness is not entitled).

But at the very least, until that happens... we are not friends.

Do not expect me to consider someone who demonizes my sisters, and thereby feeds into the violence done to them, a “friend.”

[shesgottawatchit]

Tangerine (2015) dir. Sean Baker

A Trans Woman of Color Responds to the Trauma of “Tangerine”

Why is it that trans women of color have to experience so much violence to remember that they have each other’s back?

That’s what I got from the movie Tangerine. I enjoyed it. Mya Taylor (who plays Alexandra, one of the two trans leads) and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez (who plays Sin-dee, the other) were fucking brilliant. They were not respectable, they were surviving in the best way they knew how and they were supporting each other even though it was difficult. I loved that they didn’t apologize for their lives or their existence.

Despite this, the audience still laughed at really inappropriate parts, showcasing the way that the film itself fails the story it’s trying to portray. And don’t get me wrong, the story is real. But the way it’s set up, how it’s shot, the progression of the plot — it’s clear that it is offering up the story to a mostly white, bougie audience. It was voyeuristic in the worst possible way. And while the two stars did have a lot of input into the making of the script, white men are still the ones who get the credit. The names of white men are on the script and white men directed the movie. The story was only made real by the beautiful performance of the actors.

One of the things that frustrated me was the way Razmik (an Armenian taxi driver who is a frequent customer of Alexandra and Sin-dee, played by Karren Karagulian) is juxtaposed to that terrible john. Razmik is no better then the dude that tried to rip off Alexandra. But the narrative manipulates you into feeling sorry for him. He is just a poor misunderstood dude who lies to his wife and keeps his desire secret. But he was just as awful as all the other non trans women in the film. He reduces trans women to what we can do for him sexually, fetishizes our bodies and refuses to publicly acknowledge that he desires trans women. He is still exploits them — he just pays well. Whats more, I don’t care at all about men and how they’re impacted by transmisogyny. Because the only reason Razmik and men like him get any kind of grief is because of transmisogyny. But it is not men who bear the brunt of that violence, it is us. Trans women are murdered for the same reasons that men are shamed. So for this film to focus almost half of the narrative on this man and how hard he has it, is very frustrating. Because even in films that are ostensibly about us, we still have to deal with men and their feelings. We still try to center male experiences.

The complicated relationship that these two trans women had with the men/love in their life was hard to watch. These were people who really and truly hated Sin-dee and Alexandra but said that they love them. They manipulate, take advantage of and abuse them. Chester was an awful abusive liar, but what choice does Sin-dee have? When validation and love come, even if it’s twisted and fucked up, you take it because otherwise you are just alone and sometimes the illusion of someone supporting you is better than nothing at all. I saw my experiences with men reflected in theirs and it fucking hurt. Trans women of color aren’t valued — again, we exist only to serve and perform for men. What does it mean that the people that are supposed to value us the most end up abusing us? What does it mean that trans women of color are often the victims of domestic violence but there is no narrative about it. We cannot be victims because we cannot be loved.

The final moment of the film comes after Sin-dee realizes that Alexandra slept with her boyfriend. Sin-dee is upset with Alexandra and tries to go off by herself but Sin-dee is assaulted, called a tranny faggot and gets urine splashed all over her. An intimate moment ensues where Alexandra takes care of Sin-dee and Sin-dee forgives Alexandra. That moment of sisterhood is so real. Nobody is going to look out for trans women of color except other trans women of color. We only matter to others when we are performing for them. But why does the film find it necessary to emphasize this sisterhood by subjecting them both to violence? What does it say about the director and the audience that this was the only way to bring them back together, because they have no other choice because the world is trying to kill them. This scene also shows them taking off their wigs which is just another instance of that trope saying that trans women’s femininity is not real. It’s a fabrication that comes off during intimate moments, cause what’s “real” is what’s on the “inside”. What does it mean that all the character development that occurred in that film was through trauma and violence? What does it mean that we can only see their vulnerability, their strength, their resilience through this moment of degendering?

I’m glad I went to see it. Seeing some of my experiences reflected in that film were really important and some of the ways they handle sex work and relationships is real. I appreciated the nuance in the way that they displayed men and their relationships to trans women. Trans women of color are almost always seen as objects to be controlled, held and exploited. The movie was clear about this. Clear that the ways men relate to trans women is toxic and fraught with dynamics of power that are abusive. Chester (Sin-dee’s boyfriend and pimp, played by James Ransone) was terrible to Sin-dee and he manipulated his way back into her good graces. Razmik was only interested in how these women could serve his pleasure. Both models — both through intimate relationship and client — capture the way that men are terrible to trans women time and again.

I also liked the way that Sin-dee was in control of her interaction with Dinah (the white, cis woman and sex worker who Chester cheats on Sin-dee with, played by Mickey O’Hagan). So often, cis white women will invalidate our womanhood. They will exclude us from women’s spaces and be generally awful to us. Transmisogyny is pervasive and cis white women are not exempt from perpetuating that. It was satisfying to see another trans woman of color in control of her interaction with someone who was actively denying her womanhood, who mocks Sin-dee’s desire to be valued and seen by her partner. It was satisfying to see her take what she needed from her when so often trans women of color are denied. White feminists might be inclined to read what Sin-dee does as violence against women but Sin-dee is not in a position of power over Dinah. And it was satisfying to watch. And while I do not trust the intentions of the white male director who shot that scene (because he would be perpetrating that violence), I do appreciate the moment for the satisfaction it gave me.

Even with these positive experiences, the voyeurism and almost lurid lens that the film was shot in makes it so that it only serves the consumption of cis white people. I cannot separate or ignore the fact that this was a film made by white men. And how these white men’s careers are going to profit from this film while the actress’s careers will most likely languish.

And why is it that so few TWOC (aside from Laverne Cox and Janet Mock) get any kind of airtime when it doesn’t involve trauma? Why are cis folks only interested in seeing us hurt, traumatized and alone? Those select few trans women who do get the spotlight, not just when they are murdered, are the exception and often tokenized by the spaces that they are in. You only ever hear about TWOC after we have been murdered. And in many ways this film is no different. It relies on the difficulty of our lives, it’s fetishizes the way our existence is marked by this world in order to titillate, to entice. The exotic other enchanting the “normal” cis white audience. And they leave the theater thinking that they know something, that they are more familiar with the lives of trans women. But our lives are not like in the movies.

After the last shot and the credits started rolling, I just broke down and cried. All that trauma and pain laid out like that so that people who don’t give a fuck about us, who just want to eat us alive — it was too much. It was so much to be in that audience, hearing their laughter and knowing we are just some fucking joke to them. That the things we face are a fantasy playground they can hang out in and then leave. That our lives only have meaning through the trauma experience. And don’t get me wrong, our trauma is real. But trauma isn’t the only thing about my existence that is real. But it’s the only thing cis folks care to see. Because a trans woman happy and loved is just so fucking weird to be real. Because seeing the full breadth of our lives is too much for people to handle. And because white people cannot help but exploit our lives.

In many ways, this film is similar to Paris is Burning. Brilliant and important and life saving while at the same time exploitative to the actors/subjects. The reviews of this film go on and on about Sean Baker and how he shot this film on a iPhone but where are the interviews asking how Mya Taylor felt shooting this film? Where are all the accolades for Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and her beautiful nuanced performance? Jennie Livingston made out like a bandit from that film and so will Sean Baker from this one. And the system is set up that only a white person could even get the funding for this project. TWOC doing this for ourselves doesn’t get the same level of attention or money. When will we get our coins? When will the work we do, the art we make, the lives we lead be for us, by us? When will white cis people stop exploiting our bodies for their profit?

https://www.autostraddle.com/a-trans-woman-of-color-responds-to-the-trauma-of-tangerine-301607/

[omophagias]

(the caveat i feel obliged to add to this post: the fact that i do not think of myself personally as always-having-been the gender that i currently am does not mean that other trans people who do think of themselves that way are wrong; everyone approaches their own life in a different way.)

when i was a nonbinary/gnc lesbian, a valuable thing i derived from the…i suppose, experience?…was realizing/having it made known to me that discomfort with certain aspects of normative womanhood did not mean that i had to put in the effort to perform it better (i believe the example i used at the time was ‘i am uncomfortable wearing a skirt’ ≠ ‘it is because i don’t shave my legs; therefore i must a) override the societally-instilled shame of being a ‘hairy’ ‘woman’ or b) shave my legs’, instead = ‘i do not feel ‘myself’ while wearing skirts and should not be compelled to do so’.) instead of “there is something wrong with the way i am ‘pursuing’ ‘womanhood’,” i could think “pursuing normative womanhood is a trap that people are unfairly pushed into by our horrendous society.”

currently, and for the foreseeable future (show me a permanent state of the self, mom!) i am a transgender man—i have been on testosterone for almost a year as of the writing of this post—and am also fairly effeminate. (the many ways in which i have changed, opened, and embraced myself as a person since beginning this transition are a matter for another post.) there is a pressure i have seen other trans men and transmasculine people talk about and have to some degree felt myself; a pressure both outward and inward, to stamp out parts of one’s self that are insufficiently normatively masculine. this is because manhood is also a trap, because the entire modern western system of gender is a trap set up to mulch the majority of people in the world; much of the process of gender enforcement under this system is a series of small murders of the self, and not just for trans people.

so, for me, pursuing medical transition was in part a way of attempting to end this cycle. i believe that one of the things i wrote in the worksheet i was given by the clinic i went to (note: map of all informed-consent clinics in the united states) was that i felt that starting hormones would make me feel more confident in engaging in behaviors that i had previously tried to remove from myself. it turned out that that was the case! as i said above, i am a fairly effeminate person; i wear my hair longer than it has been since i hit puberty, i enjoy playing around with makeup, i paint my nails, i—this is a recent development—buy and wear ‘women’s’ clothing, and do not feel the need to kill that part of my self. (this is not because men who don’t perform normative masculinity are uniformly encouraged and accepted; that is, to anyone with an ounce of sense, not the case. the spooky specter of the Effeminate (boogey-)Man is haunting society.)

i realize that “oh, just don’t perform that aspect of the general complex of behaviors assigned to your gender!” is manifestly not an actionable position at all times for all people, and my own ability not to do so is informed by the fact that i am a thin, white, upper-middle class, and transmisogyny-exempt person. that said, and despite the fact that my stage of existence as a nonbinary lesbian was, shall we say, prolonged in a manner that, looking back, was… ‘…’ (see: this post), i think that lesson i learned then—that pursuing things that make you no longer feel like you, in an attempt to catch a poisoned prize, is, guess what, going to end up with you getting poisoned—was valuable.

[doberbutts]

trans men and trans women cannot enter cis manhood, our issues are not 'men's issues', none are. They are other axis of oppression that men experience, filtered through their manhood. The association with transness, womanhood, and afab experiences intrinsically links us as targets of misogyny. when are we gonna stop trying to pretend our ASAB doesnt impact anything; even when coercively assigned, its kind of important. The fear of acknowledging sex, like at all, is getting ridiculous that yall thinking like MRAs, instead of acknowledging targeted misogyny and transphobia, filtered through your manhood, not stemming from it.

I'm gunna be real here: it feels very condescending to have someone link the definition of "coercively" in my inbox while I know that the phrase "coercively assigned sex at birth" is an intersex phrase, not a transgender one, and I've been very, very loud about my discovery that I'm intersex. It feels wrong to have someone be that patronizing about a phrase people like me came up with, to clumsily explain why they think I'm wrong.

Anyway.

When I was being taught how to be transgender by an older trans woman who called herself transsexual, the theory at the time was that trans men are actually included in discussions of transmisogyny because we are oppressed by a unique intersection of transphobia and misogyny that trans women do not face, just as trans women are oppressed by a unique intersection of transphobia and misogyny that trans men do not face.

Somewhere along the way, it became unacceptable to say that trans men face misogyny. "If you say you experience misogyny you're misgendering yourself" "if you're a man you can't experience misogyny" "trans men were never girls or women so they have never experienced misogyny" are bad and incorrect takes, but they are takes often repeated at us when we discuss our issues nonetheless.

Somewhere along the way, it became unacceptable to say that trans mascs face transmisogyny. We're exempt from ever feeling any sort of effect from it, because we're men and men don't experience misogyny so it's "just transphobia". The rise of TME and TMA labelling split everyone into two groups; TMA people were just trans women, trans fems, and maybe very feminine cis men who toed the gender line a bit. TME was everyone else. Don't look too hard at the cis black athletes getting kicked out of sports for having high testosterone levels due to concern trolling about ~evil predatory trans women athletes~. Don't look too hard at butches getting kicked out of bathrooms. Don't look too hard at trans mascs getting denied abortions. That's "just transphobia". There's no misogyny happening here. And if it is it's just misogyny and transphobia and not transmisogyny despite that being the literal definition of the word.

So if we're not allowed to call it transmisogyny which my transgender ass was taught to do by a transsexual woman, and we're not allowed to call it misogyny because we're men, and it seems that "just transphobia" isn't accurate language to describe our experiences with how society treats us, we're gunna make our own words to talk about it. That's how language works. At some point you've gotta accept that telling people their language is bad while doing absolutely nothing to resolve the actual problem being discussed is tone policing, which solves nothing and helps no one.

And it's honestly pretty offensive to repeatedly call people who are talking about trying to lower rape statistics and suicide rates the same as people who have been proven to be extremely violent, especially so to come into a black New Englander's ask box so close after the Buffalo shooting and expect me to take kindly to you comparing me to a racist that deliberately killed multiple people sharing my skin tone because he's sad he can't get his dick wet. How dare you, actually. We have done nothing to you by talking about our problems and trying to work out support networks to get trans mascs in bad situations the help they desperately need. Uplifting our own is not the same as choosing to become mass murderers writing manifestos. I shouldn't even need to explain why that's a fucked up thing to say.

[doberbutts]

What do you think about the term transmisogyny exempt (tme)?

In honesty it's a New Term for me because I do not engage with the majority of the trans community online, and thus only learned about it just halfway through May. Admittedly my understanding is still fairly minimal and I do not claim to 100% Get It, but...

From my understanding, it rebrands transmisogyny to only apply to trans women and transfems, and thus those who are trans men and transmasc are somehow "exempt" from transmisogyny.

This is a really bizarre way of thinking for me. People who are transmasc are not exempt from being affected by misogyny, nor are they exempt from the specific form of transmisogyny that transfems are subjected to. In fact, I can recall a relatively recent gross interaction with a chaser/fetishist that specifically was talking to me because he thought I was a trans woman and did not understand the difference between trans men and trans women. I had to explain to him several times before he finally got it, and then he expressed that he thought I was really gross for "wanting to be a homo". WTF, dude. You're just as obsessed with sucking cock as I am, just because you're straight for wanting a woman's penis does not mean I'm wrong for wanting a man's, but okay I guess.

Trans men may not be killed at the same rates of trans women, but that is because trans women are hypervisible (which is not great) and trans men are invisible (which is also not great)- meaning when someone "clocks" a trans man they usually think he is either a trans woman or a butch lesbian, and comes under fire for that assumption because it's not like those identities are safe at all in larger society either. Trans men are still killed for being trans, as well as subjected to beatings and rapes and homelessness and drug addiction and more, for similar and yet different reasons that trans women are.

In other words, I think all transgender identities are more alike than they are different, and I think pitting ourselves against each other to try and claim that one is more oppressed than the other will get us no where. I think recognizing that we all come under fire because of our gender expression and that while these things may affect us in different ways, the problem is not that one identity or gender has "more danger" than the other, but that these problems manifest in different ways because we still live in a very gendered society and are marginalized from the getgo.

Caitlyn Jenner may not be TME due to being a trans woman, and I may be TME due to being a trans man, but she has more privilege in this world than I will ever have, while still having a target on her back due to the simple fact that she is a trans woman. I don't think it's fair to erase others' struggles and oppression simply because one group's problems are more visible than the others'.

Additionally, transmisogyny was coined to include both binary genders and nonbinary genders and how it was misogyny and the closeness to women that fueled violent acts of transphobia. The idea being that trans men are women, trans women are men who want to be women, and nonbinary people are a mix of soyboys and confused tomboys, and thus it's all bad because it all relates back to women in the end, and thus our fellowship in misery because the world cannot accept that we are what we say we are.

At some point, there was a gear shift, and transmisogyny was put fully on trans women and transfems, which entirely erased trans men and transmascs from the discussion. If I were to hedge a bet on exact timing, I would say likely whenever the idea that all men including marginalized men are bad also spread, and trans men and transmascs began to be attacked and forced back into the closet and made to feel ashamed for being male or male-adjacent. This is also about when the argument to use the words transmisandry or transandrophobia came about, to differentiate the struggles between the two "sides".

As an aside I really wonder where peopble who are gender neutral or agender get sorted in this discussion, and whether those nonbinary who do not claim "transmasc" and "transfem" as a term to describe themselves feel similar or different regarding this discussion. I have always been very binary so I really can't tell you, but I do find that these discussions tend to leave this group out to argue on a gender binary level.