#erasure seems like privilege to the hypervisible & hypervisibility seems like privilege to the erased

[yepiamthesmileyface]

like is it so very wild of a take to believe that no queer identity has it better than others. we all face different things, and some individuals may have it better/worse than other individuals, but pretending that any given identity has privilege & status on the level of cis-het-perisex people is disingenuous at best.

[boreal-sea]

Tbh as an afab nonbinary butch whose partner is a trans woman, the language some of the people in that post about misogyny in previous decades/modern India are using makes me uncomfortable bc it reads to me like they're implying that transfems had/have it better. The discussion of how "traditional" misogyny affected (and continues to affect) the transmasc community is an important one, but the OP implying that transfems were "allowed" to exist when transmascs weren't ("the reason our history is not seen as extensive or influential as transfem history is because [transmascs] quite literally were not allowed to exist") comes across as transmisogynistic to me. Trans women have never been "allowed" to exist any more than trans men have, and the fact that those words are also in the context of talking about a form of misogyny that's unique to AFAB people makes it seem like the OP is saying that the reason trans women were "allowed" to exist was male privilege

One commenter brought up historical trans men that HAVE existed to refute the implied idea that they didn't bc they weren't allowed to and made a valid point about how the reason it seems that way is bc of erasure, but then people responded as if the post was about erasure all along, even though that commenter was the first one to mention erasure and before that the post had only discussed barriers to trans men existing? Additionally, the reply saying that "[he] *(let's not misgender people)* couldn't actually name the trans men [he] referenced" (aside from Brandon Teena I guess) and that it's a problem that we can't find information about trans men in India with just a quick google search (which Antoniə proved we actually can) seems to further imply that trans women have it better in this respect, even though frankly Brandon Teena—a trans man—is the only historical trans person I can name off the top of my head as well, not any trans women. One response also brushed aside the commenter asking people not to say "women/AFAB persons" by saying that it meant he was implying that all nonbinary people were AFAB (?), but personally *I* am also uncomfortable with the term "women/AFAB persons" because it looks like it implies that the two are the same. (And with this post being about a type of misogyny specific to AFAB people, it also makes it read like it's implied that trans women are not included under the category of "women" in this usage)

Even when it comes to the articles about trans men in India, presenting them in this context (even outright claiming that trans women in India have an easier time building community and exploring their identities when the article ey linked was actually talking about the hypervisibility of hijras—a cultural third gender—and discussed how all binary trans people are being erased under the "third gender" label there) seems to dismiss the struggles that Indian transfems face. The articles discuss how trans men are erased in India, but that's also true of trans women in India. Hijras are hypervisible in India but they ALSO face increased rates of abuse, sexual assault, being forced to run away from home, and inability to find work like the trans men in the article described

It seems like this post just started out with the OP (I would hope unintentionally) implying that trans women in the past were "allowed" to exist more than trans men because they had male privilege, and then when one person tried to refute that idea people changed the topic to the tired argument of whether hypervisibility is better than erasure while continuing to use transmisogynistic language and even misgendering the person who spoke up about it. If I'm missing something and you've got a different interpretation of these parts of the post then feel free to explain your perspective if you're up for it, but that's how it reads to me and I'm not here for what I'm seeing in it. The discussion itself is an important one but I don't think there's a need to use transmisogynistic language or minimize the struggles that transfems face for it

I didn't write that post so I'm not really the right person to send this to.

But since you want MY opinion: calling trans men transmisogynistic for lamenting we have no historical record is transphobic, sexist and misogynistic, whether or not we said it in a way you approve of, and personally there was nothing wrong with how that original post was phrased.

It is FACT that we have more records of ancient societies where people we would now call transfemme/ftm openly existed and were acknowledged and had communities and had a name for themselves (whether they were "allowed" to do it or not) compared to records of transmasc/ftm people.

This is undeniable. It's not transmisogynistic to point this out. It's not transmisogynistic for trans men to be upset we are not acknowledged in history the way trans women are.

Whether or not transfemme people had/have it "easy" in those societies is a completely different discussion and not what the original post was discussing, because at the very least their existence was recorded, unlike transmasc people, who have almost no historical record whatsoever.

That is what the core of that post is about. It is about the lack of records, and then a discussion about why the historical record lacks transmasc representation.

A lack of records could be caused by a few things:

"There's no record because transmasc people just didn't exist back then". This is dumb, and anyone who believes this is dumb.

Transmasc people existed just as openly as transfemme people, but everyone just decided not to write about us for... some reason? Also very unlikely. Why would no one write about us? This makes no sense.

Transmasc people existed but because they were afab they were oppressed. Therefore, most of them were unable to express themselves, and the ones who did had to stay in hiding for their own safety, and thus had no access to community nor a name for who they were. Transmascs were not acknowledged in the record both because they were hiding and also because most societies are sexist and would therefore never record the existence of transmasc people or take us seriously or see us as anything other than "silly girls playing dress up".

#3 is the reason explored in the original post. This is also the reason you seem to have a problem with.

But it's just a fact: afab people start out oppressed from birth in most societies, both modern and historical. Period. We just do. And I'm sorry, but that does tend to make everything difficult.

I really, really resent that when it comes to discussing trans issues, afab people are repeatedly silenced and told we're not allowed to talk about the fact that we're fucking oppressed from birth, and that it makes our transition journeys hard.

And we get abuse from all sides for being afab! Which is just sexism and misogyny, plain and simple. It's "justified" for all kinds of bullshit reasons, but make no mistake: it's sexism and misogyny.

We get told by other trans people we have "afab privilege" which is fucking laughable and pisses me off so, so much. Thanks, I'm "privileged" to have been born as a marginalized and oppressed sex. Fuck off. We get told that bringing up our birth sex and the fact that we are oppressed for it is "transmisogyny", like you've done here. Fuck off. No it's not. Stop being a sexist asshole for two fucking seconds.

Then we get cis women assholes (like radfems and terfs) shouting at us that we're just "self-hating women" and we're "betraying the female sisterhood" and we're "misogynistic" for transitioning and "joining the enemy".

And THEN, we have to overcome sexism and misogyny before we're even taken seriously in a medical context, before we're allowed to transition! We have to fight for testosterone (which is a controlled substance), meaning we can't legally "DIY" our HRT. We have to beg for hysterectomies and top surgery, all while people try to control our bodies and tell us we're destroying our "beautiful fertile temples". Medical sexism is powerful and dangerous.

It's no fucking wonder to me there's not many records of transmascs in history. "Troublesome young girls" we were kept home under lock and key; we were married off to husbands at a young age who would control us and keep us in our place and make us pop out babies so we'd remember we were really destined to be women and mothers all along. And the trans men who managed to make it? I'm not surprised they kept as quiet as fucking possible about it, because they probably would've been dragged off and treated just as awfully.

The few historical trans men we know about were "oddities" - discovered after death, or part of small communities who accepted them for who they were, or were one-offs mentioned in a newspaper or an ancient text here or there. There was not a society-wide acknowledgement of our existence in historical cultures from around the world. We didn't have a name for ourselves, or community, or anything.

None of this erases the struggles transfemmes go through. None of this is claiming "trans men have it worse". We're literally just saying "no one talked about us and that sucks".

Trans men are just literally begging for the right to discuss our struggles without being told we're trying to oppress trans women in the fucking process. We're begging for the right to lament our lack of representation without being called fucking transmisogynistic for pointing it out.