#i gotta say the whole 'theyfab chasers' thing just sounds like a mashup of 'predatory lesbians' and 'autogynephilia'

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I've encountered this in the opposite direction too (transmascs being hostile to transfems); extremely similar ways of writing and interacting but with the insults switched out.

This is a form of intracommunal violence. (I say "violence" here but I'm generalizing from straight-up physical violence to the kind of watered-down verbal hostility we've seen on our feeds this evening. Much different levels of severity: I'm just trying to categorize based on motive here.) If you're familiar with the whole "cycle of abuse" concept, it's like that but applied to larger groups like marginalized cultures or subcultures.

Some people respond to oppression/abuse/trauma by lashing out, but because the people who hurt them are too dangerous or inaccessible, they end up hurting the people who are within reach...aka, their own ingroup, or allies, or other marginalized/traumatized people around them. Then you get cliques of people acting like this who recruit other vulnerable people and it can snowball and get really nasty.

One of the hallmarks of this kind of behavior is for the perpetrators to recreate the ways in which they were abused themselves. So, for instance, this kind of infighting amongst trans people is often marked by TERF rhetoric and gender-/sex-essentialism in general.

Internalized transphobia accounts for some, but definitely not all of the hostility. Sometimes it's catalyzed by actual cis TERF infiltrators stirring up infighting on purpose. Sometimes it's literally just Sexism 2.0.

(Please take my armchair sociology with a grain of salt; I know just enough about the actual theory and terminology to accidentally misuse them sometimes.)

Engaging with people who are acting like this is dangerous on, like, at least a personal mental health level. If what they're saying isn't direct harassment/emotional abuse in its own right, it's a signal that they're looking for a target. Big, big red flag. Someone who's spoiling for a fight is not going to give you a good-faith discussion.

Don't feed the trolls. They bite the hand that feeds them.

Literally cannot fucking grok the mindset that has transfems being openly hostile to transmascs. I'm still hung up on this. I'm gonna be hung up on this for the next forever probably. Like what the fuck.