#is centered on their womanhood

[wellzofyouth]

It's too bad "female rage" is a corny marketing trend now because holy hell does Gillian do good job of making you feel the red hot rage in her passages. Like many have tried copying her but it always come off as cheap imitations

[cptrs]

[superkitten-poison]

to me velvette doesnt lie about *being bisexual* for attention but she lies about being bisexual *for attention*. like admitting to being attracted to women would make her a dyke and manly and f/f relationships dont even count bc her internalized misogyny goes so crazy she subconsicounsly does not see women as full people and needs men to validate her own personhood, and since men hold most of the power, surrounding herself with men is in fact a means to power. so one way she feels she Can have sexual contact with women is through excuses: it's for attention, for convenience, as a power play. but never because of her own desires and it can never mean anything. can you imagine? two women in a loving relationship. who would want to see that?

[vithcy]

Ppl will talk shit about lesbians having weird relationships to gender but every day 1000 tiktoks are made about how girlhood is some shit like getting bubbly feelings for a man and dressing up for him

[fromtheseventhhell]

I don't think y'all realize (or care) how much your definition of feminity/womanhood is rooted in white supremacy and how that negatively impacts BIWOC

[bored-gay-werewolf]

And the worst part is:

I feel like if i start explaining that trans masculinity is just as radical other expressions of transness that im just appealing to a crowd which has already rejected me and will not hear me out fairly

[novellapink]

To be without obsession now is a frantic search for a will to live. Who am I outside of things and others?

[gnc-tits]

if u r comfortable saying something to a tboy that you wouldnt dare say to a butch u need to like expand yr mind

[madtomedgar]

Just... What if women in fiction had tragic endings that had nothing to do with gender. What a world.

[pleuvoire]

like it's hard for me to actually describe but there's soooo many posters on twitter who are like young women who stan some flavor of female pop star and who are very concerned with the importance of lesbian identity and whose first response to everything is "why would i care about a man over a woman" or "this is bad because you are being mean to a woman" and sometimes they post a big game about trans allyship and sometimes they are fierce terfs but the sheer tendency towards the latter makes me automatically wary of that style of feminism even when people are being transgender about it

[acanthemp3]

now that posts about this are everywhere less can i say that, even as someone who loves barbie and fashion dolls in general, the way people talk about how the barbie movie is the peak of feminism and any woman or anyone who was raised as a girl in general who talks abt how the pink hyperfeminine barbie aesthetic alienates them or was used as a weapon against them as a child is actually being misogynist and anti-women having fun was actually kind of awful?

[paintingformike]

lot of people in the st fandom misuse the term comphet...or maybe its just a tumblr issue in general

[just-rogi]

I’m fucking venting here bc I’m angry and don’t have anyone to talk to and I’m not sure if this is political correct or right or whatever but I’m fucking pissed - I’m a public school teacher who works in the inner city and this year alone there have been two shootings in my neighborhood involving students not dying school hours- and one student who went missing due to gang ties (they were found ALIVE a DAYS later) -

I’m fucking TIRED I’m FREAKED OUT and I’m ANGRY because I have to go into work tomorrow and I have to have that conversation with the kids during our SEL block because they will have questions and bc they are in middle school some will not know how to process it and will joke while others will be genuinely upset

and I feel nauseous thinking about the fact that my mother and four of my closest friends are all going through the same fucking shit as teachers at different schools right now- and my roommate who is trans- and unrelated to his identity is also kinda an asshole- has been shitting on me all night about how I’m not I’m danger like he is and how I don’t know his pain (and while I’m not making excuses I’m an openly gay teacher who works directly with the lgbt students and activly educated my kids on trans rights AND I work for a nonprofit organization that directly works to protect trans and queer rights and JUST LAST WEEK put out a video for our organization on antitrans laws - I’m not saying I fucking get what it’s like to be trans but Jesus fuck I’m fighting the fight for trans youth more than you are working at Whole Foods) why the FUCK are you quantifying suffering, why the FUCK are you lashing out at ME of all people, and why the fuck are you telling a public school teacher in inner city Boston that I have no idea what it’s like to be afraid- motherfucker I’m angry I’m sorry but why the fuck are you monopolizing suffering why do you think you have the right to talk to me this fucking way. I get you are scared but you work in Whole Foods in Massachusetts- the bluest state there is- )

there is no fucking cap on grief- sorry I’m upset at this as well but you saying it doesn’t directly effect me is just so fucking ignorant and suffering shouldn’t be quantifiable mf we are on the same fucking side why are you infighting right now (and I know this isn’t relevant and this is entirely unrelated to him being trans but god he is so fucking sexist- saying shit like I have no idea what it’s like to have my bodily autonomy at risk as if roe v wade didn’t get overturned THIS year???) sometimes it pisses me off like fucking sorry I’m being over emotional and overreacting to a school shooting as a fucking public school teacher GOD I should be allowed to be angry too in my own goddamn apartment-

you don’t get to sit on your high horse and say you suffer more than me and that I’m not allowed to be afraid ok I’m done I’m gonna go in tomorrow and make sure to hug my one openly trans kid extra hard bc I know they are suffering just like I know my roomate is suffering and needs a place to express his anger- I get I’m an easy target bc I’m a safe person to lash out at and I’m not telling anyone how to grieve and I know a lot of this is just knee jerk reaction to violence and anger- I just wish he wasn’t expressing it at the one fucking person who doesn’t deserve it, like fuck, the one thing people always say about public school teachers is that we have it TOO easy, especially the night after a school shooting

*Also fuck terfs and fuck anyone who is using a tragedy as an excuse to hate trans people*

[azuremist]

TME and TMA as intersexist terms: as written by an intersex transfem

I’ve had a few different people in my inbox asking me why I view these terms the way I do. In particular, why I claim it’s intersexist. So, I thought I’d lay out a few examples, so everyone can understand where I’m coming from.

Imagine an intersex woman. She was assigned female at birth by her doctors, and was able to go about her childhood as a woman with no inclination that anything was amiss. Sure, she didn’t experience certain parts of puberty, but puberty was different for everyone, right?

But, later in life, she learns she has Turner syndrome. This is an intersex condition where a woman has only one X chromosome, rather than the usual two.

Soon after she learns this, she finds that laws are being made to attempt to keep trans women out of women’s spaces (often specifically sports) which use chromosomes as a defining factor of womanhood.

Would this intersex person be considered “transmisogyny affected”? She has been raised as a cisgender woman with no problems regarding being ‘clocked’, but she is also a direct target of transmisogynistic laws. She lies in a gray area.

Now, let’s go to another intersex person. Imagine an intersex man with PAIS. AIS is an intersex condition where babies are born with testes and XY chromosomes, but their body is immune to or can’t respond to androgens (which includes testosterone). Intersex people with partial AIS (PAIS) often develop a vulva and clitoris during puberty.

This intersex person identifies as a man, and he was assigned male at birth. However, his body does not produce testosterone, and he went through a feminizing puberty. To the average eye, he appears to be a woman now because of this.

Would this intersex person be considered “transmisogyny affected?” He was assigned male at birth, and now appears to be a woman, much like many transfems. However, if many saw how he looks now, stating that he is a male, they would probably clock him as transmasc. He was raised as a boy until puberty, and then faced astrozcization from his peers when he began a puberty that feminized him. What he was facing was a form of intersexism where transmisogyny was playing a huge part. Does his childhood matter? Can one become TME over time, when they were TMA as a child? Again, he lies in a gray area, where the answer is not quite so simple.

What about the “opposite”, per se — an intersex woman who had a masculinizing puberty? She has aromatase deficiency, which means that many ‘male’ hormones (which would usually be converted to ‘female’ hormones) would remain unconverted. She identifies as a woman, and was identified as a female at birth and was raised, until puberty, as a female. But now, she would be clocked as a trans woman upon looking at her. What does that make her? Is it different from the previous example? How and why? This intersex person also lies in a gray area. How she should be described with these terms is not clear.

And keep in mind, these are all relatively simple examples. All of the examples I listed self-identify as cisgender. But there are intersex people who are trans in any direction you can imagine.

If that last example identified as a trans woman, because she is now clocked as one, would you be able to say she’s wrong for that? What about if she identified as transmasculine, because of her experience with puberty? What if she’s multigender, bigender or genderfluid, and says she’s both transmasc and transfem because of her complicated experiences? Would that make her a TMA transmasculine person? But I thought that transmascs were all TME? That’s how it’s so often framed, anyway.

The reason why these questions are so difficult to answer is because these terms were not made with intersex people in mind. Very real intersex transfems were pushed to the wayside in favor of centering the perisex view of transgenderism. Intersex people are nothing but an inconvenient little afterthought, annoying perisex people with their demand for “inclusion” and “consideration”. (As per usual.)

You cannot simply make a new gender binary and say, “No, really, this time everyone fits into these two categories! Forcing people to confine themselves to these two rigid labels which are shown as opposites, and as never interacting, will definitely include everyone this time!!” No matter what the contents of the new binary is, it’s not going to work, because sex and gender alike are too complicated for that. There will always be people in the gray area.

This isn’t even getting into the fact that these terms, for all intents and purposes, seem to have been popularized by and associated with the Baeddelism movement around 2017, which was essentially “Radical Feminism 2: We’re Trans Women, So It’s Fine!” This movement is known for chronic villainization of trans men and non-binary people who aren’t transfem. (They act like this with cis people too, but noticeably less so than they do with non-transfem trans people. How curious.) Think along the lines of how regular radfems treat all men (and who they deem to be men) as inherently morally disgusting scum who deserve to be attacked.

Methinks that maybe these terms aren’t the neutral, fact-based descriptors of oppression that many people nowadays tout them to be, considering that.

So, yeah. “Transmisogyny exempt” and “transmisogyny affected” as terms: not even once. Listen to intersex people, stop trying to make sex and gender into binaries, and for the love of God, stop drinking the queer seperationist koolaid!

[heartless-aro]

For many girls and women, aromanticism is inherently a form of gender nonconformity, just as asexuality is for boys and men.

Romance novels are seen as being “feminine,” and romcoms are often derogatorily called “chick-flics,” for example. Women are expected to want flowers and chocolates and care about things like anniversaries and marriage to a greater extent than is expected of men. Even many of the things women are expected to do to conform to female gender roles are centered around looking attractive: having long well-styled hair, wearing makeup, shaving, wearing skirts and dresses, etc.

So shoutout to aro women and girls who want to be feminine but feel like their aromanticism makes them feel like an outsider to womanhood. Shout out to women and girls who feel left out of “girl talk” because they don’t have a crush or significant other to tell their friends about, or because they don’t think any of their classmates/coworkers/etc. are “cute.” Shout out to aro girls who are sick of being asked “who you’re dressing up for” any time they want to wear a bit of eyeliner and a pretty skirt. Your femininity is not made any less real or valid by your aromanticism.

And shoutout to gender nonconforming aro women and girls. Shoutout to aro women and girls whose aromanticism makes them feel disconnected from femininity. Shoutout to aro women and girls with short hair, and deep voices, and hair on their upper lips, chins, chests, stomachs, backs, armpits, arms, and legs that they choose not to shave off. Shoutout to aro women and girls who identify as both female and non-binary, who are both male and female, who use pronouns other than she/her. Shoutout to intersex aro girls and women. Y’all’re cool as hell and the aro community wouldn’t nearly as beautiful and vibrant without you.

[possiblyscrewed]

Honestly, I don’t think a lot of (cis) people DO acknowledge that transphobes treat trans women as men. And that kind of strikes me as a core issue here.

Cis women are and always have been the gatekeepers of gender discourse. Our ideas originate with us, but they can only be integrated into the mainstream when accepted and adopted by cis women and feminism.

I think in reality, transmisogyny is a popular concept because it allows people to conceive of transphobia as only encompassing oppression trans women face for being treated as women.

And on the surface that does seem like a good thing. Trans women are women, and they are women who face transphobia. 

But I think in practice a lot of acknowledgement of transmisogyny is not actually about centering trans women. It’s about cis women going “see, she became a woman and now she is horribly oppressed. I was right that the oppression I face is the worst possible oppression.” I don’t think there is widespread acknowledgement that transmisogyny is a product of trans women being societally treated and conceived of as a class of men. And as part of fixing transmisogyny, you have to address how we conceive of and treat anyone we see as men. When you leave that part out of your understanding of transmisogyny you just end up centering the misogyny cis women face instead. 

And, this is a dynamic that drives a huge wedge in the community. Transmisogyny exempt trans people see the massive amounts of lip service paid to transmisogyny while people laugh at the idea that they could also face transandrophobia or afab nbphobia, and feel abandoned by their community. Meanwhile, despite the fact that transmisogyny is a household word and everyone agrees that it is horrible, trans women don’t actually feel seen or supported in their oppression because it’s not actually designed to be about them!

Mainstream feminism has an easy (incorrect) framework for the tension this causes - men are the natural binary opposite of women, and men naturally oppress women. If trans women feel unsupported, it’s because trans men are stealing their attention and resources. If trans men feel unsupported, it’s because they’re self centered men who want too much and don’t recognize their privilege. Conveniently leaving the influence of cis women out of the equation entirely. 

You actually do see women try to establish this exact dynamic with gay men. How many times have you seen the “homophobia is the fear that a man will treat you the way you treat women”? But gay men don’t need significant social alliances with women and feminism the way trans women do. This framework works on the trans community because it’s a community cis women do hold power over.

Cis people will never be invested in understanding us and integrating our existence into their frameworks of gender in a way that decenters them. We have got to find a way to come together as a community and stop giving cis people the power to define our experiences. We are not accomplishing anything for trans women, trans men, or nonbinary people by applying outdated cis-centric ideas of a black and white male-female axis of oppression to our much more complex lives. 

Trans men can’t be “treated like women” because they’re not women. What they experience is misdirected misogyny. Saying trans men experience misogyny or are “treated like women” is transphobic because it’s saying they’re women, which they’re not

queer discourse has rotted y’all’s brains from the inside out holy shit.

i lived as a woman for almost 30 years. i experienced life as a woman during that time, and i still do because i don’t pass (though i have definitely made it into the “woman being too masculine and therefore must be put in her place” category which is uh. fun!) there is nothing “misdirected” about the misogyny i faced and still face. society doesn’t give a fuck about my gender identity. transphobia, at its core, is an issue of society not seeing us as who we are and punishing us for it. acknowledging that doesn’t mean we’re agreeing with it and i don’t understand how people can come to that conclusion. like. i genuinely don’t understand how some of y’all are so disconnected from reality. it’s just insane.