#on transfeminism

[hantologie]

[…] trans women defaulted into a kind of No Futurism, and while certain other queers might celebrate the irony, joy, and graves into which queers often rush, that rush into No Future looked a lot more glamorous when the beautiful corpse left behind was a wild and willful choice rather than a statistical probability.

Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

[thetransfemininereview]

THIS IS A CALL TO ACTION. Censorship affects all of us, and if Project 2025 gets its way, the entire trans publishing industry is at a significant risk of criminalization. In this article, I lay out the problem and the stakes, and suggest a broad action plan with dozens of potential response ✊

[ftmtftm]

You all realize Feminists have been critiquing "women only spaces" for decades right?

I think often about Audre Lorde's critique of a women only event that welcomed her wife and daughter, but not her son. Because she questioned it - the function and purpose of barring even the sons of Feminist women from Feminist events. Especially the barring of her young Black son, who would otherwise be left alone in the city where he would be more prone to the very violence those same Feminist women claimed to want to change.

Because what functional, forward thinking Feminist purpose does it actually serve to do that? What message does that send to women with sons, husbands, brothers, lovers, friends, who want to involve the men and boys in their lives in their activism? Who want to build a functionally better world for us all outside of the oppressive grasp of Patriarchy? Especially for the marginalized men who often sit at their own intersection violent Patriarchal oppression, that still happens to be Patriarchal oppression despite it not being distinctly misogyny?

What purpose does it truly serve to sequester yourself away into a pocket of the world, detached from those you share it with? What bright and shining future does that really promise you?

[taliabhattwrites]

The Third Sex

After months of research and painstakingly connecting the threads of transmisogyny theory, queer activism, and field-wide epistemic injustice, I would like to present "The Third Sex": my treatise on a third-world transfeminism.

[pretty-kitten-paw]

The UK government headed and run by many transphobes has decided to make the Trans Panic defense legal. If a trans person does not disclose their gender and the other party presses charges due to this, they can be convicted with sexual assault crime.

Furthermore any trans person, (tho particularly trans women), who has obtained a Gender Reassignment Certificate (GRC) will be put into prison of their birth sex if the matter is a sex crime

With these two bits of legislation Labour have made it not only legal but easy for trans people to be jailed and sexually assaulted by members of their birth sex. We know for a fact that sexual assault in prisons happen esp to trans women. We know that placing them in female prisons, whilst not eliminating sexual assault, does make it less common.

Labour are defining a movement based on fear. Based on the fact that any cis person disgusted by their own internalised transphobia at sleeping with a trans person will have the full backing of the law to punish them. Even if sexual consent was given. Even if you both got inebriated and fucked and the "victim" found out your transness later. This puts every stealth trans woman at risk. This puts every trans woman who enjoys hook ups at risk. This puts everyone at risk.

And yet people wonder why trans women overwhelmingly date their sisters and friends.

[hazelsmask]

You don't understand it's totally your responsibility as a trans women to deconstruct gender roles. And you do this by not transitioning. Women can have body hair so you shouldn't get electrolysis. Women can have flat chests so you shouldn't start hrt. Women can have deep voices so you shouldn't voice train. It's incredibly important for me as a woman that you don't transition so you can challenge gender norms! Trans women shouldn't transition trans shouldn't transition trans women shouldn't transition!!! It's for feminism and not because I hate trannies

[femme-ressentiment]

“unlike Other Men, we [marginalized] men are actually structurally incapable of misogyny” is a disturbingly common belief that goes unchallenged on here

[genderqueerdykes]

just so we're clear, replacing patriarchy with a matriarchy would be just as bad because it's the same exact thing. it's a power structure. it lends to systemic abuse.

equality doesn't mean "one gender is better than the other". equality means all genders are on the same playing field. no one gender is better, or worse, than the rest.

women are not inherently kind. women are not inherently charitable. women do not inherently have other peoples' best interests in mind. women are not inherently gentle and nurturing. women are not inherently smarter or dumber than any other gender. women are people, and that means that women are varied. chasing men of that pedestal and placing women there instead will create the exact same problems.

you can run around saying "women are just better than men" but you're doing the exact same thing that's being done to you right now, and that's not how you collapse the structure. you're just taking the same abusive power structure and painting it pink. enough. equality means we are all on the same level. equality does not mean one gender is superior to the rest. got it?

[hantologie]

[T]he contrary subjective identities of transsexuals, the sartorial practices of transvestites, and the gender inversion of butches and queens all work to confound simplistic notions of material determinism, and mirror-style representational practices, in relation to questions of gender. Sex, it turns out, is not the foundation of gender in the same way that an apple is the foundation of a reflection of red fruit in the mirror; "sex" is a mash-up, a story we mix about how the body means, which parts matter most, and how they register in our consciousness or field of vision. "Sex" is purpose-built to serve as a foundation, and occupies a space excavated for it by an epistemological construction project

Susan Stryker, (De)Subjugated Knowledges: An introduction to transgender studies for The Transgender Studies Reader

[puppyudderly-dreamy]

i think the assumption that transfeminism considers closeted trans women as tme kinda misses the whole "transmisogyny affects us wether we transition or not" part of transfeminist analysis

[intersexfairy]

can't help but think about the trans palestinians who are excluded by the constant use of phrases like "men and women" and "boys and girls." so here's to remembering them. to every palestinian with neglected gynecological issues who isn't a woman or girl. to every nonbinary person who's fallen. to everyone who's lost access to their hormones, who wasn't able to get their gender affirming surgeries - intersex palestinians, too. to every unidentified trans person and every trans person who never got to be their true selves. to all of them, the martyred, and those still struggling just to survive. free palestine - trans and intersex palestinians included.

[thetransfemininereview]

Hello my wonderful followers, please signal boost the hell out of this incredible and timely piece by Maya Deane and Kai Cheng Thom. Thank you 🩷

[taliabhattwrites]

"Epistemicide" is a term you should become very familiar with in all discussions regarding trans oppression.

It sounds fancier than it is. The term is related to the concept of epistemic injustice. In essence, trans people have historically been subject to a form of epistemicide: our stories, histories, testimonials, ways of life, all erased and buried to maintain the patriarchal myth of dichotomous, naturalized, immutable sex.

We are then further marginalized through epistemic injustice, prevented from participating in the processes of knowledge-production, our testimonies devalued, our voices suppressed and our identities defined for us, not by us. The perception of us shaped by others, instead of ourselves. The conversation about us dominated by the voices of those who'd rather stamp us out, shouting over us constantly.

If you're not accounting for this as a central mechanism animating transphobia, you're missing a lot of the picture.

[velvetvexations]

Gender is entirely made-up and I don't understand why some people are so fixated on it being "true" in the sense of like...are trans women women? Of course they are, insofar as "a woman" can be said to exist in the first place. But people have gotten obsessed with proving objectively that a trans woman is a woman, when the actual core of trans liberation is that anyone forcing their preferred gender on you is fascist. It's missing the forest for the trees. When all you do is play the "I am [x] really truly deep down just like everyone else" game you're meeting the transphobes on their level and accepting their premise that "man" and "woman" are distinct, tangible things.

To be clear, it's not that you CAN'T feel gender is a kinna spiritual force within you, or something to that effect. But my point is that trying to rip that spiritual force out of our bodies to dissect it and prove all the haters wrong because look it was here all along is just a waste of time and effort.

The truth of the matter is that the goal is not to get people to see trans women as women, it's to get them to stop feeling like clothes and pronouns and names and locker rooms should be dictated by what some asshole wrote down on your birth certificate.

[wolfbirdgirl]

IDC what anyone else says, becoming more of a transfeminist has only made me MORE convinced that transmasc people have it hard too. it is one of the axioms of feminism that women are allowed to aspire to the aesthetics of masculinity as long as they never actually achieve it, and for men to aspire to femininity is sacrilege. and you see that in the way media portrays transmasc and transfem characters. Transmasc characters are always trying to be masculine as a front. they talk with deep voices, hang out with "the guys". but they are never allowed to actually achieve it. they can never be muscular. they can never be assertive. they can never have facial hair. They must always be short and soft. Conversely, trans women must NEVER have any hint that they are AMAB. they also cannot have facial hair, or body hair. Their voices must always be high and lilting, but in that way that's immediately clockable so no one could mistake them for a ""real"" woman. they cannot be strong or aggressive or anything even vaguely associated with men. Or, alternatively, if they're transfem nonbinary, they're just gay men with colorful hair, since everybody knows gay men are basically just women already. And of course, masc lesbians aren't real, don't worry straight men. a butch is just what you call a conventionally attractive woman wearing a sports jersey. At the end of the day, queer people of all types are accepted only as long as we can be relegated to the category of "Feminine but weird". That way, none of us can ever be any threat to the sanctity of the Holy Masculine. None of us are men or have anything to do with men. And while we squabble over who has it the worst, the patriarchy lives on.

[voidpumpkin]

the thing that gets me when some transmasc pipes up with 'not all men' or 'what about me?' whenever transfems and just feminists in general are talking about men is what I learned when I was first engaging with feminism. I was there in the mid 2010s when slogans like 'men are trash' were gaining popularity and actually listened to what feminists had to say about it. The thing they made abundantly clear was when they say 'men' they're talking about men who are violent, men who are complicit, the overwhelming majority of men who are misogynistic, systems of power, expectations. A point they made is that a) if you as a man feel called out by this you are one of the men being criticised cause b) if you were feminist enough you would have listened to them and understood the underlying logic and would have also stopped engaging and started opposing the behaviour they were criticising and c) feminism is meant to make men uncomfortable, patriarchy insists that women capitulate to men and consider their feelings, why does men's uncomfortableness matter more then women's rage at their oppression, why can't men handle being uncomfortable.

And this logic remains true with transfeminism. Whenever some transmasc pipes up it's a tell on themselves, why do you feel called out, if you were actually a transfeminist you'd already know the underlying logic of our criticism and wouldn't feel attacked, why do your feelings matter more then our rage at our oppression.