#shit for brains roe v wade takes are coalescing like a decade of my frustrations with pop feminism

[faggotron9000000]

genuinely i think i've spent [~8yrs, the majority of my adult life & the entire time since i've known i was trans] trying to find a justification for how the ideology that i fled to-- queer feminism-- is so consistently hostile to me both online and off, and i just can't. i can't find solutions to the fundamental inconsistencies of the liberal queer feminism zeitgeist i (voluntarily but also necessarily) live in, and also recognize my own humanity.

i dont think you can have a truly trans-inclusive feminism that is also constantly suspicious, derisive, and in-defense-from men or masculinity.

i think the greatest crime & defining feature of White Feminism™ is a lack of self-awareness about the ways womanhood can be weaponized in service of white supremacy-- the ways that white womens' fears and tears are (both intentionally and unintentionally!) used as justification for racist & classist violence. the notion that men are privileged over women is only true in some contexts, and whiteness is (or at least should be, imho) the most glaring one.

imho, self-awareness about the ways that i can be dangerous and hurtful, even unintentionally, is like, my most basic responsibility as someone who thinks racism and sexism are bad. white dude allyship 101 is being self-aware enough to recognize when some interpersonal conflict or rudeness Aren't Really Personal-- recognizing that minority communities and individuals have rational & predictable self-defense mechanisms, and its kind and respectful for me to be understanding and accommodating about that even when it hurts my feelings. that's a piece of the cultural philosophy that i still agree with.

so i think it kind of just pisses me off to see that white feminism still has not grown much self-awareness about the ways that white women (& """"women""") can be dangerous themselves. the responsibility that i feel to forsake my own comfort for the good of others is not shared by white non-men. this suffuses the culture in ways that seem subtle, and are difficult to articulate, but don't feel subtle to me.

when i point out that norms in the culture are actually bad for me, my fellow trans queer feminists get angry and defensive. i cannot get my nonbinary roommate or upstairs neighbor or nonbinary-upstairs-neighbor's-cis-guy-roommate to stop calling me "them" no matter how much i ask them not to. i can't log on to social media without seeing memes about all the ways men suck-- t4t jokes, short king jokes, #notallmen, if men could get pregnant, men will literally X instead of get therapy, Types Of Guy, on and on and on. just constant humiliation and a thousand people rolling their eyes and waxing poetic about how its my duty to just take it.

i personally stopped making "men are trash" jokes in college bc 1) i was taught that public self-flagellation can be self-serving, and bc 2) i realized that every complaint about men as a class included black men, and i didn't feel like white ppl like me could talk that kind of shit and still consider ourselves allies. and like, i don't know, i still fucking feel that way?

i think that awareness of race has fundamentally informed my philosophy about gender, to the point that i that i think gender theory inevitably drifts into racism (or, more often, takes a sharp fucking turn into it) when it tries to be agnostic of race. to claim that men have an inherent power and privilege over women requires you to ignore the historical precedent where "protecting white women & children" has been the professed justification for racist violence (central park karen being a vivid recent example). and when you realize that this context is so important to this supposedly-universal male/female (or "men/non-men," the difference here is semantic) power dynamic, it starts to reveal the other contexts where men do not actually have the kind of power or clout that pop feminism seems to think we universally possess.

i don't know how to tell other queer people that i take it for granted that i am a man and that when they say "men" they mean me, too. i don't know how to tell people that living among self-avowed queer feminists has not led me to a people who are kind and accepting and treat me like i'm worthy of care in a way that the outside world of cishet people do not-- they all treat me like trash, and in a lot of the same ways. other queer people remind me constantly that they think i am stupid and annoying and they would love to never think of anyone like me ever again. and i don't see other groups of people receiving this standard i'm held to, that i have a moral responsibility to grow a thick skin, that "men who aren't trash know that when i say 'men are trash' i'm not talking about them." and like, i don't know, whether that's fair or not, i can't really deal with it, because i'm a person with my own traumas and my own intersections of oppresssion and whatever. i don't know. it feels [insulting? undignified? wrong?] to me to justify my like, right to dignity and care from my community, by citing that i am part of a minority group, i guess. like i think we all deserve those things bc we're human.

people don't really like it when i say i think that #notallmen hashtags-- implying-if-not-outright-stating that every individual person who IDs as a man is responsible for bearing the guilt for every sexual assault, every rude comment, every stereotypically bratty opinion ever held by another man-- was a perverse and pointed piece of widespread cruelty-- and pointing out that it was also tangentially transphobic doesn't do much to engage their sympathy, either. people think it's normal to treat me like i'm frightening, like i'm an enemy, like i'm dangerous-- trans men, trans women, and gnc butches-of-all-sorts have our emotions and behavior aggressively policed by other queer feminists based on our proximity to Obviously Scary Bad Cis Maleness & Masculinity. people put ads on lex for parties where No Cis Men Are Allowed and nobody has any inkling of why that's fucked up. cis gay men have a reputation for being transphobic, but nobody bats an eye when my lesbian friends think its cute to make gagging noises when i talk about finding men hot and wanting to fuck them. my broke transsexual ass is expected to lend infinite shoulders to cry on to every financially secure, college-educated, white ~non-man~ who wants to complain about the emotion work they do for men while also asking me about my genitals and regarding me with this weird mix of disgust and jealousy. i have to listen to other trans people complain about cis ppls' ignorance and cruelty while being ignorant and cruel towards me, and then when i point out my own burden in this exchange, they claim that i'm only upset because i don't respect their transness.

like, fuck, man, i'm tired, i've been tired for a really long time, everyone is so rude and disingenuous and solipsistic in dealing with actual ethical challenges. i just know that i'm expected to put up with a lot of shit that i wouldn't dare do to other people, either because i know it's uncouth because of the position i inhabit by merit of being a white man, or because i think it's just fucking cruel and disrespectful to say to anybody. i'm annoyed that the burden of trans allyship and antiracist allyship end at the border of white non-mens' comfort zones, that performative displays are vogue but actually leveling up your philosophy to incorporate consideration for new groups of people... isn't. i'm pissed off that a community that credits itself with trans pride and inclusivity seem incapable of taking the exact kind of criticism that they've bludgeoned me with for the last decade.

idk man it seems like every social ill that white feminists complain about suffering at the hands of men, they have also inflicted on me personally, as a trans man with a personal investment in the cause and the philosophy. there doesn't seem to be a social space for me where people genuinely treat me like a human who is worthy of care and community. "trans inclusivity" means not using the phrase "women's issues" to refer to abortion and never, like, actually thinking about how feminist culture is received by trans men. the shallowness makes me grind my teeth into dust, seemingly every time i talk to new people or log onto social media some jackass has to stomp on a nerve and then either get defensive or start crying when they're called out. it seems like taking cis white rich men down a peg by generalizing their sins as the sins of all men is more of a priority for feminism than treating someone like me as if i deserve dignity.

im currently reading queer theory books from the 90s that have better answers to contemporary gender-ethical questions than the fucking, twitter kink-at-pride discourse carousel and whatever. are we ever going to grow up or is feminism just going to end up in the reactionary dustbin of history, bc this new wave of terfdom does not look great for the philosophy's future