#source on much of this: existing as a transmasc on tumblr for years and years.

[romanticslimecreature]

These are wo things I wish I'd known about much sooner in my transmasc journey:

I've learned from various transmasc/queer/multigender Tumblrs about the overlap between butch lesbians and trans men, historically and practically. I also read part of the book "A Herstory of Transmasculone Identities" a few years ago, and while I never got around to finishing it, it's a valuable source on this as well. It's understandable when people are frustrated about people dismissing trans men as "just butch lesbians" or vice versa, but also we're allowed to have solidarity with each other and even exist in the grey area between. AFAB butch lesbians can choose to medically transition (with hormones and/or surgery), trans men can choose not to. The thing that defines your identity is you, not a checklist of traits or choices.

Tumblr user @turing-tested helped me realize that it's okay if you don't have "one true gender." A lot of people talk about their journey through identities that didn't fit to the identity that does. That is some people's experience, and there's nothing wrong with that! It's just not the only one. Some of us have fluid identities for whatever reason, or some of us may feel that no label is "correct" and just use the ones that help us explain ourselves. Some of us have conflicting identities that feel equally true at once. Your gender journey doesn't have to have an endpoint.

When I say "us," I mean transmascs in general, though obviously not every transmasc will relate to this and not everyone who relates to this is transmasc. And like I said, other people have probably articulated these ideas far better. This is why we need to amplify the voices of our community members instead of misrepresenting them like a certain someone you mentioned. Thank you for doing this project! Feel free to DM if you want to discuss further.

I reblogged from the source in case having people's comments in separate threads would be easier, but I do also want to second @ethanthealien that our identities can be impacted by mental illness, and that doesn't make them any less real. Even if I am trans because of my trauma, that shouldn't be an excuse to deny me the agency of self-determination.

Transmasc Tumblr, I need you.

I dunno if there's a rallying cry or some kind of ancient incantation I gotta bust out, but HEY TRANSMASC FOLKS AND TRANS MEN, EXCUSE ME PLEASE. I'm a trans dude with a small-ish YouTube channel working on a video about the erasure of transmasculinity, particularly in the wake of the recent debacle involving a former YouTuber who I won't mention directly but his name rhymes with Sames Jomerton. His plagiarism of Alexander Avila and Jes Tom, and outright misgendering of ND Stevenson got me fired up about how often we're overlooked or merely an asterisk in queer discourse, so much so that even those of us in this community need to search high and low for resources on our history and health care. So I'd like to hear from you. If you're comfortable, I'd love for anyone who's part of this community (and not a transmedicalist) to message me directly with something you wish more people knew about us, or an anecdote about one of your experiences (happy, sad, angering, your call.) A paragraph or two is ideal--for longer posts, I will likely not be able to include them in their entirety, but I will quote them where I can. If you'd like to be involved, please let me know if you'd prefer to be anonymous or to have your name dropped and socials linked; I'm hoping for the latter given that the idea is to shout out more artists and creators, but I want to give the anons space to be heard, too. You can also help by recommending transmasc YouTubers (especially essayists) who could use more eyes! I'm looking for more creators to enjoy personally, and I'd love to shout them out if it would help them. If y'all could reblog this, I'd be very appreciative, and if you read all of this, dog bless you. 💙 And an extra special thanks to @socksonat3am for being such a great friend with exceptional meme game. He blindsided me with a compliment so now I'm getting him back because he needs to know how talented and delightful and magical he is. Take that, Socks. Get absolutely treasured.

[kuromichad]

different subject that’s heavy on my mind rn but since i’m already being harsh let’s get into it. i wish it wasn’t automatically presumed to be some kind of truscum attitude when someone tries to express that different parts of The Trans Community have like, different needs and different risk levels and different experiences and that we have the ability to talk over each other, harm each other, etc... like when i put it that way people generally are like ‘of course that’s true!’ but is it ever really understood in practice? a number of people (not a large enough number, but still) are able to loosely understand ‘you can be trans and transphobic’ when it’s applied to the matter of transmisogyny but when a trans person tries to express distrust of or frustration with afab nb people due to how common it is that that category of person will, despite being trans/nb, espouse bioessentialist, anti-medical-transition, radfem-adjacent if not outright cryptoterf rhetoric, suddenly ‘trans people can be transphobic’ gets applied to... the person with a complaint about transphobia. 

because he’s clearly an evil truscum man! regardless of if the person making the complaint is a trans man or trans woman, oops, lol. he’s a bad person who is attacking and invalidating and totally hatecriming the heckin’ valid, equally at-risk transgender identity of “an afab woman who isn’t a woman except when she pointedly categorizes themself as a woman because being afab makes them a woman who is ‘politically aligned’ with women but she’s not an icky unwoke cis woman because they don’t like being forced into womanhood although Really When You Think About It 🤔 all women are dysphoric because obviously the pathologized medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria in transgender people is something that equally applies to cis women just default existing under patriarchy 🤔, and no, equating these things totally does not imply anything reductive about or add a bizarre moral dimension to the idea of being transgender, whaaaaat, this woman who isn’t a woman doesn’t think there’s anything immoral or cowardly or misogynist or delusional about being transgender, they would never say that because THEY’RE transgender, except when she feels it’s important (constantly) to make clear that she’s Still A Woman Deep Down Inherently Despite Not Identifying As One, and none of this ever has any effect on how they treat the concept, socially and politically, of people who actually wholly identify with (and possibly medically transition to) a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth, be it ‘the opposite gender’ or abstaining from binary gender altogether or ‘politically aligning’ with the ‘opposite’ gender from their asab. never ever!”

and like maybe that sounds like a completely absurd and hateful strawman to you! but in that case you’re either like, lucky, or optimistic, or ignorant. i’m literally not looking at random nb people and declaring that in My Truscum Opinion they’re ‘really a woman’ just because they’re not medically transitioning or meeting some arbitrary standard of mine. i am looking at self-identified afab nb people, who most often use she/they because, y’know, words mean things, especially pronouns, so people who are willingly ‘aligned with womanhood’ typically intentionally use she/her (sorry that i guess that’s another truscum take now!!! that pronouns mean things!!! the bigender transmasc who deliberately uses exclusively he/him wants it to invoke a perception he’s comfortable with!), who actively say the things listed above (in a non-sarcastic manner). 

like, the line between a person who says “i don’t claim to really not be my asab because i know no one would ever perceive me as anything else” because theyve internalized a defeatist attitude due to societal transphobia, and a person who says that because they... genuinely believe it’s impossible/ridiculous/an imposition to truly be transgender (in the traditional trans sense, beyond a vague nb disidentification with gender) and are actively contributing to the former person’s self loathing... is hard to define from a distance! i think plenty of people who are, in a sense, ‘tentative’ or like ‘playing close to home’ so to speak in their identity are ‘genuinely trans’ (whatever that may mean) and just going through a process. they might arrive at a different identity or might just eventually stop saying/believing defeatist stuff, who knows. but there are enough people saying it for the latter reason, or at least not caring if they sound that way, that it’s like, dangerous. it is actively incredibly harmful to other trans people. and it’s fucking ridiculous that it’s so difficult to criticize because you’ll always get the defense of “umm but i’m literally trans” and/or “well i’m just talking about ME, this doesn’t apply to other trans people” when it’s an attitude that very clearly seeps into their politics and the way they discuss gender.

because it’s just incredibly common for afab nb people (most typically those that go by she/they! since i’m aware that uh, i am also afab nb, but we clearly are extremely different, so that’s the best categorization i’ve got) to discuss gender in moralized terms, with the excuse of patriarchy/misogyny existing, which of course adds another difficult dimension to trying to criticize this because it gets the response of “don’t act like misandry is real” (it’s not, but being a dick still is) and “boohoo, let women complain about their oppressors” (this goes beyond ‘complaining’). a deliberate revocation of empathy/sympathy/compassion from men and projection of inherently malicious/brutish/cruel intent onto men (not solely in the justified generalizations ‘men suck/are dangerous’, but in specific interactions too) underpin a whole fucking lot of popular posts/discussions online, whether they’re political or casual/social, and it absolutely influences how people conceptualize and feel about transness. 

because ‘maleness is evil’ is still shitty politics even when you’ve slightly reframed it from the terf ‘trans women are evil because they’re Really Men and can never escape being horrific soulless brutes just as women can never escape being fragile morally superior flowers’ to the tumblr shethey “trans women who are out to me/unclockable are tolerable i guess because they’re women and women are good; anyone i personally presume to be a cis man, though, is still automatically evil, and saying trans men are Just As Bad is progressive of me, and it’s totally unrelated and apolitical that i think we should expand the concept of afab lesbianism so broadly that you can now be basically indistinguishable from trans men on literally every single level except for a declaration of ‘but i would never claim to be a man because i’m secure in the Innate Womanhood of the body i was born into, even as i medically alter that body because it causes me great gendered discomfort.’ none of this at all indicates that i feel there’s an immense moral/political gap between being an afab nb lesbian vs a straight trans man! it says nothing at all about my concept of ‘maleness’ and there’s no way this rhetoric bleeds into my perception of trans women and no way loudly talking about all this could keep trans people around me self-loathing and closeted, because i’m Literally Trans and Not A Terf!”

again, if that sounds like a hateful strawman, sorry but it’s not. i guess i’m supposed to be like ‘all of the many people ive seen saying these shitty things is an evil outlier who Doesn’t Count, and it’s not fair to the broad identity of afab shethey to not believe that every person who doesn’t outright say terfy enough things is a perfectly earnest valid accepting trans person who’s beyond criticism’ but like. this cannot be about broad validation. this can’t be about discarding all the bad apples as not really part of the group. we can’t be walking on eggshells to coddle what are essentially, in the end, Cis Feelings, because in the best cases this kind of rhetoric comes from naive people who are early and uncertain in their gender journey or whatever and are in the process of unraveling internalized transphobia, and in the easily observable worst cases these people are very literally redefining shit so that ‘actually all afab women are trans, spiritually, all afabs have dysphoria, we are all Equally oppressed by Males uh i mean cis men <3’ because, let’s be honest, they know that the moment they call themselves trans they get to say whatever they want about gender no matter how harmful it is to the rest of us. and those ideas spread like wildfire through the afab shethey “woman that’s not a woman” community that frankly greatly outnumbers other types of trans people online, because many of those people just do not have the experiences that lead you to really understand this shit and have to push back against concepts of gender that actively harm you as a trans person.

like that’s all i want to be able to say, is Things Are Different For Different Groups. and a willful ignorance of these differences leads to bad rhetoric controlling the overall discourse which gets people hurt. and even when concepts arise from it that seem positive and helpful and inclusive, in practice or in origin those ideas can still be upholding shit that gets other people hurt. like, i don’t doubt that many people are very straightforwardly happy and comfortable with an identity like ‘afab nb lesbian on testosterone’ and it would be ridiculous and hypocritical for me, ‘afab nb who wants to pass as a guy so he can comfortably wear skirts again,’ to act like that’s something that can’t or shouldn’t exist. it’s not about the identity itself, it’s about the politics that are popular within its community, and how the use of identities as moral labels with like, fucking pokemon type interactions for oppression effectiveness which directly informs the moral correctness of your every opinion and your very existence, is a shitty practice that gets people hurt and leads us to revoke empathy from each other.

like. sorry this is all over the place and long and probably still sounds evil because i haven’t thought through and disclaimered every single statement. but i’m like exhausted from living with this self-conscious guilt that maybe i’ve turned into a horrible evil truscum misogynist etc etc due to feeling upset by this seemingly inescapable approach to gender in lgbt/online circles that like, actively harms me, because when i vent with my friends all the stuff i’ve tried to explain here gets condensed down to referencing ‘she/theys’ as a category and that feels mean and generalizing and i genuinely dislike generalizations but the dread i feel about that category gets proven right way too often. it’s just like. this is not truscum this is not misgendering this is not misogyny. this is not about me decreeing that all transmascs have to be manly enough or dysphoric enough and all nbs have to be neatly agender and androgynous or something, i’m especially not saying that nb gender isn’t real lmao or even that it’s automatically wrong to partially identify with your asab; this is not me saying you can only medically transition for specific traditional reasons or that you don’t get a say on anything if you aren’t medically transitioning for whatever reason, now or ever. i just. want to be allowed to be frank about how... when there’s different experiences in a community we should like. acknowledge those differences and be willing to say that sometimes people don’t know what they’re talking about or that what they’re saying is harmful. without the primary concern being whether people will feel invalidated by being told so. because these are like, real issues, that are more important than politely including everyone, because that method is just getting vulnerable people drowned out constantly.

[autolenaphilia]

I don't have much of a stance on baeddels, because i'm not good enough at tumblr archaeology to have one. I have actually done research, because trans women are interesting to me. It seems to have been a small tumblr clique of trans women in the early 2010s? And they had some particular transmisogyny analysis? They imploded around 2014, after only getting started around 2013, as these culty cliques tend to do due to sexual abuse and personal conflicts.

But i can't get any firm grip on who they were and what they believed. It seems lost to time. There is not much evidence as blogs are deleted and are not archived well. Like this post tries to be a comprehensive explanation of who baeddels were, but if you check the sources it's mainly links to non-baeddels explaining what baeddels believed. There is like one archive link that doesn't fully work. The post is essentially third-hand hearsay. Of course I suspect the primary sources are mostly gone at this point. Because the baeddels mainly existed on social media, so much is erased or lost, they are mostly a memory at this point. It does feel like tumblr archaeology, this feels like trying to understand some early christian sect who we only know from accounts of people who opposed them.

Like the baeddels didn't publish books to my knowledge, or seem to have been in the habit of writing manifestos or explanations of what they believed. Like it's not with radfems where you can easily read Shulamith Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex or Ti-Grace Atkinson or Janice Raymond to find out what kind of bullshit they were on.

I'm not convinced the baeddels were like a distinct movement with a well-defined ideology, as that post linked above seems to argue. That they explicitly believed that gender is a choice and choosing to be a man is bad. There is just not enough evidence to do that. Like the primary sources the post have is screenshots of self-described baeddels making mean-spirited posts about transmascs. A lot of it is pretty bad, but doesn't create a picture of a well-defined ideology. I'm not convinced there was really a "baeddelism".

Like I haven't been convinced the baeddels were anything but a specific clique of tumblr trans lesbians who found out about the word baeddel and reclaimed it, believing it to be root of the english word "bad", had a transmisogyny analysis and had some bad, hateful rhetoric directed towards transmascs. Like none of that makes for a distinct ideology, no matter how incoherent.

Part of it that it seems that the baeddels were a relatively small group, that probably had an outsized impact on tumblr discourse. Like I've heard assessments that are like the core baeddel group was like 8-10 people.

The closest thing I found to a baeddel manifesto is this medium post which was published years after the baeddel clique seems to have imploded, and I don't know the connection the person who wrote it had to the original baeddels. I don't know if they thought this is a good summary of their thinking or not. Most of the text is defensive and presents what is basic transfeminist analysis as baeddel theory, which I don't think they can claim? It's not a reliable guide, especially being from 2017.

If you argue that baeddelism is something like "Transmisogyny exists, it's a real systematic oppression that transfems face, and yes, even TME trans people can perpetrate it", I guess I'm a baeddel? This strikes me as basic transfeminist theory, a basic transmisogyny theory as Julia Serano put it. If this is baeddelism, most transfeminists are baeddels.

And here I think the problem lies with "baeddel" as it's used today. They were probably never a well-defined ideological group, but tied together more by personal relationships (which is why they imploded when those relationships turned abusive) and some shared rhetoric. And a lot of what they actually believed is lost to time, due to them only being online and on tumblr specifically.

So "baeddel" has become such a loose word that it can be removed from the context of the tumblr baeddel clique and applied as an insult to practically anyone. The way I seen it used it often means "transfem who writes mean things about transmascs". But more worrying is that basic transfeminist analysis/transmisogyny theory or criticism of transmisogyny perpetrated by tme trans people are labeled as "baeddel".

It seems similar to how people don't have a good handle on who radfems/terfs actually are and what they are, so they label basic feminist analysis as "terfy" or define terf as "self-proclaimed feminist who hates men". I have written extensively about radfems here.

The post about baeddels I linked above actually does this kind of thing to the baeddels. It calls them "transinclusive radical feminists" and describe their ideology as radfem. Which I strongly doubt is true. That's because radfem ideology defines womanhood through biological essentialism and believes cis women's biology is why misogyny and patriarchy exists. It's hard to have a strong transmisogyny analysis with that kind of theoretical grounding. Trans women are neither women or targets of misogyny when you define womanhood that way.

This is why "trans-inclusive" radfems are so often not really trans-inclusive. You can't really take the biological essentialism and transmisogyny out of radfemism, and have it still be radfemism. So accusing the baeddels of doing that doesn't really hold water. Baeddels seem to have had a lot of man-hating rhetoric and separatist ideology, but that is not what defines radfem ideology.

And I do mean it seems to be applied to trans women doing basic transfeminist analysis or using transmisogyny theory. Turns out I was wrong about baeddels not publishing books, because apparently Julia Serano was basically a proto-baeddel and Whipping Girl is the tap-root of baeddelism.

Like look at these two posts.

Calling Serano a radfem is hilarious. Like she is not even remotely that. But I'm actually worried about how transandrophobia/misandry people have this view that Serano and Whipping Girl are this fountainhead of evil "transandrophobia", based mostly on some bad quotes. Because if you cancel Serano and Whipping Girl, it's a way of canceling transmisogyny theory, because Whipping Girl basically created the concept. I'm not saying that criticism and disagreement of Serano and her ideas are bad, but there is this attempt at canceling her. Due to transmisogyny, any mistakes a trans woman make are magnified and used as part as an attempt to destroy her career and isolate her from community. And Serano being such a major transfeminist that it would be a major loss.

And trying to describe her as baeddel-ascent is especially telling. The word is then entirely disconnected from the tumblr clique who claimed the word and whose crimes (which i do not necessarily deny) gave the word its modern power as an insult.

Two more screenshots:

The term is so vaguely defined that this kind of paranoia worries me. Like if you believe that there is this evil cabal of "transmisandrist" trans women still around, and not calling yourself a baeddel is no defense, I don't see this ending happily due to transmisogyny. The transmisogynistic current of call-out culture will practically get people hurt by this. Especially if it seems that critcizing transmisogyny, especially from transmascs seem to be enough to be labeled a baeddel.

The original baeddel clique might have done some horrible crimes. But I doubt they represented some distinct ideology that we need to root out of trans spaces, especially as no one can define and primary sources on what the baeddels believed is scarce.

And that's because of how online they were. I do not want to minimize any abusive content they might have sent, but it strikes me how insignificant the baeddels were. LIke they seem to have existed largely online and wielded their influence mainly on tumblr. They never seemed to have wielded any kind of institutional power. And that's not surprising, if you are a trans lesbian you don't have much power.

The actions of self-described baeddels might have been a problem, but unlike say radfems they seem to have been a very minor problem Like Janice Raymond was working with the Reagan adminstration to deny trans people healthcare, and in my country radfem groups today provide the Swedish government a feminist alibi for not taking action to improve trans rights. Radfems have had a very demonstrable effect on institutional transphobia.

You can't say that about the baeddels. And they probably were nasty to transmascs, but i suspect their greatest victim was the poor trans woman who was one of them, but who was raped by a leading member.

It's kinda insane how they, a small internet sect, have become this boogeywoman to wield against trans woman talking about transmisogyny, including major figures like Julia Serano.

[valor-selfships]

the like. weirdest thing to me about the argument of like “trans people who threaten terfs are just as bad as terfs!” is like...

nah cause terfs threaten trans ppl’s lives literally just for being trans and no other reason needed (all trans ppl btw, they’re most violent publicly towards trans women and other transfem people but don’t be fooled they hate us trans men/transmascs/non-binary folk too). that is the basis of their movement, the entire movement is about hating trans folk and wanting us to not exists period point blank. 

and we can’t just stop being trans. even if we go into the closet or like, detransition (people who detransition btw are valid until the moment they try throwing blame on the trans community, i’m not bout to say ppl who detransition are evil on principle), that’s... not something we can just do right away immediately, it’s a whole process and it takes more than just saying a couple words and/or cutting off some toxic people in our lives. which can be hard but it’s nothing compared to hiding who you are all the time lmao. either way, assuming you do not independently choose to detransition, even if you say “oh i’m not trans now” you still are you’re just in the closet. that’d be like if i said “welp i’m no longer black!” i still would be black lmao just. denying that part of my identity.

meanwhile

terfs can literally stop being terfs at any time. any moment. they can just Stop Doing That. there’s a billion arguments and resources with cited sources they can go read and look at if they want to. they can literally talk to a varied group of trans people at any time, on tumblr, on twitter, fuckin wherever on the internet if they can’t irl. they can change their ideology and stop spewing hatred at ANY. FUCKING. MOMENT OF THE DAY, ANY DAY, ALL 365 DAYS OF THE YEAR. they simply choose not to. it’s not a part of who they are as people, as much as they want it to be (tbh kinda weird if u consider hating an entire group of millions of people for 0 reason a huge part of ur identity but i digress). it’s not even widely socially unacceptable to hate trans people openly or mock them or threaten them! terfs are just cowards who wanna push this image of “wah scary evil violent trans people!” so other transphobic or transphobe-inclined cis people with no knowledge of trans people will be inclined to believe them.

and if u don’t see the difference here, or why it’s acceptable for trans folk to post “yeah terfs eat shit” in “terf safe” tags or whatever, then i cannot help you any further lmao

[emmavoid]

because i can't stop thinking about it, i've been working out more why the whole transfem debate has me distressed, and i think there's a few sources. (also, for the record, all the questions are 100% genuine!)

first, confusion. My earliest interactions with the trans community at large were back in the early 2000s- the only terms i ever heard used back then were MtF and FtM, with very rare mention of nonbinary and bigender; when i first came across transfem and transmasc as terms, my reaction was just… neat, more umbrella terms for people to use if they feel it fits them! and since they're umbrella terms, why would one group being under them hurt another group under them? even when i started transitioning years later, it was fairly rare to hear the term transfem anywhere. is it because i don't have the same connection to the term as everyone else that i don't feel the same way?

second, connection. my partner's nonbinary and struggles to even feel like they're allowed to call themself trans. they're not interested in being seen as transfem, but i can't help but imagine a world where they were- where they're nonbinary, but femme enough to want shelter under the transfem label, and how much this whole thing would make them hate themself for existing as who they are. I don't want anybody to hate themself for having an uncommon identity. sex and gender are extremely variable too- should an amab person who is nonbinary but identifies closer with masculinity be forced to call themself transfem even if they're not comfortable with it? if an afab nonbinary person is nonbinary but definitely wants to be more feminine than their body started out, should they be made to call themself transmasc if they're not comfortable with it?

third, semantics. i've never seen transfem as meaning "trans but in a fem direction," because i don't see femininity and masculinity as being mutually exclusive- not a simple spectrum with a neutral area in the middle, but a graph charted on x and y axes, where you can be strongly feminine leaning, strongly masculine leaning, or both, or neither, or anywhere in between. (hell, there could very well be a z axis on there too- shit's complicated.) but even if it is definitively "trans in a fem direction," why would that mean that someone afab identifying with it is treating trans women as less than women? does amab nonbinary folks existing under the transfem flag mean that trans women aren't women? does trans women existing under the transfem flag mean that transfem nonbinary folks are women?

I personally feel that anyone should be allowed to use whatever label they need, but am I hurting others by doing so? should i feel hurt and threatened by this? is there something wrong with me that i'm not? if this is a gate that needs keeping, what does it say about me that i don't want to keep it?

i love the queer community precisely because there's infinite variety, because there's neopronouns and wide umbrellas and love and care and empathy, because people care about each other and defend each other even if they don't totally understand each other.

It hurts to see people i care about hurting, and hurting each other, over this.

I should probably just, take a break from tumblr.

re: the big kerfuffle about the term transfem

Not posting this directly in response to anyone discussing it because, one, I don't feel like bothering someone who's already upset with an opinion that contradicts their feelings is productive, and two, it's probably best for this to stay in my dark little corner of the internet where nobody pays any attention since I don't want people from any side of the debate to harass me (much less fuckin' terfs).

So! Yeah, transfem as a term has been used as a sort of replacement for MtF because it focuses less on "who we used to be" and because it's more inclusive of nonbinary folks, and the same is true of transmasc.

Is it perfect terminology? Of course not, there's no such thing. Like everything else humans use (philosophy, politics, etc), language is a tool. An individual tool can be useful for multiple things, and can be used by different people in different ways. And of course, like other tools, language changes and evolves over time, and people who didn't use a particular term before may wind up picking it up.

A cursory look at the conflict may make you think the two sides are "transfem means anyone trans and fem" vs "transfem exclusively refers to people transitioning in a fem direction (this is, away from male to something else)."

But really, I think it might be more like this-

"Transfem is a word, and people are more important than words. If someone wants to use a word in a way different from me, who am I to police them?"

vs

"Transfem is an identity- someone who doesn't properly fit that identity using it dilutes the term, which effectively takes it away from those of us who *do* fit the identity."

My opinion? The latter is an understandable concern, but a word being used in different ways by different people doesn't actually take it away from the people who were using it first.

Hell, I've seen folks say "why would you even *want* to be called transfem given how horribly transfems are treated?" And... I think there's something to that, if you think of it from another angle-

"Why would you want to be a woman given how horribly women are treated?"

Anyone AFAB who identifies with the term transfem isn't gonna be doing it for clout, or because it's fun- or if they are, they'll quickly realize it's not gonna get them that and stop.

But if the term transfem is honestly helpful for them, and feels right for who they are, enough so that they're willing to suffer through the flak we transfem folks get alongside us? Maybe we should welcome them.