#thinking specifically about the Agojie who reportedly would say they had become men thru becoming warriors

[genderkoolaid]

on this note: how much transmasculine history is hidden within stories of "warrior women" that no one bothers to consider from a transmasculine perspective

whenever i look into cultural/historical third genders my first question is always "okay but where are the people who were assigned female" and my second is "if they aren't being named, why is that?"

[genderkoolaid]

in honor of this terf bullshit:

i'm adding my tags from this rb:

#thinking specifically about the Agojie who reportedly would say they had become men thru becoming warriors#& to be clear I'm not saying they are 1:1 w western transmascs#but it's telling to me that transmasculinity never comes up At All#people hear ''warrior women'' and only ever talk about cis women#idk why can't we entertain the idea that women who actively considered themselves to have become men#or been men in some way#mayve viewed their gender in a more complex way than just women?#you'll sometimes hear people bring up lesbians but never trans men. hmmm#it's almost like people view transmasculinity as a corrupting force which is existentially opposed to cis womanhood#it's just sooo fucking annoying seeing people never think at all abt the idea that if there is a role#where people assigned female can culturally masculinize themselves#maybe just maybe some of those women would not have identified with entirely ''cis'' womanhood?#like there had to be some people out there for whom the idea of becoming a man thru war was the point#I just wish people didn't act like you can either have Feminist Women in History or trans men but the two can't exist at once#like if any historical badass women were actually transmasc it's a Threat To Feminism#bc trans mens existence is only relevant in how cis women are affected by us

I am not saying all these people were trans men. I'm using "transmasculine" as a descriptor to group in things with a shared element (people assigned female socially/spiritually/physically masculinizing themselves in a way that changes their identity/place in culture) to relate it to trans activism.

my point is that cis is just as much a construct as trans is and we have a tendency to assume that every culture shares a cis-binary framework. gender is a construct and not every culture constructs it the same. when we see people assigned female in history, who culturally masculinize themselves, who do so to the extent they say they have become men, why do we reflexively assume that experiences is comparable to the way a cis woman in the US military or athlete understands her gender?

Oftentimes the most common ways we learn about "warrior women" is through cissexist and white-western storytelling. Nuanced cultural feelings about one's place in one's unique gender system are rarely not carried over. You know transmasculinity isn't gonna get brought up as even a consideration in most spaces. And also, I used the term "transmasculine" because women can be transmasculine. And I think with some "warrior women", even if they saw themselves as women on any level, it makes sense to connect that womanhood with transness. And also some of them likely would not identify themselves as "women", cis or not, in our binary language if they could.

And to be clear we do need so much nuance here wrt applying our labels, even categorically. Hapshetsut is a good example- yes, they portrayed themself as a man in art. but we also need to understand how ancient egyptians understood art as not a literal representation of the world around us and the ways that, within that society, a queen depicting herself as a man would not be understood in the same way we understand social transitioning of a trans man. i talked about the agojie not because they were just "women warriors" but because i literally read a quote where they explained their identity as "becoming men" and like. its deeply ethnocentric, imo, to assume that "becoming a man" has to mean the kind of physical transition we imagine. and especially since transmasculinity is reflexively erased in everything and even people who went to extreme lengths to be seen as a man and never a woman and out loud with their mouths said they identified as men are written as "women seeking safety/privilege." we should question why our understanding of gender & its connection to a certain bodytype is the default

whenever i look into cultural/historical third genders my first question is always "okay but where are the people who were assigned female" and my second is "if they aren't being named, why is that?"