#transfeminist materialism

[transfeminism-s]

Materialist transfeminism

an afab transfem inclusive type of transfeminism ?

Materialist transfeminism is a feminist current of thought that recognizes the reality of social mobility between gender groups (man to woman and vice versa, cis woman to trans woman and vice versa..). It considers gender transition as a gender transfuge which can be either a "promotion'' or a "downgrading".

It rejects the idea that trans women constitute a biological group, defined by maleness at birth, and considers them a social group constructed by transmisogyny. It this believes that trans women's oppression is not rooted in biology, but is primarily social. Materialist transfeminists therefore opposes any argument that seeks to explain the material condition of trans women by a biological characteristic of this group. They examine the social relation between trans women and non trans women as a group antagonism. They emphasize transmisogyny, which organizes the oppression of trans women by transmisogyny exempt people (TME). Because the distinction between gendered categories is recognized as the result of oppression, eradicating oppression would entail eliminating these categories.

Materialist transfeminists oppose bioessentialist transfeminists, who regard trans women as a biological group, defined by maleness at birth and believe that transfeminism's goal is to preserve and revalue transfemininity.

[taliabhattwrites]

I don't think there is a significant or notable number of people who believe transmascs are not oppressed.

I feel slightly insane just having to type this out, but this is rhetoric you inevitably come across if you discuss transfeminism on Tumblr.

The mainstream, cissexist understanding of transmasculine people is the Irreversible Damage narrative (one that's old enough to show up in Transsexual Empire as well) of transmascs as "misguided little girls", "tricked" into "mutilating themselves". It is a deliberately emasculating and transphobic narrative that very explicitly centers on oppression, even if the fevered imaginings misattribute the cause. As anyone who's dealt with the gatekeeping medical establishment knows, they are far from giving away HRT or even consults with both hands, and most transfems I know have a hard enough time convincing people to take DIY T advice, leave alone "tricking" anyone into top surgery.

Arguably, the misogyny that transmasculine folks experience is the defining narrative surrounding their existence, as transmasculinity is frequently and erroneously attributed to "tomboyish women" who resent their position in the patriarchy so much they seek to transition out of it. This rhetoric is an invisiblization of transmasculinity, constructed deliberately to preserve gendered verticality, for if it were possible to "gain status" under the sexed regime, its entire basis, its ideological naturalization, would fall apart.

Honestly, the actual discussions I see are centered around whether "transmisogyny" is a term that should apply to transmascs and transfems alike. While I understand the impetus for that discussion, I feel like the assertion that transmisogyny is a specific oppression that transfems experience for our perceived abandonment of the "male sex" is often conflated with the incorrect idea that we believe transmasculine people are not oppressed at all. This is not true, and we understand, rather acutely, that our society is entirely organized around reproductive exploitation. That is, in fact, the source of transfeminine disposability!

I know I'm someone who "just got here" and there is a history here that I'm not a part of, but so much of that history is speckled with hearsay and fabrication that I can't even attempt to make sense of it. All I know is that I, in 2024, have been called a revived medieval slur for effeminate men by people who attribute certain beliefs to me based on my being a trans woman who is also a feminist, and I simply do not hold those views, nor do I know anyone who sincerely does.

If you're going to attempt to discredit a transfeminist, or transfeminism in general, then please at least do us the courtesy of responding to things we actually say and have actually argued instead of ascribing to us phantom ideologies in a frankly conspiratorial fashion. I also implore people to pay attention to how transphobic rhetoric operates out in the wider world, how actual reactionaries talk about and think of trans people, instead of fixating so hard on internecine social media clique drama that one enters an alternate reality--a phantasm, as Judith Butler would put it.

Speaking of which--do y'all have any idea how overrepresented transmascs are in trans studies and queer theory? Can we like, stop and reckon with reality-as-it-is, instead of hallucinating a transfeminine hegemony where it doesn't exist? I'm aware a lot of their output isn't particularly explicative on the material realities of transmasculine oppression despite their prominence in the academy, but that is ... not the fault of trans women, who face extremely harsh epistemic injustice even in trans studies.

The actual issue is how invisiblized transmasculine oppression is and how the epistemicide that transmasculine people face manifests as a refusal to differentiate between the misogyny all women face, reproductive exploitation in particular, and the contours of violence, erasure, and oppression directed at specifically transmasculine people.

You will notice that is a society-wide problem, motivated by a desire to erase the possibilities of transmasculinity, to the point of not even being willing to name it. You will notice that I am quite familiar with how this works, and how it's completely compatible with a materialist transfeminist framework that analyzes how our oppression is--while distinct--interlinked and stems from the same root.

I sincerely hope that whoever needs to see this post sees it, and that something productive--more productive dialogue, at least--can arise from it.

[gremlingirlsmell]

hey just so y'all know, rhetoric like this:

is anti-transfeminist dogwhistling.

the "radfems" they're talking about are transfems trying to define and use language about our own opression like "transmisogyny" and who is targeted by it.

"gender essentialism" is used to mean different things. for one it's meant to denounce tme/tma language, saying that everyone is targeted by transmisogyny the same, and depraving us of standpoint epistemology. a second meaning i often see is: it's "gender essentialism" to say "we live in a patriarchy that benefits men over women"

this tactic is used mainly to paint transfeminists as dangerous and transmasc-hating, for applying intersectionality and materialism to feminist theory. it's to shun us by calling us terfs (a hate group primarily centered against transfems) which will immediately mark us as unsafe for other transfems and trans people in general. this is done instead of calling us baeddels, because calling us medieval slurs has fallen out of fashion and has become too obviously transmisogynistic

[baeddling]

When they compare transfeminists to terfs, what they're really saying is that we share basic feminist beliefs like "women are oppressed by men as gendered classes" and "patriarchy is a system of oppression that goes beyond the interpersonal" like thats really it. All these people whinging abt it have just convinced themselves that any feminist analysis thats based in current material conditions and class is "terf shit"

[badlywritingmagazine]

Wanna help a by-and-for transfem journal?

Wanna get involved?

Thank you everyone for your interest so far! If you have a sec, I’ve written a quick post about a few ways you can help. 

Lili Elbe, painted by Szív királynő, serving “journal reader” realness Do you have trans female mates?

Let your girl friends know. Share it amongst your networks. 

Can you read? 

Wonderful. Subscribe to this substack to be notified when an issue is released. 

Can you think?

If you’re a trans woman and you have feelings about something, send it to us. If you’re developing an idea, come chat with us over email (or arrange a phone call) and let’s figure it out together. 

Do you sell books and zines? 

Wonderful. Email me. Stock it. Perfect. I can also send you a poster version of our invitation to submit to print out. 

Have you written?

If you’re a trans woman who writes about things relevant to our lives, send it to me. If it is online and you worry that it won’t stay up forever, it’s affecting your job and life prospects, or that it is a reflection of its time and not 100% wise anymore, send it to me and get it archived. Archiving is part of the goal here. We’re not uncurated, but that doesn’t mean you should shrug and let the internet, time, transmisogyny and linkrot eat your hard work. 

If you’re a trans woman with jobs and obligations and you don’t like having your essay ‘Why dickgirls should commit more assassinations’ or ‘transgender materialism: towards a de/coterminous understanding of post tipping point transmisogyny’ or whatever attached to your name then send it to me and get it re/published under a pseudonym.

If we get a large number of submissions like this we will publish it as a separate supplement, but else it will come as a section within WBM.

Do you know grants?

Rates for unfunded zines and pamphlets suck. We want to pay the women well. Let us know if you know of funds or grants you think we fall under. We’ll be sending off applications. 

Can you help us host a launch party in a major city?

We envision low-cost evening events with discussion, trans women, and piles and piles of essays to talk about. (Can we crash on your couch?) We’re based in the UK, but are happy to come anywhere Ryanair goes where there’s a willing audience. 

Got an idea I don’t have? 

Ultimately, I want to keep this dirt simple. Essays come in, paper goes out. No columns, shite graphics. Couple core editors. Schedules loose enough to spend half the year depressed and still get it out. Stolen printer paper. Something that won’t collapse after two years. Posterity. 

That said, if you have an idea (and maybe if you want to do it), email us. Think you know enough people to get this translated and shipped somewhere else? Can you translate and know of a non-English language transfeminist text that’s not got much attention in the anglosphere? Maybe we can submit an application for a grant and distribute your translation? Understand distribution better than me? Do you have the wherewithal to manage a personals board? Something else? Anything except an agony aunt section. I’ve called dibs on that one. 

Do you have agonies? Issues? Want bad advice?

Write to the agony aunt. writingbadlymag snail symbol gmail dot com.

Do you have something to say which won't make a whole essay but is still worth saying?

Write a letter to the editor. Same email.

Addendum: Can you help us set up a website?

Websites we think are beautiful are dirt simple. Low-tech Magazine has a beautiful low-energy website. Filmmaker Margot McEwan has a lovely fitting website. Any thoughts or suggestions should be sent to the same email.

(update: we're all set now! Check out badly.press!)

See a good stack cutter?

If you see a cheap paper stack cutter for cheap, let me know. :)

Thanks all!

Forthcoming posts: information for writers, extracts from the issue.

[trans-androgyne]

i think what trips people up is that the opression that trans men face is a gendered oppression. it is an oppression based on their gender. and feminism has defined gendered oppression as something that only women face. if you are not transphobic, then it's not too hard to fold trans women (who are women) in that definition of feminism. but trans men really throw a wrench in that. and now because feminism says that only women face gendered oppression, trans men not being women means that they cannot be oppressed on the basis of gender. it's a belief born from extrapolating theory instead of listening to trans men's experiences

I’ve even done a presentation on this concept. I wholeheartedly agree; we need to be shaping transfeminist theory based on the material reality of trans people’s lives rather than what Sounds Right. People really like the sound bite that “men are oppressors” and they know “trans men are men” and therefore conclude “trans men are oppressors.” The patriarchy doesn’t care about the transitive property, this isn’t math. Gender is complex—so is gendered oppression. It’s sad to me that I have to tell that to the trans community.

[qweerhet]

we really, desperately need language to discuss the specific material experiences, and ensuing marginalization, that come from your body visibly differentiating from the sex binary, and are not described by intersex language.

currently, discussions of exorsexism like to point out that "nonbinary" is not a label that meaningfully conveys any information about material experiences, that there is no core "nonbinary transition." this is a line of reasoning that i will accept at its bare bones; it's frequently deployed in the most bad faith contexts i have ever had the misfortune to see, but on its face, the bare facts are true. there are, in fact, plenty of nonbinary people whose medical experiences are indistinguishable from binary trans people's, and whose medical experiences are indistinguishable from cis perisex people's. this is true at higher rates than it is for any other trans demographic, given what a broad coalition "nonbinary" covers. i accept the conclusion that "one's physical traits are not connected to being nonbinary whatsoever, any large-scale patterns are mild correlation at best."

regardless of that, however, there is a specific marginalization that does affect nonbinary trans people at higher rates than cis perisex people or binary trans people when it does occur, and that is the marginalization of bodies that are visibly in violation of the sex binary. this marginalization overlaps quite a lot with intersexism--in fact, an unspoken driving factor in binary transitions is frequently not only to "pass as cis," but specifically to "pass as perisex." however, being intersex is a particular life experience & should not be conflated with otherwise violating the sex binary--the marginalization described here is in solidarity with intersex experiences and overlaps heavily with how intersexism manifests materially, but is not described by that language itself.

to define "violating the sex binary": your body does not align with perisex, cisgender, binary constructs of male and female bodies. someone with breasts and a beard falls under this. someone with testes and a uterus falls under this. someone with breasts, a dropped voice, and testosterone-dominant fat and body hair distribution falls under this. someone with a flat chest, a dropped voice, and estrogen-dominant fat and body hair distribution falls under this. there are many thousands of ways to violate the sex binary.

additionally, visibly violating the sex binary as a "transitional" stage in one's binary transition does involve undergoing this marginalization. this marginalization affects cisgender people whose bodies do not align with the sex binary. it also affects people who actively attempt to hide their sex variations, to varying degrees. binary trans people also experience this marginalization, and are welcome to discuss it and feel out language for it, with the understanding that the experience of someone moving intentionally away from experiencing it is fundamentally not the same as the experience of someone who will always experience it and does not have the options to "hide" or "pass," or the experience of someone who actively wants that body. care should be taken to remember that a large number of people who experience this marginalization are actively pursuing the bodies that are subject to it, not as transitional states, but as fully realized bodies in and of themselves.

this is not a post where i am coining language--that is really not my area of expertise. this is a post where i'm hoping to open up discussion, because the transfeminist sphere on this website has a pretty broad effect on trans language and discourse overall, and the things spoken about and coined here often ripple out into the wider world.

[tpwrtrmnky]

whats your opinion on the terms TMA and TME?

I've clearly been too reluctant about clearly stating my views on transfeminist topics on this website. I'd say that's a failure on my part, so let's talk about these terms, which I think are Good, Actually.

They're extremely useful for their intended purpose, and I think most criticisms of them are ignoring their purpose as a tool for analysing transmisogyny. They're not identity labels, they're descriptive terms to explain where people are located on an axis of oppression. They do not claim to describe every form of oppression an individual may be subject to, but the specific form of oppression that is transmisogyny. It's an important form of oppression to examine because it has material consequences for, you know, transmisogyny affected people.

It's at best annoying to feel a need to walk on eggshells about the terms. Nuances and edge cases exist in every social dynamic, and every theoretical work needs to be constructed from a starting point that boils it down to a manageable level of detail first. TMA/TME terminology gets extreme amounts of backlash for a perceived lack of nuance which you can easily ascribe to essentially any useful system of categories, and it's clear that the main reason for this is the subject matter.

It's very clear that anyone on this website who dares to talk about transmisogyny is subject to backlash, so I don't blame the women who choose to go for the hardline stance on it. Being nice about transmisogyny generally seems to illicit the same backlash as any work on transmisogyny, i.e. more transmisogyny.

[milfstalin]

eSims for Gaza Guide - How to buy and donate them

Operation Olive Branch - Spreadsheet of ongoing fundraisers for evacuation and supplies for Palestinians

@\fairuzfan's website for a refugee camp in Gaza (GoFundMe donations only)

Masterlist of fundraisers verified by Palestinian bloggers @\el-shab-hussein and @\nabulsi

Website which selects a random Gaza fundraiser to donate to

if you can't afford to donate, please do share on social media and elsewhere

personal notes

party line:

marxist-leninist with transgender characteristics.

transandrophobia / transmisandry is not a material axis of oppression; it implies the existence of a system of misandry in general which is objectively incorrect. the phenomena described by transandrophobia is sufficiently described by the term transphobia.

every marxist ought to be a transfeminist.

china is socialist & the market can be subjugated under a dictatorship of the proletariat to serve the needs of a socialist state.

stalin was plural transfem and autistic. catgirl stalin and her headmate wolfgirl koba

blog notes:

a lot of my posts are queued, but i dont tag them as such.

#ch = countryhumans, i don't like them and i think they're bad which is why i like to post them

#stag art = art tag

#stag writing = writing tag

#apf = anthropoliticalfiction, my own countryhetalias thing

#ref, #resources = exactly what it says

#c.ai = posts related to character.ai

#tsrpfau = transfem stalin rpf au

#rpf art = others' rpf art usually of #yaoisheviks

#yaoisheviks = yaoi bolsheviks but it's really my communist rpf tag

art blog / fandom blog is @worldrevoked

i dont tag nsfw here, but @claypervert is dedicated to nsfw

[txttletale]

not the same anon but ive often seen transfems complain that transmascs will “refuse to let go of femininity” and “misgender ourselves” when we talk about how being treated as girls/women during our entire lives affects us materially and also psychologically. ive never understood that. where do you stand on that? Important clarifications: 1) i dont believe trans women, closeted or otherwise, pre or post transition, have male privilege. i dont believe the upbringing “discourse” is a zero-sum game (where if being raised female means tm experience misogyny, being raised male means tw have male privilege). 2) i dont believe in transandrophobia in any shape or form, I believe trans men suffer bc of misogyny and transphobia, and trans women bc of the same + transmisogyny. 3) im not trying to gotcha you or pick a fight i mean this entirely neutrally. im ready to accept that im wrong i simply want to understand why.

yea i mean, like -- obviously this is a subject that's really easy to bad-faith on either side but i think you're approaching in good faith so i'm going to answer in turn: i don't think any (serious) transfeminists begrudge that trans men have a lifetime experience of suffering directly from misogyny or that they discuss these things. i think there are obvious common experiences and solidarity to be found in these common experiences!

the times where i often see the argument that transmascs are 'misgendering themselves' is when they weaponize transmisogyny by self-infantilizing to paint an interaction they had or disagreement with a transfem as the transfem being 'predatory', 'threatening', etc -- transmisogynist trans men will very often do this, implicitly misgendering themselves by invoking the transmisogynistic spectre of the Big Scary Autogynophile sexually threatening the Poor Innocent Wombyn.

secondly, transmisogynistic transmascs will absolutely weaponize their own misogynistic trauma in disagreements with trans women -- it's not uncommon on this website for trans women trying to discuss transmisogyny to be met with paragraphs of transmisogynistic transmascs graphically describing their own experiences with sexual assault and violence, which again plays into the exact same stereotypes to the advantage of the transmasc in the situation.

similarly, transmisogynistic transmascs will also use language that groups them with cis women in an implicitly self-misgendering way for the sake of being transmisogynistic and excluding trans women. the most infamous version of this is the phrase 'women and AFABs' which gets tossed around quite often in so-called 'queer spaces', but there are also accusations of a universal 'male socialization' (used to paint trans women as aggressive, entitled, dangerous, etc, while trans men are harmless, demure, talked over by loud scary trans women, etc).

so tldr: i don't think any serious transfeminist begrudges trans men for talking about how misogyny has shaped their lives. when accusations of 'self-misgendering' come in is when (certain) trans men align themselves politically with transphobic cis women over trans women and use their own history with misogyny as a cudgel against trans women, or purposefully twist self-misgendering transmisogynistic narratives against trans women for their own personal advantage.

[transfeminism-s]

Materialist transfeminism, if properly applied, recognizes that transitioning from cis woman to trans woman is materially possible.

[taliabhattwrites]

Understanding Transmisogyny

A lot of people online have a very basic understanding of 'transmisogyny', often conceptualizing it in additive terms ("misogyny+transphobia") or considering it "misogyny experienced by a trans person".

There isn't enough consideration given to the material circumstances of transfems, to grappling with the oppression that arises specifically from refusing to be subsumed into the naturalized construction of the "male sex" and manhood.

Transmisogyny cannot be comprehended by adding together disparate experiences to try and approximate what you think a trans woman might experience. It requires a holistic understanding of how misogyny operates, of the function of patriarchy, and the mechanisms in place that enforce binary sex, and punish us in a specific manner for contravening the imperative to be men.

I broke it down into a three-part essay series, though more are on the way as I approach the topics of 'penetrability' and 'Third-Sexing'. I hope people take the time to peruse them and try to think about transmisogyny from a more transfeminist perspective.

[gremlingirlsmell]

and yea this is kinda what the climate on bisky inside of transfeminist circles is like right now. you know, that, and literally everyone throwing around the names of "proven abusers" (aka transfems who have been HAL'd) like theyre curse words or the main character of the day of the week of the month of the year, even though they've been already succesfully shunned from the entire platform months ago

if you insist "nontransitioning" transfems have privilege over transitioning transfems, you might not definitionally be a transmedicalist, but you're an asshole who is dangerously close to saying some transfems are tme

[velvetvexations]

Sorry but that "anti-essentialist transfeminism" is still essentialist. "Materialist transfeminism is a feminist current of thought that recognizes the reality of social mobility between gender categories such as man to woman, cis woman to trans woman etc. It considers gender transition as a gender transfuge which can be either a "promotion'' or a "downgrading"." I'm sorry to break it to the author, but going from being a cis woman to a trans man is not a "promotion". We have a worse wage gap than cis women, worse unemployment, higher rates of being denied service by institutions like banks and driver licensing services, and even higher rates of sexual assault. We also do not oppress trans women simply by being in a different social class to them, because we have zero access to institutions of power such as high economic positions (corporate boards/CEOs), law positions such as being judges, or political positions. In surveys we often experience similar rates of oppression to trans women and I think it's can't easily be declared that we have it strictly worse or strictly better. Even when we are slightly better off than trans women, if you tell me that only having a 70% wage gap instead of a 60% one makes us systemic oppressors, I will laugh in your [the author's] face, especially since we have a worse wage gap than cis women and "materialist transfeminists" don't take nearly the number of swings at cis women as they do at other trans people. Trans men can absolutely enact interpersonal and lateral aggression especially within trans communities, but rolling us in with cis people, especially cis men, is powerjacking us. I'm just incredibly fucking tired of so-called materialists not even bothering to look at the material conditions of trans men before making "materialist" claims about structures of trans oppression. That take isn't "materialist" and it isn't even "anti-essentialist", it's just tautological: trans women are trans women, and anyone who isn't a trans woman oppresses trans women because they aren't a trans woman. It sucks.

Mm, I hadn't noticed that. You're right, the idea that being a trans man is an escape from misogyny is completely antithetical to how I view the situation, as I've stated many times before.

I'm really sorry for co-signing that, Velvet Nation! My eyes can sometimes glaze over long texts and not absorb everything it's saying.

[digitalcockroach]

to be honest late last year I realized that for a while I'd been absorbing some misogynistic and in some cases specifically transmisogynistic beliefs and attitudes from the Internet Culture at large and I really didn't like that. I don't need to get into the personal feelings and relationships that played a role in it but suffice to say I needed to break out of a self-defeating echo chamber. so I started reading feminist, queer feminist, transfeminist poetry and essays and books and I followed more trans women online who spoke up about transmisogyny and uplifted other transfems and pretty quickly all the angry raging feminism of my teenage years came rushing back to me.

so to see the current trend of transmascs online doubling down on erasing and belittling transfem voices, sexually harassing and threatening women who disagree with them, it's like I can hear them thinking "well, I'm a guy, I can't treat normal cis women like shit or I'd be a misogynist, but it's fine to do to transfems because we're the same yknow they're-" they're fucking what follow through with that thought. say it.

like did we all decide to forget that privilege doesnt mean special treatment from the world it means advantage over certain others and not having the same violence and victimization and oppressive forces leveraged against you as they do, and it's benefiting even passively from the systems that keep those others disenfranchised - transmascs absolutely hold privilege over transfems and benefit from transmisogyny whether we like it or not, regardless that we may share other axies of oppression like transphobia, or possibly race, ability, class.

why the fuck are all of yall so much more willing to wallow in your own perceived misery and drag trans women down with you rather than use our fucking privilege to uplift their voices, promote their stories and art, materially support the transfems in our communities, and educate ourselves on the diversity of queer experience?

[thatdiabolicalfeminist]

feminist theories, esp Black feminist & transfeminist & anticapitalist feminist theories, have a lot of complexity and depth and really dig in to complex systems of oppression and like there's so much there!! so many critiques, so much back and forth and refining and updating theory to better fit evolving understandings and circumstances

so it's kinda wild to me that people think they're gonna revolutionize gender theory when it's painfully clear that they have NO idea what's already there.

like there are people trying to make whole new frameworks to understand systems of gendered oppression but without any detailed understanding of the current frameworks or, crucially, in what ways they are useful and what material realities they accurately describe.

in order to be useful a new framework needs to both be a) internally logically consistent AND b) describe or explain or interrogate etc material realities that exist in the real world

and c) do this in a way or to a degree that existing or past frameworks don't already do as well or better

and some people are coming up with stuff that sounds good in a vacuum!!!

but they're going off vibes and feelings without much attempt to find out the details of existing frameworks or even what the measurable & objective material realities are

so these "revolutionary new gender theory frameworks" often end up being rehashes of stuff that's already been thought about by lots and lots of people and widely rejected for being inaccurate or inadequate in the face of better frameworks, and/or describing or responding to a totally alternate universe disconnected from how things work in the real world

these kinds of issues make many "revolutionary new frameworks" useless at best, and at worst, they can be reactionary and actually reify existing forms of oppression.