#transfeminist theory

[ruthtearna]

The reason transandrophobia/transmisandry don't work as terms is because instead of coming up with a specific term for transmasc specific oppression, it instead tries to borrow the structure of the word "transmisogyny"

The word transmisogyny was coined as a way to describe the intersection between two axes of systemic oppression, misogyny and transphobia, as transfeminized individuals are both punished for their femininity or for being women, and punished for being trans.

The words transandrophobia or transmisandry imply there to be an intersection between transphobia and systemic oppression towards men. Men are not systematically oppressed, and trans men are not punished on the basis that they are men. They are punished on the basis of being trans and attempting to diverge from "femaleness."

This is why I prefer the terms 'anti-transmasculinity' or simply 'transmasc specific oppression'.

The discrimination which transmascs face is not the intersection of two axes, it is simply a type of transphobia, unlike transmisogyny which is both a type of transphobia and a type of misogyny.

Maybe this is dumb, but I illustrated it a bit, this is grossely oversimplified for the sake of the point being made, but I believe it to be an accurate dumbed down version explaining the roots of specific forms of oppression.

A more detailed version would include the overlap with racism (transmisogynoir, anti-blackness, the euro-centric origins of the gender binary etc), homophobia, and intersexism but again, this is purposely oversimplified version.

[storyweavingspider]

Apologies in advance if this is a bit clunky - trying to not name parties involved while still getting across the story.

A Black transfemme I know just barely got saved from this hell. For Black transfemmes you can quite literally do nothing and still be punished for it.

The Black doll in question is very sweet and fairly timid socially - has a hard time even asking good friends for things if she feels it’ll make her an imposition. A white transfemme tried to begin the process of getting her torn out of community.

Her crime? A different white doll mentioned in passing to her that she had a crush on the Black transfemme, and the white doll in question got jealous because she wanted to fuck the other white doll. The Black doll had no direct role or influence in any of this.

The jealous transfemme messaged the other white transfemme to try and claim the Black doll was homeless (she wasn’t) and had used that to try and coerce her into taking her home and sleeping with her - insinuating that she was attempting to coercively rape her by pressuring/guilting her into it.

The doll that received that message didn’t believe it and spoke to other Black trans folks about it to keep the Black doll in question safe, but seeing that message and knowing the Black doll could’ve easily had her life destroyed if the doll that received the message had decided to prioritize white solidarity and automatically assuming the Black person involved is guilty, like many whites do.

I’ve been through similar myself (linked below) and I’ve had quite literally dozens of dolls tell me about going through something similar at this point, but I’ve never seen or heard it happen with absolutely no direct interaction with the target.

I said last year that as we sink further into explicit fascism in the US (and globally) we’re gonna see more “hot allostatic load” being inflicted on transfemmes as an outlet for the lack of control, especially on BIPOC transfemmes, but our own community is out here innovating new ways of harming other dolls, and they won’t always fail like they did this time.

One thing about being transfem online--or in real life let's be frank--is that you must live in fear of making a single mistake lest you are punished by the fury of the panopticon

[agendercryptidlev]

[ID: Meme that reads "I bring a sort of "The Patriarchy was defined by Cis Feminists and the Definition Should be Updated To Better Represent the Lived Experiences of Trans and Intersex People" Vibe to Transfeminist Theory that Radfems don't really like" the background is a photo of a man with a backwards baseball cap looking into the distance while standing outside /end ID]

[taliabhattwrites]

I'm really grateful to Kai Cheng Thom for such a sparkling endorsement. I'm genuinely overwhelmed and so moved😭

Reminder that Trans/Rad/Fem drops on January 24th, and the preorder is available now!

[carlyraejepsans]

noooo little tumblr tboy put the misandry posts down

[damnesdelamer]

Leslie Feinberg

I collected some of the works of one of our greatest comrades and warriors:

Transgender Liberation: A Movement Whose Time Has Come

Stone Butch Blues

Transgender Warriors: Making History From Joan Of Arc To Dennis Rodman

Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink Or Blue

Rainbow Solidarity In Defense Of Cuba

Remember, our first duty is to be educated, so arm yourselves with the best information. We have always existed, and we always will. And in each generation, we must remember those who came before us, and become the warriors that ze fought to equip. Stay strong, stay proud, and solidarity forever.

[intersexcat-tboy]

Benevolent sexism is still sexism.

If you think placing women on pedestals is feminism or suggesting all women are victims who need protection from men, that's benevolent sexism, not feminism.

If you think abuse is inherently less abusive, less harmful, painful, serious, anything of that sort because a woman is perpetrating it, you've fallen for benevolent sexism.

[leah2eroes]

having a convo with someone who accused asked me if i even listen to any music made by women. so i list a few artists i have on repeat rn (i think i said bye2 and lena raine and a couple others), and their response was "arent those all trans women?" as if they dont count???????

its always subtle biases like this that really let you weed out who actually understands "trans women are women" as a statement of fact

[aroanthy]

trying to write something about how much i hate the ‘misandry in utena/the utena fandom’ crowd but it feels kind of redundant to me. i think i just don’t consider people who use the word ‘misandry’ serious people. i do however feel an obligation to occasionally make my position clear on that front, because im aware i tougapost and some people love to bring that guy up as the misandry in the utena fandom poster boy. which is so fucking stupid because touga is not victimised by ‘misandry’, touga is victimised by homophobic violence which is wrapped up in misogynistic violence, both of which are the cogs in the machine we call patriarchy. touga is not affected by misogyny in the same way that anthy is, that’s one of the key takeaways you can get from their being foils, and i don’t really like the whole ‘oh patriarchy hurts men too’ stuff because it neglects the fact that men reap so many material benefits from what some people deem ‘harm’ to them (emotional repression being the big one. it’s not great but when you’re the privileged party and gain power from it, who cares? it’s like the inverse of kozue trying to use sexuality to gain power: she can’t do that). but touga is a shitty dysfunctional person who has been shaped by violence and in turn perpetuated violence, and his character excels, imho, at examining how patriarchy functions and attempts to homogenise life’s many complexities. same deal as nanami really. they just play different roles in this gender essentialist nightmare that crunches out any grit. and you can extend that idea to all rgu characters but i am who i am and that is a kiryuu siblings enjoyer

[ruthtearna]

I, and any other transfeminist, are not the personified concept of the mythological "bæddel" you and others have created in your head, btw

(most 'modern baeddels' don't even follow the original belief system of baeddelism/separatism of the 2010s, most modern baeddels just call themselves that because other people called them that a lot for the 'crime' of being transfemeninists and acknowledging transmisogyny was a thing, and bad.)

I am a person who has observed the world around me and read the experiences of others both like and different from me and come to conclusions based on that.

Transfemeninists are not some evil witch hivemind amalgamation of all the opinions you disagree with that exists for you to get mad at.

[qweerhet]

i do also want to make a general PSA: the language of "failed men" and "failed women" as distinct gender categories referring to classes of people who have breached gender norms in a way that irrevocably disrupts their access to gender, particularly (but not exclusively) through transitioning or identifying with the "other" gender? that language has been in use in queer theory since at least the 90s.

it's so well-established that i cannot even begin to track down the initial coinage with a quick trip through google scholar. i'm finding publications in well-respected journals using the terminology dating back to the 90s just by scanning the first page of results. if you see someone claiming that transmisogynistic tumblr users made it up in 2023 to find a new way to sneakily call transfems men, they're just wrong, and in the worst case scenario, they're actively lying. if you have a fundamental problem with commonly-used basic transfeminist and queer theory terminology, take it up with the fucking university of chicago or something, idk, anything other than trying to convince 16-year-old trans people on tumblr dot edu that Big Transgender Blogging is intentionally lying to them about commonly accepted transfeminist theory.

[davespwite]

this is what transandrophobes say to and about transmascs while arguing that *were* the misogynists.

if you want to stay safe from this person, block @.madeofvoid

[taliabhattwrites]

The best one in every trilogy is the fourth installment, right?

[tiredbit]

If you haven’t ever seen a trans woman doing a bad thing that you saw a trans man doing, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen nor does it mean that it is a problem in trans masc circles

It just means you haven’t seen a trans women doing the bad thing before

[dreamyintersexouppy]

sometimes a transfem leaves a response on my "man hating tranny is a transmisogynistic myth" post and it's just so buckwild backwards that it says literally nothing and then i read to the end and it goes "uhm actually things are so complicated and the patriarchy is more complicated than (describes patriarchy explicitly) so you're wrong because this short tumblr post doesn't have comprehensive intersectional analysis so you must be too silly and dumb to understand it... also You're the condescending one cuz you kindly told me to assess myself as the social class of tma so actually feminism is useless" like... we're both women here it actually doesn't benefit you to bimbofy me as part of your argument, and i think condescension is thrown around as an accusation a bit too much on this site if apparently telling women that they are women and that it materially benefits them to see themselves as women in feminist analysis is apparently condescension, just reads as anti-intellectualism with extra steps

[arco-pluris]

Crítica do binômio “sexo/gênero”

Texto de Caia Coelho (2016)

Ao contrário do que se costuma pensar, criticar o binômio “sexo/gênero” não é abandonar o reconhecimento do genital como algo importante para a designação cis-normativa, para o controle da reprodução e para a produção da heterossexualidade diádica. Na verdade, é necessário considerar tais elementos para estabelecer uma crítica ao conhecimento biológico dessa parte do corpo, que obviamente não foi escolhida aleatoriamente e antecipa o gênero da sua própria historicidade, passando a ser considerado natural não só enquanto figuração anatômica, mas enquanto o eixo discursivo do cis-sexismo. Isso toma uma proporção tão grande que pessoas intersexo recém-nascidas sofrem, compulsoriamente, cirurgias para adequar a genitália a vaginas e pênis, uma prática violenta contra os Direitos Humanos.

Istvan Mesaros, em o Poder da Ideologia, revela como a ciência, com seus próprios critérios, procura invalidar a legitimidade da crítica: “aqueles que aceitam tacitamente a ideologia dominante como a estrutura objetiva do discurso ‘racional’ e ‘erudito’ rejeitam como ilegítimas todas as tentativas de identificar as suposições ocultas e valores implícitos com que está comprometida a ordem dominante. Assim, em nome da “objetividade” e da “ciência”, têm de desqualificar o uso de algumas categorias essenciais ao pensamento crítico. Reconhecer a legitimidade de tais categorias significaria consentir no exame das próprias suposições aceitas como verdadeiras, em conjunto com as conclusões convenientes que podem ser – e efetivamente são – extraídas dela”.

Se reconhecemos o “sexo” enquanto uma forma de saber sobre o corpo historicamente permeada e politicamente intencionada, torna-se de muito apoio que os conhecimentos biológicos mostrem uma diversidade que extrapole certas barreiras, divergências e contradições da própria literatura biomédica a respeito dos genitais. Quando se desautoriza o entendimento “oficial do sexo”, ou melhor, quando se desautoriza tal entendimento no campo da própria biologia, isso transpõe algumas barreiras entre as áreas interessadas em pesquisar o gênero e as áreas interessadas em pesquisar o corpo. Nessa altura, também acontece um hibridismo maior na biomedicina que, ao encarar outras possibilidades anatômicas além da diádica, nos permite pensar por que até então apenas dois ‘sexos’ estavam sendo estudados.

Criticar o binômio “sexo/gênero” significa a tentativa de perceber as entrelinhas do discurso; perceber o que não foi dito, mas constitui o discurso; perceber a ideologia na “objetividade científica” e a permeabilidade dela na história. Para todas as populações trans, transexuais, transgêneros e travestis, o principal efeito do “sexo” enquanto natural e do gênero enquanto “construído” é que, para o corpo cis-gênero, haveria “harmonia” entre esses dois eixos de sustentação do corpo e, para nós, haveria o destino psiquiátrico da patologia, quando não o destino estigmatizante da simulação.

A primeira, e imatura, definição de “cis-generidade” registrada historicamente (1995) é feita por Carl Bujis, um homem trans, e quatro anos depois é descrita por Donna Lynn Mathews, uma mulher transexual, como o significante que assinala a compatibilidade entre a identidade, a apresentação e a morfologia física de alguém: “uma vez que definimos o gênero como as características comportamentais, culturais e psicológicas associadas a um sexo, cisgênero significa estar do mesmo lado das características comportamentais, culturais e psicológicas associadas a um sexo”.

Em sua genealogia da cisgêneridade, “O Cisgênero Existe”, Leila Dumaresq contextualiza historicamente e analisa a evolução do conceito. A respeito de Carl Bujis e Donna Lynn Lewis, a autora relembra que essa definição foi escrita “no século onde as pessoas trans impuseram-se como grupo social e político; E também é o século marcado pela patologização e um crescente interesse médico em nós. As marcas deste conflito aparecem na exigência de laudos e procedimentos médicos para termos a existência civil e jurídica reconhecida. Naquele momento ainda fazia sentido usar o jargão biomédico que trouxe alguma aceitação social e que definia o trans para definir o cis. Ingenuamente, as pessoas trans quiseram expressar alteridade nos mesmos termos usados para nos descrever. Logo ficou evidente que isso não era possível e que o jogo biomédico não foi feito para permitir a expressão trans”.

Dessa forma, a não ser que você esteja disputando o conceito de sexo dentro do departamento de biologia ou medicina, ou seja, apontando incoerências da própria bibliografia, não adianta usar outras palavras, como se elas fossem mais ou menos isentas ideologicamente, pois pertencem ao mesmo vocabulário biomédico. A definição desses termos está comprometida com o diadismo e com o cis-sexismo. Por isso, dizer que “XY” é biológico e a associação disso ao universo masculino é “social”, embora tenha bastante potencial didático, é apenas eufemístico. Para não virar um problema linguístico, a nossa crítica precisa desautorizar a pretensa “universalidade” da ciência; precisa falar desses termos como garantias da cis-normatividade e da heterossexualidade, do diadismo e do controle reprodutivo; precisa localizar a utilidade e o controle desses conceitos; precisa saber que, realmente, o conhecimento sobre o corpo não é o corpo em si.