#transmisogyny

[soup-mother]

"I'm AFAB but i really relate to trans women so i call myself a trans woman. yknow ever since i started T i've felt so much like both a man and a woman, which is why i relate to transfeminity. i have so much in common with trans women because i love being a genderfuck man in a dress. it's not like being a cis woman, it's a different more alien and inhuman gender, transfeminity"

[melody-magic]

the thing about Dropout's transmisogyny problem in particular is that it seems to stem from the people at all decision making levels not having trans women as part of their worldview, literally forgetting we exist until we come into their vision actively.

like, let me put it this way. if i sat down to have lunch with brennan lee mulligan, i don't think he'd misgender me once. i think he'd be nice, and respectful, and listen attentively when i tell him what its like living as a trans woman and the difficulties that come with it. i really do! and then as soon as the conversation was over he wouldn't think about trans women again until the next time he saw one or heard about us. he wouldn't think of us when planning his games, when building his stories, or when casting his shows. so at the end of the day, yeah he'd be nice to me, but when he imagines the world, ANY world he can create, people like me do not feature in it unless we are already there for some other purpose, like to be someone's girlfriend, or to make a dick joke.

same with sam reich. when he goes into a casting phase, he and his team's rolodex (or perhaps i should say contact list to be more modern) is full of diversity! we can see it spanned across all the shows! except its strangely empty of one demographic and one demographic only. and when he does cast trans women, they're always drag queens first and trans women second.

there's something matt colville says when he finishes out some videos and livestreams, and while it may be pithy and chessy i think its relevant in this case: "imagine people complexly".

these people dont even imagine us, or consider us. to them, we don't exist, not because they don't believe in our existence, or they haven't seen it, or even because they actively hate us, but they simply dont consider it in any way until it is already presented to them. we are, quite literally, not a part of their vision of the world. how can we get them to imagine us complexly when they can't even imagine us in the first place?

[storyweavingspider]

I’d like to take those tags and add “and have been deemed disposable by society” At the end

Because it’s not solely that capitalism rejects them, their “peers” can reject them as well even separate from their worth to capitalism.

Both transfeminine disposability and the ways that Black people are made subhuman, though adjusted to suit each marginalized group, are rooted in the same white supremacist concepts and practices.

Leaving it solely at “capitalism” ignores the issues of white supremacy, and if capitalism is overthrown but white supremacy remains, we are not actually liberated.

[thesuncantreachyouhere]

transmascs have historically been erased by claims of them simply being women trying to escape oppression, and what is the discourse going on right now? oh that transmascs are actually just cis women trying to escape oppression, and being transmasc is somehow a more privileged position? thats interesting isnt it

[a-polite-melody]

A big tip I have for talking about trans issues is to make sure you aren’t talking in absolutes where none exist.

It’s a trap I know I’ve fallen into myself, especially when I’m making a post out of anger or frustration of my own experiences being erased or diminished, because the language sounds stronger and more punchy in absolutes. It hits as hard as the emotion I’m feeling is hitting me. The problem is that creates issue with not just the accuracy of the statements being made, but also ends up erasing or diminishing the experiences of other people in turn.

Quite often in posts about transphobia of all sorts, this sort of erasure can happen to other groups of trans people that the post does not focus on, and basically all of them end up ignoring, erasing, or even demonizing intersex people of all genders and their experiences.

We all as people who live outside of pericisheteronorms have more in common in our struggles against the structures that enforce those norms than we sometimes realize, and we should not be alienating or outright adding to the struggles of others in trying to alleviate the problems we face ourselves.

[catsonja]

[onix]

"She is furious. She tells me I am a straight cis male and I need to shut up and listen. What she is really furious about is being contradicted by someone who, according to their facebook profile, has a lower ranking on the discourse clearance chart than she."

"But I know I am not straight, or cis, or a boy. I am nothing so simple as that. I am a girl who has been through a lot of shit and who has grown into symbiosis with her boy suit. But what else I know is that my point is my fucking point. Do I even want to convince someone who will only listen to me when they’re told by the rules that they have to see me as a girl?"

"More than a few out transwomen have told me, privately, they they are uncomfortable with these things, but are afraid that speaking up about it would cause ciswomen to like and trust them less. “I play along,” one of them told me, “because in the queer community the only people who defend cisboys are cisboys. I don’t want to give up finally being read as a girl.”"

-

Some of my favorite parts of this. It's a bit long, but genuinely I think it needs to be required reading.

"cis men dni" are you ready to come out of your "no boys allowed" treehouse yet. its time for lunch.

[velvetvexations]

Really being driven crazy by all the “man up” stuff I see from TRFs (especially TRF trans guys) in reaction to other trans men talking about their oppression. Like so many cases of “these guys are pussys” “don’t be a bitch” “it’s your responsibility as a man to let go of any feelings about the misogyny you’ve faced” “you’re being really woman-brained about this lmao.” And somehow those of us who understand our liberation as innately tied to feminism and defeating patriarchy are the misogynists? It’s all so nakedly patriarchal. Being hurt by misogyny is just a result of something essentially fragile inside a woman’s brain according to these guys, so reacting to identical material circumstances is aligning yourself with “womanly” fragility. These guys do a lot to prove their point that trans guys absolutely can be as horrifically misogynistic as anyone else, I guess. Weird that they aren’t the ones getting the heat for it and are pretending to be militant feminist allies, though.

So many self-identified TMEs are trans men who are super into being powerful manly men who could totally oppress me if they wanted to but are too chivalrous to ever do such a thing

a large percentage of TRFs are comprised of what're essentially transmasc tradhusbands

[soup-mother]

~yelling at real life trans women in the name of fictional trans women~ seems to be a weirdly recurring trend on this fuckass website

[breederbutch]

what i feel like a lot of tme lesbians are not thinking about right now is that a lot of the transmisogyny happening right now is also lesphobia/bimisogyny. so many people's spectre of the "sexually violent trans woman" is a lesbian/bi trans woman that is preying on cis women (and occasionally tme trans people, but mostly cis women). these are the stereotypes behind the bathroom bills, behind much of terfism, behind the isolation of trans women in social spaces. and even straight trans women are assumed to be secretly and predatorily desiring cis women.

and on the topic of lesphobia specifically, hell, it's commonplace to see tme lesbians say that 'trans men just have a deep, historical connection to the lesbian community, y'know?' using rhetoric of historicity that INHERENTLY implies trans women, who have been historically excluded, are "less lesbian" than someone who isn’t even a woman. rhetoric that doesn't ever touch WHY we were including trans men and not trans women, by the way.

half of the tme lesbians with nsft blogs on here have 'cis men dni' on their pages as if there is some mystical communal trait that they have in common with trans het men that they don’t have in common with cis gay men..... i wonder what that is!

if we as tme people in the lesbian community are not addressing transmisogyny, we are simply not addressing lesphobia. dispelling myths of transmisogyny that deal with bathrooms and 'pressuring lesbians into sex' and etc are OUR ISSUES. these women are being attacked for a connection with OUR (possibly shared!) community, whether a real connection or a perceived one.

to be clear, no, we don't have to be connected to trans women's issues to care about them and it shouldn't need to be said. and transmisogyny should not be reduced only to (or even mostly to) its intersections with lesphobia. but this goes to show that not only is not caring about transmisogyny a lack of empathy, but a hypocrisy when you profess to care about lesphobia.

so the next time someone brings up to one of us that our rhetoric is fucked or we never talk about trans women's issues, i don’t want to hear that it's not our community's issue or it's discourse. i want to hear some actual fucking consideration for women being attacked for possibly having a desire for other women and that inherently being predatory/wrong. especially from the tme people that keep saying that this website doesn't care enough about lesbians!

minors can interact with this post, but not my blog. tme non-sapphics dni.

[queerjoys]

well things are certainly happening in "FTMblr"

[sistercara]

wonder who the 'they' are and why 'they' generally wouldnt want that?

[doe-eyed-disaster]

Cool that Arcane's transfem rep went from Season 1's transmisogynistic caricature of a sex worker who served no narrative purpose to Season 2's transmisogynistic caricature of a sex worker who served cunt.

Progress!

[traindoll]

The thing that really pisses me off about the "transphobia affects us all" stuff is how if you said that about basically any other form of bigotry under the same logic that argument uses, people would immediately go after you. Like if you talk about how misogyny affects men if they're considered effete (in a way that basically approaches the concept of transmisogyny) that seems to piss people off, it all leads to the basic conclusion that transphobia is already acceptable to just about everyone.

[jerrycummblr]

It's really simple. If you're born with a vagina and you naturally have elevated testosterone levels, you're a man. If you have a vagina and you take testosterone, you're a woman. But also if you have a vagina, you'll never be a man. But also if you have higher testosterone then you were never a woman. Woman never yes man a vagina testosterone no was an elevated. Vagina man.

[canonkiller]

I just think everyone should take a moment to consider the question "what is your visual shorthand for cruelty?" and then follow it up with a critical "and who taught you that?"

specific examples include but are not limited to

why is an evil timeline character design disabled? (why do the heroes go through equally punishing battles and never lose an arm, a leg, an eye?)

why are the futuristic scifi terrorists uniformly darker skinned? (why are the heroes so much lighter?)

why is the greedy boss fat? (why are the heroes skinny?)

why is the criminal mastermind heavily scarred? (why is the brooding, traumatized hero unscathed?)

why is the predatory creep a bearded person in a dress and makeup? (why are none of the heroes trans women?)

who taught you that this is how things are?

how long do you plan on repeating it?