#transmisogyny discourse

[fleshengine]

I want to talk about representation a bit, because I see the "trans women have more rep, so they are privileged/can't be oppressed/are more societally accepted" thing thrown around a decent amount. Let's take a game I'm playing right now, Cyberpunk 2077.

I love how for trans characters in Cyberpunk 2077 we have Claire, a tough looking bartender who's into cars, and the random girl in Lizzie's who drops a line about how she's a woman and that demands sacrifice, a sex worker who immediately gets played for laughs as her (floating) co-oworker makes fun of her.

Claire is fine representation in my eyes. Sure, she has "guy" hobbies but like genuinely so do most of the girls I know. We get interested in things as kids and that stuff stays. She's a little tough looking, but it's 100% in a definitely masc woman way. She's great, I love her, best girl. The mox is representation, but like... harmful rep at that. She's literally just a side character in this one scene who says "yeah being a woman is rough but it's worth the effort huh?" and gets made fun of for being trans. Her entire point is people pointing at transwomen and saying "haha you're all sex workers and ugly and everyone can tell you used to be a man lol." and frankly it's infuriating. She even uses the male character model! I don't know if cyberpunk 2077 has any definite transmasc characters, and so the case could be made that trans women "have more rep" in it. But when half the rep is this random mox who exists to be made fun of, I don't see the point.

And this is what I mean when I say recognition is not representation. Claire and the mox are both recognizably a trans women, but only Claire is a character who has depth and is a person and actually represents anyone. Being a trans woman is a tiny part of her, but it's there, she has a flag on her truck and mentions it in dialogue exactly once! You don't even really learn she's trans until later, so she's barely recognizable in the text.

So much of what people refer to as "transfem representation" boils down to characters like the mox who are just stereotypes of transwomen who exist to be made fun of. They do not represent anyone, no lived experience, no depth of character. They exist entirely to be recognizable as transwomen and nothing more. They are jokes and to say they represent trans women in any way is deeply revealing to how tme people think of us.

When you clock me in the street, what kind of trans woman will you recognize me as?

This is an idea I've had kicking around in my head for a bit. I'd love feedback/ideas on it so I might uhhhhhh @plaidos hopefully that's okay. You don't have to respond, I just want my thoughts out there.

[thebutchtheory]

an opening to what's hopefully a serious discussion on 'transandrophobia'

for a long time, i've wanted to open a discussion about this subject. all of this is genuine, and meant with no intentions but to open discussion on the subjects of transmisogyny and transandrophobia. not hateful discourse, a calm discussion.

any harassment, death threats, insults, slurs, and similar behavior will be blocked and ignored. this post is meant to spark calm discussions, not harassment and discourse. if you find yourself getting overwhelmed or too angry, step away before coming back to the discussion.

[post is long, so it will be under a cut]

defining 'transandrophobia'

transmascs i've spoken to who believe in transandrophobia explain and define it like this: (not a direct quote from anyone)

transandrophobia is not the intersection of being trans and being a man, because men are not oppressed on the basis of their gender. transandrophobia is instead the intersection of being trans(masculine) and perceived as a woman.

we [transmascs], when we tell others that we are men/transmasculine, are told that we're only identifying as such because we want privilege or safety, or because of internalized misogyny, that we believe being a woman is bad. for (mentally) disabled transmascs, (such as in JKR's statement that specifically brings up autistic transmascs) they are often told that they are too disabled to decide their gender for themselves, that they're just disabled women who 'think' that they're men.

transandrophobia is characterized very deeply by the misogyny that transmasculine people experience. one cannot say that it's 'misdirected misogyny' when it is specifically directed at us for being perceived as women by the people oppressing us and expressing violence against us, for being transmasculine.

so to reiterate and condense, 'transandrophobia' is defined largely as 'the intersection of being transmasculine and perceived as a woman and the intersection of the transphobia and misogyny that transmasculine people experience'.

(note: this is not saying that trans men experience transmisogyny, as transmisogyny is the experience of the intersection between being trans and an actual woman, and the combination of transphobia and misogyny that trans women experience for being perceived as both "weak, effeminate men that need to be fixed" and "evil, predatory men that want to invade women's spaces".)

note the explicit lack of referencing being a man/masculine or any oppression against men for being male. 'transandrophobia' is largely not defined as 'the intersection of being trans and a man' or 'the intersection of transphobia and oppression against men for being male', at least not at all from what i've seen.

arguments against transandrophobia

however, when speaking to someone who is anti-the concept of 'transandrophobia', you get someone saying something like this:

there is no such thing as 'transandrophobia' because oppression against men based on gender alone doesn't exist. there is no intersection between transphobia and misandry because there's no systemic oppression against men on the basis of being men. a cisgender, heterosexual man will never have his rights as a person debated.

or even worse:

trans men aren't oppressed because they're men. they inherently have male privilege on the basis of being men.

to discuss the first argument: when speaking to people who believe in transandrophobia, they're not talking about oppression against men for being men, they're talking about oppression against transmasculine people on the basis of being perceived as (masculine/'mutilated'/'wrong') women for having transitioned or wanting to transition.

this is a kind of misogyny that cis women generally do not experience because they are women--save for cases when WOC are perceived as men for having natural features of their race that are perceived by larger white societies as 'masculine', in which case they are victims of racism and misdirected transmisogyny/transphobia.

this is also not a kind of misogyny that trans women will generally experience, either, because they are perceived as men (in various forms), by wider society, or as women who cannot be feminine enough to get away from their perceived masculinity/maleness by 'allies' and 'supportive' parts of the queer community, and are thus treated differently based on that perception.

to discuss the second argument: i see this argument from baeddels and transmascs alike, for some reason, but it needs to be said: transmascs do not have male privilege because we are not perceived as men by wider society, we are perceived as women. perceived women, no matter how they identify, do not have male privilege. even if they pass, if it's made known that they're trans, they are perceived as 'wrong women' or 'women who mutilated their bodies' and are infantilized and pitied because oppressors believed we did something 'horrible' to ourselves for 'safety' or 'male privilege', raped in transphobic attacks meant to 'fix' us and make us 'back into women' or for similar transphobic arguments, etc. that doesn't sound like male privilege to me.

many trans people are not going to pass enough to gain any kind of advantage in society. that is just a fact of life. even on T, many trans men are still 'clockable' by oppressors. even on E, with voice training or FFS, many trans women are still going to be 'clockable' by oppressors, as depressing as it is.

this doesn't even take into account the many, many trans people that can't or don't want to transition medically. or, the fact that transmasc does not mean male. many transmasculine butches experience very deep levels of homophobia/lesbophobia, transphobia, and other forms of oppression for being butch.

there is no privilege gained in transitioning to another gender. you can't just identify yourself into any privilege or advantage in society. if trans people can understand that being transfeminine doesn't give you any advantage in (women's) sports, then you can understand that being transmasculine doesn't give you any kind of inherent privileges in society, and in fact, invites more violence into one's life than if they were cisgender.

further discussion and my understanding of 'transandrophobia'

now, it's my understanding that 'transmisogyny' was coined to express the intersection between trans(femme)phobia and the misogyny they experience for being women who are perceived as 'wrong men', 'predatory men', 'men in dresses', 'not women, not men', or other 'facsimiles' of femininity.

i also understand that, by that logic, it makes sense why people would be angry at the potential implications at a term like 'transandrophobia', which according to many people implies oppression against men based on gender alone, which is not something that exists.

however, from what i've seen, there's no good way to word the specific kinds of misogyny and transphobia that transmascs experience for being trans and perceived as women that makes everyone happy. i mean you could co-opt 'transmisogyny' to refer to trans men as well, however that is something i am deeply against.

the best substitute term i've been able to come up with while writing this is 'transphobic misogyny', and even that i don't feel is a very good term due to its similarity to 'transmisogyny' as a term.

another term i could come up with is 'transmascphobia' or '(anti) transmasculine transphobia'. i have no idea if that has already been coined, but it personally feels a little better than 'transandrophobia' and especially 'transmisandry'. however, i'm not quite sure if i like it regardless.

so all of that said, i'm going to list some experiences of 'transandrophobia' and other forms of (generally) tranmasculine-specific forms of transphobia based on my experiences and the experiences of other transmasculine people i know of:

hyper-invisibility and historical erasure: transmascs are not privileged for being invisible. invisibility means erasure and forced silence. trans men of the past have their histories spoken over as 'revolutionary women who went about life as men'. our attempts to be recognized as men, both in life and death, are seen as revolutionary stories... for women.

infantilization: when a person comes out as transmasculine, best case scenario, they're told something along the lines of 'that's cute sweetie' and brushed off and referred to as female regardless because our attempts at masculinity are seen as feminine regardless. we're seen as "cute" attempts at being male. we're also treated as if we only 'want' to be men because of male privilege or past violence from men to be safe, and are belittled, pitied and disregarded because of that perception. once again, best case scenario. all of this ties in very much part of the 'soft trans boy' stereotype that overtook tumblr for years.

misogyny: because we are perceived as 'wrong women' by larger society, we are treated like perceived women who society does not like; we are beaten, locked up by family members or, in the past, mental hospitals and/or lobotomized, raped in transphobic attacks that are meant to 'fix' us, and more. we are told that we're stupid women who don't know what they want, and are abused into silence. cishet men in particular abuse us in these manners because they believe they own (perceived) women, and when we come out as men and transition, they feel that something (a (perceived) woman, which they feel they own) is taken from them. this is not 'misdirected misogyny', this is a form of misogyny and transphobia pointed directly at trans men for being trans men.

reproductive oppression: part of the misogyny we experience as trans men is reproductive oppression, such as getting forcibly sterilized or denied the access we need to birth control because of the perception that we are women, and thus our 'job' is to have children, transmasc or not. we are also denied the right to have children, in that we are oppressed for wanting to get or getting pregnant and giving birth and are frequently denied entry to what's seen as 'women's only spaces', such as at women's clinics, for routine procedures like mammograms and pap smears, abortions, as well as seeking treatment for things such as vaginal infections.

ableism: in the case of (mentally) disabled trans men, we are very frequently denied the dignities of our genders because we are seen as 'too disabled' to know what we want, or oppressors see us as having been mislead or abused or groomed or whatever, into 'thinking' that we're trans. what comes to mind is JKR's statements made specifically about autistic trans men, who she believes have been tricked or groomed into believing that they are men.

there are probably more things that are not coming to mind, but these are some big ones off the top of my head.

my questions to the trans community

so with all of this said, here are my questions directed at the trans community. these are all genuine, and have no malice or ill intent behind them, so i am hoping that they are answered the same way.

why are we against trans men also having language to describe these experiences? what exactly are transmascs stealing or taking from transfemmes if they have language to describe their experiences?

what does the community gain when shutting down discussions of transmasculine-specific transphobia, and continuing to destroy solidarity between transmascs and transfemmes by behaving as if there are no shared experiences between our two groups?

what, if any, other terms could be used or created to describe the experiences of transmasculine specific transphobias that encompass the experiences of being transmasculine/a perceived woman by society, and experiencing transphobic misogyny?

conclusion

i'm hoping this post can help people better understand arguments for 'transandrophobia', and open a bigger dialogue on the subject within the trans community.

once again, this is all very genuine and meant with no intentions other than to open discussion on the subject of 'transandrophobia' and why it is or is not valid as a term, what other better terms could be used, and the experiences of anti-transmasculine transphobia.

[euniexenoblade]

It isn't shameful to be a trans woman and dudes aren't going to explode being compared to them. Egg jokes are not a big deal and a trans woman saying some shit like "hey, I used to do that before I realized I was trans" is not a big deal, infact most trans women wish someone had helped them realize sooner. If it turns out the person is just a cis dude, big deal! Being upset that your actions can be seen as a thing trans women do is suspect as hell! Being a trans woman is not a bad thing to be!

[rinaerat]

If I found out someone I knew who told me they were a transfem was actually afab, it would feel like a breach of trust. There are certain vulnerable things that I would not feel comfortable talking to non transfems about, because people who haven't experienced being barred from femininity don't understand it.

If "transfem" catches on as a label amongst nonbinary afab people, it will make it impossible for us to know who is a safe person to talk about transfem issues with, and who isn't. It will isolate us from having our own community. This was literally the intended function of the term when it was invented by terfs, to make it so transfems can't talk about their experiences. I know the people earnestly identifying as "afab transfem" don't intend for this, but it is what will happen if it catches on.

If you are someone who wants to identify this way anyways, please please please think about why the label calls out to you. If it's because you feel like "not quite a woman," realize what that reveals about how you see us. Transfems don't exist to be your "genderfuck goals," and if you yearn to be seen as an aberration like us, fortunately for you, you'll never know what it's like.

But I can assure you that if you use our language as an aesthetic, a good portion of us will never feel safe around you.

[communistkenobi]

I believe it was the work of legal scholar Florence Ashley where I first encountered this term (it might have also been Serano), but I’m becoming more and more committed to saying “degender” as opposed to “misgender.” like I think the term ‘misgender’ fails to properly identify the mechanism behind the process it describes: misgendering is not an act of attributing the wrong gender characteristics to a trans person, it is an act of dehumanisation. I think the term ‘misgender’ especially gives people much easier rhetorical cover to argue that trans women are hurt by misandry by being ‘mislabeled as men,’ or that they are in fact ‘actually men’ and benefit from male privilege, because the (incorrect) assumption underlying this is that when trans women are ‘misgendered’ they are being treated like men - to follow this line of thinking to its natural conclusion, this denies the existence of transmisogyny altogether, because any ‘misgendering’ of trans women is done only with the intent, conscious or otherwise, to inscribe the social position (and the privileges this position affords) of men onto them, as opposed to stripping them of their womanhood (and thus, their humanity).

The term degendering, however, I think more accurately describes this dehumanising process. Pulling from the work of both Judith Butler and Maria Lugones, gender mediates access to personhood - Lugones says in the Coloniality of Gender that in the colonial imaginary, animals have no gender, they only have (a) sex, and so who gets ‘sexed’ and who gets ‘gendered’ is a matter of who counts as human. She describes this gendering process as fundamentally colonial and emerging as a colonial technology of power - who is gendered is who gets to be considered human, and so the construction of binary sex is a way of ‘speciating’ or rendering non-human the Indigenous and African people of colonized America, justifying and systematising the brutal use of their land and/or their labour until their death by equating them to animals. Sylvia Wynter likewise describes in 1492: A New World View that a popular term used by Spanish colonizers to describe the indigenous people was “heads of Indian men and women,” as in heads of cattle. By the same token, white men are granted the high status of human, worthy of governance, wealth, and knowledge production, and white women are afforded the subordinate though still very high responsibility of reproducing these men by raising and educating children. Appeals to a person’s sex as something more real, more obvious, or ‘poorly concealed’ by their gender is to deny them their gender outright, and therefore is a mechanism to render them non-human. Likewise, for Butler, gender produces the human subject - to be outside gender is to be considered “unthinkable” as a human being, a being in “unliveable” space.

Therefore the process of trans women going from women -> “male” is not “being gendered as a man,” it is being positioned as non-human. when people deny the gender of trans women, most especially trans women of colour, they invariably do this through reference to their genitals, to their ‘sex,’ as something inescapable, incapable of being concealed - again, this is not a process of rendering them as men, it is the exact opposite: it is a process of rendering them as non-human. there is not a misidentification process happening, they are not being “misgendered as men,” there is a de-identification of them as human beings. Hence, they are not misgendered, they are degendered, stripped of gender, stripped of their humanity

[trashfeminabag]

blanchardism is incredibly harmful but also its so fucking stupid and funny to me. like yes every single trans woman ever fits into one of these two exact categories made up by a single old white dude who posts his tgirl hot takes on twitter.

these categories are "incredibly horny for straight men" and "incredibly horny for our own tits". there are no exceptions. these are the ONLY REASONS we would spend years of our life and thousands of dollars and subject ourselves to intense scrutiny and bigotry. we're just THAT horny. can you tell blanchardism was invented by a straight white dude yet

[gay-otlc]

I'm generally not a fan of quantifying oppression or looking at it as a scoreboard, but I frequently hear the claim that if you read the data, it will show that trans women are indisputably the most oppressed of all trans people, and isn't comparable to the level of oppression trans men face. And I looked at some data, from the UK's National LGBT Survey (I was referring to it for some data on transheterosexuality so I had it on hand).

The survey included 3,740 trans women and 3,170 trans men.

Being LGBT in the UK:

Average comfort level being LGBT on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the most satisfied: 3.10 for trans women, 3.15 for trans men

Average life satisfaction on a scale of 1-10, 10 being the most satisfied: 5.07 for trans men, 5.52 for trans women

The data from this survey indicates that similar proportions of trans men and trans women tended to struggle in their overall experiences living as a trans person.

Openness about gender identity

Entirely closeted with friends: 7.4% of trans women, 2.8% of trans men

Entirely closeted with family members that participant lived with: 20.1% of trans women, 14.5% of trans men)

Entirely closeted with family members that participant did not live with: 25.3% of trans women, 22.0% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity for fear of a negative reaction: 58.9% of trans women, 56.2% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in public premises or buildings: 67.6% of trans women, 62.4% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity on streets or outdoor public places: 68.1% of trans women, 61.8% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity on public transport: 68.7% of trans women, 58.7% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in neighborhood: 68.5% of trans women, 56.9% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in workplace: 60.6% of trans women, 53.0% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in cafes, restaurants, pubs, or clubs: 61.8% of trans women, 57.5% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in the park: 54.4% of trans women, 46.2% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in other environments: 9.0% of trans women, 8.9% of trans men

Avoiding being open about gender identity in athletic environments: 63.1% of trans men, 60.2% of trans women

Avoiding being open about gender identity in schools: 45.6% of trans men, 35.1% of trans women

Avoiding being open about gender identity at home: 38.9% of trans men, 32.4% of trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans women than trans men tended to struggle with being open about their gender identity.

Transphobia from people the participant lived with

Verbal harassment: 34.0% of trans men, 22.2% of trans women

Outing: 38.5% of trans men, 23.5% of trans women

Threats of violence: 7.0% of trans men, 6.1% of trans women

Coercive/controlling behavior: 25.0% of trans men, 18.2% of trans women

Physical violence: 6.1% of trans men, 4.2% of trans women

Sexual violence: 2.2% of trans men, 2.1% of trans women

Other transphobic incidents: 29.4% of trans men, 18.3% of trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans men than trans women tended to struggle with facing transphobia from people they lived with.

Transphobia from people the participant did not live with

Outing: 29.4% of trans men, 24.6% of trans women

Verbal harassment: 42.2% of trans women, 36.0% of trans men

Threats of violence: 13.7% of trans women, 10.5% of trans men

Physical violence: 7.2% of trans women, 5.6% of trans men

Sexual violence: 6.1% of trans women, 3.9% of trans men

Other transphobic incidents: 27.6% of trans women, 25.8% of trans men

Private sexual images shared without consent: 18.5% of trans women, 13.3% of trans men

Had conversion therapy: 5.0% of trans women, 4.1% of trans men

Offered conversion therapy: 9.3% of trans men, 7.6% of trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans women than trans men tended to struggle with facing transphobia from people they did not live with.

Experiences in school/educational institutions

Entirely closeted at school: 16.6% of trans women, 9.3% of trans men

Entirely negative reactions at school: 3.6% of trans women, 2.1% of trans men

Entirely positive reactions at school: 28.9% of trans men, 34.7% of trans women

Outing at school: 77.9% of trans men, 62.9% of trans women

Verbal harassment at school: 73.4% of trans women, 70.0% of trans men

Exclusion from activities at school: 31.7% of trans women, 24.3% of trans men

Threats of violence at school: 25.0% of trans women, 19.8% of trans men

Physical violence at school: 15.1% of trans women, 9.6% of trans men

Sexual violence at school: 12.4% of trans women, 5.0% of trans men

Other transphobic incidents at school: 50.0% of trans men, 47.3% of trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans women than trans men tended to struggle with being trans in schools/educational institutions.

Workplace experiences

Had a paid job: 56.9% of trans men, 65.3% of trans women

Entirely closeted with senior colleagues: 33.4% of trans men, 31.5% of trans women

Entirely closeted with colleagues at same/lower level: 30.6% of trans men, 26.6% of trans women

Entirely positive reactions in workplace: 34.7% of trans women, 36.3% of trans men

Entirely negative reactions in workplace: 5.1% of trans women, 3.9% of trans men

Outing at work: 59.9% of trans men, 55.5% of trans women

Verbal harassment at work: 49.6% of trans women, 45.6% of trans men

Exclusion from activities at work: 32.7% of trans women, 21.8% of trans men

Threats of violence at work: 9.6% of trans women, 7.7% of trans men

Physical violence at work: 5.5% of trans women, 3.2% of trans men

Sexual violence at work: 7.0% of trans women, 4.0% of trans men

Other transphobic incidents at work: 54.2% of trans men, 53.3% of trans women

The data from this survey indicates that similar proportions of trans women and trans men tended to struggle with being trans in the workplace, with slightly more trans women struggling.

Public healthcare experiences

Needs ignored: 32.3% of trans men, 24.0% of trans women

Avoided treatment for fear of discrimination: 24.3% of trans men, 17.4% of trans women

Inappropriate questions/curiosity from healthcare workers: 29.0% of trans men, 18.9% of trans women

Discrimination from healthcare staff: 14.2% of trans men, 12.6% of trans women

Inappropriate referral to specialist services: 13.8% of trans men, 10.3% of trans women

Unwanted pressure for medical testing: 10.6% of trans men, 8.6% of trans women

Had to change GP: 10.9% of trans men, 9.7% of trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans men than trans women tended to struggle with public healthcare.

Mental healthcare experiences

Average ease accessing mental health services, on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being very easy: 2.49 for trans men, 2.55 for trans women

Unsuccessful accessing mental health services: 28.6% of trans women, 27.7% of trans men

Anxious/embarrassed about accessing mental health services: 40.1% of trans men, 29.1% of trans women

Unsupportive mental health practitioner: 17.0% of trans men, 16.9% of trans women

Average mental health service ratings, on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being completely positive: 3.22 for trans men, 3.40 for trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans men than trans women tended to struggle with mental healthcare.

Sexual healthcare experiences

Average ease accessing sexual health services, on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being very easy: 3.72 for trans men, 3.75 for trans women

Unsuccessful accessing sexual health services: 14.6% of trans women, 12.3% of trans men

Anxious/embarrassed about sexual health services: 57.3% of trans men, 31.8% of trans women

Unsupportive sexual health practitioner: 15.1% of trans men, 11.9% of trans women

Rating of sexual health services, on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being completely positive: 4.05 for trans men, 4.10 for trans women

The data from this survey indicates that more trans men than trans women tended to struggle with sexual healthcare.

TLDR: According to the data from this survey, the areas in which trans women tended to face more struggles than trans men were in openness about gender identity, transphobia from people they don't live with, and being trans in educational institutions. The areas in which trans men tended to face more struggles than trans women were in transphobia from people they did live with, public healthcare services, mental healthcare services, and sexual healthcare services. Trans men and trans women struggled similarly with being trans in the workplace, and with their overall experience being trans in the UK, with trans women facing slightly more struggles in the workplace.

Obviously, this is only one survey, and doesn't represent all trans people as it was conducted only in the UK. It's possible that another survey might show trans women struggling more in healthcare, or trans men struggling more in schools.

But I would say this is strong evidence that trans women are not necessarily the most oppressed of all trans people by far in all areas of life. Trans men and trans women both face severe oppression, in some similar and some unique ways, and it helps no one to minimize the suffering of either.

Reading Comprehension Questions:

Did OP say that trans men are more oppressed than trans women? (Hint: No)

Did OP say that trans women oppress trans men? (Hint: Also no)

Did OP say that transmisogyny isn't a real issue, or that trans women shouldn't be allowed to talk about transmisogyny? (Hint: No again)

Did OP say that trans men's oppression is more important than trans women's and deserves to be talked about more? (Hint: Still no)

Did OP say that any issues are exclusive to trans men or trans women and that we have no overlap in our struggles? (Hint: You guessed it- no!)

[juney-blues]

"a system of oppression can exist but there can be no meaningful distinction between those who enforce it and those who are subject to it" is an absolutely incomprehensible take to have just so we're clear

[autolenaphilia]

It's so infuriating when anti-kink type of transmisogynist deny their dogwhistles and when criticized go: "I'm just against pedophilia and incest, why are you bringing up trans women, it's actually you who are transmisogynist for pointing out my dogwhistles." Like we can't tell that "the evil predatory fetishist freaks who claim their sicko perversions are queer" is so obviously code for trans women, like it's literally what radfems have said about trans women for decades. And the transmisogyny being criticized is not theoretical and abstract at all. They keep on doing callouts of trans woman after trans woman for having weird kinks.

And like these people are explicitly reviving 70s radfem arguments about kink and porn, something you can't cleanly separate from their transmisogyny. These radfems undeniably saw their crusades against porn, kink and trans woman as the same struggle. Trans women were and are the ultimate pornsick sado-masochist freaks in the radfem worldview.

[mr-ribbit]

gonna rant again bc im seeing a lot of trans women on my dash having to carry the heavy lifting to argue for their basic respect and a lot of other queer people who want to ??? get mad about that apparently. for the record as usual: im tme, im not speaking for anyone besides myself and my perspectives, but I am trying to reach out to fellow tme people to level with y'all from inside the house.

i thought we all got past the 'calling people gendered terms when theyve asked you to stop' thing in like. 2012. i swear we were allllll on board with not calling women dude anymore, nerfing sir and ma'am, neutralizing collective terms for groups, and all of that was like, during the onceler era. that's how we got off-putting shit like folx into the mix - remember???? why are we here again.

to those who I've seen claiming that they REALLY genuinely don't want to offend anyone, and that theyre trying to understand the dude thing, and they don't want to be seen as transmisogynistic when they aren't: ok. let's talk about it. step one, stop sending that really loaded anon to a trans woman you don't know, and close that in-group hatepost with 100 replies from people name-dropping trans bloggers they don't like. try to open your mind and assume for the duration of this post that I am not cynically trying manipulate thousands of tumblr users into making Bro the next big swear word, but a fellow queer human being who thinks you're all being pretty intentionally obtuse about an upsetting trend in our community

to be clear: this post is about the issue of trans women being called bro, dude, man, etc., particularly in recent tumblr discourse about transmisogyny, and the backlash they face if they get upset about it. this is also maybe moreso about the shitty ass excuses I see tme people make for why they supposedly can't stop doing this.

so let's go through some of the things I've been seeing people say they don't understand, supposedly in earnest, about this issue

"I DIDNT USE DUDE AS A MASCULINE TERM. I CALL EVERYONE BRO. MAN IS A GENDER NEUTRAL TERM"

I'm not actually going to exhaust my list of reasons why dude/bro/man are not strictly neutral, but you should be pretty aware that all words have context. Dude might be seen as neutral in many contexts, sure, but 'woman who is frequently called a man by others' is a situation where the context adds extra meaning to your words, just like calling someone "sweetie" might be neutral in some cases, but if you've got the context of knowing that's your coworker who's half your age, it's a bit less neutral. If you're not capable of reading that context and being tasteful about when you say dude, then you need to at least be ready to respond gracefully when someone asks you to stop. This is the part I'd rather focus on.

"BUT I DIDNT MEAN IT THAT WAY. IM NOT TRANSPHOBIC"

I think you should consider broadening your perspective *beyond* your intention behind the word. people may already understand that you meant the word neutrally and therefore didn't have transmisogynistic intent, but that's not really the entire scope of what people are saying. if that's your only concern, you're just trying to clear your record, not actually listen to what they're saying.

there are lots of words people don't enjoy being called, and in most cases, when they say 'pls don't call me that', people respect that and move on. even if the word isn't a slur, if it hurts someone's feelings, we all as a society have agreed that it's pretty shitty to keep calling them that. if your friend asked you not to call them 'buddy' anymore because their dead grandparent called them that, or something equivalently personal, you'd probably respect that instead of telling them 'but I call everyone buddy!!' right? even if you didn't really understand why it bothered them so much?

there is a prominent tendency for trans women to be denied this privilege, and when they ask not to be called dude or bro, people don't seem to respect this request as much as they would in other situations. when I accidentally use a gendered word and someone tells me they don't like it, I try to respond with something like "my bad, I didn't mean it as misgendering but I can see you were still bothered by it, so I'll try not to keep saying it. sorry!" and most people are willing to accept that. when trans women ask people this favor, a lot of people get VERY defensive, and treat the request as inane or unfair, instead of just apologizing and moving on. this is why people are upset when this happens, and it's why people are calling your actions transmisogynistic

also like you might not be doing this, but a lot of people DO use dude and bro in an intentionally gendered way to make trans women uncomfortable. it's a power play bigots use to talk down to them or otherwise maliciously harass them. do you know what arguments they use to defend that behavior when called out on it? 'oh I call everyone that' 'dude is gender neutral calm down' 'dont overreact its just a word'. by acting like this, youre all just giving credence to those same arguments.

"WELL THEY SHOULDNT GET SO MAD AT ME WHEN I DIDNT MEAN ANY HARM"

they can get as mad as they want!! also, are you sure they're 'mad'? or are they just expressing their feelings about a negative topic to you, and it makes you feel bad, so you have to make them out to be unreasonably emotional? how do you think they should have phrased 'dont call me that' to better spare *your* feelings?

also like, in most cases, these women do not knowww you. if your main response to someone saying you disrespected them is to say "I didnt mean it that way, I meant it in a friendly neutral way", well that's NOT YOUR FRIEND! she has no idea what your opinions are or what you think of her!!! she has no reason to assume you only upset her in a friendly way and not a bad unfriendly way! but she did get upset, and she did the one thing she can do which is *tell you what upset her* and your response is to say "well actually you shouldn't be upset at all"??????

and another thing:

it's not just the issue of using the word 'dude', it's because you're coming off extremely dismissive of women who have asked you to stop doing something that harms them, and because your argument is basically that they just shouldn't be so bothered by it. or that they're stupid, irrational, or otherwise crazy for telling you that it bothered them at all, just because you Technically used a gender neutral word according to Your Rules. be honest, does that seem fair? If people were calling you something that bothered you enough to ask them to stop, and they responded like this, how would it make you feel?

focusing solely on your intent and what the words mean when you use them is the same thing as saying "just get over it". no woman should need to Prove to you that 'dude' is gendered for you to care about what she's saying. the fact that you're asking people to do that sucks and makes you look bad, which is why people are arguing with you and calling you a misogynist.

especially those of you who are only doing this with trans women who are actively arguing with. you're wielding misgendering as a cudgel and we can all see it, grow up please.

[fleshengine]

unironically, dealing with like... casual transmisogyny is the most exhausting thing. I see a post on instagram, the first slide says "trans erotica" and I think "awesome, I wonder what's in it?" As I go through the slides I notice... huh these first couple are all transmasc erotica, well maybe the last few will be transfem. So I keep scrolling, and while it doesn't specify if the books have transmasc or transfem characters, there are tags for the relationships and they're all fucking Ms. "MM relationship" "MMM polycule" and I get to the end and there's not a single one that has a transfem character. I go to leave a comment like "hey please put 'transmasc' instead of 'trans' so people know what you're talking about. But I check the description first because that's polite. They've already added a section in the description (at the very bottom) saying next time they'll be clearer. "Title slide should definitely say transMASC erotica! I will makes this more clear in future versions, as trans women and femmes are too often neglected in discussions of trans literature [double heart emoji] (added 7/8/2024)"

Remake the post? I'm not kidding. If other transfems see this post, get excited and then scroll through the whole thing and then go to the comments, enough that the poster was made aware of the mix up, then it's going to push this post in the algorithm. This person is benefitting from misleading people, and they are aware of it. But fixing it is just too much work. And like... okay fine I get that it's a little exhausting to re-edit the image and then takedown and reupload the post. But when I went to their account to take a poke around I saw they made a part II to their trans erotica post.

I thought "oh cool they didn't change the first image, maybe they've included transfem erotica now!" Second sentence of the first paragraph of description: "Offering up transmasc erotica collection PART TWO bc I've been staying fed recently [trans flag][black heart][bow][smiling devil face]" Which at least personally I found really frustrating to read. They used the exact same graphic for the first slide as they used in part I, again implying that there would be trans people in general. I went through the books, there's two amab enbies, both of which are side characters it seems one of which is the devil So yeah, horray, you included tranfems. But the focus is still clearly on transmasc characters. But to be fair, it was posted before the edit to part I's description was added. But also even though part II was posted before that edit, it doesn't have an edit of it's own. Probably because there's plausible deniability in the form of the amab enby characters, so they can claim that all trans people are included. Despite it being two characters in ten books, neither of which are a trans woman. It's the sort of fake, tokenizing inclusion that really starts to get under my skin and pour sand in my joints.

I went through all the posts they've made since part II, I'd go through all the ones since part I but I don't have that kind of time and frankly this is fucking exhausting. Every book they talk about, sans the two featuring amab enbies mentioned earlier, is about transmasc characters. In both erotica and other genres, that's all this person offers. It's also really telling when they make a post about "trans enby & gender queer book accounts of follow", where I would assume that they might shout out a transfem account that focuses on that side of erotica, and from what I can tell every single account of the nine they shout out is transmasc.

People in real life: "hey dude what's up?"

Yeah yeah reality check whatever. Okay so is this account in and of itself a problem? No, a 800 follower instagram account that talks about books does not a cause for alarm make. Is this indicative of a wider spread issue in the queer community? Yeah actually, the exclusion (intentional or not) of transfem stories and creators from the community starts with what individual people are engaging with. If all you read is transmasc books, and all you talk to are transmasc people then you're going to have issues when trans people aren't that. I'm not trying to attack this account, I didn't include their username very intentionally. I'm just using them as an instance of a specific brand of transmisogyny that I see a lot and find fucking exhausting, that being extremely trans positive accounts that only ever talk about transmascs. I don't know where I'm going with this. I didn't really have a plan.

There's an aversion to trans women. For a variety of reasons society hates us. People who have an easier time integrating with society at large tend to overlook that, and instead often adopt some of those aversions subconsciously. They're not going to mistreat you in public, or do anything obvious, they've got manners, but they're not gonna read books about you, or shout you out. It sucks because I feel like a crazy person pointing it out. I didn't talk about it for years because I thought people would think I'm weird, but discussions of transmisogyny on tumblr have opened my eyes to the fact that I'm not alone, that other people also see this, and that it's an actual problem.

Thanks sisters. It sucks on this boat, but at least it's crewed.

[a-polite-melody]

Hey

If you ever find yourself tempted to blame anything negative about certain trans women you’ve met on some “male socialization” which makes all trans women like that

Maybe stop and think for two seconds

“Is the thing I’m talking about also something cis women are taught or will do to other women?”

Because I guarantee you the answer is ‘yes’.

“Oh there’s a problem with trans women treating people like sex objects, especially if the people they’re attracted to are women.”

That’s not a trans woman specific problem. That’s a problem you can also find with cis women at similar levels.

“Trans women act in ways that are misogynistic and don’t question it because ‘by my identity I can’t be a misogynist.’”

That’s not a trans woman specific problem. I think I’ve actually encountered more of this attitude from cis women than I have from trans women, myself.

“Trans women use their status as ‘the most oppressed’ to claim that any of their behaviour—even if it’s creepy, even if it’s bigoted, even if it’s predatory, even if it’s abusive—is justified because it is always ‘against their oppressors’ anyway.”

…Are we forgetting that cis radfems exist? That’s their whole schtick!

“Trans women act entitled to all other women’s bodies, this must be because they were taught as boys to act entitled to women’s bodies”

Acting entitled over women’s bodies is a problem that exists within the population of cis women to the point where it’s even cited as part of what makes up transmisogyny.

All of these things (and more) are much more coherently explained as patriarchal socialization of EVERYONE in society and often then a compounding of using your identity as a reason you shouldn’t need to unpack that. This is a society thing, not an ~AMAB socialization~ thing.

[euniexenoblade]

"I don't like projecting gender identities onto other people" you won't even stop calling trans women bro

[hiiragi7]

I've been seeing quite a lot of discourse lately defining transness as "identifying as a gender opposite to/different from what society expects you to be".

This is incredibly vague, and I feel misses that, for many people like me, there is not exactly a clear gender in which society expects us to be, nevermind a clear "opposite" or "different" gender which we can identify with. Many intersex people have experiences in which one person calls us a "failed male" while another calls us a "DSD female". Many of us have been assigned, reassigned, degendered, reassigned again. In this sense, for many intersex people, it would appear that no matter which gender we are we would fall under this definition of trans if we so choose it; society so often does not expect us to conform to a singular gender, rather they expect us not to exist at all. Even for many intersex people who identify as cisgender, their gender and sex are constantly brought into question and suspected of being inauthentic, an imposter of a different gender/sex "pretending" to be cisgender. In this sense, any gender we choose is "opposite" of expectations, even cisgender identities, because we are intersex.

And yet, the discourse I have been seeing lately has been attempting to sort intersex people into easily digestible and simplified boxes based on AGAB ("AFAB intersex" and "AMAB intersex") and trying to claim what kind of intersex person is allowed to call themselves transfem based on their AGAB, as though this event at birth always determines what gendered expectations are set for you and where you can transition to after.

Which of my gender assignments should I refer to as my "assigned gender"? The choice made by the medical professionals at my birth? The choices made by my parents? At which time? By which parent? And why does it matter to people so much that I have an assigned gender to refer to when it's all so messy anyway? Why must I invent convenient acronyms to describe it to you for your judgement? Why is it not enough simply to say I know my own experiences and identity best and that it's none of your business? Why are you trying to decide for me what I should call myself?

All this to say, I wish people would stop making assumptions about and policing other people's identities. I will readily admit I don't always understand an identity, and this is a good thing; it means there is an infinite variety of us and an infinite amount to learn about each other.

I wrote this post with the recent intersex transfem & afab transfem discourse in mind, but it quite honestly applies to a lot of the very exclusionary and rigid attitudes I've seen in our community lately. Once again, why are we using the actions of oppression (for example, the action of nonconsensual gender assignments; AGAB) to define our trans identities, to the point of excluding each other within our own community? How are we helping each other in doing this?

(I do have similar questions regarding the divide in language between "AFAB transfem" and simply "transfem" - Why specifically the label of "AFAB transfem" rather than just "transfem", if the argument is that AGAB does not determine gender? Personally, I would like to move away from AGAB language altogether.)

I've never had a clear gender to transition from; I only hope that in the future the community will support people like me in using whatever language we find best to describe the gender we are transitioning to.

Trans is a word open to anyone who identifies as such. That's the best part of it.

[kunosoura]

Man it’s crazy how there’s always a plausible reason for why the terms Trans women use to identify each other and talk about their particular issues are either evil or actually belong to everyone. CAGAB terminology is misgendering and Transfem belongs to everyone and “Tranny” can be reclaimed by everyone who’s trans and “Transfem” can be used by anyone who feels it describes them and so for that matter, can “trans woman” (and saying otherwise is intersexist), TMA/TME is binaristic/misgendering/whatever.

Like I’m a very relaxed person in general and I have zero interest in policing lgbt slur reclamation or individual identities or anything but like is it not glaringly obvious who is being systemically deprived of the language to discuss their particular circumstances here

[calamityquellerei]

i think we need to stop pitting transfems and transmascs against each other. we need to stop acting like we can only center one experience and not the other, or like saying one group is oppressed means the other group is an active oppressor. this is what bigots want, they want us to be divided so we don't have strength and unity. we can only liberate ourselves when we liberate each other.