#you say ''tma/tme isn't real''

[juney-blues]

yeah you'll say "tma/tme is a useless binary" but i don't think you actually believe that.

any time trans women ask for you to recognise you might have even the slightest bit of power over them, you know to close rank. You'll deny having any privilege over trans women while at the same time knowing clearly how best to leverage it.

you find it *very* useful, you just wish we didn't too.

[transmisogyny-explained]

I want to submit a perspective on "afab transfemininity" from. an afab multi gender person. I know my experience isn't representative of everyone who calls themselves this, but I wanted to at least share

I don't call myself a trans woman, I hesitate to call myself transfem. nonetheless, I feel connected to femininity in a distinctly transgender way. when I first came out, I hated being a girl. I was a transmedicalist and validated myself by invalidating others. I had to face a lot of internalized misogyny and transphobia in order to really learn what it meant to be a man. after I started testosterone about 3 yrs ago, I realized I was a lesbian, and started feeling more comfortable being, at least in part, a woman. it was different this time because it was something I liked, something new and my own, not something ascribed to me. it's not cisgender in any way, it is transfemininity

this being said, I know my experience toward transfemininity is extremely different from the norm. I am not what most people are referring to when they refer to transfems, and there are many definitions of transfem that do not include me. despite that, I do have some experiences that overlap, things I can relate to. my femininity is at its core transgender in nature. my gender now is more complex... I feel like both a man and a woman, neither and both. but that doesn't mean my feelings about my gender are predatory or invalid. I don't want to talk over transfems, I am very aware of my place in these conversations. but I still have a place, and it frustrates me to see you share posts that minimize my experience into a stereotype

Why do you view transfemininity as being, at its core, the experience of being “both a man and a woman” lmao

Get back to me when you start viewing trans women as actual women and transfemininity as actual femininity, and not an aesthetic or a vibe or “some other third thing” apart from femininity.

You “feel femininity in a distinctly transgender way?” Congrats! You’re nonbinary! But that is NOT what being a trans woman is — Their womanhood and femininity is not essentially different from cis women’s.

What you are describing is a very generic experience of being a feminine nonbinary person, and I don't say that to insult you; but to compare that experience to those of trans women’s betrays the fact that you don't view them as the same gender as cis women. Which is transmisogyny. It’s textbook third-gendering.

Call yourself a nonbinary woman- Call yourself whatever you want, in fact. But trans women and TMA people are never going to feel safe around you so long as you continue insisting that transfemininity is essentially the same as the nonbinary femininity you experience, and essentially different from “real” cis women’s femininity.

Also, can I just say that it’s a little condescending that you would end your ask by saying “I’m aware of my place in these conversations, but…”

Like, if you were really “aware of your place” and were actually listening to transfems when we talk about transfeminism, you would be able to recognize the enormous amount of transmisogyny baked into your message. On top of the third-gendering, you also managed to:

Imply that TMA people don’t understand the complexities of gender and nonbinarity like you, a TME person, do

Imply that TMA people creating the language and spaces to discuss our experiences in a way that excludes you, a TME person, is invalidating and somehow tantamount to labeling you as “predatory” (what does that even mean?)

Sent an unprompted ask to a transfem’s blog venting your frustrations with the language of transfeminism, despite the fact that I’m not even the one who made those posts?

Showed a pretty absurd amount of entitlement by insinuating that it’s somehow my problem that you feel frustration over misunderstanding the basics of transfeminist theory

Subtly demanded that I do the emotional labor of managing your frustration, which, frankly, is just classic misogyny

Displayed a complete lack of understanding towards what transmisogyny even is, nor why we, as the direct targets of transmisogyny, need the the language and spaces to discuss it

I really don’t care what transfem “experiences” you think you relate to, the fact that you perpetuate and can benefit from transmisogyny will always separate you from us, and if you actually gave a shit about us and our struggles, you would recognize that and try to be a better ally to us rather than co-opting and redefining our language in a shallow attempt to define us out of existence.

As has been said countless times now:

“Transfeminine” does not mean “trans + feminine,” it is a term coined by TMA people to describe our specific experiences with being denied our femininity. That is something which you, as a person for whom (as you said) womanhood/femininity was ascribed by the system of patriarchy, cannot understand in the way we do.

[psychotrenny]

One of the more depressing effects of systemic transmisogyny is the way some trans women get so desperate for any validation thar they start praising chasers. And not just specific chasers who gave them an apparently "good" experience, but with the entire concept of chasers as a whole. It's like they feel flattered by the idea of people seeing their transness as a positive characteristic, something that makes them attractive and special, while ignoring the way that even "best case" that attraction stems from a place of dehumanisation which sees you as merely part of a class of sex objects rather than an actual individual person. I say "best case" because for many chasers their attraction to transfeminity comes less from a desire for those associated characteristics in a vacuum, an inexplicably desire for girlcock or what have you, but from the vulnerability (both personal emotional and systemically socio-economic) that TMA people experience making them much easier to exploit and abuse

Like Pro-Chaser sentiment is a product of people completely misunderstanding what a Chaser is and what they do. No matter how lonely you are it doesn't do any good to see Chasers as some easy outlet for sex and validation; their treatment of transfems isn't just degrading but is often outright dangerous to an even greater extent than your average TME individual. Not the sort of people you want to be spending any time around

And sometimes you even see this sort of sentiment, this desire to be loved by someone who only loves you as a tranny because at least it's some sort of love you can get as a tranny, creep through when others are treating Chasers in a critical or mocking way. Like the Halimede MF twitter account's whole deal is roleplaying as a (somewhat exaggerated but still recognisable) specific sort of Lesbian Chaser; the "harmless transfeminist girl" if you will. Regardless of what you think of the bit, it's very clearly a bit. It's largely meant to be funny, but certainly not flattering to the kind of chaser Halimede embodies.

Most of the transfems I know recognise this, on one level or another, but you sometimes see girls express an almost genuine longing for her. A desperation for affection so great that it bleeds into how they treat a caricatured depiction of someone that is predatory on a fundamental level, just because it represents a "real woman" capable of feigning some shadow of respect for their identity and struggles despite the obviously dehumanising way with which this character regards trans women and their anatomy. Sure a lot of this "I want Halimede" stuff is just playing along with the joke, but some of it has enough genuine sentiment behind the irony that it makes you worry. To put it in Tumblr terms, HalimedeMF is another example of "You missed the point by idolising her". Which isn't to blame the individuals; the fact it happens at all is just another manifestation of a much larger and more horrible system. But it's saddening how attempts to criticise our oppression, even light-heartedly, can end up just reflecting it back into our faces. We need to do better than this

[catgirlforeskin]

Calling TME/TMA a binary is, at some level, deliberately missing the point right? Like the whole point is it's not a population label, it's a means of distinguishing a given set of experiences (TMA) from other sets (TME). So when people say it's just (transwomen) reproducing the gender binary, is there a coherent analysis that's NOT deliberately missing the point?

Saw a few accounts with variations on "dni if you engage with the tma/tme binary' and can't think of a good explanation that isn't them intentionally misunderstanding:(

Yeah it’s a (usually deliberate) misconstruing of tme/tma as identities instead of a means of analyzing oppression.

It’s very convenient for tme trans people to do because they get to go “umm you’re enforcing the gender binary and the real transphobe for asking me if I have any lived experience with transmisogyny on my post where I dismiss it existing or treat misandry as an equal force”

[euniexenoblade]

I'm transmasc and I don't think I completely understand the discussion around TMA/TME.

I'm pretty sure I mostly agree with you. Like, "transandrophobia" is not a helpful or accurate description of the transmasc experience, and I can see how it could be used to belittle what transfems go through.

Transfems definitely get more attention from hate groups. Transmasc erasure sucks, but it can definitely be a blessing when the bigots are picking their targets.

I keep seeing posts comparing trans men to incels and MRAs. I haven't seen many transmascs who would warrant that comparison.

That's not to say it's necessarily an unfair comparison. On the contrary, it probably means that there's a lot of transmisogyny going around that I'm not seeing. And if I'm not seeing it, that probably means I'm inadvertently participating in it.

IDK why I felt the need to send this to you. I guess I was hoping you'd tell me how to do better, which totally isn't your job. Feel free to ignore me and/or tell me to fuck off.

I'll send you $20 for tolerating my bullshit. Have a nice day.

Ok I wanna answer this before I get too high (I'm honestly feeling it already). Thank you for the $20, when I realized I forgot to pack a lunch today that money helped me eat still so legit thank you.

So first off, "trans women get more attention from hate groups, transmasc erasure sucks but can be a blessing." (I can't copy and paste on this screen, so I'm paraphrasing) yes but I wouldn't call erasure a blessing, no matter who it's for. They're two sides of a very fucked coin, on the one side transfems get lots of attention and vitriol, and the erasure of transmascs makes it harder for some transmascs to understand they can be trans. But on top of that, the form of transfems we see are never real representation, 99% of the time it's a transmisogynistic ideal of trans women, it's the weirdo white boy spreading lipstick all over their face just before they smash the mirror in a fit of "dysphoria" kind of shit. Though transfems have extreme visibility, our actual selves are not visible, we are ultra violet rapist horn dogs or we're the super ignorant, super emotional crybaby.

And, a side tangent, cuz you sorta did a thing the transandrodorks do that is frustrating. It's not a measurement of what's "worse." That's not how oppression works, that's not what we are saying, we are talking about the forms of oppression.

Men are not oppressed for being men. They can be oppressed for a variety of things, racism, ableism, interphobia (is this the right term I forget), homophobia, etc etc. Masculinity is rewarded, masculinity is the desire, patriarchy exists so men get to be above women. Things like "misandry" do not exist, they are inventions of violently misogynistic men, your MRAs, your incels, your conservatives (this includes liberals btw).

The person who coined "transandrophobia" used to talk about wanting to correctively rape lesbians. I'm not gonna go at someone's kinks, but the blog was not presented as a kink blog, I literally went there myself and read the posts when this first popped off and they come off as true lesbophobia in the context of their blog and coupled with the misandry posting, this person literally looks like MRAs and incels. The defense the community uses is "it's a kink are you kink shaming?? It was on a private locked blog!" Which, the latter, no it wasn't, I literally went there and looked, and the former. Idk I think if you're saying you want correctively rape lesbians while also talking about misandry and counting "transandrophobia," you look misogynistic and homophobic.

The main writers people follow for transandrophobia related content are straight up liars, who make shit up, and one specific non horse entity consistently cites himself as his own "source" and when he doesn't, he cites terf blogs that are connected to kiwifarms and sites of the sort. They will take bits talked about in feminism and present it as a thing they discovered and present it as transandrophobia. Ie. "Men can't show any femininity and can't cry and that's misandry" despite things like this are discussed at length in feminist texts, men can't do these things cuz that makes them more "woman" in the societal lens. Yeah it's fucked, but it's misogyny, not misandry.

I am, consistently, misgendered by the transandrodorks, and so is every other trans woman that disagrees with them. And it's definitely intentional.

Then there are token trans women who don't know much of anything about feminism or transphobia and will straight up harass you for saying women are oppressed. They often weaponize transmisogyny against other transfems, they misgender, suicide bait, or in velvetvexations case, will stalk your blog for two days even though you ignore her and when she's sees you're on a date with your wife, she goes to your wife's blog and starts messaging her instead. Legit, this woman is one of the worst people on this website, the only reason she's not seen as communismkills 2 is cuz men like her.

On top of this, terfs consistently support "transandrophobia" as a concept and constantly say that transandrophobia is compatible with terf ideology. The transandrodork community is ripe with terfs and crypto terfs. Like that one who said he hoped a friend and I get raped, cuz saying "men arent oppressed" warrants wishing rape on people. Or the trans guy that outright said "trans women are male" and tripled down harder saying "trans women don't experience misogyny and oppress transmascs cuz they're really men," claims that were so wild that even velvetvexations couldn't agree with them lol.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: not every person that believes in transandrophobia is a bigot or a bad person. A lot are just young transmascs who are under read about oppression and history, and this terf/transphobe community swoops in and pretends to be representing them and sucks them in. For every disparaging transmisogynist piece, there's two more that are talking about the problems of transmascs. So when you tell these guys "that's a hate group" they don't remember the post calling trans women men, they remember stuff about T being super illegal. So they think we are attacking them for having a problem, not the actual bigotry on display.

Honestly, if these people would just stop misgendering trans women, they might have more trans women who'd be nice to em. But that's the consistent trend.

Transandrophobia is a violent, transmisogynistic ideology that is propped up by terf ideology. That's why they are compared to MRAs and incels.

[velvetvexations]

I think the "tme versus tma" peddlers who spend all their time treating trans women as the only people who suffer aren't ready to admit they are uplifting a weird quasi-male supremacist idea, wherein male is a falsely perceived attribute that is centered nonetheless. "I was falsely assigned the role as male so you all need to shut up and listen to me" isn't really much different than "I was assigned the role as male so you all need to shut up and listen to me"

It once again goes back to the idea "THIS conception of gender is real, actually". Transphobes say gender is tied to biology and trans people will often treat it like it's your soul that's gendered. This results in the same fetishization of female victimization that TERFs engage in where it's like, trans men have always been men and trans women have always been women from birth (which is true enough if you're going to get all metaphysical about it), and that means you have to take every single interaction throughout their entire life to be within that context.

But, of course, baeddelism does not mean anything like "male supremacy" actually exists. It's just yet another logical bind a minority of transfems, and the non-transfems who support them, have worked themselves into.

[ugly-anarchist]

The main issue I have with TME/TMA is that TMA is far too vague, but meant to be extremely specific and TME is just ridiculous.

"Affected" by transmisogyny is.. kind of a lot of people. All trans and intersex people are, to an extent, targets of it.

The main target of transmisogyny is trans women but that doesn't mean it doesn't affect other people. Using such a broad word like "affected" in this context ends up feeling extremely invalidating to a lot of people because, even if we're not the main targets, that doesn't mean people haven't come after us on the basis of transmisogynistic beliefs.

I'm intersex and I'm the main target of intersexism but I would never say that perisex trans people aren't affected by intersexism, nor would I say they're exempt from experiencing it.

Now, this doesn't mean that perisex trans people can't be intersexist, they absolutely can. Same for people who aren't the main targets of transmisogyny and perpetuating transmisogyny. Non-transfems can be transmisogynistic but this doesn't mean they're exempt from experiencing it.

Framing it as "you are exempt and you benefit from it" completely erases any and all nuance from actual real life human experiences.

Saying that transfems and trans women are the main targets of transmisogyny isn't bad or incorrect, but placing labels on other people's experiences and refusing to acknowledge overlap and similarities in treatment between two different communities is just counterproductive and isolating.

Transfems absolutely deserve words to describe their experiences but there are very valid reasons why people take issue with TME/TMA and completely disregarding them and labeling them as transmisogynistic isn't helping you.

[doberbutts]

I very much see your points! I suppose the only real difference between your viewpoint and mine stands in the fact that while yes, I do agree that to use the terms TME/TMA to sort of "gatekeep" specific experiences is bad, I feel like that's more of an issue with individual (although decently widespread, unfortunately) misappropriation of the language, rather than a conceptual flaw with the framework. I believe there's a lot of people who intend to use the terms correctly, and if and when they happen not to we should aim to correct that individual behavior rather than throw the baby out with the water, so to speak. I do understand that it's a bit of a tall ask when everyone's at each other's throats and often not willing to return the favor, but at the very least that's what we should strive for if we want to reach mutual understanding (I say all this knowing that's your goal too, I wouldn't assume otherwise).

After all, I do believe that the way "transandrodorks" are treated stems from a similar misunderstanding or overgeneralization of what we actually stand for, and an unwillingness to reach out a hand and actually listen to what we have to say rather than assume the worst from a few bad actors. That's why when the positions are reversed I want to at least try to reach out and meet the other party in the middle, even if the same courtesy isn't always afforded to me.

As for your example with Caster Semenya, I do believe that intersex people should absolutely be allowed to use the term TMA to refer to themselves regardless of AGAB if they feel it's appropriate, as their experiences often exist outside the strict framework we tend to employ and they would know best which terminology applies to them and which doesn't (and should also obviously allowed to make up their own when needed). I don't see eye to eye with anyone who advocates for TMA/TME while disagreeing on this point (and I'll admit I'm not sure what the general consensus here is).

And as for the other example, I'm a bit hesitant to continue that specific analogy (which I do believe to be absolutely valid, btw) since I'm white and I would rather not say anything out of turn, so I'll instead offer the usual rebuttal to the analogous point: when someone who is TME experiences transmisogyny, it's an atomic experience, not continuous. They might be mistaken for a trans woman, but as they are not actually a trans woman they don't live in the same state of constant fear and threat of (this specific type of) violence. They can prove they're not transfem, and the attack will stop, or at least lessen. They have the option of simply not being transfem, something which obviously isn't afforded to transfems. That doesn't mean that the experience they went through didn't affect them, or did so less, but they would live it differently from someone who would be the actual intended target.

Now, I relayed that point but I personally am not sure I agree with it 100%, specifically the latter half. If the TME person being attacked happens to be another trans person, rather than cis, they don't get to escape the danger through proving they're not transfem, because then they're just trading a type of violence for another (the one actually meant to target them, which might look differently). Not to mention that you won't always be in a situation where you can/want to prove it, or where the other party will believe you or care either way. I guess the bigger point here is that if you're TME you're not always experiencing transmisogyny in every facet of your life, though.

Either way I believe there's plenty of more nuance that could be had here, and in that sense I do dislike how that's lost when using TME/TMA, but as terms they were never intended to encompass every possible experience in shorthand but rather just give a general idea, which could then be complemented by any additional info you would be willing to share.

Ah but you see, that's the talking over someone else's experience I'm talking about.

When TME people experience transmisogyny, it is incidental and not continuous. Well. For some, like my example of the idiot mistaking me for Mexican for being brown while saying a French word, that is true. I am not commonly mistaken for Mexican, though it's not unheard of, and it hasn't happened in years. Specifically, when I stopped wearing my hair long and started binding, I stopped being read as *Dominican* (which racist people do not see the difference between the various Latin American countries) and thus stopped experiencing this problem. It's incidental, but I still think that the best choice is to ally with Mexicans and other Latinos and Hispanics to stop the bigoted behavior from happening altogether.

But what happens when it IS continuous? Black cis women, also labeled TME, are disproportionately transvestigated and heavily punished by transmisogynist laws and rulings despite not being transgender themselves. Not only does showing birth certificates not help (and, also, I think this is Bad Logic, because if I have to show my personal private documents in order to be left alone, I'm still being Affected By The Oppression because I have to carry my documents everywhere. Like that's just Baby's First Fascism) but I have personally witnessed multiple black celebrity and politician cis women be forced to prove they are women *while they are pregnant*. And yes, that is misogynoir. But it is practiced by utilizing the exact same societal systems to hurt trans women. Thus my logic on the other post- all oppression hooks into each other and back onto itself somehow. Not only is that not incidental and very much continuous, but this a systemic problem and why cis and trans women and *especially* any person of color regardless of gender should ally among themselves to fight it.

And, finally "they can prove they're not trans fem and the attack will stop or lessen"- sure, much like how Hannah Gadsby was able to say "no no I'm not a faggot you see I am a lady a woman no man-liker here" and the guy left her alone wait no he didn't he beat the shit out of her anyway. Like that's the problem I have with this- the reality is that this does not apply to every single person and that real living people are being hurt and sometimes killed while being labeled exempt from the very thing that kills them. We have had cis people die due to bathroom laws meant to hurt trans women. It is absolutely not a matter of just proving you're not one because transmisogyny is one help of a drug and it is used as a dangerous weapon to any and everyone it's pointed towards.

And that is the crux of my problem. People can use whatever words they like to describe their own experiences. Pointing these words to describe someone else's experiences for them, however, and denying that their very real lived experiences have happened or that it matters less is where I draw the line.

[transmascpetewentz]

is the banner against tme/tma terms just admitting you think transmisogyny isn't real

"tme" and "tma" are not words primarily used to describe transmisogyny. They are words used to place transmisogyny as if it is above other forms of oppression including transandrophobia and intersexism. I know you'll claim that "cis men are tme too" but the purpose of a word is how it is objectively used. "TME" is almost always used to group trans men, AFAB nonbinary people, and cis women together as if we are all one group under the patriarchy, which is not true whatsoever.

How you extrapolated my being against divisive language to me thinking that transmisogyny isn't real says a lot more about how you think about intersections and Black feminism than it says about me or any of the fields that I reference.

[cepheusgalaxy]

Ok I'm gonna be very real for a second. I get it where the whole "trans mascs don't face discrimination for being trans mascs" argument comes from.

Trans women are trans and are woman, so they face both transphobia and misoginy. Like in a venn diagram. If transphobia is in one sphere and misoginy on the other, then transmisoginy sits at the middle, at this intersection.

Trans men are trans and are men, so they face transphobia, but not "misandry", because, well, misandry doesn't exist, so there isn't really a thing to transphobia to intersect with.

But this is a very, very simplistic way of seeing how people, trans people relate with gender.

Trans men don't have the same relationship with masculinity that cis men do. In queer spaces, for example, masc trans people are many times denied space because of this association with masculinity. That affects masc trans women and non-transmasc intersex people too. How couldn't it? Because we are "men", but we don't get the so known Men Benefits. We are The Enemy. But "the enemy" doesn't see us as one of them.

This hate of men many people have doesn't really affect your Non-Queer Cis Man. But it affects trans people. Sometimes it's not even just the hating of men. But the conception that men are like this or like that and are perverts or agressive or mean or automatically bad people that comes from sexist ideas that want to take the responsability of misoginistic men out of them by blaming it on their Inherent Nature also hurts trans people. Transmisandry is not something that intercepts transphobia with "misandry". It's a shade of oppresion that composes a lot of different factors that affect not only trans men, but any trans person percieved as a man at any given time, and that's why it's such an important word.

And as a side note, I also don't like the terms "TMA" and "TME". Like, think with me for a minute. Trans people have schrodinher's gender. We are women when it can be used against us and men when it can also be. We are nothing when it conveniences our oppressors, and they just see us as anything they see fit. We know that some trans woman get confused as trans men. We know some trans men get confused as trans women. So, if things are like that, than trans people all face exorsexism, transmisoginy and transandrophobia depending on circumstance. For them, we aren't "trans men" or "trans women". We are all trans freaks that may be "dangerous men" or "confused stupid girls" or "genderless gruesome freaks" as they see fit. So saying someone is "trans-misoginy-exempt" just sounds real silly. Yeah, perhaps in this given situation, but we all know that can very well change literally any time.

I think that, this way, TMA and TME could be better used as descriptors for states or situations, and not as identities. "I am transmisoginy excenpt at this moment." "I am transmisoginy affected in this other situation". I think being used this flexibly would benefit us very greatly

Anyways. Thank you for hearing my two cents. I'm gonna watch Hunter X Hunter now.

[queersatanic]

you should do some research about the legality of transition in algeria before you claim an algerian cis women getting transvestigated at the olympics cant be tme. theres a whole lot of shit that algerian trans women go through that imane khelif simply does not. hell you should question why there are zero trans women competing in the olympics.

You’re responding to this post, and it sounds like you’re claiming that it’s not transmisogyny unless someone experiences every or maybe just the worst aspects of transmisogyny, even if they experience some aspects.

Because literally, news orgs are calling an Algerian cis woman "transgender," and she's receiving hatred from some of the most prominent transmisogynists worldwide on the false basis that she is trans.

Almost definitionally, this is a woman affected by transmisogyny despite being assigned female at birth and living her entire life as a girl and now woman. This is true even, as you point out, though Algerian trans women have a different experience in Algeria than she has and does.

Again, the original post you're replying to did not say that “transmisogyny-exempt” and “transmisogyny-affected�� were useless categories, just that they aren’t essentialist, binary categories. They are not fixed. They are categories some people move back and forth between. The explicit point is that there is overlap especially in different contexts that makes it impossible to use TME/TMA as “legitimate trans women” and “everyone else”.

A skinny white trans fem in Los Angeles or London who has been on HRT for years and able to afford surgeries she wants won’t be exempt from every kind of transmisogyny in the world around her, but she likely would be exempt from some of them by virtue of meeting other standards of (white) femininity, so she might be able to more safely use bathrooms in public than a butch woman with a short hair cut, even if that butch woman is cis (or even straight!). That doesn't make the trans woman less trans or the cis woman more trans. It just means "transmisogyny" is a club and not a scalpel.

It's important to recognize that systems of oppression aren't concerned with locating something real or actual and punishing that real, actual thing; they're about enforcing hierarchies with arbitrary boundaries, and they don't bother to use any consistency or rigor because the whole point of having power is that you don't need to appeal to anything superior to exercise that power.

This is going to seem far afield, but about a decade ago, a man from India visited his son in Alabama and a cop put him into a coma by slamming him on his head into the sidewalk because neighbors had reported a “Black man” wandering suspiciously around in their neighborhood. The man "didn’t comply" because he didn't speak English, so naturally cops assumed he was intoxicated or combative. (From memory, the only person actually punished in that was the police chief who said the cop in question had done something wrong; the cop was cleared of all-wrongdoing.) In India, the father may have had a completely different social status, possibly even one that looked down on Black or African people. He certainly didn’t experience all of the worst elements of anti-Black racism in the white South. But in a white neighborhood in Alabama suburbia, he was dark enough to be treated like a Black man, dangerous and transgressive.

White supremacy, like transmisogyny, isn't concerned with whether you are the ultimate version of a thing just if you’re enough of a thing to be punished. Of course we need to recognize when other people have challenges that are different or more intense than we go through, but our coalition ought to be built on unified resistance to shared oppression rather than policing the boundaries of categories people who hate us aren't even bothered to learn or care about while they hurt us.

[plaidos]

I'm a cis girl who is pretty much universally mistaken for a man if I dress casually and don't wear makeup (for many reasons including my build, my voice, and facial and body hair). If the person perceiving me is themselves LGBT and TME they sometimes think I'm a trans man but usually think I'm a cis gay man, and trans girls usually think I'm a boymoding trans girl. If I put work into makeup and present feminine, I'm consistently be read as transfem in LGBT spaces, and in other spaces I still only "pass" as what I actually am if I'm dressed very modestly and am really careful not to talk (I'm trying to learn voice training but it's easier to just be as quiet as I can). So even though I am happier being feminine I don't usually do it unless I'm in a LGBT space, because it's not always safe and because I don't have the time and money to do makeup every day.

Please don't worry that I'm here to argue that I'm TMA because I know that I'm not, people in my personal life and online know that I'm not trans, when interpersonal transmisogyny is one of the biggest kinds that hurts TMA people, plus every kind of discrimination can occasionally hit people who aren't the real target of it. What I would really like to ask, is how I should go about correcting people, especially transfems, when they assume I'm also trans? I don't want to make anyone think that I consider being transfem a bad thing, both because that would be hurtful and because it isn't true (it makes me relieved and happy to be read as a woman as long as it's safe). But I also don't want to be tricking people, like that post recently with the nonbinary AFAB person letting their transfem friends continue to think they were also transfem. I have very bad social anxiety and I really have no idea how to handle it at all so if you or any of your TMA followers have any advice at all on Social scripts for me, I would appreciate it very much, thank you

this is a great question, anon! it's perfectly acceptable to say "oh, i'm actually not trans" if somebody assumes you're trans. if you get a funny look in response you can (but don't have to) follow it up with "i don't mind if people think i'm trans, i just didn't wanna mislead you" or similar. i've met plenty of people like you, i've had this exact encounter with women like you (and with cis guys who are commonly read as transmasc, too) and i've never felt weird about it, and i'm always left more worried that i've made you feel weird. so i promise, it's not weird, trans girls will most likely give you the benefit of the doubt (i mean, you seem like you understand transmisogyny well & are a competent listener, so you probably feel safe to most trans girls you hang out with).

it's a normal part of your life and it's ok to be casual about it too. like if somebody mentions you're trans or implies you're trans in a group setting with other people who might think this, it's totally normal to be like, "oh, yeah, i'm actually not trans. i get that a lot though, i just haven't said anything yet because like, i didn't want to be weird about it" like everybody would totally get what you meant i promise

[trans-androgyne]

I do agree that people are too rigid or quick to make identity based assumptions when using tma/tme, but people using language in flawed ways doesn't make the language the problem. While there are issues with these terms constantly chasing the perfect language only derails the conversation. Maybe we will figure out something better later on but for now I don't think the terms are the real problem.

Honestly, I find it very hypocritical that a lot of the people who complain about the term tme because "how can someone be 'exempt' from transmisogyny if it is systemic" will turn around and be annoyed by people who say "transandrophobia isn't real because there is no androphobia" and vice versa.

I do think the term transandrophobia is a good thing but that is the point; the people at the center of the problem should get the most input on the terms they find useful and it isn't helpful for everyone else to distract from the point by playing semantics.

This is a very understandable perspective. In the case of transandrophobia though it completely misunderstands what the word means at all. People claim that transandrobros think men are systemically oppressed by women. That is not true. In the case of tme, people including myself and probably every new person introduced to the term perceive “exempt” as meaning “exempt.” I do not see any way to rehabilitate that. But there are deeper issues than the language to me.

My issue with tme/tma is that it’s a binary. It doesn’t account for more complex experiences with transmisogyny than that. I don’t take issue with there being a term for transfems to describe experiencing targeted transmisogyny (tma) but to assume others, especially whole groups such as transmascs, never experience it in a meaningful way? I will listen to transfems about their own experiences forever. But I will not sit here and listen to them about other people’s experiences.

People also use the term in ways that make it clear they believe trans women are the most oppressed demographic in the world. I get it, I have also felt like that about transmisogyny in the past, but that is not an acceptable mindset to have and argue for.

I would really appreciate hearing what the term “tme” means to you though. It’s the one I take issue with. To some people it’s a synonym for non-transfem and therefore an oppressor of transfems. It gives them the right to “punch up” at tmes in whatever cruel way they see fit. That’s the behavior I have the most problems with. In any case thanks for reaching out.

[cl0ckworkqueerness]

i hate the labels tma and tme so fucking much it genuinely makes my blood boil for many reasons but one of them is because so often it's not used to discuss the impact of transmisogyny on those who experience it/how it's perpetuated by those who don't, but instead it's used to say "look! here's a group of people who experience REAL/WORSE transphobia! all other trans people DONT HAVE IT AS BAD AS US!" as if a specific and horrible type of oppression doesn't fucking exist for any trans person except trans people perceived as amab

yes it Is important to discuss transmisogyny and it Is a very real issue that corrupts and destroys the lives and images of so many people who did nothing wrong except be alive in the "wrong" type of way. i will NEVER deny its existence, its severity, and its roots in a wider culture of "you have to be a woman or feminine in THIS EXACT WAY otherwise you're SEXUALIZING WOMEN". i am also not shy to call attention to the fact that exists everywhere, yes, even in trans spaces.

However i also just. Kind of hate that to many people, it's become a standard for the "worst" kind of transphobia someone can experience. as if being denied basic and necessary medical care for being a trans man, transmasc, nonbinary afab, or intersex isn't a real problem, or that trans men and perceived-afab people's bodies being treated like sacred temples and blessed by the birth gods and in need of being protected from the big bad evil doctors trying to do a surgery on us isn't a real problem, or being shunned by a cisnormative society for not being "masculine enough" isn't a problem, or being shunned by queer spaces for being "too masculine" isn't a problem, etc etc.

there are so, so, so many ways that the transphobia a person faces, and the sex characteristics that person is perceived to have, can intersect. there are so many different ways a trans person can experience violence. can experience erasure. can be talked over. can be demonized. can have their status as anything weaponized against them. hell, transphobia can intersect with anything, including intersexism, ableism, xenophobia, racism, etc.

that is what i meant by "no one form of transphobia is worse than another" in that one post, by the way, if you were curious (or if you were looking for an excuse to shoot down my arguments, as i know a few people were)

if you're going to take anything away from my posts, i'd like it to be that i stand up for all trans people, regardless of who they are. even the ones who tell me i'm wrong or disgusting for doing, saying, or being whatever it is I do, say, or am. that includes people who don't get talked about, or erased, or experience kinds of oppression that aren't known about. i happen to be more vocal about trans men's experiences because, well, i am one, and that's what i experience on a day to day basis, and for a very long time i didn't see anyone talking about it at all.

never let trans unity die.

[gaogaigoatgrrl]

i get the feeling the transmasc thing isn't just surface-level what-it-says-on-the-tin stuff, so i gotta ask what's the actual problem for us with transandrophobia? it just looks like a word like transmisogyny (though structured differently) so i don't really understand what the immediate problem is

you have to understand that a significant part of the reason the term "transmisogyny" exists in the first place is that everyone (generalizing), including tme trans people, routinely treats trans women and transfems like absolute dogshit, and they get away with it because they have privilege over tma people.

i'm not just talking about being mean. i'm talking about denying us community support, pushing us into precarity, then taking advantage of our desperation to use us as scapegoats and sexual objects and throwing us away when we're no longer useful. it's not just cis men who do this. tme people in general engage in this bullshit. i've been on the receiving end of it myself, specifically from transmascs.

there is no "equal but opposite" counterpart, but some (but not all) tme trans people are immature enough that when they hear tma people trying to develop terminology to name this dynamic, their first thought is "hey, no fair! why don't i get a fancy oppression term too?"

in the past, it was en vogue to just deny the existence of transmisogyny outright, or to use semantic trickery to claim that it affects all trans people (the latter method is gaining popularity again, however). now, the angle's that everyone's oppressed in their own way, so there's no need to point fingers, right? but that ignores the fundamental nature of oppression. it's a thing that groups of people do to other groups of people to subordinate them for their own collective gain. who's subordinating men?

this is the part where someone will want to accuse me of saying that trans men aren't oppressed at all. and that's outright untrue. trans men are oppressed, and viciously at that. but that's not because society oppresses men. transphobia is just that bad on its own (not to mention when it intersects with other oppressions besides misogyny-- we'll get to that later).

tl;dr: it's bad because it gives tme trans people a way to duck responsibility for the way they treat trans women (and transfems more broadly). it obfuscates intracommunity power dynamics that regularly get transfems trapped in isolation, povery, and homelessness and killed and makes them easier to avoid addressing. if everyone involved were cis, it'd be easy to see this for the antifeminism that it is. i was seeing manosphere circles (mra, mgtow, incel, pua, etc.) use a lot of similar arguments and talking points in a cis context ten years ago.

i should cap this off by saying that transmisogyny isn't the only power dynamic that bears mentioning within trans circles. racism, particularly antiblack racism, is also a significant problem in similar ways (arguably worse), and white trans people (like myself) should not be dodging responsibility for that either. all of us have a responsibility to make sure that the most vulnerable among us do not get left high and dry, and i believe that in general it is both ethical and strategically smart to work in solidarity with other oppressed groups that sometimes overlap with our own. there are tme trans people who share this insight wrt women, and i am grateful for their willingness to stand up for us.

liberation does not come from sweeping conflicts like this under the rug, but from treating them like real problems that need to be taken seriously and actively worked against. fundamentally, my beef with transandrophobia theory is that it interferes with this process and is therefore anti-liberatory.

[rin-tezuka]

i would personally say that the erasure of language for a-spec and nonbinary people is a real problem. granted that's not an excuse for brainrotting transmisogyny, but unlike """"transandrophobia""" aphobia and exorsexism are in fact real, you know? i don't know if I'm being very clear and I don't want to be a jerk in anyone's inbox just because i disagree with an offhand comment, but I was left thinking this basically. for every aromantic TME theyfab or whatever there's a TMA nonbinary aromantic transfem equivalent, and they have less institutionally vested interest in appearing the "most oppressed" to declare themselves ontologically privilegeless the way TME people often use other positionalities as a cudgel against transfems. but for that person, the erasure of aromanticism as a real possibility for humans to be that's equally healthy and important and not a mental illness to be fixed is a real problem. the fact that aromanticism is something to be mocked and dismissed both in and out of "queer" spaces is a real problem. That allo people who are queer some other way still benefit from the social legitimacy of getting into relationships and get to mock and dismiss aphobia as a problem while they fight to receive more social and legal capital for being in relationships is a real problem. binary people putting all gender oppression in binary terms (correctly) without accounting for the fact that you get shit on harder for being nonbinary because there is no framework for your gender so much as existing and that binary people have trouble even conceptualizing of enben as people who are in front of them and not abstract stragglers is a real issue even if TMEs use it to cry and wail and piss their pants over being called TME. you're nonbinary (referencing your bio), so maybe saying that is pointless, but I see even other nonbinary people forgetting exorsexism is a real axis of gender oppression and not an accidental attachment to oppositional sexism sometimes. and this isn't a thought exercise to guilt trip a stranger with to me, this is a real person, someone I know personally. and maybe someone making "just call me a slur" jokes at a-spec terms isn't quite a "real problem" compared to that, but it doesn't reflect well on your supposed "community"'s ability to take the power they wield over you and the capacity to hurt you with it seriously if they're rolling their eyes at you for merely having words to say it with, does it? I guess the point of this is just that I wish people would articulate their grievances with the "everyone welcome except transfems" culture without shitting on aspec people. Oppression based on aromanticism or asexuality is a real thing I experience and a lot of my friends experience, mockery of any aspec words and experiences whatsoever both from straight people and queer people is a thing that happens a lot, and it doesn't become funny to point and laugh at the sentiment that it's rude and gross and aphobic of some people to equate our words to slurs or assimilationist nonsense just because that person who said it is also a transmisogynistic bigot.

sorry for writing an essay. It's just something I'd like to stop seeing from the people whose posts i like, since I have to see it everywhere else in my life anyway. I really want to say that I'm not trying to crucify you or judge you by a statement on the internet or anything! It's Only A Blog and all that. I guess this is just to say that I personally dislike the conflation of discussions of aphobia and exorsexism as "fake problems" like "transandrophobia" for TME people to cover their asses when they are very much real things. that's it. have a nice day! :3

I mean don't get me wrong i don't really disagree. I kinda just think concerns about stuff like making jokes about QPPs (a term i haven't heard for like 8 years) is hollow coming from somebody who hates trans women, yknow?