the reason 99% of this website has “no terfs” in their descriptions and yet transmisogynist ideas run so rampant is that almost no cis lgb people on this website know actually what transmisogyny is and what terfs actually want.

like you see thousands of those annoying “respect trans women juice” and no actual thinking about what it actually means. and i think that’s partly because of the name we use - trans exclusionary radical feminists. what does being “trans exclusionary” means ? the problem of terfs isn’t that they “exclude” trans women, it’s what they think of trans women.

because… a lot of transmisogynists are trans ! usually some version of afab-non-binary-transmasc-adjacent-lesbian-or-bi. so when you call them terfs, they say they can’t be trans exclusionary, since they are trans. and they also reblog trans women’s donation posts or news about harassment, they usually don’t deny that trans women are women, they also protest the bathroom bill, they also criticize the gender binary system. so everyone cheers, and since terfs don’t do those things, it means they are ok.

but they still adhere to a worldview of “women and trans women”, so to speak. that trans women’s gender are “trans women”. that being a trans woman is in itself a particular position of gender. which means that they don’t include trans women butches when they talk about butches, for example. they don’t include trans women when they talk about women’s problems. trans women have their own problems, their own experience, that is distinct from women.

so, big news ! if you ever, in any case, use the words lesbian, butches, women, etc. and you don’t include trans lesbians, trans butches and trans women in this discussion, then you’re a transmisogynist. that’s it ! saying “no terfs” isn’t enough. you need to include trans women in your worldview, in your feminism, in how you talk about women, all the time, and not only when talking about trans issues. anything else will get you a bunch of crypto-terfs followers.

I’m gonna say something really problematic that’s gonna make me hemorrhage followers, but I don’t care because I’m fucking angry.

The way that women I was friends with have started treating me now that I’m deeper into medical transition is cruel and strange and unacceptable.

Feminism taught me I’m allowed to take up space, and I don’t have to take shit from anyone, and that my thoughts and feelings and art matter. Understanding that I was worth more than whether or not cishet men found me fuckable, that I didn’t have to let my body define me, these were all things that helped me realize it was okay that I was trans, that I didn’t have to be what everyone wanted me to be because of how I looked.

And now these same friends and this same community that taught me so much, people I’ve fought for and with my whole life, are telling me to be quiet again when I worked so, so hard to be heard, and it’s exhausting and alienating and weird.

I’m not saying that misandry is real or that men as a Class are oppressed, but the failure to recognize that trans manhood is different from cis manhood and that it’s not as simple as, “You’re a man now, so I’m retroactively revoking your right to speak about your trauma,” is just… real transphobic and lame.

I don’t want to be in women’s spaces or take over women’s discussions; it isn’t about that. I mean shit like real life, actual friends, who have known me my whole life, telling me it’s not my place to talk about things like abortion and sexual assault, because they think having he/him in my social media bios somehow grants me the kind of privilege that cis men get.

And I know things will be more complicated than that when I start to pass or I’m treated as a man consistently somewhere other than the internet, but like.

Dude, it was less than a year ago that somebody doxxed me and threatened me with physical violence and called my house calling me the d-slur every day because I refused to send him pictures of my tits, and you really wanna tell me I that don’t know what it’s like to be harassed by cis men?

I don’t have a point to make, really, or a solution, but like…

I just wish people who I thought had the same values as me weren’t like, “Hm. You’re yucky now,” or that I could talk about my experiences without people thinking I’m “admitting” to “really” being a woman.

Cisgender women I knew before I transitioned have had some of the worst reactions to my transition. For like two years after I came out to most people they kept trying to get me to join in with their women’s only activities and misgendering until I’d been on testosterone for over a year. Some of them still do it.

Strangely enough in my particular situation I’ve become more comfortable talking to my cis men friends and family about my problems which was definitely not the case before. A couple of my close friends have been great, but as a whole I’ve had a ad time.

A lot of cisgender women seem to think that they have a monopoly on gender based oppression, and they absolutely do face a lot of oppression. But they constantly just… ignore transgender people and their issues and add to those issues and act like they can’t possibly be doing that because cisgender men oppress them too. Transmasculine people’s issues are constantly ignored and trivialized and I hate it.

Dear fellow cis ladies: acknowledging that trans masc folks are men/masculine does NOT mean treating them just like cis men, FFS. Male privilege is something you’re raised into, not something that gets handed out as part of a kit once society decides you’re masculine enough.

Ok, I’ll admit I’m straight up confused here and need some dialogue.

There’s a lot of messaging out there that trans women are real women and society is not to hold their prior biological sex assignment to them. We are to treat them as they are now, as the gender and sex they have claimed.

This og post seems, to me, to be saying the exact opposite should be done for trans men. It seems to be saying that society, and ciswomen specifically, should still accept the trans man as a woman because his prior experiences are not negated by the gender and sex he now claims.

That… that really doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

It seems as though trans men are upset that they’re being pushed out of women’s spaces after transitioning. But, like, what? Women’s spaces are for women. You’re a man now. You can advocate and support women’s spaces, but no you cannot be in and a part of them. Just like trans women aren’t a part of men’s spaces anymore.

Am I missing something here? Do trans women also expect to remain an accepted and loved member of men’s spaces? Because right now this just feels like another example of women not living up to unreasonable expectations.

Again, this is a request for dialogue. If I’m wrong I need to know. And we can’t grow if we don’t confront what we don’t understand

I’ll try to explain. content warning for mentions of sexual violence.

First: it isn’t about access to women’s spaces, notice how OP literally said “I don’t want to be in women’s spaces”. It’s about being able to talk about sexism and the violence of the patriarchy as things that effect you personally.

But wait… don’t trans women also experience sexism and the violence of the patriarchy? Yes, yes they very much do.

But here’s the thing: when it comes to this, the experiences of trans men and trans women are not polar opposites. You can’t mirror every statement about trans women and apply it to trans men because that’s not how reality works. The patriarchy casts a wide net and targets anyone it sees as not man enough.

As you can see, sexism often targets cis women, trans women, trans men and non-binary people, basically anyone who isn’t a cisgender man.

Statistics prove what a lot of trans men are saying: Asked about recent experiences of sexual violence, trans men who are early in transition and transmasculine people who do not transition report equal or more experiences of sexual violence than cis women (while trans women report far more experience of sexual violence than both). We also see a decrease in things like job opportunities for trans men during transition. There is no instant privilege being handed out the moment they identify as men.

Some trans men reach a point in their transition where they are seen by society as male most of the time and they - as well as outside observers - can notice that privilege ticking up. Coworkers take them more seriously as they speak. Walking home at 4 AM doesn’t feel scary. They’ve acquired male privilege based on the condition that they never speak about being trans. Which is a nasty precarious situation a lot of the time. Often there is also the condition that trans men should over-perform masculinity (which unfortunately results in some trans men becoming really sexist jerks out of a survival attempt. which is BAD and should be shut down, but it still comes from a different place than the behavior of cis sexist jerks.)

It’s important that trans men recognize how their privilege works because ignoring it can result in a lot of really shitty behavior. Simple example: The IT guy comes to fix the computers at work and only wants to speak to you and not your female coworker. That’s sexism. You’re supposed to shut that guy down and tell them to respect your female coworker right fucking now. But if you don’t recognize that male privilege impacts you, you won’t act. So yeah, it’s important for trans men to recognize what male privilege they have. 

But when that is simplified to “you have all the male privilege the moment you identify as a man” or “your past experiences of violence under the patriarchy do not matter”, you deny a lot of how sexism really works, and the result can be violent as trans men lose the support system they had while very much still being a target of patriarchal violence.

Trans women often experience the violence of the patriarchy long before they identify themselves as women, as they grow up soaked in messages about how inferior women are and see the worst of misogyny as it manifests in men-only spaces. And when trans women start presenting femininity, the violence of the patriarchy follows immediately. No slow process for them. Sexism targets those it sees as ‘not man enough’ and as far as the patriarchy is concerned, trans women are the worst sort of ‘not-men’ because the existence of trans women exposes the fact that being born with a specific genital shape doesn’t make you a man and that there might even be something desirable about being a woman. That frightens cis men and untangles the patriarchy, so trans women get all the worst of sexism immediately.

But the experiences of trans men are not a polar opposite of that, they’re a different process in which sexism launches an extra intense assault against their person when they come out as trans and only slowly impacts them less during transition. And the potential trauma sexism has caused in their life endures.

So tl;dr:

[…] We fought for our place at this table, and that has made us stronger than you will ever be.

POSE 2.09 | Life’s a Beach

if you care about trans women, you need to care about all trans women. that includes trans women whose gender expression is gnc. that includes Black and Indigenous trans women. that includes all trans women of color. that includes aspec trans women. that includes Jewish and Muslim trans women. that includes all trans women of faith. that includes trans women who are sex workers. that includes nonbinary trans women. that includes trans women whose gender and attraction labels might be in conflict with your idea of what you think it means to be a trans woman. no one but ourselves can decide what it means to be trans women. 

The thing about trans women that people don’t talk about enough is the voice problem. Many of us are afraid to admit it, but there’s something incredibly degrading about being expected to alter the way we use our voice around people.

Really, like, the way that trans women are taught and expected to speak is incredibly tedious, unnatural, and obviously forced to the ear of any speech pathologist. So the “solution” is for us to go “full-time” and essentially ditch the voice that comes naturally.

It isn’t right, but there’s no winning in either case. People will misgender you if you speak naturally, and if you do try to use your “feminized” voice you’re honestly putting yourself at risk of violence, and how the fuck am I supposed to feel confident when knowing full well that the sounds coming out of me aren’t genuine or convincing to anyone?

This is a serious fucking problem that doesn’t get addressed. Trans women are expected to find services and often pay absurd sums of money to get training or “therapy” for the voice, but all you are really doing is practicing the art of speaking in a submissive and stereotyped voice. Enter radfems, who would then use this as a weapon against us, claiming that we are perpetuating *ppfffpffpfafbloobpblboooblbllblblpp* by using our voices in a way that makes us feel safe. 

But, unless you’re the lucky 5-10% of trans women who can pass even after speaking, that safety is not only unlikely, but more often than not people are going to look at you with disgust and of course you know what happens once you’re outed.

Why should I have to talk like a fucking cartoon character? Cis women do NOT sound the way that these voice experts insist they do, because trans women have to speak primarily with a head tone, completely forgoing the chest and therefore removing the part of the sound that makes it sound like speaking and not fucking squealing.

If you care about trans women, expecting us to change our voices in order to pass as cis is fucking gross. 

read this in its entirety. 

Today I got a nasty TERF anon and I also really upset myself looking through replies on Twitter. The anon didn't make sense and doesn't deserve refuting, but I wanted to take a second to spell out something I see as missing in the discussions between transphobes and trans folks and their supporters:

When we say "trans women are women," transphobes blink and laugh. It strikes them as preposterous. They respond by saying "my dog is a cat" or "Freedom is slavery." Transphobes don't deserve our breath because they aren't listening, but for people who aren't actively filled with hate and dismissal of trans folks' feelings, I think this could use some explanation.

There are certain experiences that we think of as shared experiences of womanhood. But these experiences are never REQUISITES for being a woman; they're merely things that people who are women often experience. These things include biological experiences like menstruation, pregnancy, breastfeeding, childbirth, and cultural experiences like, say, getting catcalled, or getting a training bra, or being the only woman in a meeting in an office.

It's not problematic to discuss shared experiences that women often have. What's problematic is suggesting that they are necessary in order to be a woman, or to assume that only women experience them. This is patently obvious: not every woman (not every cis woman!) experiences pregnancy or menstruation or breastfeeding. No one would say you need to have been catcalled to call yourself a woman.

Moreover, we know that different groups of women have different experiences as sub-groups. Women of color experience things that white women never do. Fat women experience things thin women never do. And not just body things: women in high-powered careers experience different things than women who work in other ways. Women athletes have a shared experience that is not shared by non-athletes.

When we say "trans women are women," we mean just that. They are women. But we do not deny that they have had a different experience in life as trans women. The experience of growing up identified as a boy while knowing oneself to be a woman is surely something a cis woman or man cannot know. This doesn't conflict with being a woman because there are many, many ways to be a woman. Because women share lots of experiences, but none of us share them all.

This is why it's so important for feminists to fight for trans folks, beyond it simply being the right thing to do: because the same forces that tell trans women that they don't count as women are the forces that tell all women there's one way to be a woman. That being a woman means a specified list of things, your own desires be damned.

It's all a lie. There's no one way to be a woman. There's no universal experience of girlhood or womanhood. There is no single experience that ties us all together. But that doesn't mean we don't share something essential, but it's amorphous. It's constantly shifting and changing and never essentializing.

This is how I can share certain experiences of womanhood with fellow moms I know that I'll never share with other women. How I can share certain experiences of sexuality with queer friends that I can't with het friends. That I can understand how I share something meaningful with trans women even as our lives have looked very different.

This is why it's harmful to make assumptions based on people's sex/gender: because you can't assume shared experiences on the basis of shared gender. This is always true, even among cis women, and it causes major problems (see: all of white second wave feminism). And it's the same with our trans sisters.

I think if people could understand this, we'd be in a much better place.

This is why it’s so important for feminists to fight for trans folks, beyond it simply being the right thing to do: because the same forces that tell trans women that they don’t count as women are the forces that tell all women there’s one way to be a woman. That being a woman means a specified list of things, your own desires be damned.

::loud applause::

The problem with gatekeeping is that the gates always seem to get narrower.

A word of advice to trans women

Go to your nearest target. Buy a two pack of pushup bras (24$ for 2), and target’s bra inserts (12$). Then go to your nearest Walmart and buy the Vasserette Control Shapewear Panties (2.50 each), they do wonders for helping your tuck. There you go! You just saved yourself a lot of money, you can afford to buy enough to wear every day, and best of all you look fabulous. -@twidx

recs for trans women are so rare on tumblr!! spread this, people.

Please reblog this, in total it’s about $38.50 to make a huge difference for a trans woman/trans feminine person.