Lukewarm Feminist

There's this backpedal stance TransUnity/Transandrophobia chuds tend to take once you've disproved the bullshit of "TME/TMA is just asking what's on your pants". And that's "We know who you REALLY MEAN when you say TME/TMA" the assertion that even though by definition TME/TMA includes cis people and people outside the queer community, that trans women who use the phrase must either be talking about trans men or AFAB trans people (depending on how bio essentialist the anti-transfeminists wants to paint us as) when she's discussing intra-community transmisogyny.

It's how I got a dude accusing me of secretly attacking trans men on a post where I was complaining about a trans woman getting a harrasment campaign/mass report banned for saying "hey maybe don't expect trans women to forgive and forget ex-terf queers" and another one accusing me of the same thing on a post whose main demographic I was talking about was mspec cis men who don't view trans women as women.

And honestly how self entitled do you have to be. For a group that loves to paint trans women as self absorbed victim complex bitches trying to make ourselves the most oppressed minority in the world who needs every discourse to be about us, they are unable to comprehend it not being about them. They are unable to consider that they aren't the only part of the community that transfems could hold ire with.

Sure it's a common talking point about how trans women are excluded from lesbian communities and we've voiced our discontent with all the cis mspec men who don't see us as women and see our bodies as the "best of both worlds". But suddenly all those communities vanish into the ether when a trans woman uses the phrase TME.

It's telling that you view yourself in such opposition against us that you can only imagine us having a problem with you. Despite your best intentions you have not monopolized the intra-community transmisogyny industry.

Ok wow why am I literally now seeing posts where people are claiming that women are flat out not oppressed on the basis of gender in the western world and suggesting otherwise makes you a TERF. And they have thousands of notes and are appearing on my dashboard. What. The actual fuck. Is happening on this website. To the left right now in general. Horseshoe theory is so so so so real that it has become a circle.

Hey quick question. What the fuck is wrong with you guys??

This person is truly a fascinating person...a trans woman who denies her own oppression. She has been mistreated by terfs and radfems but believe that problem lies within feminism in of itself, making her dangerous to other trans women. She supports Israel and condemns antisemitism, but she goes on a Jewish woman's blog and makes misogynistic remarks about their feminist politics.

Also this interesting post:

Truly...I'm sorry that she experiences these things. But in the ends, a bigot whose bigotry stems from trauma is still a bigot.

The prioritization of men's issues always comes with the insistence that they're actually being ignored in favour of women's issues. Theres pages on pages written on men's suicide rates and male loneliness that cite studies in which the data for women show an equal or even greater rate of the same problems. Thousands of reddit threads about trans men being ignored while trans women get their posts taken down for the same thing. The illusion of men being ignored or treated badly in feminist spaces is nothing but the visceral reaction people have to seeing a man not being treated as the most important person in the room for 2 seconds.

I've seen people say terf rhetoric is any hatred of men and I've seen people say terf rhetoric is anything transphobic said by anyone. the refusal to actually engage with the reality that terfism is primarily focused on oppressing trans women is in itself a form of transmisogyny. yes they hate all trans people, but it is quite easy to see who they primarily target with their words, actions and policies, you just don't want to care about trans women. claiming someone is a man hater doesn't mean you get to call them a terf or a radfem, thats an obvious, willfull dilution and denial of what terfs are.

I couldn't have said it better myself.

As a 30 year old man who escaped the Alt-right pipeline, you're not going to be happy about the answer.

All I hear from leftists is how much they hate me for my immutable traits, how much they blame me for everything wrong with the world, how much they want me and everyone who looks like me dead.

Whereas Alt-right types would call me "brother" and welcome me into their ranks so long as I hated the right ways.

Do you understand the difference?

I'm an ally and support equality because I feel it's the morally correct choice to make, but holy fuck is it difficult to reconcile that with the fact that means fighting for a lot of people who see you as the scum of the earth.

Read this and then read it again and then read some fucking bell hooks because this is a legitimate problem on the left.

"To create loving men, we must love males. Loving maleness is different from praising and rewarding males for living up to sexist-defined notions of male identity. Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being." - bell hooks, The Will to Change https://bellhooksbooks.com/product/the-will-to-change/

bell hooks, bell fucking hooks was absolutely not saying that we should lay off on talking about white male privilege, which is the thing the previous poster is whining about, ffs.

Read what she's actually said outside of some cherrypicked quotes! And stop misusing the words of dead women of color as an excuse to coddle the fee-fees of sexist racist white men!

If people who were part of tumblr gamergate starts reblogging your post or starts using misandry unironically. Maybe there is also something fundamentally wrong with your post.

the fearmongering is already out of control lol

How the fuck does post of 4B attracts so much transmisogynists...like holy fuck. Please block ryasanda, she hangs out with terfs.

Here's a metaphor. Cus people are right transfem and transmasc identities aren't monoliths and encompass many experiences. But you know what is a monolithic force?

Transmisogyny.

We are pointing at its vastness blocking out the sun screaming at it and begging you to help us destroy it and you turn to us and say

"ok but the shade"

As the plants die at your feet

No two women have the same experience. All feminism is founded not on actual essential unity, but on political coalition and affirmation of shared political needs and goals.

Race, culture, class, birth assignment, religion, and countless other factors mean all women experience womanhood differently. Excluding trans women because we have a different life experience misses the point that all women have different life experiences. This idea isn’t even new, its not even specific to trans women, its literally the point Crenshaw and Collins and Mohanty and countless other woc and third world feminists have been making for decades now.

Always very interesting when my posts about transmisogyny that include some criticism of other transfems always get far more notes than those that don't. Not that I regret talking about them. Abuse and racism and ableism should be criticized regardless but it's hard not to raise an eyebrow at all the TME people who scroll past a post talking solely about how they enforce our oppression only to then happily reblog one which talks about transfems being at fault in some other way

If you use the word Baeddel to refer to a contemporary and extant group of transfems it's block on fucking sight.

I'm so tired of any conversations around transmisogyny centering the feelings of people who live in a fucking fantasy world where a nefarious cabal of separatist trans women is both a real and powerful force shaping the discourse and if every word isn't expertly chosen to coddle any tme readers then you are a baeddel.

A lot of you got your understanding of systemic oppression from bad video game allegories, high school anti-bullying assemblies, and reading tumblr posts and it fucking shows.

Ngl the absolute aversion "leftists" have to talking about misogyny on here is something that I doubt we can ever recover from. The fear of confronting such a huge issue is often weakly explained away with "well the r*dfems might join in" and it's like ..okay now you're just leaving discussions of misogyny to be done exclusively by t*rfs. And transphobia has only gotten worse on this site. So. You're not helping anything or anyone.

there's really no consideration when it comes to trans women. people will have a bad experience with one transfem and go "well i don't usually do this, i forgive all kinds of things, but this woman is ontologically evil and a pest and nobody should interact with her" and don't even blink at that statement

In the same way women can't collect privileged points to exempt themselves from being victims of the patriarchy, men can't collect oppressed points to exempt themselves from being biased against women lol

Straight, white, cis men are not the only men who can be biased against women. Tumblr likes to put a progressive hat on anti-feminism and pretend it's only the most privileged of men who are sexist, in order to escape the uncomfortable reality that misogyny is universal and all men can be shitty to women. Progressive spaces rightfully wouldn't tolerate white people like "omg how dare you say I can be racist when I'm gay and have depression!" or something, but frequently have posts insisting that there are groups of men incapable of sexism (while they insist there are women privileged enough to be safe from misogyny). This is what happens when people don't see misogyny as an axis of oppression on par with the others.

From a trans woman:

one thing you have to get ready for as a trans woman who's about to come out is certain cis people are going want nothing to do with you afterwards. we all know this, we all talk about this. transphobes going transphobe

but what i dont think we talk about enough is you need to be prepared for a second wave of this. it will come later. it's not tied to anything body change or surgery or whatever.

trans women are treated so poorly by society that we inevitably shrink. we learn how to exist in the spaces that will have us, even if that means cramming ourselves into boxes that don't really fit, being treated in ways we often don't like, doing things we often don't like doing, often even fucking people we don't want to fuck.

at some point, you're going to learn to stand up for yourself. i don't say this to scare you into thinking you'll become a 'mean trans girl' or whatever. but just like transitioning in the first place, it's change or die. you found the first safe harbor and fashioned your anchor to it but you can't go on living with people who don't respect you, working a job you're too smart for, living a life you don't really love.

and when you do, there will be cis people in your life who only liked that meek, quiet girl who would do as she's told. some of these people were malicious, doing it on purpose because they've known enough trans women to know who's vulnerable. some are doing it unintentionally, believing themselves to be a good ally, you've just gotten angry and bitter (this one hurts the most). and some just plain won't like the person you really are, having only known the people pleaser they got to know.

but it's change or die. if you're not you, you're not living. there are so many better people just waiting to love you, but you won't find them chasing after cis approval. and girl, i promise you, you deserve so much more than what you're getting right now. be strong. you've been strong before. i love you.