Understanding Transmisogyny

i still think about the time i was discussing HRT and got told by an admin I was making "sexual comments" on mastodon and therefore my position of not having a callout post written on me was indefensible. i think thats the point that i finally started to break off from that site

it was a messy situation that i was certainly not perfect in but the huge dissonance in treatment I was getting vs. afab nonbinary users in the federated network was when i realized there was a total breakdown in the administration's ability to recognize and correct transmisogyny

the # of times we had to go hey. this instance is being transmisogynist before it actually got blocked was insane compared to how quickly trans women were thrown under the bus without any actual discussion. pulling one of our trans woman friends out from an abusive relationship cost most of our friendships because it was, partly, unearthed by trans women standing up for themselves, and even after the abuser was outed the whisper networks that cut us out didnt actually change their behavior after apologizing

The last post is so real. All transfems please please learn how to be a bitch. Learn to let yourself be the bitch is someone else's mind. I've seen people criticize this attitude by pointing out how the term isn't empowering or whatever but in my experience when everyone around you keeps treating you that way over and over it's far more effective to start identifying with it. If standing up for myself and refusing to be a doormat makes me a bitch in other's eyes then I will flaunt it. I will be bitchy and mean and defensive. It not only protects my peace but it has saved my life before. It will save yours too. Be the bitch. Put your foot down.

Both cis and other trans people expect us to be small and reserved. Trying to spend your life fitting in that view to avoid being seen as the loud hysterical tranny will literally kill you. Be the stereotype. Defend yourself. Be loud and mean and provocative if it means protecting yourself from people who barely see us as human already

hey girl! huh? oh, no no no, I'm not misgendering you, I use girl in a gender neutral way. I call everybody girl! anybody can be a girl, it doesn't really mean woman, ya know? hey look I don't know why you're being so difficult about this, I said it's gender neutral. I'm not transphobic! I'm trans myself and my trans guy friend doesn't have a problem with it when I call him girl. ok look I'm done arguing with you I'm just going to block you.

I've gotta admit I think about this one a lot for many reasons. I'd really love to see what others think

disappointed in my transfem siblings honestly n truly. educate urselves

i dont need to be "educated", i already know that cis people respect drag queens more than they do transfems

it's not that I don't think people should do drag or drag is bad in general, I just don't like it, I wouldn't choose to watch it.

however, it's basically expected, both by other queer people and by cishets that I would be thrilled by it, it's like the token queer thing that we're all "expected" to love and feel represented by, and I don't.

also, mostly unrelated to how I feel about drag itself, but I fucking hate how any time some shit happens with trans femme people's rights the news bring in fucking drag queens to talk about it, and they accept. we are not drag queens.

drag queens shouldn't be asked to speak for us, but they will anyway because that's what bigoted or ignorant cis people think of when they think of us, so drag queens should fucking refuse to do so, instead of playing it up for the cis at our expense.

drag is such a tar pit concept to talk about because like it's probably a net benefit for society to have a way for people to explore diverse gender expressions but the moral panic and the surrounding culture war has crept into one of many ways to explore gender informally, including how drag as an institution (by and large, at least) changed while reacting to the reactionary right.

even the fascimilie of trans women becoming more culturally prevalent and accepted brings about this backlash from the Cultural Reaction. it's almost as if there's a social institution that is hostile to trans women or something that we should also be mindful of. Maybe there's even a word for it if we all think really hard about it.

The crux of this is that if the society is allowed to have a complicated relationship with drag and transmisogyny, then trans women, the target of transmisogyny, are allowed to have complicated relationships with it, too.

it is 2009. i'm a child with too-early access to the internet on a gaming forum. someone asks if liking sissies makes you gay.

it is 2016. i'm on /r/animemes in my last year of high school. someone is asking if liking traps makes you gay.

its 2020. i'm on twitter during an election year. someone is asking if liking femboys makes you gay.

its 2024. i'm on tumblr, which has a rich history of discussing social justice and queer rights-

yknow that thing people say about women on /r/aita? how they'll tell the most harrowing story about their boyfriend/husband and be like "is he an asshole or am i a crazy bitch like he says?"

i have a version of this were every now and then i get an ask along the lines of "i'm the only transfem in a friend group full of transmascs and a while ago i asked them to stop calling me male socialized so they told me i was a misogynist and all stopped talking to me for a month. is that okay?"

if you're a young transfem in a friend group consisting entirely of transmascs and sometimes you feel a little uncomfortable and isolated and afraid to speak up. get out of there. get the fuck out of there i promise you there are girls out there who will treat you better.

trans woman: meow meow :3

the "trans women are women" crowd who follow 1-2 popular trans women on social media and consider that enough activism for a lifetime: oh, he- I mean they're into bestiality? ugh, I always knew they were a creep :/

the popular trans woman on social media: listen up, trans women. I hate you, and you need to shut up about transmisogyny, because it doesn't matter, and most of you really are male socialized perverts anyway. I'm one of the good ones, and that's why queer people love me

They don't fucking say that. What is your damage?

you made a brand new account specifically to call me a hysterical crazy bitch. trans women really are the women of women

"I identified as trans for a time but realized It probably didn't fit me" <- completely fine! Exploring your identity is absolutely okay!

"I am a detransitioner" <- you are using a specific identity with inexorable ties to fascist movements. You are functionally the same as calling somebody who experimented in college "ex-gay".

yes. okay. ill tone it down for you. i wont talk so loud when im excited. ill keep my legs clamped together and shrink down for you so arent intimidated by my manly disposition. oh, you want me to shave too? ill go shave every inch meticulously and i wont even cry when it burns later. yeah yeah youre right ill wear a longer skirt. cant risk scarring some family from them seeing a tiny bulge in fabric. was my voice too deep for you? and ill never sound like a real girl? you can always tell cant you. ive got some weird kinks? nevermind plenty of cis people share them, yeah im just a freak and should go to prison or just die. yeah. youre right i was talking over that person, ill stay quiet and keep my head down.

am i small enough for you to fold away in some dusty corner yet? am i palatable enough for you to chew and swallow til theres nothing left? did i make you laugh hard enough the tears blocked my sorrow? did you get off on me and close the tab?

am i a girl to you now?

its really funny that every single post about the way people treat non-binary identity as an inherently cafab thing ends up with a billion tme people in the notes attempting to position this as the result of people viewing nonbinary identity as "womanlite" or whatever.

like i do not think you should be attempting to engage in discussion of transphobia if you cannot see the issue with responding to "its bad that people ignore or deny the existance of nb trans women & other nb transfems" by going "yeah, this is because they view nonbinary people as women and they ignore nonbinary people who arent women."

The most socially anxious trans girl you'll ever meet in your life: Hey, um, this character "Sir Otto Gynephile," he makes me uncomfortable. He's a bit of a stereotype, so if you could not put him on my dash, that would be really nice, please

The rest of tumblr for some reason: YOU WANT TO HUNT ME FOR SPORT???

other trans women can put it better than me but there's this, tension, between "radical genderpunk you can be whatever you want forever-ness" and "trans woman as politicised identity"

one views any engagement with your assigned gender at birth as like, being trapped in a prison of your own making,? as using the tools of the enemy or whatever. and the other is "yes my assigned gender is a prison, it is a prison the outside world is constantly enforcing on me and i would like to be able to talk about that a little thanks"

so you get this tension, where one side (made up of predominantly people who aren't trans women) says "the ideal world is one in which you can be whatever the fuck you want forever! so call yourself anything you want as long as it makes you happy, you can be an afab trans woman if you want it's all made up :)" and the other side says "hey hi yes i broadly agree with you on the whole ultimate gender liberation front, but we do not live in an ideal world and transfemininity is uniquely demonized even as far as trans identities in general go, so i would appreciate it if maybe you didn't act like our identity and oppression was something made up that you could just put on and take off whenever you like? we sure as fuck can't do that."

and then the other side goes "hey all these trans women are invalidating us! why are they gatekeeping and being so exclusive! assigned gender at birth shouldn't matter so why are you acting like it does!?"

and they say this while we live in a society where your assigned gender at birth very much does matter, and if you're a trans woman it is borderline impossible to escape that.

it's like an is-ought problem where since we're not acting like we already live in a gender utopia where one's relationship with assigned sex and gender is completely arbitrary, we're treated like the enforcers of the gender binary.

this is where you get stupid bullshit like people calling trans women radfems

Basically boils down to:

"I don't see AGAB" 🤗

And much like other similar "I don't see...", it's just coming from a position of privilege; how nice for you to be able to go about life without having to worry about that.

Co-signed into the replies because it was well-said, and we (trans women) benefit from it being said by people who are not us too.

Especially that last:

Why is the idea that transmisogyny is "just" an online problem so pervasive? Trans women face issues from rape to starvation to imprisonment for being trans women to name a few, these are extremely "irl" issues that are pretty common from my experience.

person in a community suspiciously devoid of trans women: "well I've never seen any transmisogyny here, we've always been accepting "

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.