caffeineandsociety

[caffeineandsociety]

the idea that restrooms, locker rooms, etc need to be single-sex spaces in order for women to be safe is patriarchy's way of signalling to men & boys that society doesn't expect them to behave themselves around women. it is directly antifeminist. it would be antifeminist even if trans people did not exist. a feminist society would demand that women should be safe in all spaces even when there are men there.

[caffeineandsociety]

hey white leftists

[caffeineandsociety]

I ask this in good faith, but how is it that so many transmascs hate the idea of (trans inclusive) radical feminism so much? All I know it does is liberate everyone from the evils caused by cis men and the patriarchy.

Well first I would say this isn't an opinion unique to transmascs, but thats the circle I orbit so I understand where that perception comes from.

The problem is that you really can't excise the problematic elements of TERFism simply by removing the overtly transphobic parts.

Radical feminism, both trans exclusive and "inclusive" hinge on the idea of Men (sometimes cis, sometimes not) are perpetrators and Women (and sometimes, vaguely, some* non-women)are victims. Putting aside the individual capability to cause harm which is easy enough to debunk, even on a societal level this is not telling the whole story. The Patriarchy is a system of societal control and allotment of power, and it aims to control everyone, men included. Most men, all but the most powerful in society, which is capitalist, christian cishetero white men, have the patriarchy weaponized against them!

"Cis men" as a class, as individuals, don't cause evil. They are just human beings. Human beings with equal capability to love and nurture and fight for what is right. Which is the other problem with radfeminism, is that it seeks to strip away this humanity from the people around you, and isolate you. and like...what is a cis man, anyway? Like I know the answer seems obvious, but at what point does "cis man" end and "nonbinary person" or "trans person" begin? What elements of cis-manhood cause evil? Where does that "evil" go when someone transitions or no longer identifies as a cis man?

This is, I think, the fundamental problem of "trans inclusive" radical feminism. In continuing to divide the world into Evil Men and Good Women, you STILL impose a system of gender essentialism in a way that does not coalesce with the ideas of queer liberation. A nonbinary person can be a cis man one day, come out as nonbinary and change nothing else about their life from that point. What then? Are they no longer evil? Were they ever evil? How do you even being to decide that without just using the same trans exclusive rhetoric you're supposedly fixing, anyway? And I'm not even getting into the impact this has on trans men, because we are put in this position of being a marginalized gender and victims of misogyny but also placed in this position of privilege due to being men that is not accurate to reality. And sure, maybe you can remedy that by always specifying cis men, but many TIRFs don't see that as a flaw of the ideology, anyway. They Do think trans men are gender traitors and Do think we inherit some sort of evil power the moment we become men.

And there is much, much more to be said on the topic of radical feminism and its pitfalls. These are just the broad points. The dehumanization of Cis Men as a class is not simpatico with queer liberation and it just never will be. It is a good question worth asking, because it can seem good on the surface unless you know what to look for.

[caffeineandsociety]

can we just have, like, any feminist movement whatsoever. did everyone just stop caring?

[caffeineandsociety]

we'll talk about cis men having fragile egos but tbh! patriarchal gender roles gives everyone fragile egos when it comes to gender because its inherently unhealthy. it ties the very concept of self to gender & then makes gender something one can easily fail at. cis women who feel attacked when told they hurt someone (because they feel like their role as a caretaker is being threatened) and cis women who get angry at gender neutral medical language (because the patriarchy values the idea that womanhood & pregnancy (& everything related to it) are synonymous) are behaving in the same way men who feel attacked when their masculinity is threatened. trans people will also do this too, sometimes overcompensating because we have to fight ten times as hard to not be seen as failures by default. patriarchal gender is always fragile and quick to lash out because the patriarchy survives on fear and specifically the fear of losing one's self via gender failure (& the material punishments that come with that). hope this helps

[caffeineandsociety]

If you’d actually listen to trans men, you’d know every single one of us has said “transandrophobia is a mix of misogyny and transphobia”. We’ve been saying it from the start. We are fully aware it involves misogyny!!!

It’s medical misogyny and medical sexism, it’s social misogyny and sexism, etc etc.

But that’s not all!

Transandrophobia also involves how much society hates it when afab people act masculine. Butch women deal with this all the time. Little kids labeled as tomboys deal with it. Society really hates masculine afab people.

But wait, there’s more!

Transandrophobia ALSO involves how much society hates men who are men in the “wrong way”.

And one more thing!

Transandrophobia ALSO involves homophobia, because whether the trans man is straight or not, society views him as a woman. That means he’s treated as either a lesbian (though some trans men do identify as lesbians), or a straight woman, either way erasing his true identity.

And all of that is transandrophobia.

It’s not just transphobia. It’s not just misogyny. It’s not just those things separately. It is an interaction of those things that cause transmasc people to be uniquely abused by society - and a lot of that abuse is invisible, or shoved under “just misogyny” or “just transphobia”. But it’s not.

And - importantly - it does not imply that transmascs are “more oppressed” that other trans people, or that other trans people “oppress” trans men. That’s not how intersectionality works.

[caffeineandsociety]

I remember in the early 2000s how people were debating if lesbians should be allowed in women's restrooms because lesbian were "predatory" and would "harm cis straight women", and now it's being recycled into if trans women should be in women's restrooms because they're "predatory", like how do people fall for this shit twice?

(Early 2000s source: https://www.chicagotribune.com/2002/12/18/lesbian-15-sues-over-locker-room-ban/)

imo once you try to define women’s only safe spaces it always cracks open a door for “if a woman is dangerous, should she count?” and dangerous almost always means like. queer or a poc who isnt interested in policing themselves in public.

[caffeineandsociety]

There are distinctly feminine styles of misogyny, for that matter.

In my experience, it's moms who are more inclined to impose strong gender standards on their daughters* than dads - while, yes, in the common opposite-sex-biological-parent-nuclear-family setup, these ideas DO come from both sides, a parent of the same gender is often inclined to project their own expectations and insecurities on their children in weird gendered ways; so while yes, it's usually dads who teach more misogyny and toxic masculinity to their sons*, it's also usually moms who teach their daughters that their looks are the most important thing they have and they can't be trusted with tools and getting their clothes dirty and being "unladylike" is the worst thing they could ever do and boys being complete and utter assholes means they like them.

*Known or presumed; of course it gets complicated when trans and intersex people exist but the general pattern is a thing, the binary doesn't real but people's belief in it does and has impacts, etc.

The entire concept of "cattiness", as well, is a whole huge can of worms here - because on the one hand, the term specifically refers to the way that women will tear each other down based largely on perceived failures specifically as women; on the other hand the term also very deliberately misogynistically downplays the harm that toxic relationships between women can cause while also treating that toxicity as an inevitability. Just a whole clusterfuck of misogyny with that one, and FAR from all of it comes from non-women!

Karenism, weaponized fragility, Missing White Woman Syndrome - these broadly overlapping things are predicated on the idea of white women as the permanent damsel in distress, entirely incapable of taking care of herself (but maybe she'll girlboss a bit and try). Meanwhile, you find a lot of people, including women, who will...try to call these things out when they're not what's happening. Sometimes especially women, because if cishet-abled-white-skinny-rich-Bethany doesn't experience what you're experiencing, then surely Andrea the 6'4" Black trans woman, or Eddie the butch-transmasc cusp lesbian, or Leah the fat native wheelchair user is just playing the victim and exaggerating for attention, right?

The refusal to acknowledge one's own capacity for doing harm is mostly a feminine thing - after all, the standards of masculinity state that you're SUPPOSED to be strong and powerful, right? And look where that leads: mass harassment campaigns, whisper campaigns to ostracize people, the whole damned online callout-industrial complex that is aimed first at transfems, especially transfems of color; second at essentially anyone that cishet society sees as "failed women" (e.g., WOC, other queer women, transmascs, etc.), and rarely if ever at anyone who's...actually doing harm.

All of this is misogyny.

None of it is exclusive to white cishet women, even the forms that are more common among them.

It's not just something that men (active agents) do to women (passive objects), and to treat it as such is another form of misogyny.

I feel like people on this website think that women's contribution to misogyny begins and ends at shitty fandom opinions on female characters, not "loving themselves enough" to magically be immune to socially imposed insecurities, and OCCASIONAL aberrations in the form of US Republican women (but they're SUPER rare of course)

And it's beliefs like this that go a LONG way toward downplaying what it means for misogyny to be systemic and deeply socially ingrained

50-ish% of the population is not immune, not even close to immune, to the pervasive messaging that anything associated too heavily with women is frivolous and brain-melting, that being born with a vagina makes you weak and stupid as if the hole is in your brain, that femininity is always sexual and by extension that being transfem is a fetish first and foremost, and yet at the same time that women aren't supposed to actually be interested in sex they're just supposed to put up with it for their husbands so a woman being horny is creepy and bad and if it's toward other women it's OBVIOUSLY predatory because NO woman wants to be lusted after and she should KNOW that, that masculinity/maleness is a default state of humanity and women are women first and people second, and the list goes on

If developing immunity to these ideas were as easy as "being a woman" then they would not be nearly as influential

#everyone can be misogynistic dipshit it came free with your existence in a misogynistic society

[caffeineandsociety]

I feel like people on this website think that women's contribution to misogyny begins and ends at shitty fandom opinions on female characters, not "loving themselves enough" to magically be immune to socially imposed insecurities, and OCCASIONAL aberrations in the form of US Republican women (but they're SUPER rare of course)

And it's beliefs like this that go a LONG way toward downplaying what it means for misogyny to be systemic and deeply socially ingrained

50-ish% of the population is not immune, not even close to immune, to the pervasive messaging that anything associated too heavily with women is frivolous and brain-melting, that being born with a vagina makes you weak and stupid as if the hole is in your brain, that femininity is always sexual and by extension that being transfem is a fetish first and foremost, and yet at the same time that women aren't supposed to actually be interested in sex they're just supposed to put up with it for their husbands so a woman being horny is creepy and bad and if it's toward other women it's OBVIOUSLY predatory because NO woman wants to be lusted after and she should KNOW that, that masculinity/maleness is a default state of humanity and women are women first and people second, and the list goes on

If developing immunity to these ideas were as easy as "being a woman" then they would not be nearly as influential

[caffeineandsociety]

radfem women (both trans and cis): I hate all men but especially trans men. I just hate them since they chose to be the Evil Sex! They're universally bad people and deserve to die :3

trans men: hey that's kinda messed up to hate us just bc we're trans men

radfem women: omg what a cringe xx chromosome moment! Why don't you take your uterine emotions somewhere else, girly? I don't wanna hear your womanly whining!

[caffeineandsociety]

Wait... Wait wait wait, let me understand something.

So for this cisgender woman with naturally high testosterone (and/or an intersex condition, I do not know her specific condition and it's honestly none of my business) has to be be forced to take the same testosterone suppressing medications that these same competitive regulatory committee said wasn't good enough to suppress trans women's testosterone to allow them to compete in women's sports.

If she has naturally high testosterone, similar to that that trans women experience in their lives pre-transition then wouldn't she have the same advantages that a trans woman supposedly inherently has and can not be corrected with said testosterone suppression?

Like, no one should have to undergo forced medical treatment to be able to compete or to make it "fair" for their competition. Other athletes have all kinds of natural advantages, like Michael Phelps having an abnormal wingspan and larger lungs and heart. In fact, every high level athlete has some kind of physical advantage, that's how they're such high level athletes. You think the people they beat out for their spots just, what, didn't work as hard? Didn't grab those bootstraps tight enough? Fuck no.

Racism, intersexism, and transphobia are all linked, and this case is maybe the most glaringly obvious one.

[caffeineandsociety]

One very crucial point I find for intersectional thinking is:

Separatism is never the answer to anything - if it's the group in power you're separating from, separatism does little to nothing to change the power they have over you; if it's another marginalized group, that's a divide-and-conquer tactic that is working against you; either way, it is no victory.

Separatism can be extremely TEMPTING, especially to people who have faced a lot of lateral aggression from other marginalized people, and the pressures and biases that make it seem like a solution HAVE to be addressed and worked on if we're going to get anywhere at all, because believe it or not people don't like being in spaces that are fucking hostile to them.

[caffeineandsociety]

Being a trans person is just toeing the line around saying something progressive but not too disruptive. Because I can say things like “trans women are women and trans men are men.” and I’ll be mostly fine. but the moment I start posting about trans women being murdered and assaulted or trans men being raped and denied medical care, I’m suddenly I’m an evil disgusting tranny who is too ‘aggressive’.

I can say things like “trans women are women :)” but I can’t say “in the US trans women have the highest rates of being murdered - specifically black trans women are at the most risk. Police ignore reports of violence against trans women and a lot of the time the police are engaging in the violence as well.”

I can say things like “trans men are men :)” but I can’t say “in the US trans men experience the highest rates of rape in the trans community - with specifically black and Native American trans men being the most vulnerable. When they are raped they have little to no resources to get help.”

[caffeineandsociety]

[caffeineandsociety]

“I can’t be a trans man on the internet” go the fuck outside then dude. Signed a trans woman who has had enough of your bullshit posts

I’m gonna use this ask to make a point.

Trans guys if you get an anon claiming to be a trans women that says rude/bigoted shit, don’t believe them. Transphobes have admitted to pretending to be trans women and sending bigoted asks to trans men.

If you get an anon ask saying weird shit claiming to be from a trans women - always remember anons can lie about who they are! 9 times out of 10 it’s just some cis person lying to paint trans women as evil bigots.

And everytime I see a trans man fall for the bait and start saying transmisogynistic shit I just sigh.

[caffeineandsociety]

Went to block another TERF and saw a “ladies, here’s how to spot one of those sneaky stealth trans women on dating sites” post that very genuinely read like satire even though it clearly was not. One of the listed bullet points was (honest to god) “Men have longer bones than women, so check their femur length!” so I guess TERFs are really out here trying to examine people’s fucking bones like you can really tell how long someone’s femurs are through their god damn pants.

There was also a whole other section on identifying post-op vulvas (which, like…if you’ve already gotten to this point, clearly the bone length thing failed you) and one tip was like—I’m paraphrasing here—“If there’s hair near their anus they’re probably a man! Women sometimes have this too but their butthole hair is way more feminine so it’s easy to tell the difference :)” so I’m pretty convinced that whoever wrote it has never seen a naked woman in their life (cis or trans). Possibly they have never seen another human being before; it’s really unclear by the way they seem to think men and women follow the same phenotypical principles as the orcs in World of Warcraft. Like they deadass watched Pixar’s Brave and accepted the sex dimorphism of Merida’s parents as biological canon.

The other list items were like… ‘tall’, ‘has a lot of body hair’, ‘deep voice’, ‘small butt’ (?), so I guess I’m trans-woman-passing now despite being AFAB, which at least means I don’t need to worry about dating a TERF by accident.

You know what I usually like to call the assumption that women are naturally dainty and hairless? Misogyny and racism! If you have the barest ounce of material understanding it’s obvious that biological essentialism is antithetical to the goals of dismantling misogyny and achieving gender equality. But hey, don’t worry—TERFs are the real feminists here for sure! You can tell by how short their bones are.

[caffeineandsociety]

All marginalized identities under any given culture are simultaneously more AND less similar than most people think.

That is to say, we all have to listen to each other, because there are unique ways that we ALL do and don't experience that marginalization. There are factors that we can draw parallels to all we want but we will NEVER fully emotionally have the full picture. We need to be willing to accept that and fight for improvements we CAN'T make all about us-

But at the same time we can absolutely relate to those things personally through parallels in more ways than we often give credit for, because a lot of the time they do come from the same root causes and constitute important related parts of the big picture.