#Assigned feminist at birth

[ryukisgod]

Things are going to get worse before they get better in Australia

#🙄 #how am I supposed to trust #a medical organisation that thinks sex is assigned at birth #the lord is testing me #radical feminists do interact #australia #tra

[chiegetseven]

When you grow up seeing female archetypes in the media, there are some that get left out of feminist discourse. Namely "best girl". Anita Sarkeesian never talked about the "best girl" archetype in Feminist Frequency (although she did break down the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope well. I've only ever heard "best girl" used by men/boys/AMAB NBs (assigned male at birth non binaries). In part, I think, because that's who most of the "gamers" I know are and certainly most of the gamers involved in online gamer culture spaces. "Best girl" is complementary and usually describes a female character who is actually more well-rounded, more realistic than the other female archetypes in games. Mostly negative or damaging female archetypes from games are discussed in feminist discourse.

I think it's a problem with how women or AFAB (assigned female at birth) people are socialized because it happens with interpersonal relationships too. Women often cherry-pick their negative experiences and feelings as the topic of conversation with girl friends, or fem spaces, when discussing their romantic relationships. I even find myself doing it. Sometimes it's a healthy outlet for venting frustration but I think it also has some very negative consequences. (The following statements are primarily about discussions of benign relationships, abusive relationships and the behavior around them can look very different from this and I'm not wading into that right now. If you are in an abusive relationship, please seek help from an organization near you. If you are scared your abuser will find out, go to your local library, you can say you want to get a book or attend a community event. They have computers and knowledgeable staff who will be happy to help you find resources and are not required to report patron interactions.)

1) girl friends and anyone else receiving the gossip (and I know that is a hot button word but I'm not just going to call it "the tea" because everyone knows that's the same thing right now but they might not in 5 years) get a lopsided impression of the relationship being discussed not only because they're only getting one side of the story but because that story itself isn't even the whole story for the side that's telling it. This issue goes beyond women and is more of a human condition issue. As they say, "misery loves company", in this case meaning that when people are enjoying themselves, they want to soak in that feeling and are not driven to express their feelings but when they have negative feelings they want to get them outside of themselves. But AFABs are socialized to do more of this. So when things are going well in a relationship, people may just say "oh things are really good right now!" or maybe even some details of things they're doing with their partner, but when things are going poorly, the immediate response is to analyze and rehash every detail like you're planning a strategic military operation and say all of the negative stuff you wouldn't say to your partner.

2) because women have this "vent" for frustrations, they might not actually try very hard to change the situation by talking issues out with their partner, leaving their partner at a disadvantage because the woman has not spelled out the issue clearly enough for the partner to change anything. There is an addictive quality to this behavior, and there is a social payoff too in that AFABs can get a lot of mileage out of pity without having to do anything. AFABs are often socialized to downplay their successes and so if you're happy and you share it with your friends, hopefully they're happy for you, but if you're upset, they get upset with you and it creates more of a bond. This is not a "trauma bond", a trauma bond happens between the victim of abuse and the abuser. But it is bonding over trauma, and that can reinforce learned helplessness.

3) this reinforces stereotypes about women and men even though contexts have changed significantly in certain ways. While men and boys historically had the advantage in work and academics, as well as other fields, women and girls have been out-performing men and boys for over a decade. There is a book called "Of Men and Boys" by Richard Reeves that discusses these issues in a truly well-balanced, well researched, and effective way. There are still disparities in wealth and emotional labor, and obviously the threat to women's reproductive rights is terrifying and is a tool to take away these gains. But the average AMAB actually faces more disadvantages in school, particularly if he/they are also a POC (person of color) or poor. So while the men in power, usually men who have held powerful positions from before the social shifts of the last 2 decades, are absolutely belligerently advantaged over women/AFABs, the average man/AMAB does not hold the reigns of society, he has the bit in his mouth, he is enslaved by Late Stage Capitalism. And the anger men and boys feel at being enslaved is often redirected from the actual cause of their problems to the women and girls they see surpassing them, and they feel there is insult added to injury when women talk about them like they are subhuman. That isn't an excuse for violence, but it is important to recognize where we really stand.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

#best girl #manic pixie dream girl #feminist #feminist frequency #feminist criticism #critique of feminism #the tea #men #women #boys #girls #non binary #gender spectrum #gamers #online culture #discourse #AMAB #AFAB #assigned male at birth #assigned female at birth #the human condition #learned helplessness #thank you for coming to this ted talk

[animentality]

"trans women don't know the unique experiences of being a woman-"

there is no fucking universal experience of being a woman. you only think that if you're a fucking white woman who forgets women of color exist on an hourly basis.

you only think that if you assume your experience is the only experience in this world to have.

you don't know what it's like to be a black woman, a disabled woman, an indigenous woman, a Chinese woman, a mixed race woman, a Latina, a Pakistani woman, a Cambodian woman, a Muslim woman. You can't know.

You can't pretend to know.

You can't even use "universals" like all women are afraid of men or all women have been sexually assaulted or all women know what it's like to be condescended to, because different women experience different things according to their cultural upbringing. Some places are better or worse than others. Some places are not better or worse, but have their own equivalent issues.

Some places are densely populated and full of weirdos, some are backwoods redneck towns, full of more intimate weirdos.

Some people experience sexual grooming, sexual assault, catcalling, stalking, gender discrimination...and some people don't.

Some people have families that support them and their sexuality.

Some people live in abusive patriarchal households and grow up haunted by their own gendered "differences," painfully aware of how wrong the world is. Some people live in a pretty okay world, with only light grievances, and microaggressions.

Some women identify only loosely as female, and some people who are assigned female at birth reject womanhood entirely, and that completely negates any "standard" of womanhood that you cling to, because it's just a word.

It's a label that humans use to make sense of themselves.

But you can rip it off any time you like. You can also paste it on, even if you weren't born with it.

Trying to apply your own womanhood to other women is wrong, foolish, and a waste of time.

And that's why your transphobic ass is ridiculous.

By trying to "generalize" the female experience, you just totally neutralize any point you're trying to make.

People should be able to talk about how different their experiences are, so we can talk about why some people have it worse.

Terfs are so fucking annoying because they're typically white feminists, who don't care about black female experiences or any other WOC's experiences.

They refuse to acknowledge how flexible the very notion of being a woman is.

And as a result, they're nothing but a blight upon this world, whose only purpose is to pretend that they, the angry white women, are the only people who matter.

Fuck you and fuck that.

#transgender #lgbt #feminism

[nothorses]

Let's Talk About Baeddels.

An (updated) retrospective on Tumblr's movement to make gender essentialism trans-friendly.

This post contains excepts from a longer article on Medium. If you have the time, please read the full article! I also request that you link the longer article if you use this as a source.

All links have been updated with archived versions of posts that have since been deleted (and otherwise might be deleted or lost sometime in the future). I have revised some sections, and included more context and examples, in order to clarify and strengthen arguments.

Disclaimer

Transmisogyny is real, and requires much more acknowledgement than it currently receives. The trans community is very much capable of transmisogyny, and often does enact or enable it; likewise, trans people also often enact and enable transphobia against other parts of the trans community. Trans women suffer at least as much as the rest of us, and trans women — as a class — are not privileged, and do not hold the power to oppress anyone else.

If you take only one thing away from this post, take this:

Trans people all need to work on being better allies to each other. None of us can gain anything without the rest of us.

Establishing an Ideology

The first post on Baeddelism was by Tumblr user @unobject, on October 2nd, 2013:

The post was quickly liked by @lezzyharpy, also one of the first to call themselves “Baeddels”.

This post first provided the name and defining ideology of the Baeddel movement. The implication of the post was, essentially, that because the root of the word “bad” was “baeddel”, and because “baeddel” referred to intersex people and “womanish men”, this old English slur was proof that transmisogyny was the worst form of bigotry; and even, perhaps, the root of all bigotry. (It’s worth noting that this interpretation of the etymology has been problematized.)

While @unobject was the first person to make this connection, @autogynephile (“Eve”) eventually became, in essence, the figurehead of the movement. Of the other Baeddels, some of them were explicitly aware and supportive of the ideology behind Baeddelism, some of them were young or newly-out trans women seduced by the personalities involved, and some of them were tangential enough to the movement that their understanding of it was wholly different from the understanding those at the core of the movement held and promoted. Baeddelism was a sort of trend, for a time, and many participants wore the name without entirely knowing what it meant.

It’s important to acknowledge that as much as there were dedicated members of Baeddelism, and as much as there was a unified ideology behind it, there were also individual Baeddels who did not understand — let alone support — the ideology.

The Ideology

Baeddels essentially built upon the foundation of @monetizeyourcat’s ideology that had been gaining traction on Tumblr in the years prior, with some additions that ultimately defined their movement:

Transmisogyny is the form of oppression from which all (or most) other forms of oppression stem.

Privilege is granted on the basis of assigned sex. (“AFAB” or “Assigned Female at Birth” vs. “AMAB” or “Assigned Male at Birth”)

These fundamentals of Baeddelism were essentially a rebranded form of Radical Feminism. In particular, they drew from the Radical Feminist idea that misogyny was the “primary” form of oppression; that which all other oppression stemmed from. Baeddels only tweaked this idea to replace “misogyny” with “transmisogyny”, which led to the rest of the conclusions Baeddels drew:

There is no “transphobia”

All “transphobia” stems from transmisogyny first, and transphobia as it impacts non-trans-women (or, sometimes, non-transfeminine people) is incidental.

There is no “Trans”

If “transphobia” isn’t real, what else is left of the transgender identity?

While this is by no means the dominant understanding of transgender identity or community, the equivocation of oppression to identity is, in many ways, core to Baeddel ideology (and we see the lasting impact of this in still-widely-used “TME/TMA” termingology). By this logic, if transphobia doesn’t exist, neither does trans identity or trans community (though they obviously believed that transmisogyny, and subsequently trans women, do). Therefore, there are no “trans men”, and belief in the existence of “nonbinary people” is highly contingent on whether an individual believes in the oppression of nonbinary people.

“AFAB Privilege”

The idea that within the queer and/or trans community, people who were AFAB/CAFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) receive unique privilege and positions of power that people who were AMAB/CAMAB (Assigned Male at Birth, a counterpart to “AFAB” and “CAFAB”) do not.

Trans Lesbian Separatism

… was what the movement was ultimately defined by, as the logical conclusion of their other beliefs (much like Lesbian Separatism was the logical conclusion of Radical Feminist beliefs).

Baeddels believed that only trans women can understand, or be truly safe for, other trans women; therefore, contact with anyone who was not a trans woman was deemed “dangerous” and highly discouraged.

Trans Men

… also played an important role in Baeddel ideology, and the resulting treatment of trans men is what is often remembered today. Baeddels generally believed the following, either explicitly or implictly:

Trans men are not oppressed, or experience so little oppression that it hardly matters.

Trans men do not experience misogyny, even prior to transition.

Trans men have access to male privilege, or trans men have an easier time passing, and frequently go “stealth”; thus benefiting from male privilege as well as cis privilege.

Trans men are often (or always) misogynistic and transmisogynistic, and are not held accountable for this.

Trans men oppress cis women.

Trans women enacting violence on trans men is “punching up” at oppressors, and therefore not only permitted, but encouraged.

Trans men are inherently violent, or become aggressive and violent when they go on testosterone HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy)

The impact of this ideology is often discussed among transmasculine people because of the depth of harm it caused, directly and indirectly — and it was very much intended to. Harm caused to transmascs was not only permitted or excused, it was often actively celebrated.

Nonbinary People

… are often overlooked when summarizing Baeddelism, but Baeddels did have plenty to say about them. Baeddel ideology relied on the idea that privilege was granted on the bases of assigned sex, and nonbinary people’s genders were thus treated as irrelevent; they essentially did not believe nonbinary people truly existed.

CAFAB nonbinary people are either trans men attempting to invade women’s spaces, or cis women pretending to be trans.

CAMAB nonbinary people are actually just trans women who haven’t accepted it yet. They must transition, or they are transmisogynistic.

Intersex People

Intersex experiences, and intersex history, were often co-opted and erased by Baeddelism. This was often more a byproduct of their beliefs than an overtly-stated idea, but most notably, the term “Baeddel” itself is likely more applicable- if not exclusively applicable- to intersex people, rather than trans women. Making their reclamation of it as a “transmisogynistic slur”, or their claim that the word’s existence means that “transmisogyny is the root of all oppression”, incredibly ignorant- if not actively harmful misinformation.

Notably, Baeddels also believed that intersex people- being “more androgynous” (a harmful misonception)- were able to pass more easily as the opposite assigned sex, and that intersex people (even within transfemme spaces) had “intersex privilege”. Some even believed, and openly claimed, that intersex people were “hermaphroditic”; a slur against intersex people, and typically implying that the individual has both sets of reproductive systems simultaneously.

Trans Women

… did not receive universally positive treatment, either. Baeddelism was very much a cult-like group built around the firmly-held conviction that they were absolutely correct, and that anyone who disagreed with them was The Enemy. Trans women who disagreed with them were generally seen as brainwashed and self-hating, and trans women who did agree with them were expected to subjugate themselves to the ringleaders of the movement.

Within Baeddel circles, trans women were most frequently victimized by the abusers allowed to run rampant because “trans women do not, and cannot, harm anyone else.” — including, apparently, each other.

“They were also bad shitty abusive people in general. “… a bunch of them passed around a pile of smear campaigns and false rumors about virtually any trans woman that they had a even the slightest animosity for. Including the victim of the kinkster rapist. They’ve done other fucked stuff, like chased two twoc off this site for trying to make a zine, but yeah. That’s like, just some of it. I’m not up for going over the messy details of the whole shitparade. “Full disclosure, I made a lot of excuses for these sacks of crap, even while they were out there spreading false crap about me […] I wasn’t aware of the worst shit they were doing until much much later.” - @punlich

Inside the Movement

Though individual Baeddels often existed in vastly different social circles from each other- particularly offline- those who lived through the movement highlight commonalities in their experiences.

One interviewee recounts the manipulation present in their initial involvement with the movement:

“It came to me at a point where I was very quick to weaponize anything anyone told me about their experiences, because I was always a fighter. I’ve been an activist for a long time, you know, and when these trans women would come to me with their experiences I would believe them. I wanted to. But the way they acted didn’t add up when compared to what they were saying. I felt really lonely there, and stupid all the time. I felt like I was being a bad trans person.” […] “Online they were more willing to say things that were, for lack of a better word, stupid. They would say things that lacked any kind of logical sense. But in person, they would go into this kind of toxic femininity- this weaponization of weakness. And I think that’s because online they were often in these echochambers, but in person they had to rely on much more subtle manipulation.” - Vera

It seems at points that the environment created within this movement- and the social circles that composed it- was almost cult-like in nature and in need for control.

“It was very isolating. I didn’t see my friends for a while, I was kind of just living with them, cooking and cleaning for them, starving myself, and slowly growing crazy. I was just being consumed by this weird academia and theory that had no basis, because everything was online and Tumblr-based.” - Vera

Perhaps most chilling, however, are the patterns in their attitudes toward sexual assault. One interviewer recounts being subject to sexual assault, and upon posting about their experience to a Facebook group, being met with hostility from Baeddels present in the group- who quickly used their social influence to have them banned from some of their only support systems at the time.

“I ended up with pretty much no one to talk to about the experience at a time when I was already really, really struggling, and it’s one of several factors that led to me dropping out. “The Baeddel who got me banned also messaged me directly at some point during all of this, and I tried to get her to understand the pain she was causing me. She basically laughed it offand said it was my fault. She seemed to find a lot of joy in how much it hurt me, and blocked me soon after.” - Anonymous

Another recounts sexual consent violations from a friend-turned-Baeddel:

“[My ex-friend] had previously been fetish-mining me for her mommy kink. I was freshly estranged from my own mum, and she stepped in to be like, “I’m your new mum now,” and would pester me to call her “mum” in Welsh- as at that point she was going by a Welsh name. I played along, but it transpired that she was basically using that to get off, and she had a thing for infantilising transmascs and being this mum/mom figure.” - Luke

And yet another interviewee discusses verbal sexual harassment during interactions with another Baeddel:

“I had one [Baeddel] directly tell me that I’m beneath her as a trans man, and that I should “Shut my smelly cooch up” and only use my voice to uplift trans women. I was a minor at the time. “She then sicced her followers on me, and they bombarded me with messages telling me I’d “never be a real man”, that I needed to “sit on the side and allow them to have the spotlight”, and even telling me to kill myself- because I was inherently toxic to them. I was 16 years old, pre everything, and I couldn’t even pass at the time. They didn’t seem to care that I was a minor, or a newly hatched egg.” - Anonymous

While Baeddel ideology itself does not explicitly condone or excuse sexual assault, it’s striking how common these stories are; especially considering how small in numbers actual Baeddels were.

It was, in fact, this exact problem that would eventually cause the movement to dissolve.

The Downfall of Baeddelism

Sometime between the group’s formation in 2013 and their downfall near the end of 2014, @autogynephile (also “Eve”), the defacto “ringleader” of the Baeddel movement, began what Baeddels referred to as a “transbian safehouse”.

This was apparently intended as a place for unhoused trans woman lesbians and trans women who, in general, had sworn off contact with men; the ultimate goal of the lesbian separatist ideology at the core of the Baeddel movement. It was thus also referred to as a “commune” by some, and as a “cult” by others.

One occupant of the “safehouse”- Elle- later posted to Tumblr that they had been raped by Eve during their stay, and detailed their experiences.

The Baeddels, rather than believing the victim and ousting the rapist from their movement, chose to close ranks around Eve instead.

Various reasons were given for this:

The victim must be lying

The victim- and anyone who believed them- was simply transmisogynistic.

Anyone who disagrees with the Baeddels is an Enemy Of The Movement, a “carceral thinker”, and a danger to trans women as a whole.

Trans women are incapable of sexually abusing anyone.

“Standing with Eve” was the ultimate sign of loyalty to the movement, and thus a mark of pride and honor.

It was okay to keep being a Baeddel no matter what, because Rape Accusations Should Be A Personal Matter.

(You can read more about Eve’s own denial of these events here and here.)

Years later, even people involved in the initial group have spoken out against the movement and actions of those involved:

“I was in ~the Baeddels~ for years and like… we straight up did horrible shit. “We harassed anyone that disagreed for any reason, our politics were terrible, our isolationism made an environmental ripe for abuse that I have firsthand experience of, there is nothing in that group worth salvaging or defending. “Also acting like people are just bringing this up out of the blue is silly like… it’s being brought up because people are still trying to defend the shit we did instead of fucking recognizing that it was wrong. “Creating this myth that hate on the Baeddels is just a way of keeping trans women in line is a tacit defense of the horrid shit we did.” - @lezzyharpy

“like I’m sorry but I served my time in shitty awful Baeddel group in early mid 2012s and it fucking sucked ass.” “… Like it’s straight up cult-like the way you build this self-reinforcing network wherein ayone on the outside looking in with any criticism is unsafe, not to be trusted, only there to hurt trans women, and the only people you can trust is this self-selected group of trans women.” - @lezzyharpy

Why It Matters, and Why Baeddelism Never Really Fell

Baeddelism itself has seen multiple attempts at resurgences by various individuals, including documented experiences with self-proclaimed Baeddels as recently as 2018- well after the movement first “fell” in 2014.

Most proponents of “Baeddelism 2.0”, a revival of the original movement, argue that the abuse that occurred within the original movement was either completely fabricated by detractors (sound familiar?) or, at minimum, not actually inherent to the ideology.

And, of course, there are some original Baeddels still active on Tumblr today.

Baeddelism never actually went away.

“Baeddelism” was only one name for a set of beliefs that existed long before the specific term did, and hasn’t gone anywhere since the original Baeddel movement died down.

What the Baeddels did was put a name to the ideology @monetizeyourcat was cultivating before them, and what Cat did was popularize, centralize, and justify a way of thinking that had existed before she ever made her blog.

This ideology has since been referred to, loosely, as “TIRF-ism”: Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminism.

It is rare that anyone actually refers to themselves as a “TIRF”, and there is no real centralized TIRF movement; rather, a loose collection of radical feminist beliefs circulates various transgender spaces. The validity of these beliefs is generally taken for granted: of course (trans) women are The Most Oppressed People; of course (trans) women are Inherently and Unequivocally Victims In All Situations; of course (trans) men are Inherently Oppressors; of course (trans) men are Dangerous and Evil… and so on.

Like Radical Feminism, and subsequently Trans-Exlcusive Radical Feminism (TERF-ism), those ideas are fundamentally dangerous.

The defining tenants of radical feminism are that misogyny is the root of all oppression, and that rather than misogyny being an issue of power and control on a society-wide level, it is instead, or also, a matter of oppression and privilege on an individual level: men are always oppressors, and women are always victims.

These beliefs fundamentally exclude and erase the experiences of other marginalized people.

Namely, people of color and indigenous people, who’s experiences with and concepts of gender do not fall within the strict and rigid lines that white, western, colonialist people’s do.

Radical feminism is not a redeemable ideology. It cannot be reshaped into something good. It is fundamentally broken, and the movements born from it- lesbian separatism, political lesbianism, TERF-ism, TIRF-ism, and Baeddelism- are proof enough of that. They each promote only surface-level variations of what is fundamentally cult-like thinking: only the in-group can be victimized. Only the in-group is safe; the out-group is inherently and universally dangerous. Only the in-group understands you. All members of the in-group are, fundamentally, incapable of abuse.

We cannot allow these ideas to be perpetuated within or without the trans community.

Learn the Signs & Prevent Harm

Here’s what we can do to prevent this from happening again:

Learn what Baeddel ideology and TIRFism look like, even detached from the name.

Learn what radical feminism looks like, even detached from the name. Even from people who claim to oppose radical feminism.

Act on dogwhistles. Call them what they are.

Do not allow people to downplay the harm all forms of Radical Feminism have caused. Remind each other that Radical Feminism is not a redeemable ideology, and seek out other branches of feminism instead.

Remember the harm that has been caused. Remember that it will be caused again if these things are allowed to go unchecked.

Listen to and uplift marginalized people. Allow them to speak to their own experiences, identify their own needs, and name their own oppression.

Remember who the real oppressors are, and do not pit marginalized people against each other. The people perpetuating and benefiting from transphobia are cis people- and more specifically, cis people in power.

Build solidarity with other marginalized people. One group of trans people cannot gain liberation without liberating all trans people, and one group of trans people cannot be targeted without the rest of us suffering as well.

Remember that there is no group or identity incapable of enacting abuse, violence, harassment, or other harm against another. Victimhood should not be determined based solely on an individual’s identity.

Remember that there are no acceptable targets for violence, cruelty, harassment, and abuse.

For more context and a list of red flags, read the rest of the article here:

#baeddelism #baeddel #baeddels #transgender #transunity #transmasc #transandrophobia #transfem #nonbinary #non bianry #transphobia

[hyperlexichypatia]

This post reminded me of it, but my partner has observed that in contemporary gender discourse, maleness is so linked to adulthood and femaleness is so linked to childhood, that there are no "boys" or "women," only "men" and "girls."

This isn't exactly new -- for as long as patriarchy has existed, women have been infantilized, and "adult woman" has been treated as something of an oxymoron. Hegemonic beauty standards for women emphasize youthfulness, if not actual neoteny, and older women are considered "too old" to be attractive without ever quite being old enough to make their own decisions. There may be cultural allowances for the occasional older "wise woman," but a "wise woman" is always dangerously close to being a madwoman, or a witch. No matter how wise a woman is, she is never quite a rational agent. As Hanna K put it, "as a woman you're always either too young or too old for things, because the perfect age is when you're a man."

But the framing of underage boys as "men" has shifted, depending on popular conceptualizations of childhood and gender roles. Sometimes children of any gender are essentially feminized and grouped with women (the entire framing of "women and children" as a category). In the U.S. in the 21st century, the rise of men's rights and aggressively sexist ideology has correlated with an increased emphasis on little boys as "men" -- thus slogans like "Teach your son to be a man before his teacher teaches him to be a woman."

Of course, thanks to ageism and patriarchy (which literally means, not "rule by men," but "rule by fathers"), boys don't get any of the social benefits of being considered "men." They don't get to vote, make their own medical decisions, or have any of their own adult rights. They might have a little more childhood freedom than girls, if they're presumed to be sturdier and less vulnerable to "predators," but, for the most part, being considered "men" as young boys doesn't really get boys any more access to adult rights. What it does get them is aggressively gender-policed, often with violence. A little boy being "a man" means that he's not allowed to wear colors, have feelings, or experience the developmental stages of childhood.

This shifts in young adulthood, as boys forced into the role of "manhood" become actual men. As I've written about, I believe the trend of considering young adults "children" is harmful to everyone, but primarily to young women, young queer and trans people, and young disabled people. Abled, cisgender, heterosexual young men are rarely denied the rights and autonomy of adulthood due to "brain maturity."

What's particularly interesting is that, because transphobes misgender trans people as their birth-assigned genders, they constantly frame trans girls as "men" and trans men as "girls." A 10 year old trans girl on her elementary school soccer team is a "MAN using MAN STRENGTH on helpless GIRLS," while a 40 year old trans man is a "Poor confused little girl." Anyone assigned male at birth is born a scary, intimidating adult, while anyone female assigned at birth never becomes old enough to make xyr own decisions.

Feminist responses have also really fluctuated. Occasionally, feminists have played into the idea of little boys as "men," especially in trans-exclusionary rhetoric, or in one notorious case where members of a women's separatist compound were warned about "a man" who turned out to be a 6-month-old infant. There's periodic discourse around "Empowering our girls" or "Raising our boys with gentle masculinity," but for the most part, my problem with mainstream feminist rhetoric in general is that it tends to frame children solely as a labor imposed on women by men, not as subjects (and specifically, as an oppressed class) at all.

Second-wave feminists pushed back hard on calling adult women "girls" -- but they didn't necessarily view "women" as capable of autonomous decision-making, either. Adult women were women, but they might still need to be protected from their own false consciousness. As laws in the U.S., around medical privacy and autonomy, like HIPAA, started more firmly linking the concepts of autonomy with legal adulthood, and fixing the age of majority at 18, third-wave feminists embraced referring to women as "girls." Sometimes this was in an intentionally empowering way ("girl power," "girl boss"), which also served to shield women (mostly white, mostly bourgeois/wealthy) from criticism of their participation in racism and capitalism. But it also served to reinforce the narrative of women as "girls" needing to be protected from "men" (and their own choices).

I'm still hoping for a feminist politic that is pro-child, pro-youth, pro-disability, pro-autonomy, pro-equality, that rejects the infantilization of women, the adultification of boys, the objectification of children, the misgendering of trans people, and the imposition of gender roles.

#youth rights #ageism #feminism #sexism #intersectionality #capitalism #body autonomy #bodily autonomy

[spacelazarwolf]

Hi, I was going through some of your old posts and wanted to clarify something. Do you think transfems can have internalized misogyny? Are they in your experience especially prone to sexism from having grown up as someone assigned male at birth?

weird vibes from this ask, i can’t tell if you’re trying to bait me or genuinely curious. if it’s bait, get fucked. in case it’s not, here’s my answer:

i think anyone can struggle with internalized misogyny or internalized patriarchy, especially women or people who are expected to be women. and, as the name would suggest, trans women are women. when a woman is told by society that her worth is in her appearance, and she internalizes that and starts judging herself based on those patriarchal expectations, that’s internalized misogyny. this is especially compounded for trans women and trans femmes, whose identity is already questioned by society. they face extremely intense scrutiny to look or act a certain way, to hold a certain societal role to “prove” their womanhood or femininity, so it’s not surprising that many struggle with internalized misogyny and judging themselves on the patriarchal norms that are violently forced on them. so yeah not only do i think they can have internalized misogyny, i think it’s inevitable for them to struggle with at some point on their transition journey simply because of how inescapable misogyny is in our society.

in terms of “socialization” based on agab, i think the entire concept is flawed. we’re all socialized to act a certain way based on our upbringing and environment, and very often our agab influences that, but there is no universal “afab/amab experience” and simply being raised as a boy or a girl doesn’t make you inherently more or less prone to sexism. i’ve known cis men who are staunch feminists because of their upbringing, who always work to dismantle patriarchal norms in the spaces they’re in. i’ve also known cis women who were deeply misogynistic and deeply harmed the people in their lives because of their insistence on forcing patriarchal norms onto them.

i’m not going to pretend i haven’t had bad experiences with individual trans women being sexist or misogynistic, but that’s because trans women are in fact people and people aren’t perfect. i have experienced misogyny from many different kinds of people, and the thing it always has in common is an attempt to make sure everyone’s staying in their patriarchy-prescribed box. we’ve all grown up in a sexist and misogynistic society that impresses on us how important it is to stay in our box and make sure others stay in their box.

we all have things to unlearn, including trans people. being trans doesn’t magically absolve us of doing that work. unfortunately that means there are going to be instances where trans people, including trans women and trans femmes, perpetuate misogynistic or sexist rhetoric. but i have found that offline the vast majority of my conversations with trans women and trans femmes about my experiences with misogyny and sexism go something like this:

“i face this as a trans man.”

“woah i had no idea, thanks for telling me. i relate to this tangentially because of the way trans people often have multiple gender roles forced on us at once.”

“wow i love connecting with other trans people through common experiences even if they might not be 1:1.”

#ask avishai

[pillarsalt]

hi! i was wondering your opinions on how hrt affects the body? i hold a lot of radfem beliefs but i am trans (taking testosterone). would being a woman to you have to be completely about chromosomes? for example, trans men years on T do not have the same genetic makeup as cis women. same with trans women on E, their genetic makeup would be very different to cis men, and would more correlate to cis women. does this factor in who you consider female/male or having experience as women?

Hi there, thanks for reaching out.

Firstly, I think you may be a bit confused. Taking exogenous hormones does not affect your genetic makeup. Your dna will stay the same unless you're exposed to something extreme like radiation - this is a good thing because dna mutation is bad for you and causes cancer! Your genetic sex is immutable, a person with XY chromosomes cannot have their dna altered to have XX chromosomes instead.

Hormones will affect the expression of your genes, for example turning on facial hair production in women who are taking testosterone. This is why those patterns of facial hair, even in women, differ from person to person. The genes for it were already there, but hormone replacement therapy uses the endocrine system to change what signals get sent to your genes to tell them what features to express.

Beyond chemically induced genetic expression, there are particular physical features in males that do not occur in males, and vice versa. This is a feature of the /ancient/ evolution of sexual reproduction. Despite the variety of metaphysical beliefs about identity and personhood, the truth is that humans evolved to reproduce between two sexes, and human beings cannot change sex. Every cell of your body has your sex encoded within it. This affects us physically in many ways. I and most feminists believe that this fact should be irrelevant to any person's ability to pursue their passion, be themselves, and love who they love. Even so, recognition of biological sex is something important. This is really critical in a medical context. For example: men who receive a blood transfusion from a pregnant or recently pregnant woman have an increased risk of death by transfusion-related lung injury. Another example: tracheostomy tubes differ in size depending on sex due to dimorphism in average tracheal diameter. A women who is reported as a male risks considerable injury by having a male sized tracheostomy tube forced into her windpipe. A considerable amount of medications differ in dose effectiveness and side effects based on biological sex. Something as straightforward as a heart attack has different symptoms depending on if the patient is female or male. Denial of biological sex is dangerous, and as it stands, medical science has not advanced enough to change the biological sex of an individual. If you are born male, you will stay male for your entire life. You say that a transwoman who has taken estrogen is more genetically similar to a woman, I'm sorry but that simply isn't true. A male person will always be more genetically similar to other males than to a female person.

Determination of sex is very simple, it's about the easiest genetic test to do. They have kits for high school classrooms to try out ffs. We need to leave the "meaningful sex change is possible through medical intervention" thing in the past, all we accomplish with that is giving people false hope and an unattainable goal to fixate on. Sex is real and immutable, I wish it didn't matter, but it does.

And why it matters is, maleness and femaleness have become inseparable from certain stereotypes and assigned qualities by societies in human history. Overwhelmingly, the male people subjugate the female people. Since men, male humans, discovered womens' ability to give birth could be taken advantage of, it was capitalized upon. And this is the foundation of patriarchal society. Religions were founded to justify this as the will of god. To deny that women have historically been persecuted due to their sex is, well, misogynistic. There is no "woman feeling" that makes us targets for child marriages, FGM, trafficking/prostitution, and other horrors from the minute we're born and even before. No, it's the sex we were born with that makes the world think it can decide our fate. In fact, the way that people treat male children differently from female children is so different so early, that we are genuinely unable to study human behaviour unaffected by gendered expectations. This is what feminists are talking about when they discuss "socialization". There is not a single man on the planet who knows exactly what it's like to see the world from a woman's eyes, no matter how feminine that man is. Womanhood isn't something you can achieve or acquire through effort: you were either born a woman or you weren't, just like you were either born with detached earlobes or not. It's so simple.

All that to get to my final point: Yes, I believe the definition of womanhood comes down to biology, because anything beyond that is a meaningless stereotype. Women can do anything, be anyone, look any way they want, go through any experience they do. The one thing they have in common is that they are female adult human beings. There is not way to fail at being a woman or do it wrong, you just are. Womanhood is the experience of having been a female person in this world, and nothing else. There are certain things only female human beings need, like abortion and female contraceptive rights, access to spaces where we can be safe from our subjugators (male human beings), and the ability to define ourselves and fight for our collective rights.

(At this point you may object and point out that male people who identify as trans women are also subject to violence and scorn from men: unfortunately that is often the case, but this does not make male people who identify as women, well, female. We need solutions for them that do not involve requiring women to sacrifice our comfort and safety for the sake of a particular subset of men, because of the inherent risks involved and the fact that women do not owe men anything even when those men have it bad.)

One last thing: my opinion is that prescribing exogenous cross-sex hormones is unethical (so are all elective cosmetic medical procedures but that's a post for a different day). I understand the distress that gender dysphoria inflicts on people, however the ill effects of hrt are too numerous to condone. The huge increase in risk of stroke with estrogen, heart disease and uterine atrophy with testosterone, and the way that trans medicine studies are notorious for losing followup with patients after a year or less... it's short sighted and frankly, financially motivated. The amount of trans patients who are prescribed hormones without access to an endocrinologist, it's honestly infuriating. People deserve the best care possible, not lab rat bullshit where they cut you loose when it's not working out. I won't judge anyone for what they do to themselves to cope with distress, but I want everyone, especially girls, to be aware of the lifetime effects medical decisions may have, and that you also can find happiness within yourself without hurting your body.

Thanks again for your question, be well ✌️

#ask

[catfemsblog]

they’ll call radical feminism ”white feminism“, while not realizing that liberal feminism is a western concept.

most women in developing countries are radical feminists, since they experience sex based oppression every day.

the talibans are not banning "whoever identifies as a woman“ from going to school, the clergy in iran is not oppressing women because of their gender identity, girls in africa are not getting their genitals mutilated because they identify as women.

wherever you’re the oppressor or the opressed one in a patriarchal society is not assigned at birth it is observed.

#radical feminists do interact #marxfem #marxist feminism #radfem #radical feminism #fgm #radical feminist theory #radical feminists please touch #radical feminist safe #radical feminist community #radical feminists please interact #misoginy #misandry

[hadeantaiga]

As a revolutionary transmasc feminist, what do I need?

Just like every other person who was assigned female at birth, I need the patriarchy eradicated.

Just like every other trans person, I need the patriarchy eradicated.

Just like every other neurodivergent and mentally ill person, I need the patriarchy eradicated.

Just like every other person living on this planet, I need the patriarchy eradicated.

The patriarchy as it is manifesting right now is inextricably entwined with capitalism, and capitalism reinforces the patriarchy. This creates and maintains the immense economic inequality people face across the planet. To be a feminist is to be an anti-capitalist.

This also drives the our destruction of our planet, our natural resources and our environment in the pursuit of more profit. I can't be an environmentalist without being a feminist.

And I can't speak as a person of color because I'm not one, but there is plenty of feminist literature by people of color discussing how anti racism is an absolutely necessary part of feminism. As always, bell hooks and Kimberlé Crenshaw are great places to start.

There is so much more I could say, but this is just a starting point.

#feminism #transmasc feminism #intersectional feminism #revolutionary feminism #trans feminism

[fozmeadows]

As someone who hasn't read the works of radical feminists like Simone de Beauvoir, could you explain what's wrong and what bothers you about biological essentialism? I'm curious about your opinion after reading your post on radfems (and I'd like a perspective that isn't so based on biological gender essentialism, which I honestly have a hard time moving away from because I don't understand other perspectives well). 👀

The problem with biological essentialism is that purports to answer the eternally unanswered question of nature vs nurture in a wholly one-dimensional way - ie, with biological sex as The Single Most Important Aspect Of Personhood, regardless of any other considerations - while simultaneously ignoring the fact that biological sex is not, in fact, a binary proposition. We've learned in recent decades, for instance, that intersex conditions are much more common and wide-ranging than previously thought, not because scientists have arbitrarily changed the definitions of what counts as an intersex condition, but because our understanding of hormones, chromosomes, karyotpying and other physical permutations has expanded sufficiently to merit the shift. So right away, the idea that humanity is composed of Biological Men and Biological Women with absolutely no ambiguities, overlap or middle ground simply isn't true. Inevitably, though, if you mention this, people with a vested interest in biological essentialism become immediately defensive. They'll start saying things like, oh, but that's only a tiny minority of the population, they're outliers, they don't count, as though their argument doesn't derive its claim to authority from a presumed universality. To use a well-worn example, redheads are also a tiny minority of the population, but that doesn't mean we exclude them when talking about the range of natural human hair colours. But the fact is, even if humans lacked chromosomal diversity beyond XX/XY; even if there were no cases of cis men with internal ovaries or cis women with internal testes or people with ambiguous genitalia - and let's be clear: all of these things exist - the fact is, our individual hormones are in flux throughout our lives.

There are standard ranges for estrogen and testosterone in men and women (which, again, vary according to age and some other factors), but two cis men of the same age and background could still have completely different T-counts, for instance - meaning, even the supposed universal gender factor isn't universal at all. More, while our hormones certainly play a major role in our moods and cognition, so do a ton of other genetic and bodily factors that have nothing to do with the sex we're assigned at birth - and on top of that, there's nurture: the cultural contexts in which we're raised, plus our more individual experiences of living in the world. One of the most common, everyday (and yet completely bullshit) permutations of biological essentialism comes when parents or would-be parents talk about their reasons for wanting a son or a daughter. Very often, there's a strong play to stereotypical assumptions about shared interests and personalities: I want a son to play football with me, for instance, or: I want a daughter to be my shopping buddy. But even within the most mainstream channels of cishet culture, it's understood that these hopes are not, in fact, grounded in any sort of biological certainty. The dad who wants a sporty son might be just as likely to end up with a bookworm, while the mother who wants a little princess might find herself with a tomboy. We know this, and our stories know this! For the entirety of human history - for as long as we've been writing about ourselves - we have records of parental disappointment in the failure of this child or that to embody what's expected of them, gender-wise. More than that: if biological essentialism was real - if men were only and ever One Type Of Man, and women were only and ever One Type Of Woman, with recent progressive moments the sole anonymous blip in an otherwise uniform historical standard - then why is there so much disparity and disagreement throughout human history as to what those roles are? The general conception of women espoused in medieval France is thoroughly different to that espoused in pre-colonial Malawi, for instance, and yet we're meant to believe that there's some innate Gender Template guiding all human beings to behave in accordance with a set, immutable biological binary? And that's before you factor in the broad and fascinating history of trans and nonbinary people throughout history - because despite what TERFs and conservative alarmists have to say on the matter, our records of trans people, and of societies in which various trans and nonbinary identities were widely understood (if not always accepted), are ancient. We know about trans priestesses from thousands of years before Christ; the Talmud has terms describing eight different genders, and those are just two examples. All over the world, all throughout history, different cultures have developed radically different concepts of femininity and masculinity, to say nothing of designations outside of, overlapping with or in between those categories - socially, legally, behaviourally, sexually - and yet we're meant to believe that biology is at all times nudging us towards a set, ideal gender template? There's a lot more I could say, but ultimately, the point is this: people are different. While some aspects of our personhood are inevitably influenced by genetics, hormones, chromosomes and other biological factors, we're also creatures of culture and change and interpersonal experience. The idea that men and women are fundamentally different, even diametrically opposed, at a biological level - that the major separator in terms of our personalities and interests isn't culture, upbringing and personal taste, but what's between our legs - is just... so reductive, and so inaccurate.

We can absolutely have common experiences on the basis of a shared gender, but gender is not the only possible axis of commonality between two people, let alone the most salient one at all times, and the idea that we're all born on one side of an immutable biological equation that cannot possibly be transcended makes me feel insane. According to modern biological essentialism, intersex, trans and nonbinary people are either monstrous, mistakes or imaginary; all men are fundamentally predisposed to violence, all women are designed for motherhood, and we're meant to just hew to our designated places - which, conveniently, tend to echo a very specific form of Christian ideology, but which in any case manifestly fail to account for how variedly gender has been presented throughout history. It's nuts.

#foz answers things #gender #feminism #biological essentialism #history #sociology

[genderkoolaid]

I think your fight against anti-transmasculinity/anti-transandrophobia and how queer spaces paint masculinity as inherently evil, your posts have actually opened my eyes to alot of what transmascs go thorugh. But as a transfem I was hurt to see that you support spacelazarwolf, someone who has used TERFy arguments that for example include claiming that trans women react to male socialization the same was as cis men react to it, and are therefore "male-brained" or dangerous to be around: https://www.tumblr.com/lesbianchemicalplant/729005502701486080/trans-men-on-here-are-like-trans-women-are-sexist?source=share (I do not agree with the author's view that transandrophobia does not exist)

As a transfem, a group is constantly demonized by the cis world and a lot of feminist spaces as sexual predatory, dangerous men to be around, transmisogynistic arguments that are "backed up" by the fact that we are socialized as male, seeing another trans person use the same argument in order to demean transfems hurts me a lot, makes me more scared of interacting with trans spaces outside of my friend group.

I don't mean this as a call out or nor do I mean to sparkle an internet argument and I hope my worries aren't downplayed, but I think it is necessary to address certain things and we transfems and transmascs should have eachother's interests in mind.

I absolutely understand why you are worried about that post, but that screenshot was taken to specifically cut out the rest of the post & remove all context from what he was saying.

Here is the link to the actual post. Conveniently, the person who took that screenshot cut out the literal next sentence, which is "we all, regardless of agab, grow up exposed to sexism and misogyny, and we’re all affected by it in one way or another."

The reason he is specific about transfems is because he is responding to some tags which say that all "afabs" (referring to trans men talking about their experiences with misogyny) are biologically "smug" and "insufferable" & how he has seen transfemmes use bioessentialism towards other trans people in ways which are blatantly misogynistic, and hiding behind the defense that they themselves are women. The final paragraph of the post is this:

"i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again: trans people who were assigned male at birth are not somehow inherently more capable of sexism than people who were assigned female at birth. everyone is capable of sexism. but they are also not exempt from perpetuating sexism and misogyny just because they are trans, and they have just as much of a responsibility to unlearn it as the rest of us do. do not use being trans as a shield from consequences when you say things that uphold oppressive systems."

The post you linked isn't just reading between the lines, they specifically cut off all context and put words in his mouth about "dangerous male socialization" that he actively clarifies he disagrees with in the post itself. He never says anything about transfems reacting the same way cis men do, or being socialized male or having male brains or being dangerous to be around. He is very clear that this is a universal problem to all people, and all trans people, and everyone needs to be active in unlearning misogyny because it is taught to everyone.

I don't blame you at all for being concerned about this, but the linked OP is actively warping the truth to justify the argument that belief in transandrophobia existing is inherenty anti-transfem.

#m. #ask box

[germiyahu]

I had the brazen lack of judgment to go on Twitter and immediately saw several tweets raging at Mia Schem, calling her ugly, misinterpreting her statements about Palestinian children, standard in the Twitter antizionist playbook really- insults and mistruths.

But I kept seeing the comments, “how does someone rape you with his eyes” “what the fuck does raped me with his eyes mean,” and let me tell you. I am not a woman by any means. I still immediately know what “raped me with his eyes” means and I could immediately envision what that felt like for her, to have a man have absolute control over her, leering at her, mentally undressing her. And this implicit threat hanging over her for nearly 2 months? The fear, anxiety, and disgust she must have felt?

Is it because I have sisters? I’m sure a lot of Twitter has sisters, a lot of them are women, or were assigned female at birth, have experience with creepy men, consider themselves feminists… they can’t all be manosphere goons. Maybe Mia made a mistake giving an interview, because now she’s known to them as a tool of propaganda, and they don’t take her seriously at all. They think everything she says is in service of “dehumanizing Palestinians,” and that her comment was racist and just like the woman who got Emmett Till murdered actually. But I am in no position to judge her choices. It’s her life and body and it’s her healing, not mine. She knows what she’s doing.

But the distinct lack of empathy for Jewish women is appalling, because I know if you removed the context of “genocide in Gaza from settler colonialist white supremacist Zionist entity” I know most of you self proclaimed feminists would implicitly understand what she meant. Many of you have been in similar unsafe and harrowing situations (though probably not for over 50 days!). Many of you don’t trust men for these reasons. If this were a Palestinian woman saying an Israeli prison guard raped her with his eyes, Twitter would believe her. Twitter would spread that like wildfire and there would be a million garbage essays incorporating that interview into their “Zionism is sexual violence” theses at Universität Judenhass.

Most (normal) people even came around and empathized with Kim Kardashian after she was robbed, and explained the fear she felt and the real danger of sexual violence she was in as a woman. But they won’t come around to a young woman who was literally held captive by and was at the mercy of a man who belongs to an organization who already filmed themselves committing war rape and were high fiving each other for it?????????

#it’s just crazy to me #there has to be a term for how they deliberately play dumb when it comes to something Israelis said #israel #palestine #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism

[molsno]

one of mainstream feminism's largest failures of the past decade or so was the propagation of the term "toxic masculinity." I don't mean to say that the ways that men uphold rigid, overly-restrictive notions of masculinity shouldn't be discussed and criticized, but the name given to this phenomenon failed to accurately describe it for what it is: transmisogyny.

I think that here, julia serano's definition of transmisogyny makes it clear why that's a better word to describe this phenomenon. transmisogyny is the intersection between oppositional sexism, which is rooted in the belief that male and female are rigid, mutually exclusive, and "opposite" categories with no overlap between them whatsoever; and traditional sexism, the presumption that femininity is innately inferior to masculinity. when these two forms of sexism intersect, the result is transmisogyny.

when you look at it this way, it becomes clear why "toxic masculinity" is an insufficient term. when a man chastises a young boy for crying, or when a woman mocks her male date for ordering a fruity drink at a bar, it's a message that communicates two things:

"you're a man. that behavior is categorized as feminine, so it is off-limits to you."

"because that behavior is categorized as feminine, doing it anyway will make you inferior to other men."

because the message is a combination of these two forms of sexism, it's transmisogyny, even if the person being chastised is not transfem or even gender non-conforming. however, let's be clear: this doesn't mean that men are uniquely victimized by transmisogyny. while yes, it is painful for some men to be held to these expectations, by and large, it is men who stand to gain the most by upholding them.

the goal behind this particular instance of transmisogyny is to discourage men from becoming "lesser" in the eyes of society. it is to punish them for being feminine, so that they will police themselves without anyone needing to punish them further. it is to prevent anyone assigned male at birth from even thinking about partaking in femininity. it is to stop trans women from existing, because we vehemently reject the notions that the two sexes are opposites with no overlap and that femininity is inferior to masculinity in the first place.

men benefit from this form of transmisogyny, and until now, they've never been held accountable for it. sure, maybe cis women will ridicule a man who refuses to order a lavender drink at a coffee shop and only uses 3-in-1 shampoo with "men's" in a big bold font on the label for being insecure in his masculinity, but this minor grievance is easily outweighed by the many privileges he holds for being masculine. maintaining these privileges is of the utmost importance for him, which is why, even after years of mainstream feminists raising awareness about and mocking "toxic masculinity," men still uphold and enforce the transmisogyny that allowed them to obtain these privileges in the first place. their position at the top of the gender hierarchy is a great place to be, and they can only stay there by ensuring that everyone else is firmly beneath them, with trans women at the very bottom.

and let me make myself clear from the outset, before this post starts circulating around and people start adding their own additions to it. it is a failure of mainstream feminism that this topic always begins and ends with discussions about men, when the people who are the most traumatized by this phenomenon are trans women. yes, it is unfortunate that many men have been so heavily conditioned by this phenomenon that they can't so much as cry when someone near to them dies, but I have very little sympathy for those men who then turn around and enforce the very same transmisogyny onto others.

furthermore, nowhere in this post did I say that only cis men benefit from this form of transmisogyny; trans men can and do uphold it, and likewise benefit from doing so, albeit usually to a lesser extent than cis men. even if they do so because their masculinity is called into question at a far greater rate than cis men's masculinity (and thus the stakes for failing to conform are higher), it still pales in comparison to how often trans women have been harassed and assaulted for failing to conform to the expectations of masculinity that were placed upon us all our lives, expectations which most of us never wanted anything to do with.

moving forward, we need to discard "toxic masculinity" as a term and start describing it for what it is: transmisogyny. we need to center trans women in the conversation, as we're the ones who are the direct targets of transmisogyny. we need to hold tme people accountable for enforcing these overly rigid gender roles in the first place - ESPECIALLY cis men, who benefit the most from doing so. and most importantly, everyone needs to stop talking over trans women when we discuss transmisogyny by redirecting the conversation to talk about how it hurts some other group. it should be enough that it hurts us. transmisogyny is the core of so many forms of gendered oppression that challenging it directly will benefit everyone in the long run, but it will have the most immediate and profound impact on us, and I think that's an important enough reason to work to combat it.

#txt #transmisogyny #my writing #1k

[rebellum]

nooo i wrote a whole RESPONSE to this but then tumblr app crashed and then I had to type the whole thing out AGAIN on my computer and then in that time period the op turned reblogs off. Since they turned reblogs off, I decided to cover up their name, in order to kinda respect that.

my response:

No. It is important to create new words in order to discuss specific phenomena. That’s why words like homophobia, lesbophobia, transphobia, misogyny, transmisogyny, exorsexism, and transandrophobia were invented. 

Sure, lesbophobia is covered under “homophobia”, but lesbophobia is an important word for describing how misogyny and homophobia affect women’s experiences of homophobia. Transmisogyny is covered under “transphobia”, but it’s useful to have a term that specifically describes how trans fems experience the intersection of transphobia and misogyny, not just for being trans, but for being specifically trans feminine, and the ways that expectations of womanhood, femininity, manhood, and masculinity factor into their oppression because of their assigned sex at birth, their presentation, and their gender. Exorsexism is covered under “transphobia”, but it’s useful to have a term to describe how transphobia affects specifically people outside of the gender binary. Misogynoir is covered under misogyny, but the term was created to specifically describe how Black women experience the intersections of racism and misogyny. Of course my explanations here are a little reductive, each one of these examples has much more to it than what I listed. 

In a similar vein, transandrophobia is useful for understanding how transphobia, homophobia, misogyny, and the meta-epistemologies of those discourses affect trans mascs, not just for being trans, but for being trans masc. Oppression, both systemic and on individual levels of discrimination and prejudice, works differently for people depending on the intersections of their identity (assigned sex at birth, assigned gender at birth, presentation, gender identity, race, culture, ability, etc). 

So transandrophobia is useful for discussing specifics like:

The idea of “lost lesbians” and “the trans cult tricking little girls into mutilating their bodies”

The rhetoric of violence around testosterone-based HRT. There is the incorrect idea that people who take T become more violent because they are becoming more masculine. 

This association of masculinity with violence, and how that affects trans mascs. For trans people regardless of gender, proximity to masculinity puts people in danger in queer spaces. People are treated worse if they are trans masc, trans fem and don’t pass well enough to the surrounding people, or nonbinary and not sufficiently ‘safely’ androgynous (skinny, hairless, and white, with no prominent secondary sex characteristics). 

How trans mascs are treated differently when they come out, or when they start to transition. Many people find that people are colder to them, they experience higher rates of abuse, and if they are trans men they are told to not talk about their experiences because ‘they are men and can’t possibly understand misogyny’. The voices of people who aren’t trans masc often end up being listened to more about trans masc experiences, than the people who have actually lived through those experiences. Like, people are shitty to trans people that are masculine specifically because they are masculine.

Corrective rape 

Many people, even in feminist and trans spaces, believe that a man’s gender cannot factor into his experiences of oppression. Eg believe that the fact that they are men is irrelevant to trans men’s experiences, believe that a Black man’s masculinity has nothing to do with how he experiences racial oppression, etc. There are even some vocal people who believe that men cannot be oppressed, and that trans men cannot be oppressed, specifically because being men means they CAN’T experience oppression. 

The idea that trans men transition in order to try to escape misogyny 

Discrimination in reproductive healthcare 

A lot more, it would take ages to list the different kinds of transandrophobia

I also noticed you said “continue to feel its effects if they don’t pass”. But that idea is part of the issue: trans mascs continue to experience oppression for being trans masc when they DO pass. Even if someone is well passing, and stealth, they still directly experience discrimination for being trans masc through things like access barriers to reproductive healthcare, higher rates of abuse, sexual assault, etc. 

So transandrophobia (trans andro + phobia, not trans +androphobia as some people against the concept seem to believe) is, like other specific terminologies of oppression, really useful as shorthand for the specific forms of oppression people face not just for being trans, but for being trans masc.

#transandrophobia #transphobia discussion

[shittysawtraps]

Hello, self-proclaimed "gender critical feminist". You prattle on about how everyone, especially you, can "always tell" if someone is transgender simply by looking. Why don't we put that claim to the test?

On the wall in front of you, a projector will display a series of 100 images of various men and women. Some are transgender, some are cisgender. You must determine and say out loud what gender you think that person was assigned at birth. Any wrong answer, as well as failure to answer within one minute of a slide appearing, will activate the machine next to you. It will deliver 10 blows to your face with a wooden bat. After each correct answer or beating, the projector will display the next picture.

Here's the first image. Clock, or get clocked. Make your choice.

#shitty saw traps #submission

[sexhaver]

Would love to hear what your word alternative is to describe the specific oppression faced by trans men because base level "word means this and can only mean this and has to be able to mean the same thing when broken down to it's base words" is "bi means two so bisexuals don't like enbies" levels of bullshit on both a social and linguistic sense. Trans men experience transphobia and mysogny specific to them on top of other oppressions that is not experienced by other trans people or cis women and the chosen word is transandrophobia, the oppression and specific hatred of trans men. Transmysogny describes transfem specific oppression, transphobia covers all trans oppression experiences, what can transmascs call our oppression since one word in it apparently offends you? If its just the name that offends you, what's an alternative? Idk how to tell you that trans men do experience oppression for, in cis people's eyes, "trying" to identify as men therefore yes, they experience oppression for being men, trans men specifically. The word androphobia is loaded but so is the word queer or gay or homosexual or literally every other language used by the lgbt community. All around, yikes.

Your literally only looking at it from the perspective that cis people see trans men as men, just trans ones therefore they dont attack or question their manhood, just the fact their trans. When they don't. They see us as ugly, immature and disfigured women who don't know our place. This idea that trans men's oppression just evaporates and they suddenly gain male privilege when they transition to any degree, regardless of medical or passing status is bs. Idk how to tell you they are experiencing oppression for being trans and specifically trying to transition from womanhood to manhood due to our society's view of what women should be. But sure, take all my shit out of context and post one screenshot. You really proved a point by ignoring trans men's oppression and deaths as a result of their transmasculinity, I'm sure Nex can really attest to our sudden transmasc privileges. Didn't realize you were the most surface level "men = bad. Men face no issue in society." type of "feminist".

Would love to hear what your word alternative is to describe the specific oppression faced by trans men

"transphobia".

Transmysogny describes transfem specific oppression,

transmisogyny is the synthesis of transphobia and misogyny that trans women face. the reason trans women get their own word is because that word represents the intersection of two different axes of oppression, not because every trans identity needs its own descriptor for hatred against it specifically.

transphobia covers all trans oppression experiences, what can transmascs call our oppression since one word in it apparently offends you?

...you answered your own question, "transphobia".

If its just the name that offends you, what's an alternative?

"transphobia".

trans men do experience oppression for, in cis people's eyes, "trying" to identify as men

this is transphobia.

The word androphobia is loaded but so is the word queer or gay or homosexual or literally every other language used by the lgbt community. All around, yikes.

Lol. Lmao, even.

Your literally only looking at it from the perspective that cis people see trans men as men, just trans ones therefore they dont attack or question their manhood, just the fact their trans. When they don't. They see us as ugly, immature and disfigured women who don't know our place.

wow, so the reason cis people are biased against trans men is because they see them as fundamentally being failed examples of the gender they were assigned at birth and lying about their actual gender identity? damn, that's wild. if only there was a name for this phenomenon that could also map onto other trans identities to provide a unifying framework for analysis.

This idea that trans men's oppression just evaporates and they suddenly gain male privilege when they transition to any degree, regardless of medical or passing status is bs.

literally not what this discussion is about.

Idk how to tell you they are experiencing oppression for being trans and specifically trying to transition from womanhood to manhood due to our society's view of what women should be.

you are describing transphobia.

I'm sure Nex can really attest to our sudden transmasc privileges.

what the fuck? 2. Nex was nonbinary not transmasc? 3. what the fuck?

Didn't realize you were the most surface level "men = bad. Men face no issue in society." type of "feminist".

hello? what year is it? can anyone hear me? it's so cold