It's really fucking condescending to approach a transmasculine person talking about their oppression and assume they have no understanding of transfeminism. Its infantilizing, its often dancing between misogynistic and malgendering, and its almost always hypocritical as hell.
If you police the discussions of analysis that tmasc people use with "you're wrong, you clearly need to read (transfeminist text)" maybe reflect on if that text you are citing is one specifically written by or about transmasculine people, or includes any collaboration or input from tmascs at all. Which is like. Pretty much never the situation I encounter.
It's like, cool. I'm not saying that your source from a transfeminine activist/author creating a work about transmisogyny isn't an important contribution to transfeminism, or holding incredibly valuable insights (I mean these are often works I think everyone should read)- but consider that if these works specifically do not center or involve transmasculine people... why are you wielding it as the rule book to define how a discussion on transmasculinity should be held?
Why is it that tmascs need to defer the language they use to communicate their experiences to those who are not them or making any genuine effort to cite, collaborate, or include them?
Why is it automatically wrong to challenge the conclusions those kinds of texts declare about us? Is it that tmascs refuse to accept the conclusions of a work which never sought to sincerely involve them just out of ignorance or pride- or could it be because those conclusions might actually be very limited and inaccurate- no matter the quality of other aspects of the work?
And like. Importantly here.
....Transmasculine people have made contributions to transfeminist materials, you know?
Yes we are underrepresented in transfeminist texts but are we are absolutely there, currently and historically. Our underrepresentation isn't some lack of care we have either, it's quite obviously yet another byproduct of our erasure in society. We are underrepresented in many spaces of career and academia both because of the systemic barriers that exclude and prevent us from entering, and from the fact that our contributions go undervalued and unacknowledged. It is absolutely not unusual to see the curriculum of gender studies classes completely exclude texts made by transgender men and transmasculine people. But they do exist.
Maybe these discussions and ideas of transmasculine theory are so new and shocking to you because you've never taken the time to flesh out your understanding of transgender oppression beyond a handful of transfeminine authors who did not author their works with transmasculine people in mind nor in partnership?
Again. This is not saying these aren't important works, but it should not be so controversial to state they just are not always going to be entirely applicable as the framework through which all other approaches to transfeminism must orbit. Nor is it that are they flawless objects that should not be criticized. Examining the successes and the failures of a text is essential critical analysis & media literacy. Especially in areas of theory.
To treat these works as universal representatives of transgender experience and incapable of having limitations or blind spots is foolish. It is standard practice to go to directly to marginalized people themselves to understand their perspectives and lives, not others. Transmasculine people are not the exception to that.
It just is incredibly telling that the texts consistently quoted at transmasc people to talk down to us about how we need to be properly educated on our place in transfeminism are never texts from transmasculine people themselves. It is self explanatory how you've reached the conclusion it is acceptable to demand transmasculine voices be decentered when you've built an understanding of us from texts which do not make the effort to involve us, but will still try to speak concretely about and for us.
You just sometimes encounter such prideful complicity in total ignorance to tmasc lives which will even myopically promote there are no transmasc texts in transfeminist academia in the first place.
So idk. But just maybe. Don't turn around and act like maybe we just aren't as well read as you are
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