One of the biggest problems I have with Radfems is when they call women who identify as trans “misogynistic”, or dismiss them as though they’re just being stupid.
Do you really think you’re helping anyone?
When I was a teenager and first discovered radfem communities - this was before I transitioned - I felt just as alienated by them as I did by conservative women.
Because they didn’t understand me, they didn’t have any experience with how I felt, and they didn’t have any helpful advice for me.
At best, their advice was “learn to love yourself”. At worst, they were actively hateful towards women like me and called us names. Traitor, misogynist, etc.
No one gave me the empathy I needed. No one gave me any actionable steps I could take towards that vague goal of “loving myself”, which felt like an impossible thing to do at the time.
The feelings I was experiencing, and which I had been experiencing for my whole life, needed much more help than that. It needed people who cared and who wanted to understand me.
A big part of why I transitioned was because trans men were the first people who actually understood how I felt and had an answer for me as to how to cope with that.
The answer ended up being wrong of course, but I didn’t know that at the time. When you’re a kid and you’re just looking for someone who understands how you feel? And suddenly you meet all these women who live as men who understand you perfectly, because they’ve felt the same things…
Of course that’s the path you’re going to follow.
Radfems need to be doing better if they want to actually help women who are transitioning. My feeling is that many actually don’t want to help and don’t genuinely care about us.
But for those that do… in order to do better they have to listen to the experiences of women who have been through all of that.
We have to talk about the unique experiences of women who choose to transition in order to actually help the young women who are transitioning now.
If talking to trans identifying women makes you feel like you’re yelling at a wall, consider that maybe it’s not that the person on the other end is dumb - Maybe you’re speaking the wrong language. Maybe you should lower your voice. Maybe you should try to understand her.
Of course it’s not anyone’s job to be our therapists. But when young women are looking for community and empathy, we don’t deserve to be turned away at the door.
Sometimes it feels like masculine women, women who transition, are the only ones who don’t get included in female solidarity.
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