isuggestforcefem, the TMA/TME dichotomy/binary, and discrimination-first identity for pity
(and smaller subheading: why they hate the concept of gendered socialisation so bad)
here are an assortment of screenshots of transfems on this website talking about TMEs. when you see the acronym TME in the following screenshots, I want you to replace it with the word "cis men & AFABs', what they purport to actually use it as, and tell me if you notice a pattern. if you read the previous sentence and thought "well that's silly, TME includes cis men!" I invite you to read the screenshots to the end and then think about that statement. for now walk with me:
thinking caps 🧢 on now: do those sound like they're talking about cis men to you? if you replace TME with "cis men & AFABs" do the posts still make sense? how about when you just replace them with "AFABs"? is there something about these posts that doesn't apply to cis men, even though they are also transmisogyny exempt? why might that be? 🤔 let's contemplate together.
and for a little extra, sometimes they just say it straight up for you so you know what they're talking about, because it was never about being mad at cis men in the first place, and actually you're a Hitlerite:
I wonder why cis men aren't the ones who are the problem. cisgender men are the ones responsible for the global wave of anti-trans legislation, the ones who frame trans women as child predators, who enact physical violence against trans women, who murder trans women. cisgender men were the perpetrators in 96% of murders of trans women in the United States between 2013 and 2021.*
why then would cis men not be the problem that they complain about?what do the cis women, "theyfabs" and trans men have in common that OP might have such an issue with that being murdered comes second to having people exclude you online? 🧢🤔 pondering...
the invention of TMA/TME as a term used to describe a group based solely on the term for oppression they face is a brilliant operation on part of the people it benefits, i.e. transfems who want you to forget who they were pre-transition and want you to believe they have been on the bottom of society's totem pole their whole lives. I found myself thinking of the term misogynoir, another relatively new term to describe the specific discrimination faced by a group discriminated against for combined factors (black + woman), and how we haven't tried making misogynoir-affected and misogynoir-exempt a thing. I would really like to on account of it being another point to allow the internet black woman to be right at the bottom of the privilege totem pole in a way that would make tumblr whites seethe the way they already do about black women 🤭
this is because a label based on the discrimination a group faces is an attempt to make you see these people as more pitiful, sadder, more worthy of your sympathy, instead of being descriptive. we don't use homophobia-exempt in place of heterosexual. we do not say racism-exempt in place of terms like broader terms like people of colour or more specific ones like non-[ethnicity here]. it is done intentionally. person-first is a thing of the past, identity-first is for the common folk: discrimination-you-face-first is the language du jour to make sure you think of them as "people discriminate against me btw 🥺" first and foremost. it's a great strategy for a website where the social hierarchy is based on a custom game of queer oppression olympics which they desperately wish to win.
this language also allows for the inversion of the status quo. in the same way that people on this website whining about misandry forget that male supremacy is in fact the way the world at large operates and the "I hate men" posters aren't lords of the land singlehandedly driving male loneliness and suicide rates, those invested in the TMA/TME dichotomy want you to forget that for the vast majority of trans people (i.e. those who didn't transition very, very young), for the vast majority of the formative years of their lives, transfems experienced male socialisation and transmascs experienced female socialisation. most transfems benefited from and perpetuated society's pervasive misogyny, and that most transmascs have suffered from the effects of it. you are to think of the transmasc/TME as an entitled, dominating force who have been gifted everything by the world and the transfem/TMA as endlessly suffering under their majority rule.
people more articulate than me** have written about the strange denial of socialisation. this post by tumblr user pure summarises my opinion on it best:
"the only reason to deny it exists is to deflect guilt." sicko-fancy replied to the above post with this statement and more, but I feel it to be the most succinct way to look at it. to deny the existence of this socialisation, of a system that you may have benefitted from even as it harmed you, can only be understood as an act of guilt for having existed as part of such a system in the first place. there's another motivator here though imo: envy. the desire to have had the experiences your cis peers had, the knowledge that you were humiliated and punished for exhibiting behaviours that were celebrated in those of the opposite sex. even just the knowledge that, through no fault of your own, you are different and some will consider you lesser than your cis counterparts drives an insane amount of envy in those less comfortable with their transness. many who declare themselves as being proudly trans reveal themselves to be the copers of the century through their refusal to acknowledge how their past affects their present, which you can often see in the way they just keep being misogynistic towards women and those they see as women (transmascs) no matter their identity lol.
this dynamic where you are meant to perceive transmascs as the ultimate oppressors of transfems begins to fall apart when you look at literally any space whatsoever, online or offline, where things matter and occur and this is not happening. you're meant to believe
every trans man has the platform, beliefs and minor influence to get randoms ostracised from communities for minor infractions and Unpersoved and are always believed with impunity;
false rape accusations are plentiful (wrong), specifically target transfems (And Black People Btw) (and also just "just trust me sister we're getting falsely accused of rape by the dozen"), get people jailed and killed all the time (also wrong, did you know that 2% of rapists are convicted and imprisoned much less for facing violent retaliation lol), and come from the "TMEs" in huge numbers (do you think they're talking about cis men making false rape accusations?), painting "TMEs" as hysterical harpies who want to ruin people's lives by falsely accusing people of heinous crimes (now what group have I heard that from before...)
meanwhile even just looking at the online sphere actual bog-standard misogyny down to rape threats and not taking them seriously enough and complaining about "theyfabs" (again note using AFAB here in places of directly seething about capital F Females, which is literally what it means, but would make them sound like incels 🤔) and not taking the identities of any of these people seriously because many of them are, at their core, misogynists who do not like women and girls. I mean AFABs. I mean TMEs.
I'm going to conclude this by reminding you that these whites are currently trying to scold transmascs for romanticising cowboys because Manifest Destiny while they openly try to get you to go "well who decides what a rapist is. and nobody's talking about forgiveness for rapist what if the victim wants to forgive the rapist 🥺"
* whites click their heels at the idea of bringing up trans homicide statistics and talking about their "sisters". Trans Murder Monitoring's statistics show that, globally, the vast majority of murdered trans women are black and non-black trans women of colour, with an all-time high of 93% of them being black or brown in 2024. in cases where the perpetrator was known to the victim, clients of sex work (almost exclusively cis men) were the most numerous, followed by the trans womens' partners (again, vast, vast majority cis men). in the same way that cis women, especially cis women of colour, are especially vulnerable to cis male violence (and especially vulnerable to said violence while participating in sex work, which women, cis and trans, are driven to by poverty and male's desire to purchase consent to exploit women for sexual gratification), trans women face unimaginable levels of violence from cis men. please remember this the next time one of these white americans selling diaper pictures tries to put herself on the same level as murdered trans women of colour.
** tumblr randoms are trying to paint pure as a TERF for 🤔 talking about how it was in fact radical lesbian feminists who led the fight to get NAMBLA kicked out of queer advocacy circles by going "ummm well the people who wrote this are bad!!!" isn't it interesting how it's always talking about women making sure predatory men are removed from communities that gets people the most vocal about wanting to stay away from anyone who might engage in wrongthink 🤔 but the pedophilia and rape fetishists are A-OK to the point that the person took more issue with me calling a known serial sexual assaulter a token than with the fact that she is a serial sexual assaulter 🤔 I would really love to see anything trans-exclusionary pure has actually posted, because so far it's coming up as the usual "well if we call this uppity black a TERF nobody will listen to her!"
