One thought that I've been trying to put into words, mainly related to the reason many transfems will be instantly hostile to someone coming onto their posts to ask questions (even if they are in good faith, which will be indistinguishable from sealioning anyway), is that explaining the same "basic concepts" over and over is exhausting.
The vast majority of users in this website are straight up unable to acknowledge misogyny as an actual force that exists. Example 1. If they can't even do that, is it any wonder that overt transmisogyny and twerf rethoric goes over 95%< of users' heads? Example 2.
I was doing some laundry and for no particular reason a conversation that I had years ago with a (no longer) friend came to mind. He was outraged that there are programs in place so companies have to hire a certain % of women employees. No amount of explaining that women are passed over on the hiring proccess, that we are treated worse, paid and promoted less, that a more qualified woman will have a harder time finding a job than a less qualified dude, that we can't just "get more qualifications/experience" and get hired easier as a random dude could; no amount of explaining and showing factual data would convince him that those sort of programs are necessary or it'd be even worse than it is. And eventually I had to drop it because like. You can only spend so much energy on trying to make people see reality.
I think there is a similar phenomenon at play here, where no matter how much evidence is presented, how many studies, how many transfems lose their blogs daily, how many get (are getting) harassed and nothing is done about it, how many notes posts with our lived experiences get; at the end of the day most people do not conceptualize transmisogyny as a social force that "causes" all of this, they do not ever interrogate their own biases toward transfems, they can be explicitly told that a trans woman is getting harassed because she is a trans woman and they will find a million excuses to not believe it. Example 1. Example 2 & example 3.
On the first example the op of that thread says, and I quote: "But clicking on the replies just showed a bunch of hatred towards her on behalf of her identity." The 6th comment in order of upvotes (51 compared to 411 on the top one) cuts through the bullshit: "Because she's trans. Anyone saying anything else here is essentially just talking around the issue. But that's the root cause. If she weren't trans, she wouldn't get the hate. It's that simple." Remarkable (not really, you get used to it) that even with the op (unintentionally?) pointing out the cause the comments blaming youtube comments and anonymous people on the internet are the most upvoted ones. It is so simple, it is so obvious, so clear, so selfevident, so blatant; and yet the general public is unable to acknowledge transmisogyny exists.
The examples 2 and 3 are videos that I do not recommend watching (~2 hours combined) but the gist of it is: a catgirl streamer (who happens to be a trans woman) posted her fps montage on twitter and got accused of cheating. Let me make it clear: the only reason shitheads with massive audiences managed to make it into a (relatively) big deal is because she is a trans woman. That's all there is to it. And yet in the 2 hours of video it is not mentioned a single time how she constantly gets misgendered and insulted by any of her detractors. It took me until they show one of those shithead streamers to immediately go "oh this is just a hate campaign, she's probably just good at the game". And I, as always, was right.
Do we see the point I'm making? Do we not see this happen on this website every single day? How no matter what you say, no one believes you? No matter how much proof there is, tme people do not even acknowledge transmisogyny exists? Do we see now why a woman making a post about her experiences might be extremely rude and hostile to random users asking questions that can be answered by reading the post and listening to what many transfems are saying? Do we see now why it looks like many transfems only trust other transfems? Do we understand that all of this combined is itself a form of transmisogyny?
It is a miracle and an impressive display of patience that there are women who take the time to explain all of this in very nice words and much better articulated than I am able to to tme people.
Not like they'll read it anyway.
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