I'm making a post out of some tags I left under a different post in order to elaborate a little, so forgive if this is a bit less articulate than usual. For context, I was speaking about non-transmasculine people's tendency to react to a transmasculine person speaking about their adverse experiences and marginalization by telling them that the experience they described isn't unique to transmascs and that other people go through it, often worse.
Itâs definitely not always malicious on an individual level but it does operate from a malicious environment, so to speak, one that has been purposely cultivated by anti-transmasculine people (in my experience often ATM women, cis or trans) to ensure that any instance of speech by a transmasc about transmasculine oppression is rhetorically neutered, even when it is superficially âtoleratedâ. [The predominant attitude is] "Yessss of course you get to say Your Thing! Awww well done good boy! Look, arenât we so good to you, we even allow you to speak! You know itâs not like this everywhere, right? Never forget how lucky you are [to just be allowed to speak]! And now, time for me and the rest of the Actually Oppressed People with Actual Power of Reasoning to talk about why what you just described probably didnât happen as you described it, and [if it did] it meant something else, and also women go through it too and itâs way worse when [it happens to women], and you better agree with us on this or my façade of tolerance is going to slip and Iâm going to accuse you Of Vile Misogyny."
As I said, itâs not that every individual is thinking this when they do what OOP describes, but this sort of social ritual (transmasc shares a thought or experience -> a non-transmasc takes the stage to speak about how this isnât a Unique Experience and itâs worse when it happens to anybody but transmascs -> transmasc has to either agree or receive punishment from The Community via whatever onlooker is available and feels like it) has very much been set in place on purpose by extremely anti-transmasculine people who did very much know what they were doing and do want us silenced. **Our silence gives those who just plainly hate us and like to see us suffer sadistic satisfaction, as it ultimately leads us to die or detransition, and is politically useful to the rest, because even if we stay transitioned it forces us to pursue** no other self-fulfillment and to only quietly exist as resources (of labor, gender affirmation, money, sex, love, community organizing, you name it) for the rest of whichever specific community weâre in to draw from.
This is one of several bad faith rhetorical strategies that anti-transmasculine people within LGBT+, trans, and/or feminist communities utilize to silence us. Silencing does not necessarily entail making the other party entirely quiet - on the contrary, it often involves dictating the content and the form of speech (which words can and cannot be used, which topics can and cannot be talked about), as well as providing punishment for 'disobedient' speech through gaslighting, dogpiling, ostracism, harassment, and ridicule.
