Do trans men oppress trans women? If yes, how and how can I avoid doing that? Sorry if it's a stupid question
Hi! Very interesting concept you've given me...
I want to start first by saying: if you have privelege in a society and you are an oppressor class, there is no real way to "opt out" of that system - but you CAN do something about thay privelege and unlearn bigotries, like any other group. It should be more them-focused less you-focused ykwim? Better framing for everyone.
And wether or not trans men "opress", is a different story... lemme boot up the ol' nuance machine..
First of all let's define oppressor! Is it someone in a class priveleged above you? Able to enact axes of oppression against you? Or, do we mean someone who has the social capability to oppress? People will disagree on this.
.
If we say "trans men cannot be oppressors since they are transgender, giving them no social power because they are oppressed under the patriarchy" I wanna bring up 2 points.
The first being "what about cis women?" They are oppressed under the patriarhy, misogyny is real, yet they are priveleged and oppressors. Are the complexities here deeper than just "has social power entirely/has none"? And if so, how nuanced is it? Does it change anything?
The second thing I wish to bring up is as a priveleged party you DO have social/political/etc power, maybe not the equivalent to a patriarch, but you DO have power over others.
Mmm... I think that gets into an additional nuance of "systemic, social, political, etc" privelege, and what we define oppressor as there too. Is an oppressor only someone who has political or systemic power over you?
There is a very large discussion here.
....
And as you may notice I have been hinting at the idea trans men have privilege over transfeminized people, (which inherently is a different conversation), because that's truly what this question should be. Now I am unsure if I am the best to explain this because I feel like someone who more muses, asks questions, posits things occasionally, not an authority figure (go see @/the-whipping-girl or like @/transsexual-feminism or something to ask for/read up on what trans-misogyny is better than I can ever explain it.)
But I will try!
So, in a lot of transfeminist theory for decades people have been discussing transfeminization under the patriarchy and how anyone who is not transfeminized has the ability to enact trans-misogynistic violence against us.
What IS trans-misogyny?
Well, Julia Serano once described it as oppositional sexism (as it pertains to us so transphobia) intersected with traditional sexism (femininity is somehow lesser)..
"But don't other trans people face this?" yes, but arguably to a lesser extent and in an entirely different way. The transfeminized/trans-misogynized class in the patriarchy is inherent to someone "transitioning into femininity" so to speak..
Of course, that's the shoddiest explanation ever and I wouldn't take to heart - I'd find someone who knows how the fuck to describe this and the theory around it and take their shit with more grains of sand - but at least you have an idea of where to look discussion-wise..
-==
"But how does any of this make us privileged?" Well, you see, the basic idea is that by not being trans-misogynized you are privileged, and you hold the societal power over trans women to use this bigotry against them. And more than any "trans person is transphobic" situation.
It's been explained to me like this:
Patriarchs (societally-cis men)
->misogyny->
Societally-cis women
->Transphobia->
TME societally-transgender people
-> trans-misogyny->
TMA people
===
Now, to explain this,
a patriarch holds privileges on the axes of misogyny, transphobia, and trans-misogyny.
A societally-cis woman is, of course, oppressed by misogyny. Now, cisfeminism will have you believe these are the only categories - but we know better! We, as transfeminists, know this class is privileged on the basis of trans-misogyny and transphobia! YES, you can be privileged and oppressed by the patriarchy in different ways. [some fake-cis-feminists claim gender-based oppression is all the patriarchy pertains to, and transphobia is its own separate axis that relates none. AKA "trans men oppress cis women cuz men - but they oppress trans men cuz they're cis" - this is just wrong. On the face of it. Not how reality works.]
TME trans people are oppressed by both misogyny and transphobia - now many non-transfeminists stop here. They think "cisfeminism + a class for trans people! This is the patriarchy's set-up" - but for a while transfeminists have been theorizing about it differently. THIS is where trans men are, and, as you can see, it isn't saying "privileged on basis of transphobia/misogyny" BUT it IS saying privileged on basis of trans-misogyny. THAT is what people are discussing - even if they don't use this model.
TMA trans people, oppressed by misogyny, transphobia, and, of course, trans-misogyny.
===
Now, some say that transphobia inherently carries misogyny as an axis of oppression, so they'll describe this more-so as subtypes of misogyny beating down on more marginalized groups under the patriarchy (as best as I explain it). This is why you may see people who discuss things like this say "you don't need an intersection of transphobia and misogyny for people who aren't TMA" - because the misogyny came free with the being abused by the patriarchy.
The key difference is that when people say we need words like isomisogyny or to let trans men into trans-misogyny - there is no analysis. No understanding of theory. Just "they have this and I feel like I should too" <- mainly because people centre their validity in how oppressed they are, causing a bunch of fakewokes who cannot admit privilege at all. Even outside of this context.
So, a transfeminized person talking about theory will be met with ignorance and insecurity. There is a specific reason why trans-misogyny was coined, and the theories built off of it was all with reason. There is no "I feel like I should have this" - there is no coining on twitter for the fun of it - there is just actual active discussion. Transfeminists are not concerned with the tumblr hub-ub of it all.....
Which is all to say: the difference on why we get our own "special" word and other ones seem to always be riddled with flaws is because we don't see it as a special word. We just discuss with each other, and new words come when they are needed. So, unless someone wants to read up on actual theory and then make their own special literature for other groups (which has never happened).
IDK I feel I gotta include that because every time a transfeminist mentions theory there's always complaints "why don't I get my own?" - but the issue is the thought pattern of that in general. It's not that you're not allowed, it's that it's never been about being unique and affirmed in your own oppression! So if someone tries to respond to me explaining this theory on why transfeminists might believe in trans men's privilege with "what about me?" - what ABOUT you? WHY do you need your own term? What's your analysis? How does it fit in with the current analyses being discussed? <- Think that to yourself.
^ SORRY FOR TANGENT. I JUST KNOW HOW IT SOUNDS TO MENTIION TRANS-MISOGYNY THEN MENTION HOW A LOT OF PEOPLE DON'T BELIEVE YOU NEED A WORD FOR THE MISOGYNY/TRANSPHOBIA INTERSECTION... BUT TRUTHFULLY, IT'S IN THE THEORY, YKWIM? OPPOSITIONAL SEXISM X TRAD SEXISM AS IT AFFECTED PEOPLE WHO ARE SOCIETALLY-TRANSFEM IS SOMETHING, YOU GOTTA START WITH SOMETHING. that's why these beliefs form, i think.
==========
I really disassociated and forgot a lot of what was supposed to go here I'm sorry. I had more to say on the model and different modes of thought..
....
NOW, it's important to reexplain nobodies arguing against the oppression of trans men, and if you have a societal force that needs a name that isn't better described as misogyny or transphobia - let us know! Do that work! Make that theory! But until then, this is what we got lol.
Now, "trans men are privileged", how is this different than cisfeminism or general fake-feminism?
The difference is, we are acknowledging that societally-cis and societally-trans people have different placements under the patriarchy. The patriarchy doesn't care for gender labels; the fact the enforced classes are man and woman are because they want you to conform to that. They want you to be born M or F and conform to the role it enforces. A gender-identity-based patriarchy does not exist.
[this is also why transfeminists say "you are oppressed for being trans not being a man" - because it's true - your gender labels have nothing to do with it. it's oppositional sexism. Transphobia. Your patriarchal class is because you are trans solely.]
In the transfeminist mindset, though, you are not privileged for your labels, but your societal standing as a non-transfeminzied person. Because you don't experience transmisogyny and benefit from that, you have privilege.
This is also different from the TERF idea of "transitioning into privilege" - being trans inherently makes you not privileged! Nobody is saying you become a patriarch. I know it may feel that way if someone says "male privilege" for trans men - which yea, I think the term will always cause confusion, but people who say that mean this as well.
Any transfeminist view about trans-misogyny and TME privilege will be based on this idea that you are privileged for not being trans-misogynized. No, not that you have "female-privilege" or are the equivalent of a patriarch.
===
Okay, now I have deliriously explained the concept of WHY people may say trans men have privilege, let's talk about what we are really here for: not understanding what it means to be an oppressor, or discussing theories that pertain to TME privilege while I stumble through trying to explain the thought processes behind them, we are here cuz you asked a probably bad faithed question that if answered in earnest would always lead here:
Unearning trans-misogyny.
And to unlearn trans-misogyny, we need to first understand what it is. How it functions.
Trans-misogyny comes with a lot of things,
We are hypersexualized and fetishized, we are seen as sex dolls, we are seen as less-than for our femininity, we are forced to strive to perform womanhood as best as we can even if we are GNC or have a complex experience due to being seen a pervs and invasive cis men if we don't (even allies uphold this) - we are held to an impossible standard, people literally wait for us to fuck up to go "see ? I was affirmed in my inherent distrust!",
i am literally too sick to continue this post which sucks cuz this is what the post was always going to be and it'd ve a really cool and loong explaination and sruff but im so sick
go read up on transfeminist lit and lurk in our discussions . be educated.
i think you're a little uncharitable to trans men and other TME trans people here. it's a pretty good post to be clear (especially for one made while sick and delirious lol, i hope you're alright!), but i do think there is a lot of intelligent analysis about trans men's oppression that has come out on this website in recent years that is perfectly compatible with transfeminist analysis, it's just accompanied by a lot of unhelpful argumentation between trans folk that can be difficult to sift through.
most of the theorising that has come out historically about trans oppression has been written by trans women, which has given a pretty clear picture of transmisogyny but less so for anti-transmasculine oppression (as manifested through elevated rates of sexual abuse, infantilisation, etc) and i think the disparity mostly comes down to epistemic injustice.* but to suggest that the lack of academic discourse surrounding specifically anti-transmasculine oppressions is evidence that there is no such thing as transandrophobia / anti-transmasculinity i think is a little unfair. do lots of TME trans people need to unlearn transmisogyny? yes!!! but i think that their own issues can just be ignored.
side note: a book that i read recently that does touch on a couple of the above topics re. transmasculine people was DILF: Did I Leave Feminism? by Jude Doyle, as well as his Medium posts. it's not perfect and by no means is it a complete analysis, but it did leave me feeling a little clearer about it than i did before.
*epistemic injustice: when a group is less able to produce knowledge regarding their experiences than another, e.g. trans men struggling to enter this particular academic space (this is such an oversimplified explanation, Miranda Fricker has a whole book on it that you can read lol)
hi! i understand entirely! to be clear: my post was never meant to voice my own opinion just take the reader along a journey of why people may think that way and what they think
also! i never wanted to make it seem like i believe "no theory=dont exist" ykwim? more that A.) again thats just a reason people dont buy in early or factor it, theyre just going based on the literature theyve read - but it IS always evolving ofc ofc and B.) until that advancement i dont think a lot of people will switch up what they believe necassarily ykwim? like some people buy in early and others wait for more concise stuff to arise to then slowly factor it in
and any vague "people will use this to just try and have something similar to trans-misogyny" or similar was to try and critique the mindset moreso than any particular term. yea some terms were coined legit with 0 reasoning behind them to have "their version of X" (looking at you transandrophobia-exempt) and i think its silly, but moreso its the idea that trans women are keeping their version of X for themselves and not allowing others to have theirs thats wonky i think. i think it should be reframed entirely ykwim?
but yea i didn't mean to downplay anything i was trying to explain certain viewpoints about this topic that are borne from misunderstanding transfeminist discussions while also explaining what things i see are Prevelant Enough to also be affecting how people are viewing things...
tho eya youre right i should prob rewrite this to make it clear
how bout we all play a quick game. let’s all play along no matter what we believe or what side we are on.
the game is this: we pretend that ‘man’ means what it used to mean and ‘woman’ means what it used to mean— back before the 2010s, mostly.
aka: they are two terms denoting the two different sexes of the human race (which is sexually dimorphic, & no the existence of DSDs doesn’t change this, & neither does belief in a gender identity or in more than two sexes or ‘a sexual spectrum’ or whatever else.
and…
WE ALL KNOW THAT!
do us a favor & stop pretending to not know what actual reality is… you know just as well as i do what is going on in the world no matter how hard you scream your “TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN” cult mantras. you know that human beings are sexually dimorphic and that there are men & women, males & females, & that this is decided by our chromosomes, our hormones, our body parts (both internal organs & external sex organs).
YES there is some variation here! because like ALL things in the world nothing is 100% consistent 100% of the time! BUT the vast majority of people born with Disorders of Sexual Development DO NOT IDENTIFY AS TRANS and to be trans does not = to be intersex.
TRANS=\= INTERSEX!
so stop lying to me because it’s the most blatant sign of disrespect. & no i don’t give a fuck if calling this out or saying what i’ve said is something you find “rude”… cause it had to be said.
& as a brave woman once said…
RIP, Magdalen. You were one of the bravest of us all.
anyways… just talkin to the rational women now (the real feminists lol)
i have this new thing where i no longer entertain conversations with people who are blatantly denying reality to my face. like when my father equates abortion to murder & won’t change his stance no matter what AND YET… he doesn’t treat me, my mother, or his new wife the way he would treat a murderer (especially one who murdered helpless infants!!)… and yet…
we have all had abortions & he is well aware!
i point this fact out to him & he never does address it… wonder why…….. Lol.
point is, it’s just like how gender theory activists are well aware there are two sexes and that they cannot actually change their biological sex.
so what if we all just stop entertaining the nonsense?
like, if someone comes up to you while you’re walking down the street and they are either high, suffering from mental illness, in shock/extreme distress, etc…… & you cannot for the life of you UNDERSTAND A WORD they are saying… do you usually stay and have a pretend nonsense conversation with them & then invite them over for tea, or do you politely nod a few times & get out of there, because there ain’t shit you can do for them & you would rather not be stuck in a conversation so removed from reality you cannot make sense of it?
(also situations where u used the fawn response don’t count)
TRAs in their current mainstream form are all talking nonsense & we GOTTA stop acting like it makes a lick of sense.
*i hope this didn’t come off as offensive to anybody who has actually experienced/does experience psychosis, because if there is an implication that having symptoms that alter your perception of your reality somehow make you lesser in any way… well then i apologize cause that isn’t what i meant.
i MEANT that when people who are clearly lucid try to tell you that the world is actually something entirely different than what it is, then they are surely not just blatantly unconcerned with your wellbeing but are actually being malicious and likely have an intent to gaslight you, bully. harass you into silence, drag you into their cult, or perhaps even maybe just make it impossible to argue back with them
(cause SRSLY, what THE FUCK do u even say to ‘x + y = yellow, which is a sinusoidal sound wave & my penis is now a vagina bye!)
rly tho, that’s about how these post modern new definitions & denials of reality sound like).
ANYWAYS ! hope u all enjoyed this lil rant from me, a one miss aelin rose. 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
@penatola ya it is bb. ya it is. this is what i was talkin about wit people denying reality to your fuckin face. you ain’t notice how the trans community always trying so hard to deny the truth of human sexual dimorphism but always need two terms to describe someone’s sex even if it ain’t “male” and “female”…. it’s clear you on some level are aware there are 2, they are different, those differences matter.
no need to follow up wit you on this tho not tryna argue
scientists: humans arent really sexually dimorphist and also sex isnt a locked box of one or the other, every sex characteristic can be "in between" or mixed and matched with others that seemingly "dont match" - because thats how biology works
Sometimes when researching the history of slavery you come across a connection to your own life that takes you by surprise. Here's a connection I only made recently.
In the village where I'm from there is one old mansion dating from around 1800 and a lot of small newer houses. That mansion has been owned by the same family for centuries: they are the local Protestant landowners who made their money out of selling flax, the plant fibre from which linen cloth is made.
The reason that Ulster (the northern quarter of Ireland) has Protestant landowners is an interesting one in itself. It was historically the most Catholic region of Ireland, and the most resistant to English rule. It was sparsely populated and had difficult terrain, plus dense woodlands and bogs that made the guerrilla tactics of the Ulster lords effective. It was actually in response to this resistance that the Plantation of Ulster occurred in the early 1600s.
As punishment for the resistance, land in virtually all of Ulster was seized by the English and redistributed to Protestant settlers from northern England and southern Scotland. These new landowners were forbidden from having Catholic tenants and were required to import further settlers from England or Scotland to populate their lands (in practice it proved impossible to find enough settlers, so these landowners often skirted the law and rented to Irish Catholics anyway). The woodlands were deforested to provide timber for the new settlers, to make more land agriculturally viable, and to make Irish resistance (which naturally continued) more difficult.
It meant that very quickly Irish families in the area were either kicked off lands they had lived on and farmed for centuries, or else had to work the same land but pay rent to British colonists for the right to do so. For nearly two hundred years after this, Catholics were effectively banned from land ownership, until in the late 1700s they were finally permitted to buy back the lands their ancestors had once owned by saving the money they earned by working that land for the descendants of the British settlers who had seized it. There remains a clear religiously-stratified class system in Ulster to this day as a result of this historic injustice.
What does all this have to do with slavery? Well, the local Protestant landowners in my village made their money by selling flax to be made into linen. Much of that linen was shipped to the Caribbean to clothe the enslaved Black people who had been kidnapped from Africa and trafficked to islands like Jamaica, Antigua and Barbados where they were forced to farm sugarcane until death. The very merchant ships that brought slave-produced sugar and cotton to Britain and Ireland often returned with a cargo of Irish linen, beef, butter, and pork. On an island like Antigua, for example, the ecosystem was totally destroyed by plantation owners who deforested everything they could to make way for a sugarcane monoculture, naturally resulting in a situation where food and clothing needed to be imported rather than produced locally.
During the era of slavery, Ireland accounted for a huge portion of the produce imported into the British Caribbean. Different areas and cities in Ireland grew wealthy off the unusual role of provisioning the slave plantations. While it was linen that created much of the wealth in Belfast at that time, in Cork it was beef. This is just one of the many ways that so many Europeans benefitted off the proceeds of the transatlantic slave trade, even if they didn't own or invest in slave plantations themselves (though of course many Irish people did that too, including many Catholics).
It's often said that Ireland is where the British practised the techniques of colonisation they would later employ so ruthlessly in the the rest of the world. In fact, many of the Scottish colonists who settled Ulster moved on in a generation or two to settle Virginia and Pennsylvania, no doubt using the valuable lessons they had learned from their first attempt at colonisation.
But although there is no way you can compare the colonisation of Ireland with the unequalled horror of the transatlantic slave trade, it is so interesting to see the repeated colonial tactics of land seizure and deforestation to enable large scale industrialised processing of agricultural products shipped back and forth across the Atlantic, whether it be linen or sugar.
And of course now I know that the mansion in my village is, like seemingly everything built around that time, unambiguously one of the proceeds of the centuries of trafficking and forced labour of kidnapped Africans that underpins everything in western Europe.
it's totally not transfeminists having transfeminist discussions about how trans-misogyny is an oppressive force and by not being in the group marginalized by it you are privileged and have the social power to harm transfeminized people by wielding trans-misogyny
its people saying "you are privileged because you're hyperinvisible"
that's why when people "call out" these things happening it is 99% of the time a transfeminist discussing what was aforementioned and others instead reading whole new sentences that say "you are not oppressed i am more oppressed ur not valid rahhh"
^ let's explain why this happens:
bad faithed actors (shitty losers, TERFs, ignorant people, etc) over a year ago blew up for saying the worst shit, and every few months there would be another shitty person for a little bit. then people kept replying to it and eventually the same points got parroted around enough for people to treat what maybe a few people said as What Everyone Ever Is Saying.
So, now, we have a few people's weirdness being blown out of proportion and people who are newer to the discussion and ignorant about what's being said on "the other side" view everything even similar as Secretly Saying What That One Person Said Once.
then you get people trying to argue against transfeminist ideas with "well im oppressed too" - which really doesn't work fundamentally because the transfeminist never said otherwise, so they get pushback. affirming their idea that the transfeminist just Thinks They Are Privileged For Their Suffering (which in and of itself is a TERF-borne idea)
and the cycle continues
==
AKA: this is a discourse post. it is borne from treating what maybe a few people have said ever as totally happening all the time, equating completely normal conversations to that extreme to pad it and make it seem like thats happening, then wrapping it in a bow with enforcing this is a trans man v trans woman issue and implying trans women are taking up too much space in the conversations and denying others their oppression.
I may not be well worded enough to break through the "noooo nuh uh! i have benefit of the doubt because i'm being mask off rn!" BS, but anyone who cares can tell this is weird. you are the scum that infests the transandrophobia tag that turned it from ignorant at worst to willfully ignorant and discourse driven and violently trans-misogynistic as the baseline. you should be ashamed, and anyone who thinks theyre doing anything by supporting stuff like this should wake tf up
another Black trans woman was found murdered, louisiana this time, and the news is consistently misgendering her in all the reporting. her name was marlow trottie and she was only 35 and she was a woman. don’t let them erase her womanhood.
Trans women aren't allowed to exist in media unless we look directly at the camera and go, "I am a transgender woman." And it makes me want to kill people
I feel like egg prime directive shows everything wrong with how LGBT community treats trans women. And the general contempt for them ingrained into it.
The Internet would genuinely be a better place if we all accepted that "cringe culture" was never about being mean to certain fandoms and was always about harassing transfems, mentally disabled people and fat people.
was blocked but i already had this response written..
FOR; blud said in the comments its not ACTUALLY about forcefem but ""egg culture""
-
the usage of forcefem here to tall about ""egg culture''' feels very specific. no wonder you're scared about being called transmisogynistic! you are putting two things associated with transfems together for no real reason other than to jingle a bell to get the readers transmisogynistic bias to activate so you can push a narrative people (transfems in this case as you are heavily implying it) are somehow forcing men to be women. forcing them to be transgender. this isn't happening.
the best example you got is F1NNST3R and the whole schtick with him is he purposely made himself a meme. he made his chat forcefem him and become fetishbait and then people were debating on what that means. yea it sucks when you find out you wanna understand your gender and yea the internet can be super parasocial, but i don't think thats indicative of egg culture. i think that's indicative of how audiences online can be incredibly invasive and treat their favs like characters. (also the wider discussion was more nuanced but yea. the BEST EXAMPLE of this was borne from being parasocial, not "egg culture")
A Measured Response In Star Trek, the Federation of Planets has agreed on a prime directive: No member of the Federation may make contact w
anyways read this, for all intents and purposes it argues against every argument you have.
#whats with thid lie online that trans women are evil predators grooming people X into being trans
i dislike how prevalent for///ce fem is online tbh like people can be just existing (Not A Sexual Thing) and some fuckers will try to for////ce fem them by insinuating something they're doing is girly . fuck off
So like there's this urban legend that gets passed around of trans women taking up too much space.
I've met like, exactly one of those boomer trans women who just yap forever and everyone in the room is obviously deeply uncomfortable. I feel like that's more a boomer thing than a trans woman thing, and there certainly are boomers who are not like that but it seems more common.
Personally, I'm a little quiet at first and really sensitive about social cues. Like, people have sometimes mistakenly believed I have poor social skills or I'm autism-spectrum. I think the truth is that I have adequate social skills and enough empathy to tell when people obviously dislike me.
I'm so sensitive to social cues and so desperate for the web of feminine validation that I have avoided entire hobbies, arts, careers, essential household chores and colors of the rainbow just because a specific woman or person afab really laid on the shame and made me feel like I'm not allowed to do that thing. If it wasn't outright framed as "that's for girls!" it was "you won't do it right [because you don't have female socialization]."
The female socialization thing is a psyop. It's Mean Girls. It's that a lot of people have a lot of time on their hands and are unfathomably insecure and they need someone to pick on so they don't get bored and right now it's us, and if it wasn't us it would be someone else. I think it's pretty much driven by the same engine as how a lot of racist white women hate women of color.
Sisters and siblings, it's not us. If we ask to be let in, they're always gonna say no.
The sucker punch of seeing this idiot write a whole essay about how my personal experience is actually invalid and then going to their blog and seeing they’re a very open zionist
The sucker punch of seeing this idiot write a whole essay about how my personal experience is actually invalid and then going to their blog and seeing they’re a very open zionist
