In honor of pride month I want to talk about something a little controversial in our community: transmisogyny.
DISCLAIMER: I feel like maybe Ive heard these ideas/terms from someone else but I genuinely cannot remember. If there are earlier posts on ANY sm site that predates this one and talks about these same ideas/terms, please send them to me! Also, these are MY opinions that I formed based off discussions I had in MY OWN community. Now on to my little essay ->
Now, when I first heard about transmisogyny, this is how it was described to me "a specific type of misogyny that affects trans people, more specifically trans women/femmes" and I have to be honest, I got lost at the "specifically for trans women/femmes" part. You see, the way I saw it, both trans women/femmes AND trans men/masc faced specific types of misogyny that was caused by the fact we are trans. I think thats why it became this controversy in the first place. Trans men/mascs saw the specific type of misogyny only we faced, yet weren't included in the term "transmisogyny". To us, it felt like another form of erasure, belittling, and maybe to some extent gaslighting. To trans women/femmes, it felt like we were trying to take over, demean, or maybe even disregard their experiences with that specific type of misogyny.
Now, Ive thought about this a good amount. Ive thought about how trans men/mascs only have the term "force femming" as a way to describe this type of misogyny. Honestly, I PERSONALLY do not like that term. While it is accurate to some extent, it makes it seem not that bad, or even worse, that somehow being feminine is this horrible thing (something many of us do not agree with). Not to mention that it doesnt incapsulate all of the misogyny we face for being trans men/mascs. Instead, I propose some new terms: femme misogyny and masc misogyny (they are a work in progress, so if anyone has any better suggestions Id love to hear them!). These two terms informs the person what kind of misogyny is being discussed, trans women/femme or trans men/masc respectfully. Leaving transmisogyny as a way to talk about the misogyny that all members of the trans community face.
I know theres a lot of importance in transmisogyny pertaining to specifically trans women/femmes. I am asking my trans sisters this: would you be willing to include trans men/mascs in the term "transmisogyny"? I feel it will greatly help reduce the erasure of our side of the community, and help bring to light all of the violence we face.
I would love to hear yalls opinions on this! I want this to be a fair healthy discussion, so please write your answers as I wrote this post: in good faith! I will delete any trans misandrist, terf, transphobic, and generally bad faith comments. This is going to be treated as a genuine discussion between our two sides of the community. Thank you for your time, and sorry it was a longer post!