heyy i am very glad you are coming at this conversation from a place of love and willingness to educate yourself, i understand if people saw this post and immediately went into self-defense mode and im glad you didnt lol <3
so first off, i am a trans man and not a trans woman, so when it comes to the perspectives of trans women it is important to hear what they have to say on the matter first and foremost. i HIGHLY recommend starting by reading The Whipping Girl by Julia Serrano, i think it's a book that is what really solidified my perspective on transmisogyny and it is quite literally the book that defined transmisogyny as a distinct intersectional oppression from general transphobia and general misogyny.
when it comes to the term femboy, i believe that it is largely a porn categorization label. the people you see who identify with the term are often transfem sex workers, still-closeted trans women and nonbinary transfems, and feminine men, both cis and trans tbf. the thing is, it is a word that is primarily categorizing trans women as a sexual fetish. this is the same as the word "shemale" which i am not using this word lightly and i choose not to censor because it needs to be said explicitly. the terms shemale and femboy come from the same place of primarily viewing trans women as sexual objects. i am never in my life gonna call out a trans woman who uses any of these terms for herself, thats not my place and if she is a sex worker then she probably feels the need to categorize herself as such because its how she makes a living. but i do chafe when it is used in a reclamatory way by non-transfems because of its use in fetishization, even if supposedly the non-transfem is not intending that to be the case.
den @freckliedan made a really good post that i just reblogged, about reminding everyone to not treat trans women as sexual objects, and that was posted around the time the femboy baking video came out. because even a lot of people who were saying they were supportive of dangender or just loving how dan looked in that video, were veering dangerously close if not fully careening into just sexual objectification of dan as a "Man In A Skirt." and don't get it twisted!!! i love to talk about how sexually attractive i find dan and phil!!!!! but the issue is when that is the ONLY thing people are posting about. and while i think was also true to some extent about sister daniel, i think it was really apparent and much worse with femboy dan, maybe because the sister daniel persona was one that owned her sexuality more explicitly than femboy bear dan.
when i say the phandom has a transmisogyny problem, i mean that systemically and not necessarily on an individual level but also yeah kinda a little bit on an individual level too. the WORLD RIGHT NOW has a transmisogyny problem lmao. and i think what bothers me the most when it comes to the phandom having this issue, is that we often preach being very accepting of everyone regardless of who they are and we're a safe space for so many queer people, and yet there is a distinct lack of transfems who are vocal in the phandom. transmisogyny is a learned systemic oppression, just like homophobia, just like racism, just like ableism. and if i'm being fully honest about everything like, fuck it, i think this community has a racism problem too! because the World has a racism problem! and i think if we claim to be a community that is open and supportive and a safe space for so many people, then we need to do the work in unlearning our biases that were forced into our heads by the rest of the world, and sure it's not any of our faults for living in an oppressive society, but it is our responsibility to push against it, especially if we are not a part of those marginalizations (white people yall gotta start doing better towards us phannies of color!!!!!!!)
to be honest it's been a while since i rewatched the original femboy baking video, so maybe the irony-caking i mentioned is not nearly as bad as i thought it was. and you are right, like ultimately it is a video about two gay men trying on a different style while also trying to bake and being silly and funny along the way. i think it really is the label of femboy that bothers me more than the actual content of the video itself, because of everything i said above. i felt this way about femboy baking and not about sister daniel because sister daniel was often labelled as a drag persona, which again, drag as a culture does have a history of transmisogyny as well, but idk it didn't feel quite as. explicit as femboy baking, and maybe that is just my opinion on the matter because i just didn't happen to be the biggest fan of the video (despite it having some lovely and funny moments as well).
again i am glad to have this conversation and like, this is a tough conversation to have! ESPECIALLY right now, when it seems like every fucking government official wants to wipe trans people and ESPECIALLY TRANS WOMEN off the face of the planet. so it can seem like, well aren't we actually celebrating gender-diversity and expression when we talk about this stuff? and i love to talk about dnp irt gender expression and sexuality and kink sososo much as evidenced by my entire blog lol, but i do think a lot of people need to work on these unconcious biases while they engage with this kind of discussion. i am included in this needing to do work! i haven't done NEARLY enough reading of works by Black trans women about transmisogynoir for example, and that's something i will work on! and i think it's good to start by having these conversations, but not ending it here. we all have to actively show up for the trans women in our lives, and if you don't have any in your life maybe you need to reflect on why that is and learn to check those unconscious biases of yours. EVERYONE NOT JUST THIS COMMUNITY NEEDS TO DO THIS. if you are someone who does not want to see trans women dead, then you need to do this. even if you think you are the most woke aware leftist feminist in the world, we all have unconscious biases we need to work on.
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