Whenever you say something, you are really saying two things:
That that thing is worth saying.
That is, speech/writing has a cost to it, in the form of energy and time expended doing it, in the energy and time taken by others to listen to/read it, and the thing you are communicating is implied to be sufficiently valuable to worth that trade-off.
E.g. if you meet a woman and she says, "Hi, I'm Becky, I was born on a Thursday," it would be an odd experience because even if 1 applies, 2 clearly doesn't (unless you are running some kind of day-of-birth study or something ig). There is a hidden meaning of, "you should be aware of the weekday of my birth because it is important," that seems to make no sense.
And yet people will often defend something they have said on the basis of it being strictly true, which is unsatisfactory because it only justifies half of what was communicated by the act of saying it.
If Becky comes along to a queer event and says "Hi, I'm Becky, I'm AFAB," you have to understand that that is not just a neutral statement of fact, it also communicates something like this: "I am aware that if I looked and sounded the same but my sex assignment was different I would be treated differently. I am informing you of my sex assignment right now so that you treat me appropriately hereafter."
And that is just straight-up transmisogyny, both in displaying uncritical acceptance of how prevalent transmisogyny is in queer groups, and in demanding exemption from it. It sounds absurd on the face of it that a cis woman describing herself using entirely true statements can be doing transmisogyny, even in the absence of any transfeminine person or any mention of transfeminity at all. But it's true all the same.
And if you try telling Becky she shouldn't say that, she and most of the other people at the event will tell you "but it's true!", "she can describe herself how she likes!", "don't police how other people talk about themselves!", and so on. And people will look at you like you've lost your mind if you start claiming that Becky is abusing you by introducing herself in a manner that doesn't reference you at all.
germansingergirl
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