everything I've seen recently just makes me feel ashamed of being a trans woman, it just makes me think that terfs are right about us. Why can't we just be normal
Please don't feel ashamed. You are your own person and are not defined by the actions of others.
Do I even need to say anything about how wildly wrong and dangerous this rhetoric is...?
Just in case...
1.) That's not what materialism is. "Making things better for people" is literally idealism by definition. Materialism refers to the actual material ways you can improve people's lives.
2.) Bodily autonomy, justice, [legal] equality, etc, are all broad concepts but can be established in ways that will materially improve people's lives.
3.) I'm sure I'll be accused of rape jacketing but holy shit how is this not just explicitly pro-rape rhetoric.
4.) Claiming to be a materialist but not valuing bodily autonomy, which is ome of the major examples of material conditions (ownership over one's actual material fucking form) is absolutely unconsciousnable
This will probably be my most controversial post by far, but it needs to be said.
Gendered socialization is unequivocally real. Boys and girls are treated and socialized differently before they're even born.
Female babies are disappearing en masse, because male babies are more valued.
From an extremely early age, parents respond to their childrens' emotions differently based on gender. Mothers over-estimate the crawling abilities of their infant sons compared to infant daughters.
Mothers speak to their infant daughters more and talk them more about emotions than they do their sons.
By the age of 2, boys already show an avoidance to the color pink and other items traditionally seen as feminine, laying the ground work for early demonstrations of misogyny in childhood.
When children enter pre-school, there is no difference in math abilities between boys and girls. But such gaps begin to appear as children grow older.
The vast majority of girls report feeling unsafe going outside, and at least 2/3 of girls have reported experiencing sexual harassment at school by the time they 16.
Further on in education, women will understimate their scores, while men will overestimate their scores. Women will perform worse on tests when first told that women, on average, perform worse.
Researchers argue that the prevalence of sexual assault against women is so high specifically because of early gendered socialization. The men who commit sexual violence consistently demonstrate specific ideals about gender and perform hostile masculinity.
The patterns reach well into adulthood, influencing occupational choices.
I could literally go on and on and on. There are countless studies and entire fields of academia dedicated to researching this. The fact that children are socialized differently paced on assigned or percieved gender is really not debatable.
I am sympathetic to the fact that transphobes have warped the concept of socialization to insinuate that trans women are destined to be violent or predatory, or that trans men are destined to be submissive and helpless. However, people weaponizing these frameworks does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist.
Furthermore, individual people's nuanced experiences with gendered socialization does not mean that these patterns don't exist on a large scale. Any interaction with society will confer the influence of gender biases, especially upon children to are extremely vulnerable to both subtle and overt social cues.
Again - gendered socialization is real. This is a core aspect of feminist analysis. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
Okay, OP you asked for controversy. Since there have been nothing but cisses and transmascs agreeing with you in the notes, let me actually talk about the transfeminist issue you are dancing around like it's the foxtrot.
Transfeminists get perpetually irritated with the line 'trans women are male-socialised' because it is always used to harass us as ""unsafe"" to be around women or transmascs. The unspoken assumption is that somehow we inherently make them uncomfortable with our ""learned masculinity"" (transphobically enough, trans men are often treated like sweet little meow-meows because they're basically women in this framework despite being more masculine and thus male-socialised than us) or that somehow being coercively raised into a masculinity most of us find deeply traumatic teaches us how to be inherently predatory or some nonsense. It is a classically transmisogynist tactic used to exclude trans women from social groups, and something we have to fight against constantly.
Obviously, childhood socialisation is a phenomenon that exists but it has no bearing on adult socialisation for trans people. I can speak less to the transmasculine experience because I am a trans woman and have engaged with this topic mostly among trans women, but for us, the coercive 'male socialisation' imposed on us from childhood has no bearing on our socialisation as an adult because we inherently have to reject it to live as women.
Transfeminine children from a young age find the male socialisation imposed on them wrong, traumatic, and often extremely punishing and degrading. Every boy in the locker room picking on you because you don't know how to be one of the lads. Every girl you try to reach out to for friendship using the language women use to talk to women then rejecting you because you are a 'boy' and therefore yucky. The only parts of masculinity that stick are the negatives, that you are loud, you take up space, you are inherently a predator. All of these hurt you and make you act small and meek and quiet to avoid hurting the people you desperately want to love. And then all the men around you bully you for it because it makes you unmanly. All the femininity you attempt to learn for yourself is half-formed because you experience stinging social rejection every time you try to act like one of the girls. Many cis women are perfectly happy to treat young trans women as outlets for their frustrations with cis men because they have power over them, forcing her to take all the responsibility for a maleness she does not have and does not want.
It is only really when we start coming out, for most of us as adults, that we get a shred of a socialisation that isn't malformed, when we take the misshapen form of the female socialisation we could have had and build it back up into a whole socialisation that we can use to start building connections with other women. It's a long and difficult process that requires a lot of learning and can be thoroughly exhausting because of all the maladaptions we've accumulated having to live under the regime of the entire society trying to impose its male assumptions onto us.
And then some bitch calls us 'male-socialised' to justify why she thinks we're inherently predatory and have bad vibes to boot us out of the women's support group we would like to attend because we are women and need support.
That is why we reject the notion of 'male-socialisation'. Not because gender-socialisation of children is not an inherent force in society, something that is so normative and accepted that any given person you ask on the street would agree that it exists. But because we are not fucking ""male-socialised"", and anyone who says we are is a transmisogynistic dickhead.
Stop giving cover to that argument, wanker. If people treat robots and aliens as women and reproduce with them the social discourse that reinforces womanness, then they do the same with trans women. In fact, there's plenty of literature to back up that cishets already do this. I like the second article because it particularly focuses on the fact that trans women are frequent victims of gender-based violence because we are treated as women in a way that trans men do not experience because they are treated as men.
How about we start unlearning our transmisogyny and listening to trans women talk about transfeminism, hmm?
"Nothing but cisses and transmascs agreeing with you" damn I guess you get to degender and misgender the transfems on this post cause they don't agree with you!
Firstly, I am aware that the concept of gendered socialization is used to attack transfems. The concept of socialization is also used to attack trans people overall and make generalizations about us. This does not mean the concept as a whole is untrue or useless. Or, as you're doing, simply turning the tables and claiming its actually transmascs who are male-socialized, despite much of socialization happening from before gender identity is developed.
"Childhood socialization exists but it has no bearing on adult socialization for trans people" is an absolutely wild claim and you absolutely need to cite literally any sources for that. I provided numerous sources that show that socialization lasts well into adulthood.
Trans people are not fundamentally different from cis people when it comes to being affected by their environment. To claim that trans people specifically somehow magically overcome being affected by childhood socialization solely by virtue of gender identity is absurd and has no basis.
The narrative you give about rejecting childhood socialization is, in and of itself, an example of how socialization functions. Rejecting it leads to trauma and ostracization. Its also, not unique to transfeminine people. Cis men can also reject it, but that doesn't mean they weren't affected by it in some way or another.
Its also a huge generalization to assume that there weren't transfem people who ever attempted to embrace their imposed social roles. Tons of transfem people leaned into masculine gender roles in an attempt to fit in or suppress their identity. To say all transfeminine people inherently rejected their socialization is flatly untrue.
The big point you're missing here is that socialization has subtle effects on people that most don't notice. That's the point of a lot of sources I provided. Even for example, intelligent women who believe in themselves are still affected by childhood socialization in subconscious ways.
A great example of this is that you refer to hypothetical woman as "some bitch". Why did you choose a gendered insult for her? Did you think before you wrote it out, or did the word "bitch" come to you immediately? What causes that?
And lastly, if you think trans men don't face gender-based violence because they're men, just look at the sources that say otherwise.
My good sir. My dear friend. Reading comprehension.
Ah yes, I forget that degendering is when I don't see something on a post and call attention to it, that doesn't muddy the meaning of that word at all!
Socialisation doesn't stop past the age of 18. It is reiterated in every social engagement you have. Whilst some childhood somethings-or-others will remain over, you have been a full adult for 10+ years. That is dramatically more important to your current behaviour than some Freudian dramatics about childhood. Trans people are affected by our environment and mine sees me as a trans woman. That dictates how I see myself and I interact with everyone in it.
You provided sources that CIS PEOPLE's childhood gendered socialisation can persist into adulthood. You know, people who find the gender they were given in childhood affirming and comfortable. OP, are you still a woman? Am I still a man to you? Mayhap that alters things somewhat? Yes, some of my gendered socialisation about what a woman is and should be persists from my childhood, but that isn't what you were trying to assert, is it?
And if you read what I wrote, you will note I said trans people's socialisation in childhood is fundamentally different from cis people's. You are arguing that Judith Butler is wrong and there are only two socialisations. Have you considered socialisation is also a spectrum and children are not empty vessels you pour 'socialisation' into?
Again, you argue with a ghost when you say that I assume that trans women have never been eggs or in the closet. I assumed when I said 'trans women' it was understood I meant 'trans women who know they are trans women and are presenting as trans women' but perhaps I should have lowered my expectations. You inherently have to reject being solely a man to become solely a woman in a society that still operates under an assumed gender binary, and to be a woman you need to socialise yourself into feminine behaviour. I thought this was so obvious it didn't need stating to a fellow transsexual/transgender person but here we are. Or that being an egg or in the closet is deeply fucking traumatising and painful.
'A great example of this is that you refer to hypothetical woman as "some bitch". Why did you choose a gendered insult for her? Did you think before you wrote it out, or did the word "bitch" come to you immediately? What causes that?' Nice attempt at a gotcha, I did that deliberately to reinforce that a trans woman was being victimised by another woman due to the social perception that women are incapable of doing harm (which is itself a critical component of misogyny). I do appreciate the attempt to jacket me by characterising me as a masculinised violent misogynist who rears up when a woman disagrees with me. I love the trans solidarity there from my masc cohorts, giving me the same transmisogynistic shit cis people do.
And yeah, I'm aware trans men are murdered for being trans. What's the ratio on murdered trans people again according to Trans Murder Monitoring? 90+% trans women? And in both cases it's usually misogynistic violence, although transmisogyny explains the wildly disproportionate rate for trans women over trans men? And that stereotypes about trans women being traps or men in dresses significantly contributes to violence against us, as well as notions that we are inherently male in some way, either via socialisation or some sort of gendered essence that makes us behave inherently like violent men?
Maybe there's a reason we don't like that, huh. Stop giving cover for transmisogynist violence, you wanker. And perhaps listen to a woman closely when she speaks.
Firstly, "dear sir" "masc cohorts" and "OP are you still a woman" not only do you assume my gendered terms you also assume my assigned gender. You're misgendering me cause I disagree with you.
I agree, socialization doesn't end at childhood but your argument was that childhood had "no bearing" on adult socialization. My childhood trauma still impacts me, shockingly enough. Its almost as if those are some of the most formative years of someone's life that determines the majority of their social positions, such as race, culture, class, etc.
You haven't yet provided evidence that trans people's socialization is fundamentally different. You're placing trans people as a class of people ao fundamentally unique and different from cis people that we couldn't possibly share any experiences with them.
And no, i never said there were only two socializations. I provided evidence for that the vast majority of people are generally enforced into the major gender categories. That doesn't mean only two, it means there are demonstrable patterns of the kind of socialization that majority experience.
"I assumed when I said trans woman it was understood I meant a trans who know they are a trans woman and out / presenting as one". That's a terrible assumption, and you're intentionally erasing a significant portion of trans women are just a trans and woman as any other trans woman.
"I did that to reinforce that a trans woman was being attacked by another woman" So that justifies you using misogynystic language to demean her? Its not misogyny jacketing if you're just being misogynistic.
I love how you ignored everything else in my links such as trans men having the highest rates of sexual assault and healthcare discrimination. How convienent!
This will probably be my most controversial post by far, but it needs to be said.
Gendered socialization is unequivocally real. Boys and girls are treated and socialized differently before they're even born.
Female babies are disappearing en masse, because male babies are more valued.
From an extremely early age, parents respond to their childrens' emotions differently based on gender. Mothers over-estimate the crawling abilities of their infant sons compared to infant daughters.
Mothers speak to their infant daughters more and talk them more about emotions than they do their sons.
By the age of 2, boys already show an avoidance to the color pink and other items traditionally seen as feminine, laying the ground work for early demonstrations of misogyny in childhood.
When children enter pre-school, there is no difference in math abilities between boys and girls. But such gaps begin to appear as children grow older.
The vast majority of girls report feeling unsafe going outside, and at least 2/3 of girls have reported experiencing sexual harassment at school by the time they 16.
Further on in education, women will understimate their scores, while men will overestimate their scores. Women will perform worse on tests when first told that women, on average, perform worse.
Researchers argue that the prevalence of sexual assault against women is so high specifically because of early gendered socialization. The men who commit sexual violence consistently demonstrate specific ideals about gender and perform hostile masculinity.
The patterns reach well into adulthood, influencing occupational choices.
I could literally go on and on and on. There are countless studies and entire fields of academia dedicated to researching this. The fact that children are socialized differently paced on assigned or percieved gender is really not debatable.
I am sympathetic to the fact that transphobes have warped the concept of socialization to insinuate that trans women are destined to be violent or predatory, or that trans men are destined to be submissive and helpless. However, people weaponizing these frameworks does not mean that the phenomenon does not exist.
Furthermore, individual people's nuanced experiences with gendered socialization does not mean that these patterns don't exist on a large scale. Any interaction with society will confer the influence of gender biases, especially upon children to are extremely vulnerable to both subtle and overt social cues.
Again - gendered socialization is real. This is a core aspect of feminist analysis. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
Okay, OP you asked for controversy. Since there have been nothing but cisses and transmascs agreeing with you in the notes, let me actually talk about the transfeminist issue you are dancing around like it's the foxtrot.
Transfeminists get perpetually irritated with the line 'trans women are male-socialised' because it is always used to harass us as ""unsafe"" to be around women or transmascs. The unspoken assumption is that somehow we inherently make them uncomfortable with our ""learned masculinity"" (transphobically enough, trans men are often treated like sweet little meow-meows because they're basically women in this framework despite being more masculine and thus male-socialised than us) or that somehow being coercively raised into a masculinity most of us find deeply traumatic teaches us how to be inherently predatory or some nonsense. It is a classically transmisogynist tactic used to exclude trans women from social groups, and something we have to fight against constantly.
Obviously, childhood socialisation is a phenomenon that exists but it has no bearing on adult socialisation for trans people. I can speak less to the transmasculine experience because I am a trans woman and have engaged with this topic mostly among trans women, but for us, the coercive 'male socialisation' imposed on us from childhood has no bearing on our socialisation as an adult because we inherently have to reject it to live as women.
Transfeminine children from a young age find the male socialisation imposed on them wrong, traumatic, and often extremely punishing and degrading. Every boy in the locker room picking on you because you don't know how to be one of the lads. Every girl you try to reach out to for friendship using the language women use to talk to women then rejecting you because you are a 'boy' and therefore yucky. The only parts of masculinity that stick are the negatives, that you are loud, you take up space, you are inherently a predator. All of these hurt you and make you act small and meek and quiet to avoid hurting the people you desperately want to love. And then all the men around you bully you for it because it makes you unmanly. All the femininity you attempt to learn for yourself is half-formed because you experience stinging social rejection every time you try to act like one of the girls. Many cis women are perfectly happy to treat young trans women as outlets for their frustrations with cis men because they have power over them, forcing her to take all the responsibility for a maleness she does not have and does not want.
It is only really when we start coming out, for most of us as adults, that we get a shred of a socialisation that isn't malformed, when we take the misshapen form of the female socialisation we could have had and build it back up into a whole socialisation that we can use to start building connections with other women. It's a long and difficult process that requires a lot of learning and can be thoroughly exhausting because of all the maladaptions we've accumulated having to live under the regime of the entire society trying to impose its male assumptions onto us.
And then some bitch calls us 'male-socialised' to justify why she thinks we're inherently predatory and have bad vibes to boot us out of the women's support group we would like to attend because we are women and need support.
That is why we reject the notion of 'male-socialisation'. Not because gender-socialisation of children is not an inherent force in society, something that is so normative and accepted that any given person you ask on the street would agree that it exists. But because we are not fucking ""male-socialised"", and anyone who says we are is a transmisogynistic dickhead.
Stop giving cover to that argument, wanker. If people treat robots and aliens as women and reproduce with them the social discourse that reinforces womanness, then they do the same with trans women. In fact, there's plenty of literature to back up that cishets already do this. I like the second article because it particularly focuses on the fact that trans women are frequent victims of gender-based violence because we are treated as women in a way that trans men do not experience because they are treated as men.
How about we start unlearning our transmisogyny and listening to trans women talk about transfeminism, hmm?
"Nothing but cisses and transmascs agreeing with you" damn I guess you get to degender and misgender the transfems on this post cause they don't agree with you!
Firstly, I am aware that the concept of gendered socialization is used to attack transfems. The concept of socialization is also used to attack trans people overall and make generalizations about us. This does not mean the concept as a whole is untrue or useless. Or, as you're doing, simply turning the tables and claiming its actually transmascs who are male-socialized, despite much of socialization happening from before gender identity is developed.
"Childhood socialization exists but it has no bearing on adult socialization for trans people" is an absolutely wild claim and you absolutely need to cite literally any sources for that. I provided numerous sources that show that socialization lasts well into adulthood.
Trans people are not fundamentally different from cis people when it comes to being affected by their environment. To claim that trans people specifically somehow magically overcome being affected by childhood socialization solely by virtue of gender identity is absurd and has no basis.
The narrative you give about rejecting childhood socialization is, in and of itself, an example of how socialization functions. Rejecting it leads to trauma and ostracization. Its also, not unique to transfeminine people. Cis men can also reject it, but that doesn't mean they weren't affected by it in some way or another.
Its also a huge generalization to assume that there weren't transfem people who ever attempted to embrace their imposed social roles. Tons of transfem people leaned into masculine gender roles in an attempt to fit in or suppress their identity. To say all transfeminine people inherently rejected their socialization is flatly untrue.
The big point you're missing here is that socialization has subtle effects on people that most don't notice. That's the point of a lot of sources I provided. Even for example, intelligent women who believe in themselves are still affected by childhood socialization in subconscious ways.
A great example of this is that you refer to hypothetical woman as "some bitch". Why did you choose a gendered insult for her? Did you think before you wrote it out, or did the word "bitch" come to you immediately? What causes that?
And lastly, if you think trans men don't face gender-based violence because they're men, just look at the sources that say otherwise.
Nope. I'm done with giving any good faith to this essay. Between this and the account being mostly fictionalized, there's no reason to be engaging with this seriously.
The specific puppygirl described in the essay is a coercive rapist. Yes the story is being extrapolated to say gross things about disabled trans women in general but the amount of people defending this specific puppygirl (and even trying to cast Knight as the real abuser) makes me queasy
Context
I appreciate this, I'll admit I initially skimmed a bit - I may be too biased to give an impartial read, because of my relationship with disabled transfems. I'm used to people assuming that my partners are abusive by virtue of being disabled.
You're right, the specific puppygirl in the story is sexually abusive. We don't need to defend her. The essay is messy in a way that makes it very unclear whether Tara is only talking about her abusive ex in broad terms, or if she's intentionally generalizing out to other disabled transfems.
I'm still critical of many of the things written, but yeah, if you're being sexually abused you should leave. There's many better ways to say this than the way Tara did.
Sure that one pup may be a POS, but Knight's whole essay painting ALL puppygirls as exactly like her is inexcusable. Like, I thought we were against painting all members of a group as one in the same because of shared identity?
I was beated, raped, sexually abused, verbally abused, and financially abused by women for half my life. Some of which were trans women!
Does that mean I should start writing about how all trans women are like that?
And the way she talked about her is extremely transmisogynistic, too. I've quoted it before but idc, I'll do it again:
"The puppygirl has put on the costume of feminization in order to put the condition of feminization on someoene else."
"The aesthetic of being a feminized figure has been mobilized to dodge the labor of being a feminized figure, which is to say, to dodge being a woman, which is to say, to install someone else in the place of the woman so that the woman's labor can be extracted from her while the puppygirl wears the woman's clothes"
Yes, rape and abuse are evil and reprehensible and do need to be called out no matter who the perpetrator is, absolutely! At the same time, just like your abuser being a POC doesn't give you a pass to call them racial slurs, your abuser being transfem doesn't give you a pass to come within a hair's breadth of calling her a man in a dress.
The fact she's acting like puppygirls "putting on the costume of feminization" and "extracting women's labor while wearing the woman's clothes" is any sort of widespread issue that requires theorizing about just positively reeks of repackaged TERF rhetoric to me.
The specific puppygirl described in the essay is a coercive rapist. Yes the story is being extrapolated to say gross things about disabled trans women in general but the amount of people defending this specific puppygirl (and even trying to cast Knight as the real abuser) makes me queasy
Context
I appreciate this, I'll admit I initially skimmed a bit - I may be too biased to give an impartial read, because of my relationship with disabled transfems. I'm used to people assuming that my partners are abusive by virtue of being disabled.
You're right, the specific puppygirl in the story is sexually abusive. We don't need to defend her. The essay is messy in a way that makes it very unclear whether Tara is only talking about her abusive ex in broad terms, or if she's intentionally generalizing out to other disabled transfems.
I'm still critical of many of the things written, but yeah, if you're being sexually abused you should leave. There's many better ways to say this than the way Tara did.
I am someone who is the sole caregiver and source of income for two severely disabled transfems (who also happen to both be therians). I talked to them both before posting this.
This is not hypothetical for me. I have a partner who cannot load a dishwasher. I have a partner who cannot take her medicine on her own. I have a partner who cannot hold a job for disability reasons. I have a partner who can barely leave the house most days.
Not everyone is compatible with someone who has high accessibility and/or caregiving needs. Not everyone can work through a relationship that is assymetrical in so many ways.
But the way that Tara Knight addresses these subjects is not from a place of compassion. It is not from a place of nuance or simply acknowledging that her own experiences were negative and harmful to her. It does not treat the puppygirl as a person genuinely deserving of love and caregiving.
While I believe its absolutely possible for marginalized people to enact weaponized incompetence - from my own lived experience I know the story is almost never that simple. Life is way messier than that. The reasons are always more complex than "she chose to be incompetent".
You don't need permission to leave your partner, from anyone. You can leave a relationship for any reason. But you don't have to then turnaround, and generalize an entire demographic. The story told is a personal one, but it was then extrapolated to a blanket statement.
There's a very casual and ordinary cruelty there. The one that's so often present with people who, are simply not compatible with a type of person, and then come to believe that no one is.
Anyway, if you want to materially support disabled puppygirls, you should consider donating to us.
Hey, I'll keep this short. I'm a cancer survivor and sole income of my household. I caregive for my two disabled transfem partners of color who cannot work.
One of my partners just lost services, and we're struggling financially because of it.
My health is getting worse and I'm showing some pretty bad signs that may require further surgeries and treatment.
If you can spare anything it would help immensley.
That post that's like "afab housing reveals the difference between transmisogyny and transandrophobia: trans women are denied housing while trans men just have to misgender themselves to get housing" is so stupid. I think the only thing it reveals is these people's view that trans men getting misgendered is simply not as big of a deal as when it happens to trans women.
Like, in this hypothetical scenario, both the trans man and woman have the exact same choice: get misgendered or get denied housing... Except a trans woman getting misgendered is framed as worse than being homeless while trans men should just like... Shut up and deal with it, I guess.
This is actually a really good example of an issue all trans people experience and should be able to relate to each other about, but these people are too busy sniffing their own oppression Olympics farts to think about what other types of trans people go through.
Side note: where the FUCK even is all this supposed "afab only" housing? What scenario will people ever find themselves in where "afab only" housing is the only housing available to you? I have never seen this out in the wild despite living in Liberal MA. All gendered housing is just "mens" and "women's" usually with a coed option. I guess maaaaaaybe women's DV shelters? Which do not accept trans men btw.
This post acts like there's a plausible scenario where "afab only" housing is the only one available. But let's be honest: this is a really stupid idea. In reality trans people are forced to either stealth or live as our SIG just to be housed.
Like if you want to make a point about women only spaces that are exclusive to cis women being held up as necessary to cisfeminists without a parallel for men, that's usually a more valid argument. But with housing there's such a blatantly obvious parallel (most being separated into binary SIG) that is infinitely more common than whatever stupid niche feminist circles would have "afab housing."
Like, give me literally one example of "afab only" housing that:
a) actually accepts trans men without trying to detransition us
b) is a major institution and not some queer housing/cult type situation
c) has no coed option at all
And maybe this argument would have even the slightest bit of merit instead of being a hypothetical.
Trans man: I have a complicated relationship to gender and masculinity and donât vibe with the expectations of heterosexual relationships in our society.
Plaidos: Hey Iâm thinking about your genitals right now. Can I use a misogynistic derogatory word for your genitalia, fantasize about you being penetrated, and imply that being born with a vagina makes you privileged? Youâre just sooo rapey and predatory :(
one of my biggest gripes with the trans community and the discussion of transandrophobia is that its really fucking hard to explain to, without offending/triggering, someone who cant get pregnant, who has never had the ability to get pregnant, and would REALLY LIKE the ability to get pregnant, how pregnancy can be used as an act of violence, ESPECIALLY against trans men, and that its not the same as being forced to impregnate someone, both dysphoria wise or otherwise. like they have wildly different implications. a trans man who is forcibly impregnated is forced to stop testosterone for the duration of the pregnancy, and are often barred from legal abortion more frequently than cis women. his body is changed permanently from the pregnancy, the pregnancy can out him as trans if he is stealth, pregnant people are often times physically dependent on other people after a certain point of the pregnancy which leaves them vunerable to being trapped with an abuser, and a trans man who is dysphoric about pregnancy is going to have to live with that for the duration of the pregnancy, while watching the pregnancy that he did not want permanently change his body. on top of that, it is SO HARD to rebuild a life/career after pregnancy FOR ANYONE, AND ESPECIALLY trans men. theres a reason that forced marriage/pregnancy is such a common and effective detransition tactic against trans men, both in non-western countries but everywhere else too. theres a reason we worry about it so much. these implications simply do not exist for someone who is forced to impregnate someone. its obviously sexual assault and is horrible and it is permanently life ruining but not to the extent that actually being the pregnant party is, and pretending like theyre the same or even comparable is like. its not even transandrophobia its just ridiculous
wrt the criminalisation of estrogen, like yes they're currently trying to do that because they're targeting transfems, and t is already criminalised but not because of targeting transmascs, but because of sport.
But, like, that's just a convenience for them now. If that hadn't happened 36 years ago already, they would also be doing it now, specifically to target trans people. And you bet they would be using the bullshit ROGD study and "Irreversible Damage" narratives.
They just don't have to.
And none of that means that we should therefore ignore the struggles transmascs have had for those 36 years and onward, just because it wasn't initially targeting us.
We all know for a fact that the people most affected by it were transmascs getting HRT anyway, not cis male athletes, not gym bros, not old guys with ED. We know this. And yet y'all fucking refuse to talk about it.
We can and should absolutely talk about the ways that criminalising estrogen is going to be awful and negatively affect people. What we don't do is say "so that means trans men have it easier, because even though they've been dealing with this exact issue for decades which we conveniently never talk about, it wasn't TARGETING them and we all know that means they're privileged because what matters most in oppression is peoples intentions, not the material outcome of actions".
I always felt very confused when I see people online wildly ranting about how âtrans men have invaded trans spaces and wildly outnumber trans womenâ, because in my personal experience, Iâve met many more trans women in my life (both online and off).
Nearly all the transmascs Iâve met in real life were teenagers (with literally one exception), and 80% of those teenagers ended up realising they werenât trans at all.
I got curious what the actual statistics were like, so, I decided to go ahead and do some research.
I should add a quick caveat that all the sources and studies I looked at were exclusively from global-northern countries, as solid data from the global-south regarding queer individuals is extremely difficult to find due to transphobia in those countries.
The first result I found was this Official Government Report from 2017:
Official Government Statistics from the UK, in 2017, claimed that 77% of people with a Gender Recognition Certificate were MtF, while 23% were FtM.
But thatâs old. Really old. So old, non-binary people werenât even legally recognised! And times have changed a lot for the community. So, letâs look for something newer!
I found a Canadian survey from 2021. After all, arenât Canadian statistics always the source for claims about âtrans male prevalenceâ? Letâs take a look!
â31% of this gender-diverse population of Canadians over 15 were transgender women (31,600), 28% were transgender men (27,900), and 41% were non-binary (41,400).â
Hmmm. Curious. Given that this survey was taken in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, and accepted answers from teenagers, Iâd assume that the numbers might be slightly skewed from how many people were experimenting back then. But, regardless of whether the evidence has a teenage-phase bias or not, we can see that trans women still slightly outnumber trans men.
I was getting a bit tired of not finding any evidence for these peopleâs wild claims of trans men being vile invaders overpowering the poor frail little transfeminists. After all, people wouldnât just go on the internet and lie, would they? No way, right?
I spent nearly an hour searching for a study or statistic that had a decent sample-size and only allowed adults to answer. I was tearing my hair out. I was going insane. I was crawling on the walls. But, finally, I found gold.
A 2022 survey, with over 90.000 respondents, that only allowed reports from adults, and ran in the USA! This is perfect. The people complaining about trans men are usually USAmerican, so this must mean this study might finally give a source to their claims! Oh, itâs such a dream!
So, drumroll pleaseâŠ!
âThirty-eight percent (38%) of respondents identified as nonbinary, 35% as a transgender woman, 25% as a transgender man, and 2% identified as simply crossdressers.â
Mm. You mean to tell me that⊠trans men... are not only less frequent than trans women⊠but also⊠theyâre the least common group of people who actually identify as transgender??
MmmmmmâŠâŠ..
MmmmmmmmmmmmmmmâŠ. soâŠ. the anger at âtrans men invading trans peopleâs spacesâ isâŠ. unfounded, dumb, and bigoted?
a place where transmasc he/him users are welcomed as lesbians and not treated like the unwelcome straight men they are is not a safe space for transfem lesbians
lots of mixed feelings about this interaction but imagine being a man and speaking to women like this. like this beautiful witty clever cornfield creature is really HOLDING BACK when she makes fun of this "illegal dyke" guy (this style of name is sort of a dogwhistle these days btw)
like imagine being a man, seeing a woman dealing with the complexity of systematic abuse, and then calling her "you people" like that's at all an appropriate way to speak. incredible stuff
illegal-dyke is not a man, and is actually illegal in his country, which is yemen where it is illegal under article 268 for him to have sex with the group of people he's attracted to.
'you people' as in westerners who don't know anything about the real lives of trans people around the world.
