other trans women can put it better than me but there's this, tension, between "radical genderpunk you can be whatever you want forever-ness" and "trans woman as politicised identity"
one views any engagement with your assigned gender at birth as like, being trapped in a prison of your own making,? as using the tools of the enemy or whatever. and the other is "yes my assigned gender is a prison, it is a prison the outside world is constantly enforcing on me and i would like to be able to talk about that a little thanks"
so you get this tension, where one side (made up of predominantly people who aren't trans women) says "the ideal world is one in which you can be whatever the fuck you want forever! so call yourself anything you want as long as it makes you happy, you can be an afab trans woman if you want it's all made up :)"
and the other side says "hey hi yes i broadly agree with you on the whole ultimate gender liberation front, but we do not live in an ideal world and transfemininity is uniquely demonized even as far as trans identities in general go, so i would appreciate it if maybe you didn't act like our identity and oppression was something made up that you could just put on and take off whenever you like? we sure as fuck can't do that."
and then the other side goes "hey all these trans women are invalidating us! why are they gatekeeping and being so exclusive! assigned gender at birth shouldn't matter so why are you acting like it does!?"
and they say this while we live in a society where your assigned gender at birth very much does matter, and if you're a trans woman it is borderline impossible to escape that.
it's like an is-ought problem where since we're not acting like we already live in a gender utopia where one's relationship with assigned sex and gender is completely arbitrary, we're treated like the enforcers of the gender binary.
this is where you get stupid bullshit like people calling trans women radfems
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