There has recently been a claim going around that "theyfab" is not a slur, and is in fact, primarily used as a way for transfems to call out or vent their frustrations about transmisogyny.
Some examples of this claim can be found in the screenshots below:
So, is this really the case? Does "theyfab" primarily exist as a way to call out transmisogyny?
This wikitionary page on the word, cites some of the earliest found examples of the word.
The earliest archived example is of a Twitter post, quoting something that says "theyfab trannies". So, we can safely say that
1. The word pre-exists the earliest archives we have of it
2. The word has been used in an explicitly derogatory way
There is no record of what the Twitter user was responding to, so we don't know the context of the phrase they were quoting.
The earliest recorded usage of theyfab on 4chan is from late 2018. The usage of it in the post, again, strongly implies that the word had already been in use prior to, we just don't have records of it.
However, we do have records of it being used in a derogatory way, in a manner that has nothing to do with calling out transmisogyny.
Most of the earlier usages do appear to be used mainly by trans people, but always in derogatory ways. You could make the argument that some of the early examples are venting about intracommunity issues, but the prevalence of the term being used in outright transphobic manners in that same time period really lends credence to the fact that it is, first and foremost, to be a slur.
