The transandrophobia brainrot has hit tiktok hard. There's a sound going around right now that uses the T slur in a reclamatory way, but whenever a transmasc person uses the sound people lose their minds saying it's transmisogynistic for them to use that word. But when cis male drag queens use the audio it's a slay.
My answer to those people is Get Kate Bornstein'd:
Tranny. Many people donāt know the history of the word, they assume it was an assigned hate term or slur along the lines of the ānā word. Thatās not how it happened. Tranny was invented by us in Sydney, Australia in the 1970s where drag was a big deal, and still the best drag shows ever are in Sydney, Australia ā theyāre amazing. So a lot of trans-identified women who were assigned male at birth did drag, thatās how you made your living. And so they were transsexuals, transvestites, drag queens, and they were all doing drag to make money. They all bickered amongst each other who is better than who, āWell the drag queens are better,ā āNo, the transsexuals are better.ā āYou are all freaks, weāre better.ā And on and on and on. But they worked together and they were family together, so they came up with a word that would say family and that was tranny. In Australia they do the diminutive, thatās how they come up with words. So tranny. I learned the word in the mid-1980s, late 1980s from my drag mom in San Francisco, Doris Fish, who was the cityās preeminent drag queen and sheād come from Sydney. And she schooled me in this word tranny, she said, āThis way it means weāre family, darling.ā āThank you mama.ā [...] So we used it and we were trannies together. And F to M was just beginning to start, the trans men were just beginning to become visible, Lou Sullivan was a neighbor of mine around the corner, and he was the first big out trans man, wrote his book. So trans men and cross dressers . . . cross dressers were also family. Transsexuals, we were all trannies and that felt good. That got into the sex industry and became a genre ā there was tranny porn, there were tranny sex workers ā chicks with dicks, she-males. [...] And, my only guess is that people who . . . because the only way they would have found out about the word is if they were watching tranny porn or having been with a tranny sex worker and then hated themselves so much that they turned it into a curse word. So itās not really technically correct to say weāre reclaiming a word ā it was always ours. So, many people mistake the word for the hatred behind the word and, in my generation, and Iām sure in future generations of trans people, tranny is going to be a radicalized, sexualized identity of trans in the same way that faggot is a prideful identity in the gay male community ā not all gay men are faggots, but those who are are proudly fags and those who are dykes are proudly dykes within the lesbian community, trannies are proudly tranny within the transgender community. Does that mean we canāt call ourselves that because some trans woman does not want to be called a tranny? No. Iām going to keep calling myself a tranny. To the trans woman who gets called tranny, Iām sorry ā as soon as . . . youāve got to look at why youāre getting called tranny and if you donāt pass, youāre going to be read as a transgender person and then you fall back on the cultural view of trans folk which is freak, disgusting, not worth living, we can hurt you. It has nothing to do with the word, it has everything to do with the cultural attitude. So the word has stirred up a shit storm, but itās not the word.
Four weeks ago, Bear posted a call for submissions on his blog.Ā In the interests of keeping the call as open as possible, we agreed to include as many trans-identities as we knew, so we used the word "tranny." And that's where the activist shit hit the postmodern fan base. People have been pissed. Here's their argument: FTMs are co-opting a word that belongs to MTFs. The word "tranny" belongs to MTFs, reason those who were hurt by our use of the word, because it was a denigrating term reclaimed by MTFsāergo, only MTFs could be known as trannies. I spoke with Bear, and we agree thatās wrong on several counts:
Tranny began as a uniting term amongst ourselves. Of course itās going to be picked up and used as a denigrating term by mean people in the world. But even if we manage to get them to stop saying tranny like a thrown rock, mean people will come up with another word to wound us with. So, letās get back to using tranny as a uniting term amongst ourselves. That would make Doris Fish very happy.
It's our first own language word for ourselves that has no medical-legacy.Ā
Even if (like gay) hate-filled people try to make tranny into a bad word, our most positive response is to own the word (a word invented by the queerest of the queer of their day). We have the opportunity to re-create tranny as a positive in the world.
Saying that FTMs canāt call themselves trannies eerily echoes the 1980s lesbians who said I couldnāt use the word woman to identify myself, and the 1990s lesbians who said I couldnāt use the word dyke.Ā
At one phase in the evolution of transpeople-as-tribe, it was the male-to-females who were visible and representative of trans to the rest of the world. They were the trannies. Today? Ironically true to the binary weāre in the process of shattering, the pendulum has swung so that it's now female-to-males who are the archetypal trannies of the day. The generation coming up beyond the next generation, i.e. my tribal grandchildren are the young boys who transition to young girls at the age of five or six. Theyāre the next trannies. None of us can own the word. We can only be grateful that our tribe is so much larger than we had thought it would be. How to come togetherānow thatās the job of the next generation of gender outlaws.
^ From Who You Calling A Tranny?
We've been having this debate forever and its been stupid forever.
And its an increasingly outdated debate. More people know about trans men&mascs than ever and there are plenty of trans men&mascs who have been called tranny by transphobes who don't give a shit about this distinction. And not just people who have been mistaken for transfems, either, but men like Andrew Jonathan Blake-Newton and Saye Skye who were attacked by people who knew them. Do they have more or less of a right to say tranny than a trans girl whose never been called it by a transphobe? (Neither. Because no one owns this word.)
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