#bioessentialism

[balconeko]

person who posted the uterus tattoo blocked me for having this take

i thought this take would be so lukewarm but i guess not

[i-suggest-be-good-about-gender]

Reminder that there's no such thing as being "born male" or "born female!" The sex binary is made up bullshit used to justify the gender binary!

Do you mean: someone with a penis, testes, testosterone, flat chest, etc.? -> SAY THAT!

Do you mean: someone with a vulva, uterus, estrogen, large chest, etc.? -> SAY THAT!

Do you mean: someone with any combination of those traits? -> SAY THAT!

Be specific! Just say the anatomy! They're not dirty words! Help out your intersex friends!

[this-is-multigenderphobia]

Bioessentialism will have people saying stuff like "all amabs are dangerous and violent, and all afabs are incapable of harm and pure" and gender essentialism will have people saying "all trans feminine people and trans women are incapable of harm and pure, and all trans masculine people and trans men are dangerous and violent"

And I keep seeing them used as reactions to each other. You get away from one and fall into the other.

"hey, before you interact, tell me what category of humans you think are inherently evil and disgusting and that we should exterminate to live all peacefully and safely? :)" <- this is how it sounds.

I am not joking when I say the death of nuance is the death of us.

[prokopetz]

In my experience, one of the reasons the idea of "brain gender" is such a persistent gremlin even in ostensibly progressive spaces is that a lot of folks haven't really abandoned the bioessentialist framework of gender, they've just modified it to include trans people, and trans-inclusive bioessentialism falls apart if brain gender isn't real.

[enderequi3m]

wow! this is a completely normal and not at all strange or bigoted thing to post! i sure wonder how this train of thought affects people of color! or anyone who isn't conventionally attractive! or fat people! or-

edit cause im already irritated: guys this post isnt about tmes vs tmas or about like. how none of us comprehend satire. its about how this is a slippery slope and how this idea is one that mousidy and her circle already believe in and are reinforcing and its WORKING. there are people agreeing with this statement and it leads them into a dark line of thinking where they think everyone who isnt a white transgender perisex woman is a evil rapist. its about how satire or not, this is not a good post for a white woman to be making when she does not have to deal with the affects of being a black queer or trans person! about how she (who judging by the way she almost never talks about being tfemwhile fat or fat tfems beyong 'love fat tgirls' and shit like that) is already within the line of thinkign that all ppl she doesnt feel attracted to are evil!

[transcockiness]

here's my #t4t art every time i draw transfems with transmascs the trans girl is dom topping in piv. in those cases and also when i draw two trans people of the same gender fucking these facts apply: the taller, bigger, fatter, darker-skinned, stronger one with the biggest dick is topping and the shorter, smaller, skinny, lighter-skinned, weak one is bottoming. height and weight and race and genital size and other factors people have no control over decide who's topping and who's bottoming and everyone thinks this is fun and sexy. what's "bottom dysphoria"? "bottom surgery"? "bioessentialism"? i think you're making words those up. isn't this such great trans representation?

[taliabhattwrites]

"Reinventing the Gender Binary"

CWs: Rape, fetishization, impregnation by assault, dehumanization, transmisogynistic degendering, misappropriating the language of racial justice, objectification, and worst of all, "infighting". I'm going to do something stupid---post about transfeminism on Tumblr again. The following is transcribed from two Bluesky threads:

I have a story.

About how "transfeminists reinvented the gender binary". About how "every trans person is subject to transmisogyny". About how "we're all faggots, deviants, perverts, so why demand specificity?" It begins with a transmasc individual saying "chicks with dicks" isn't offensive.

See, this individual identified as a chick with a dick. Or a man with a vag, depending. They revealed a lot about themselves over the course of the argument with a trans women. They were 19, married, a parent, and never availed of any transition care. They didn't consider this term dehumanizing.

When the trans woman they were arguing with told them that they didn't have the authority to deem whether a term fetishizing her was dehumanizing or not, they got very nasty. Trans women did not have any special claim over 'chick with dick', and to say so was to practically misgender them.

So justified, they talked about how trans women *are* just a sexual identity, a kink identity, and we did not have any special authority over transphobia or transmisogyny. Unlike them, who experienced real oppression. This is where they strongly implied that they had been impregnated by assault.

That's deeply traumatic, and violent, and something no trans woman will experience. So therefore, of course, we have no epistemic authority over misogyny. Or transphobia. Or sexual assault, and fetishization. Our suffering is always going to be a subset of "real" misogyny, see. Because no wombs.

This individual is young, and they do not know they are a TERF. Trans identity, to them, is a mask, a way to "escape being gendered". Oppression to them is intrinsically linked to reproductive exploitation, which is synonymous with misogyny, and trans women don't experience that. We costume.

Every time I hear someone say that "we've reinvented the gender binary", I sigh deeply. We never needed to reinvent it. Trans women, in the midst of the most queervoid-y of spaces, have always keenly been aware that our claims of oppression and experiencing misogyny are rarely believed.

You can say this was a young individual---but where are they going to learn better? Who is going to tell them that trans women's oppression isn't a costume, isn't a stigma for a kink, is more than just a mask we put on? That we are, meaningfully, women? Even without the wombs?

The gender binary is already there. The queervoided social spaces always cease to be queervoided when a tranny walks in, because these spaces recognize true trans people yearning to be free from (re)gendering and oppression, and "male pretenders who want to be gender I wish to escape, the freaks".

I am not the one who made the gender binary important. I am not the one who tolerated TERFs in my spaces, who encouraged the uncritical adoption of naturalized sex split from gender, and promoted a model of misogyny intrinsically tied to reproductive injustice.

I am the one who is offal.

Trans women are women who cannot be reproductive exploited, and we are too tainted to be allowed to be men ever again. So we are trash. Even to queervoids, because their "beyond the binary" ends at the threshold of a tranny demanding respect.

You think you are beyond sex? You think you have eliminated the need to divine what kind of gendered violence an individual is subject to?

I don't believe you.

I don't believe you, because I have seen gendervoids enact this violence on trannies, time and time again.

I don't believe you are beyond gender.

[Red, in a different post]:

I don't believe you are beyond gender.

I don't believe you are beyond gender.

YOU MARK ME AND MINE IN THE SAME WAY THE CIS DO, IN THE SAME WAY OUR MOST DEDICATED EXTERMINATIONIST FOES DO, AND YOU HAVE THE SHEER, UNREPENTANT, UTTER GALL TO PRETEND YOU ARE IN ANY WAY MORE ENLIGHTENED THAN THE GUTTER OF THE PATRIARCHY YOU EMERGED FROM?

You are not beyond gender.

Fuck your pronouns. You treat a tranny like this, your gender is fucking "sexist". Piss on your "gender abolition". It's worth nothing.

I will, in fact, be even blunter:

Trans women are not trying to say transmisogyny is "the worst oppression". We gave up on trying to stress the severity of it a long time ago. We are, at this point, trying to communicate that we *are oppressed at all*, to people who refuse to believe it.

I have seen fifty-year old men pull out the "I was a woman longer than you, tranny" card. I've seen people of every identity and experience go "I'll always be more of a woman than you, tranny, and don't you fucking forget it." Trans women are surveilled, scrutinized, targeted, and not believed.

The most gender-enlightened of us all refuse to deign to recognize trans women as meaningfully impacted by misogyny, as anything but second-class citizens of womanhood and feminism, as meaningfully oppressed because we are woman-gendered, sure, maybe, but we are not FEMALE.

And we notice that.

Then when we notice that even fellow trans people are more willing to self-regender to talk over us than BELIEVE US ABOUT OUR OWN LIVES AND OPPRESSION, or GRANT US THE PRIVILEGE OF SPEAKING AS THEIR EQUALS IN THE STRUGGLE AGAINST PATRIARCHY, we are called "divisive".

Fuck that.

Hear me, here and now: You will get nowhere but a singularity of a "gender-enlightened" movement collapsing in on itself because for all the yearning for a post-gender existence, no one is willing to grant the tranny the dignity of womanhood, to admit that she, too, suffers AS a woman.

If you want to tie the core of misogynistic oppression to reproduction and deem transness as nothing more than "gender-play", fine. I wish you luck.

Cassandra has spoken.

[dhddmods]

Please remember if you are entering psychology or neurology or any medical field to be critical. Saneism, ableism, bioessentialism, gender essentialism, fatphobia, and racism run deep within medical practices and medical studies.

Not everything you will be learning will be true, kind, or in the best interest of the person in question. Not every medication or surgical procedure is truly necessary.

Please listen to the communities you are learning to treat. Please do not take things at face value. Please understand that many of these studies have biases within them and are not 100% reliable.

Prioritize autonomy and consent. Understand that no condition or variation inherently makes someone right or wrong. Understand that there is no such thing as a "good body/mind" or "bad body/mind", but just a body/mind that has different needs.

Remember, for most conditions/variations, a "cure" is unnecessary. Usually treatments or accommodations are a better route.

And please don't tell people to fit into useless social norms as a part of their "treatment."