✿ the bealog! ✿ @thebealog - Tumblr Blog

Please remember that Pride is important because someone tonight still believes they’re better off dead than being themselves.

kayla-denker

Trans women when they see a woman early in transition letting the dysphoria get to her head and making her say things like "no one will ever see me as a woman":

"Babe, you are beautiful! That's all just the dysphoria talking! Everyone thinks this during these early days, and they're always wrong! I know that it's so hard and demoralizing, HRT works agonizingly slowly, but it does work and you will get through this. You have the strength, you've already proven that by transitioning! And you don't have to do it alone,we will always be here for you!" Trans men when they see a man early in transition letting the dysphoria get to his head and making him say things like "no one will ever see me as a man":

"You're right, they won't. This is transmisand— er, transandrophobia! They hate you for being a man, which is why no one is ever gonna see you as anything but a confused masculine woman at best! Everyone can sense your divine feminine energy that was bestowed upon you by your female socialization. You are an afab, and you will always be female. You were born with a uterus and that will define your life always and forever. This is what intersectional feminism is all about! Have you not read Stone Butch Blues? You should join our Harry Potter book club!"

transsexual-feminism

It's wild how consistently "nonbinary" gets treated as just a spicier flavour of transmasculinity, and not a range of identities both transfeminine and transmasculine people both hold. Within trans online spaces, transfemininity is seen as almost anathema to being nonbinary.

It's like, either you're a feminine cis man who is still cis, like a femboy, or cross-dresser, or you're a binary transgender woman 'gender conformist' who has an absolutely uncomplicated relationship to her gender. There's no in-between, and any sign that a transgender woman might have a more complicated relationship to her gender is grounds to exile her to the former category of femboy or cross-dresser.

Being nonbinary is only socially permissible in transgender spaces when you're transmasculine, because transfemininity is subjected to such intense scrutiny that that anything short of swearing an oath of undying loyalty to Artemis that you will forever and exclusively be a woman is grounds to treat you as a male cross-dresser.

You can see this in a lot "androgynous" fashion styles as well, especially in what bodies get to be counted as androgynous. Typically, the bodies are white, thin, and (stereotypically) feminine, save for the absence of boobs, while the clothing is (stereotypically) masculine. The fact that this is an idealization of transmasculinity is not an accident, and it makes transfeminine nonbinary people hoping to be socially read as such extremely difficult.

The only alternative for them is the 'man in dresses' stereotype, which not only reduces them to the status of a cross-dresser, but which is constantly fetishized and repackaged as "gender fuckery" by TME people who think it's exotic. And I know some transfem nonbinary people get a lot out of this, I know a few of them, but for the vast majority of us, it's a complete misrepresentation of how we actually want to present.

These fashion and body standards are not the cause of this pattern so much as the shared effect of the pervasive transmisogyny directed against transfemininity which constructed transfemininity and nonbinary identity as anathema to begin with.

This anathema is typically employed against transfeminists as well. I am nonbinary, and yet I could not tell you the massive stream of people accusing me of being a binary trans woman who denies the existence of nonbinary people and who do not believe me when I try to explain otherwise.

When people say transfeminism is "exorsexist", what they mean is that they can't understand transfeminine people as nonbinary, that they refuse to recognize our identities, or to understand our experiences.

Either we're cross-dressers, or gender conformists. Either we're men, or anti-feminists. Transfems are denied a gender identity.

thebealog

nothing irks me more than hearing a TME say "gender fuckery", its almost never well intentioned

alurkerlieshere

Woman who hasn't been held in a decade: oh I'm pretty low maintenance, yeah honestly I think I'd find that overwhelming or something, can I just hold your hand instead? If that's okay of course?

alurkerlieshere

Woman who feels ill at the notion of taking up space: yeah I can stand. Yeah honestly it's no biggie I like standing. Do you mind if I lean here? It's okay to say no.

alurkerlieshere

Woman who would rather die than be considered selfish: I'm really sorry to ask I'm probably just being annoying but could I ask for another pillow? Yeah there isn't one in the room. Yeah no worries I can just bunch up some towels if needed.

alurkerlieshere

Woman who's most outlandish and fantastical fantasies are a coffee date and seeing a movie with someone: oh I don't get out much. Yeah I don't really like being around people. I'm pretty much an introvert. Or something like that yeah.

alurkerlieshere

Woman who would break down screaming and crying if someone showed even a hint of affection in person, who would fall apart at the seams if you held her still and asked her if she was okay, woman who if allowed too would wrap herself around you and sob and weep until she became severely dehydrated: oh yeah sorry I spaced out for a second there. Yeah I'm doing alright.

kayla-denker

"Love" that it has somehow become controversial even among trans men to say that trans men are men. And not in some metaphorical sense or whatever, not in a "gender isn't real" sense, not in a "but they're still female" sense, but in the sense that trans men are real, actual, MEN. And in addition: trans men that medically transition are MALE. That's what medical transition does: it changes your fucking sex! That's the whole point of it! And no, not just when you get grs, HRT alone does that too!

But no, so fucking many of them hate trans women so goddamn much that they've committed to misgendering themselves and spreading TERF ideology about how "they'll always be female" just so they can insist that the inverse is also true: that trans women are actually, and always will be, men and male.

aradiabot612

"nobody is exempt from transmisogyny" do you think white men can experience misogynoir? no? because misogyny and racism is a systemic force against women and black people? and the word specifically defines the societal force and the way those two things affect black women? like the way intersectional words are supposed to work? okay.

mousidy

Is there a reason a lot of hate from trans men focus mainly on trans women and rarely on cis women or cis men? Like is that because that's the only group they can punch down on? Though I guess they could punch down on cis women since they are men, but then for those bi & straight trans men I guess that's taking out part of their dating pool? I dunno. - confused agender trans femme

they grew up in the same transmisogynistic society that we did, absorbing many of the same narratives and stereotypes about trans women that taught us to hate ourselves, and the rest of the world to hate us

the concept of transmisogyny is not very widely understood even within queer and trans communities, so they are able to abuse their TME privilege without it looking like that's what they're doing. at best it looks like "infighting" between trans people to onlookers who don't understand the power dynamics at play, and at worst it looks like they're underdogs beating back the scary powerful trannies we were all warned about

very few people understand how disempowering it actually is to be part of a heavily fearmongered-about demographic. any amount of self-advocacy is read as aggression. fearmongering is an incredibly powerful discriminatory tool because it disguises the actual power dynamics, making the disempowered look powerful and justifying their suppression

us speaking up and trying to educate about transmisogyny makes the true power dynamics legible, so they try to shout talk about it down so it still looks like they're winning a fair fight instead of kicking a dog while it's down

their transmisogyny goes unchecked and unquestioned, in part because people think that if you're trans yourself, you're completely trans friendly, and thus cool about trans women too. so if you disproportionately mistreat, exclude, and abuse the trans women in your life, it must just be because they deserved it, instead of because you're a transmisogynist

their own transness does not provide them immunity from hating us, it's the opposite. it gives them cover to do so, because people think it makes them immune to hating us

safeplanetdweller

library date?? coffee shop date??? museum date?? art gallery date?? stargazing date?? napping date?? picnic date??? yes

mousidy

"we're all faggots in the eyes of the state!" "we all have it just as bad!"

ok. wage gap

source

like. come on now

trans mennnn pspspsps understand your relative privilege over your transfem sisters and use it to support and uplift us instead of pretending not to have the structural leverage necessary to harm us. ooooo you know you want to build queer solidarity

jaepidgey

Support our trans sisters. We are privileged in that we are seen as “desiring the superior” (masculinity) rather than the supposedly illogical “desire for the inferior” (femininity). Those in power can make sense of trans men, because men hold more relative power— but seeing womanhood as desirable, despite all the barriers set up by society and all the discrimination levied upon feminine people? That breaks the system entirely. Our trans sisters are out here fighting the system at its roots. The least we can do is speak out for their cause, as well. All or nothing, folks. Our causes are interconnected in the face of tearing down patriarchy and rigid social norms based on biological sex. What happened to “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere”

girl-bytes

you can explain the material things that could be done to make trans women's lives easier, and someone who thinks misandry is real will show up like "that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, abolishing gender". and then they wont abolish gender

uhuh100

they only ever want to abolish trans women's gender

closet-keys

a lot of people say "abolish" when they mean "re-naturalize." they don't want to make sexgender systems more visible and work collectively to dismantle them. they want to make them invisible and insist there is nothing there to dismantle.

cherry-official

Not entirely related but it reminds me of this story

One day I showed off my girliest outfit around the only person who knows I’m transfem and he was just like “oh yeah that’s nice what’s so special about it” and when I mentioned they were girls’ clothes he just went “well yeah but clothes have no gender” and I literally had to look him dead in the eyes and say “let me have this”

I’m not mad about it but it was EXTREMELY disheartening especially because he thought he was being supportive by taking the femininity out of what I was wearing

kayla-denker