Transcript:
I am currently writing an essay titled "The Perfect Trans Woman." Its thesis is that, in opposition to blatantly transphobic talking points, the trans community and its allies have constructed an image of the "perfect trans woman" to counter this rhetoric.
While this figure is, by and large, a much better and more accurate representation of trans people, she is essentially the mirror opposite of TERF logic. In being so, she inadvertently affirms many of its foundational assumptions.
TERFs maintain an obsession with male socialization. Their idea is that if you were once indoctrinated into manhood and raised as a boy, you can never truly become a woman. You will, they argue, carry all the social training of boyhood, inevitably becoming a misogynist and a perpetrator of misogyny. In contrast, the "perfect trans woman" is someone who, in childhood, experienced forms of abuse and neglect in the way any woman might. She did not develop a strong connection to manliness or the patriarchy and did not perpetuate misogyny.
I think many trans women would find that story relatable. It feels very safe to say that trans women don't have male childhoods.
However, I am someone who is comfortable saying that I did have a male childhood. In my teenage years, I would very much say that I did perpetrate misogyny. I am not allowed to talk about that experience without having my womanhood taken away from me.
The "perfect trans woman" does not defend my right to exist and be a woman. She actually reinforces the idea that if you experienced being socialized as a man, you can never truly change. She doesn't fight back against that logic at all; in fact, she buys into it.
Ultimately, it is the TERFs who are taking my humanity away. But I don't believe we should be entertaining their logic at all, because here are the truths that will always remain true: Transitioning radically changes your relationship to the patriarchy. Everybody perpetrates the patriarchy—this is Feminism 101.
The dehumanization and degradation of trans women are in perfect alignment with the patriarchy. And the TERFs don't care. They don't care if you were always a girl and always knew. You don't need to create a narrative that all trans women are like this, as if it's a universal truth, because they don't care. They're still not going to grant you any humanity either way.
I'm not saying that people who describe themselves this way are lying. I'm saying we don't need to go to lengths to claim this is a universal truth about who trans women really are. We're people. We're capable of doing bad things and of being bad people. And if you don't believe that people can change, rewire their brains, and cease to exhibit harmful tendencies, then what is the point of anything? Those truths should never be used to take away our womanhood.
Furthermore, if you genuinely believe people are incapable of changing, of becoming something different, and of altering their relationship to structures of power—if you truly think that's impossible—then what is the point of anything?
ID: tiktok comment by user aspiring_erudite asking "can I please read it? It sounds amazing" and averyy responding: "if I finish it, it will likely be made into a video essay on my youtube (@ averyycs). /end ID
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