Topic= "trans woman are just as racist as white men" is still trans-misogyny
Captions not included, transcript needed plz
time: ~4:00
[Transcript: So I saw this video from @reellauraloomer, she was criticising the racist ways in which some white trans women including Sabre act, and you know, good video, I’m all for criticising the racism of white trans women. As I like to say, white trans women are about exactly as racist as any other group of white people, which is to say, quite racist, and criticism of that is good and well warranted. However, there is a particular turn of phase that Laura uses in the video that is quite transmisogynistic. And to engage in transmisogyny in a criticism of racism is unnecessary and counterproductive, reinforces transmisogyny, and damages the validity of the criticism. The thing that Laura says is “a lot of white trans people still behave and act like white men”. Now, Laura does say “white trans people” but I’m gonna talk about trans women. The person on screen is Sabre, a trans woman. I don’t know if Laura had specifically trans women in mind, maybe she does have trans people in general. But let’s think about trans women. The idea that white trans women specifically act like white trans men, or sorry, like white men, that is a transmisogynistic trope. That is playing on the idea of male socialisation. Male socialisation is a transmisogynistic idea that trans women carry some sort of male energy with them through their transition in a way that makes them uniquely dangerous or predatory or something like that. And that’s not true, I debunk it at length in my upcoming book. I’ve made videos about it in the past. It is an incorrect theory that is wielded as a rhetorical cudgel to prevent trans women from standing up to themselves. For Laura to say that a lot of white trans people act like white men is to engage in a form of this male socialisation rhetoric. This is a transmisogynistic trope. It’s also not necessary to imply that these white women’s racism makes them male in some way. Because white women are pretty fuckin’ racist. There’s a lot of great Black feminist scholarship on white women’s racism. White women as a group have a little bit less institutional power to uphold racism than do white men. But white women still have a lot of societal power to uphold racism. And they use that power to uphold racism. So these white trans women’s behaviour is not male in any way, it’s just white. It is their whiteness that makes them oblivious to racial issues and is what is worth criticising. There’s nothing distinctly male about that racism. To suggest that it is male in some way is to engage in transmisogyny. This is hopefully a productive critique. I appreciate the work that Laura does, criticising white trans women’s racism. But I think it should be done thoughtfully. Criticising trans women is, you know, can be difficult because it’s easy to lean into transmisogynistic tropes. And that is something that should be avoided at all costs. You don’t have to get transmisogynistic in order to criticise the things that trans women do.]
