Understanding Transmisogyny

Dismantling transmisogyny within the trans community. Please Read

[transmisogyny-explained]

Updating my pinned post since I’ve gotten a lot of new followers recently.

My carrd is extremely outdated and I don’t even know if I have the login information for that site anymore, but I’m leaving it there for archiving purposes.

This blog is periodically active and operates on a queue of exclusively posts made by other transfems (and occasionally TMEs) about transmisogyny and related subjects that I thought were insightful/informative/etc. and wanted to save for myself.

I no longer check the inbox or messages for this blog and I rarely check the notes. If you absolutely have to get ahold of me about something, you can send a message to my main @twink-woman.

I may occasionally leave commentary on the posts I reblog, but again I rarely check my notes, so I probably won’t see it if you’ve replied to me.

[transmisogyny-explained]

I’m sort of having a mental health crisis. I’m not sure when or if I’ll be coming back to tumblr.

[orchidvioletindigo]

Male-centrism is a term we need to use more often and I mean this in a fully transfeminist way. "I call everyone bro and dude" male centrism. "I can't tolerate a certain type of woman being in my space because they remind me of men" male centrism.

[janederscore]

so, just for the record, staff's blatantly discriminatory rules enforcement practices are only half the story. like, if you ever find yourself wondering why trans women are always getting termed right after their posts about transmisogyny start getting numbers (and mysteriously start getting mature content flagged for seemingly no reason), its bc there are a couple of specific circles of people who mass report tgirls who talk about that sort of thing too loudly (or, y'know, they're just generally annoyed by). there's at least one discord server more or less dedicated to the practice to my knowledge and i wouldn't be surprised if there were more.

staff, of course, can perform the tied hands routine bc of this - they're just responding to reports! and now that the first ban is served, any subsequent attempts to rebuild one's social life are read as Ban Evasion. girls are left with the non-choice of permanent exile or starting over from scratch, trying to be quieter this time so they don't get found. this is the point, and its being done with purpose by people who, funnily enough, spend most of their time talking about the importance of Community. lol and lmao

[strawberry-crocodile]

if you genuinely believe that trans women all have a simplistic "binary" relationship with gender (and to be clear, i think most people saying this are just full on bigots) then thats because the trans women around you do not feel safe talking about gender with you. or perhaps there are no trans women who choose to spend time talking to you. either way you should think about that before you talk about us again.

[punishedgwyndolin]

it’s interesting how many people say the term “nonbinary” as short for an identity with the assumption that this is separate and contradictory with a transfem identity, ppl so used to and centered around transmascs that they forget there’s other nonbinary people. like once you realize how many people implicitly see nonbinary gender as transmasculine by default it’s impossible to stop noticing it

[taliabhattwrites]

This may be orthogonal to the original point, but as a third-world transfem who's rather embroiled in the queer scholarship that eventually trickles down into Tumblr and popular queer discourse, there's something very particularly galling about how "non-binary" identity is treated.

Y'all have probably noticed this too. Historians will say that it's ahistorical to impose "modern categories" of gender and sexuality onto the past, so definitively stating that someone was "trans" or "bisexual" is a big no-no. Similarly, you'll encounter arguments about how imposing "Western categories" of "gayness" or "transness" onto other cultures is "cultural imperialism".

Which ... alright, there is a logic there, even if I take issue with it. However, one thing I've noticed? That selfsame scholarships has no issue with using the term, "culturally recognized non-binary identities" to refer to constructions like third-sexes, or even something that is clearly contextually more or less "gay male bottom".

And that's just so fucking weird?

Scholarship like this is also very emphatic about how "the gender binary" is a "Western, colonialist construct" (which is again a disputable claim, but let's roll with it). In fact, the legibility of "non-binary" as an identity is quite rooted in the modern, anglophonic, Western queer context, and its percolation outside those contexts is rather uncommon.

Yet, the very same fields and scholars that would say "calling a third-gendered person 'trans' is imperialism" have absolutely no issue describing that very third-gendered person as non-binary, irrespective of whether or not "non-binary" is a particularly meaningful concept in that culture!

I don't know chat, there's something interesting going on here, for those willing to critically think about the Western constructions of "non-binary" :)

(Also, just wanted to ask ... has any queer person ever been called "AC/DC"?!)

[taliabhattwrites]

In the West, transfems can't be non-binary. Outside the West, transfems have to be considered non-binary.

[tpwrtrmnky]

Maybe the real colonialism wasn't the binary we had at home... but the nonbinary we declared along the way......

[tinierpurplefishes]

Just as an aside, I have actually seen AC/DC used as a slur for bisexual people

[taliabhattwrites]

That's wild.

Contextually, that also helps highlight how much of a jumble that paragraph is. "Nonbinary genders" as a phrase is being used to encompass pejoratives for queer people, tortured phrases like "male-bodied persons socially considered women" [I wonder if there's a more succinct term for that idea], and throwing together everything from bisexuality to transness to intersex people into this singular umbrella that may not even be a meaningful concept outside of the anglophonic West!

[endykelopaedia]

PLEASE dont forget the incredibly racialised aspect of transmisogynistic murders and violence i am begging yall to not forget the incredibly racialised aspect of transmisogynistic muders and violence. the trans women being murdered are most often black women! they are often sex workers! the murder problem exists at an intersection of yes transphobia and misogyny, but also racism and classism! transmisogynoir is a violent killer! PLEASE im begging yall to not forget the racialised nature of transmisogynistic murders and violence!!!

[endykelopaedia]

in addition, black people, obviously, are the most likely to face police violence and false imprisonment. sex workers even more so. black women in general are a historically degendered class. black people are more likely to be impoverished. black people are more likely to be discriminated against in so many aspects of life. black people are the first to get hurt and black people are the last to get listened to. remember to fight for black trans women when you are fighting for trans women.

[strawberry-crocodile]

fun game for tmes to play: is this person a Genderfuck Genderweird or are you percieving an incongruity between a feminine gender/presentation and an assumed "maleness" of the body?

[strawberry-crocodile]

i think there's some amount of "i want their gender" that's ultimately more a case of body dysmorphia than gender presentation?

if you are seeing Dr Frank N Furter or fucking Buffalo Bill and thinking "wow what gender goals" and you're a transmasculine person who feels dysphoria about having thin shoulders and a slight face, i suspect there's an element of "i want to be Visibly Queer, and i want those body features". and these characters are often treated and talked about as men! which might also be something you want!

and i think you need to be able to step back and say "i want a body like that, i want to be seen as A Man" rather than make this about how Cool and Radical a Noncomforming Man the character Rapistman Threattowomen is. because what you're noticing is often hateful transmisogyny.

and to be clear, i'm making these earlier assumptions in part because i feel something Similar But Opposite; the small, thin shouldered, slight faced pixie cut hawaiian shirt queer look gives me gender envy! because i want a body that others- and myself, because social conditioning cant just be turned off- as feminine, to present as queer and wear masc clothes and look cute and girly. and the fact is thats not what many of these people are going for! it might be rude to parade around, like, gamergate era hateful caricatures of transmasculine people and shout "this is soooo iconic, this is so gender, i want to be a woman like she is".

idek where i'm going with this. but i hope this is something people understand and im not just raving here.

[strawberry-crocodile]

And to be clear if you are talking to a real living trans woman who has she/her pronouns and identifies as a woman, and you say that her appearance is your genderfuck boygirl testosterone goals, you need to be sent to a reeducation camp.

[cooltrainergorps]

it's kind of crazy how much damage the rhetoric that conservatives "think of us all as faggots" has done to people's willingness to understand and engage with intersectionality. now suddenly any engagement with the ways in which different identities are socially positioned for different forms of discrimination is queer infighting, and you'll never guess what demographic is constantly accused of inciting it,

[tpwrtrmnky]

I think we need to let go of the meme that being fetishized and speculated about a lot is compensation for epistemic injustice to trans women. Like. Trans people's perspectives generally aren't really platformed, and appearing in porn a lot doesn't mean trans women have a privilege there.

A big instagram as a fashion model or a stable income from online sex work or any other such form of visibility doesn't translate to political influence, or influence on gender studies, or anything of the sort. In fact, these types of visibility have tended to be held against trans women in academic circles through the transmisogynist declaration that trans women only being visible in these fields is a consequence of a vapid adherence to gender roles, as opposed to a consequence of discrimination.

[lesbianbloodritual]

when it comes to my like lesbianism i think i have a lot of i guess internalized transphobia about it cause, when i feel good i'm a women making relationship with other women cause they're like the best people i've ever met, i know some dudes who are ok but i don't really like them like i do the women in my life, but when I'm i guess in the dumps i feel like or at least feel the specter of the misogynistic men i've met through my life and that it'll end up like them and hurt all the girls i know and they deserve better than that.

i understand where you're coming from. this is something that many, many trans women struggle with, especially when they're younger or have recently come out.

now, i need you to pay very close attention to what I'm about to say, because it's essential knowledge if you want to be happy as a transgender woman. ready?

THAT SHIT IS POISON!!!!!! IT WILL KILL YOU!!!!!!

you are not a man. you are not responsible for anything any man in your life — in all of history! — has ever done. anyone who tries to make you think or feel otherwise is not someone who has your best interests at heart. they are greatly misguided at best, and actively dangerous at worst.

everyone is capable of harm. the problem with men is not that they have an inherently greater capacity for harm. the problem is that society is structured so that they can get away with the harm they do.

you are a trans woman. society is not structured so that you can get away with anything. you do not move through society as a man. not even if you are closeted. your subjectivity is a woman's subjectivity, and the mechanisms that regulate your movement through society are those of misogyny. the doubt and self-hatred you feel, the idea that you're somehow unclean, undeserving, that your existence needs to be justified, that you are inherently dangerous: that's internalized transmisogyny.

does this mean that you can do no wrong? no. as i said, everyone has the capacity for harm. what it does mean is that if you ever hurt someone, you will be a woman who has hurt someone. not a man.

which brings us to my final point. why is it so dangerous for you to believe that you are more capable of harm than other women, that you must somehow "prove" your innocence?

because it makes you easy to manipulate.

if other people (particularly cis women and transmascs) realize that you are eager to demonstrate your status as a "true", "safe" woman, they will walk all over you — because if you push back, they can simply accuse you of acting like a man. after all, women are supposed to be gentle and demure, right? and if that doesn't put you in your place, they will start talking behind your back, saying you're scary, entitled, clearly not a real woman after all. and people will turn their backs on you. it happened to me, it happened to a million other girls.

i don't mean to scare you. there's plenty of good people out there, but you gotta know the rules of the game. also, check out the concept of transfeminized debt, and read whipping girl by julia serano if you want. I love you!

[patricia-taxxon]

transmisogyny isnt "worse" than any other prejudice, but it's newer, less established, less understood, and easier to ignore for certain otherwise in-the-loop progressives. i think this explains most of how it is discussed and reacted to in leftist online spaces.

[patricia-taxxon]

it's very clear. like when I got an ask saying that trans men aren't the ones oppressing trans women, i said "well, white disabled trans women are limited in their ability to racially oppress, but they still benefit from white supremacy & are complicit in whiteness and it'd be silly to say they suffer from transwhitefemphobia" and the response to that was just "that's not how this works, how dare you, you are trying to distance yourself from your whiteness, unlike me, who remains at arms length from the franchise of patriarchy forever because of my chromosomes" like it just hasn't been patched in yet

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

I'm beginning to think in the context of "haha you might be trans" and "wow all men suck" jokes being perceived on this website as deeply awful and offensive to the person being joked about that a lot of you have deeply shitty cis men friends who can't take a joke.

When a friend of mine recommended Gushing Over Magical Girls I literally went "have you tried estrogen???" because the only people I saw talking about this series were other trans women, but he's not a fucking baby and found it funny. He did not find it an attack on his fucking masculinity or whatever.

The idea that trans women are reinforcing awful gender stereotypes through egg jokes, that we're pressuring feminine men somehow into being trans women, is TERF rhetoric. It's the defining rhetoric of conversion therapy, that trans people and trans healthcare are taking feminine, gay men and turning them into trans women. Just admit that you fucking hate women and get away from us.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Also we're going to talk about mirroring again. Even from the posts that disagree with me on this topic, the focus is always on trans women. How awful trans women are for doing this to men.

Not the reverse. Surely egg jokes are also made from trans men to cis women. Why is this not a concern then? Maybe, just maybe, the idea of suggesting to a man he might be a woman is considered a grave offense, while suggesting to a woman she might be a man isn't? Of course, we also can't discount misogyny, women are doing things so its bad.

Like surely cis women also can get uncomfortable about this, but no one seems to give a fuck about this aspect of the conversation at all, so it makes every post about this deeply fucking hollow. It just makes you all look like transmisogynists.

[tpwrtrmnky]

The rhetorical strategies against trans women can be generalized to just a bunch of different implementations of "blame trans women for things that are done to them"

There's fetishisation of trans women arising from their position as marginalized women ending up in survival sex work? actually trans women's fault for being a sex thing

Trans women have their gender presentation policed heavily by gender clinics? How dare trans women reinforce gender stereotypes!

The position of trans women as vulnerable targets of patriarchal violence means they require access to support structures intended to protect women from said violence? This must be a scheme by the violent men actually.

Trans women are hesitant to participate in debates due to the extreme risk of mass harassment at the hands of the audience? Must be censorship. From the trans women.

Trans women rely on healthcare, which is funded by the exploitative structures of capitalism? This is on trans women. nobody else is to blame here.

[tpwrtrmnky]

On my knees begging users on this website to realise that criticising someone for explicitly siding with the transmisogyny-first branch of the anti-trans movement is not "infighting" just because they happen to be somewhere in the trans umbrella

[taliabhattwrites]

This website is dogshit at recognizing "TERF rhetoric" despite slinging that term at every transfem with a feminist consciousness, because it is deeply, deeply invested in reducing "TERF" to "misandrst" and refusing to entertain any critique of the male-supremacy society is founded on.

Like, here's a bitter pill for every idiotic non-transfem who simply refuses to learn what transmisogyny really is: You all spout "TERF rhetoric" a lot. A lot of you believe that you have a specific relationship of trauma and violence with patriarchy that trans women never will, which IS "TERF rhetoric". A lot of you think that trans women have identical experiences to cis men prior to bodily transition, which IS "TERF rhetoric". A lot of you believe that trans women do not have the right to speak authoritatively on misogyny over you, because we will always be "guests" in womanhood instead of authentically women with our own experiences of misogyny, which IS. TERF. RHETORIC.

You are all so intent on jumping at shadows, on equating feminism with ontological man-hate, on calling every analysis of patriarchy "gender essentialism" when a trans woman is making the observations or speaking on how she's oppressed.

But the second--the SECOND--it is time for you to put a trans woman in her place, suddenly she's a man! Suddenly, you recall that men are privileged in our patriarchal societies, that men are capable of violence, that men benefit from the exploitation of women, and you eagerly lay all those sins at trans women's feet. Being blunt?

THIS WEBSITE FUNDAMENTALLY HOLDS TRANS WOMEN AS MORE RESPONSIBLE FOR PATRIARCHAL VIOLENCE THAN THE ACTUAL CIS MEN WHO HURT AND PREY ON US ALL, WHO BENEFIT FROM OUR ABJECTION AND WHO DELIGHT IN SEEING QUEER PEOPLE EVISCERATE ANY SENSE OF FEMINIST CONSCIOUSNESS OR SOLIDARITY, ALL FOR THE SAKE OF DUNKING ON TRANNIES.

Are you idiots still, even NOW when YET ANOTHER "big transmasc" account has been revealed to have been harboring actual "TERF sentiment", not the slightest bit ashamed of the way you enable this? The way you refuse to root out the TERFs among you, in favor of accusing us of either siding with or BEING our own oppressors?

How much of the trans population on this site has spent the past few months scaremongering about my book and politics, instead of engaging with the writings I've put up for free online? How many of you invoke the specter of the 'transradfem' at women simply trying to talk about and conceptualize their oppression, while gleefully imbibing and regurgitating actual Gender-Conservative thought, spreading that poison throughout your oh-so-progressive communities?

You think "transradfems" are TERFs? MOTHERFUCKER YOU ARE THE ONES WHO LET THE TERFS SPEAK THROUGH YOUR MOUTHS.

Is it finally, finally time for this illiterate website to recognize the actual problem?

[oxymoronictransfem]

This is a TERF website. And I'm really not surprised it is with how often it's called the “AFAB” website.

[punishedgwyndolin]

one of the awesomely principle-less things about tumblr users is the way you’ll see people be like bioessentialism is terrible and we have to stop it from ruining our #community right before saying some of the most bioessentialist and transmisogynistically loaded slop you’ve heard in months. remember all the people who’d pontificate about how “afab chests” are uniquely sexualized and objectified? people literally love bioessentialism when it’s serving them

[tlirsgender]

How did "gender is a social construct, i.e. subjective and not based in some intrinsic tangible reality, put bluntly gender isn't strictly Real" turn into "therefore the patriarchy doesn't exist". Like well it does. People categorized as Women very demonstrably suffer material consequences for this. Our idealized post-gender future utopia isn't real, either, that's purely theoretical at this point. Ignoring (trans)misogyny within our communities and framing feminists as "reinforcing gender" for pointing it out is uh the opposite of the point, actually. The patriarchy IS the oppressive power structure of Gender we're trying to get rid of. That's the idea, yes? What did you think this was about

[tlirsgender]

This is what happens when you get your ideology from Vibes instead of reading theory

[tlirsgender]

Everyone loves repeating catchy slogans until they lose all meaning and original context but I need you to stop doing that, ok? The social-legal-medical force of sexgender assignment very much affects people, like, right now in real life. That's why it's bad and we don't like it. I think step one of dismantling the establishment is listening to women? These critiques started from women's lib, it just turns out all trans + intersex people are fighting the same fight against gendered oppression. Why are you trying to do feminism without the women. Your politics are FUBAR you gotta start over, man