Abbiesmal

this is not the only time i have lost entire networks over my supposed hatred of trans men. these men don't even have to be in the room for me to be deemed an intolerable threat to them. at all times, i am expected to make space within myself for transmascs, to carve little holes in my feminism for these "AFAB when convenient" men. if i do not do so, if i instead dedicate my life to the care of my fellow transfems over all men, i am social jetsam. the number of people who have stayed in contact with me after these banishments happen is so few it doesn't even reach a half dozen.

I think the idea that this is divisive in the first place is kind of insidious, because our intent in this kind of situation is often to try and take down the barriers that prevent us from integrating and unifying with the larger queer community, but our criticisms of these barriers are taken as an attack, and are dismissed rather than seriously considered

do y’all think distortions work with like,,,, trans people. like if you believe and are able to make others believe, you can be who you are.

i had this headcanon before i finished the game and was made aware of what distortions were in the context of zato. that three years ago, marina had begged lev for a dress. i mean like, crying on the floor choking on her own saliva type of begging. like it was UGLY.

but after he gave in and bought her a dress under the guise that it was a gift for a friend’s daughter, marina… reshaped herself, so to say. before i finished the game, i thought she just got lucky enough to make people forget she was a boy at all. padding, growing out her hair, changing her social circle maybe, all that silly stuff stealth trans people do irl.

but now that i’m aware of distortions… marina said she believed that if she convinced herself something was true, then it was. which i think worked before in her favor, in a way. she believed so much that she was a girl, and then enough people followed through that it caused a distortion. nobody even remembers that she was ever a boy in the first place. marina does, and she wonders how it’s all so easy now.

Don’t be too loud

Don’t be too confident

Don’t be too funny

Don’t be too sexual

Don’t be too angry

Don’t express discomfort with anything

If you or any transfem does any of these things in any context, it’s only because of your male upbringing that you feel so confident to be angry or loud.

A few months after I started transitioning I had a complete breakdown about this. I was so worried about how the ways in which I was raised would affect how I interact with others. Do I have some innate male confidence I need to destroy? This came after reading a lot of the borderline-terf rhetoric that spreads in the trans community about trans women.

After I while I discovered transfeminist writing that helped me understand my place in the world for really the first time. And then I thought, wait my childhood didn’t instil within me any kind of confidence. When I was a kid I was scared of everything, bullied, abused, terrified to speak up and completely unable to relate to any of the boys surrounding me.

It occurs to me that accusations of being male socialised are a particularly useful tool to stop transfems from discussing any of the discrimination or violence we face from non-transfem people. Any kind of advocating for yourself as a transfem can be shut down using this rhetoric.

It’s the complete flattening down of any of the complexity or interiority of transfeminine life for the benefit of shutting down conversations about transmisogyny. It’s a subtle way to say that transfems basically had the same exact upbringing as cis boys. It’s a way of portraying a confident trans woman who stands up for herself as secretly harbouring the same potential for violence that a cis man has.

And once again, like a lot of transmisogynistic sentiment, I don’t see people outright saying these things but rather implying it for plausible deniability.