Lesbian Outlaw

like someone will be talking about "women's healthcare" and they will say "you mean AFAB healthcare!"

in their head, the math is "(cis women) + (the trans guy I know) = (common denominator is we were AFAB)" because they never once considered trans women as women in the original statement. the implicit transmisogyny just becomes vocally explicit in their attempts to clumsily "include" trans men.

and when a trans woman points out that the cis woman is being transphobic, the cis woman gets extremely flustered and defensive, because in her mind, she was going out of her way to include "trans people" (see: the one trans guy she knows) and that still isn't good enough for you people. now the cis woman is feeling vividly resentful of trans women (because the trans woman trying to gently correct her becomes symbolic of trans women as a whole) and much more likely to double-down on whatever implicit transmisogynist beliefs she already harbored.

like I just see this unfold so often.

it's extremely demoralizing that often the one trans guy the cis woman knows also does not give a shit about trans women and allows the cis women he's in community with to constantly reframe "trans inclusion" as "excluding trans women" simply because it's easy and benefits him.

it's especially disappointing to see this because it's not even that hard to challenge this sort of thing.

like I'm not a trans man, but I am a trans person, and I was assigned "female" at birth, and in my experience, when people do this, it literally is as simple as saying "no, this (e.g. medical misogyny) isn't about assignment, in fact trans women actually face much more acute forms of this kind of (e.g. medical gatekeeping, discrimination, and medical abuse) than cis women or tme trans people" and then we can talk about the mechanisms of sexgender hierarchy enforcement & how/why it impacts different demographics in these ways.

if you're TME and you're the sole person that a cis person is relying on for a "trans perspective" then, while that responsibility shouldn't be placed on you (it would be great if cis people learned about stuff independently instead of outsourcing their opinions to a singular trans person they know), it is placed on you.

and what you do with that responsibility does actually impact how this cis person will interact with trans women (individually and collectively) going forward.

By adding "and other people with a uterus" she is excluding trans women from her definition of women, at the same time however she is being thoughtful of trans people who were AFAB as those are ones she interacts with in her daily life. On the other side, it makes me think that white transmisogyny exempt queer people are also the only marginalized people she interacts with or thinks about in general, considering a cisgender man who is dark skinned or disabled would also be oppressed in the medical system.

“but what about that one comic where she re-examines her bias about bathrooms?” i don’t know how to tell you this, but people can still be transphobes if they think trans people should get the dignity of having somewhere to pee; not every racist (or even every white supremacist) is arguing about how we should bring back racially segregated bathrooms and indeed many modern racists are patting themselves on the back for finding no problem with that. Besides, the punchline of the comic is that trans women are less likely to be stopped in bathrooms than cis lesbians because we conform to gender stereotypes more than them (in her mind) — it’s just one in a long line of comments in Dykes To Watch Out For about how trans people are, at best, “conformist homosexuals”

if you look in the comments section of Dykes To Watch Out For on her website, youll find that it’s absolutely teaming with terfs, many of whom Bechdel was close friends with and mentioned in her blog posts.