eldritch boything

"Other members of the community are bullying us for our gender and presentation"

"Have you considered it's deserved because they could be transphobic to trans woman?"

This is enraging honestly. I could type paragraphs to how folks treat us for asking to not be bullied but honestly I think anyone who cares doesn't need it.

Stop telling trans people they deserve mistreatment

A big problem in queer feminist theory in my opinion (in general, not just in the discourse) is a tendency to treat identity labels as positionality in and of themselves. This frequently goes hand in hand with gender essentialism and extremely deepseated cisnormativity. People will take two groups that share an identity, and then use that to transitively map a certain positionality onto one of those groups by comparison. And generally, the cis, binary perspective is the one being imposed on the other. And if you're not watching for it or familiar with the topic, you might not notice the switch, because of how common it is to treat the two concepts as interchangeable.

But they're not. For example, A cis man and a trans man and a bigender man all share the identity of "man," but they each occupy a different positionality in the world. As in, the way other people perceive them and treat them, and the way they act in response to the world, is different. They occupy a different material context.

A lot of theory by and for trans women has already explored and firmly established this idea, in regard to trans and cis women. We have words like transmisogyny to describe how the positionality of being a trans woman or transfem effects, for example, the misogyny a person experiences.

Many people don't extend this to its natural conclusion when it comes to trans men and non-binary people, though, and justify that with a misunderstood definition of intersectionality. Our shared identities with other groups are used to project experiences on to us that are not actually true–and in doing so, to silence us.

This is what someone is doing when they say things like "of course trans men have male privilege, they're men," "trans men aren't the primary targets of misogyny, because they're men," or "as men, trans men are treated better than trans women." These ideas (setting aside for now the exorsexism of how transmascs who are not men get shoved into this categorization) rely on taking a person's identity, in this case, "man," and making it synonymous with the positionality of another group with an overlapping identity, cis men. "This is true of cis men," they say "so it must be true of all men." Identity (a fluid and internal thing that a person expresses via dialogue with society) is subsumed by positionality (the material conditions a person operates in).

And when you point out that none of those arguments are materially true, they meet you with "so you don't believe trans men are men?" Here, the argument is sort of a reverse motte-and-bailey (is there a word for this fallacy more specific than strawman? I'm not sure), taking one statement, that being "trans men do not occupy the same positionality as cis men" and treating it as synonymous with another, "trans men do not share the same identity as cis men." The strong, obviously hard to challenge argument is rhetorically swapped for a strawman that can easily be knocked down, and it's done by merging positionality and identity into interchangeable concepts with a meaning that they can move between as suits them.

Here, we get the "weaponizing your AFABness" and "misgendering yourself" strawmans too. When a trans man says he doesn't have the same experiences as a cis man, he is stating something material, such as "I need to access gynecological care and being a trans man makes that more difficult" or "I'm targeted by misogyny in my everday life because of how people perceive me." Note that the supposed rebuttals I listed are identity based again. To this argument, if you acknowledge a different positionality, you must be admitting to a different identity. In this way, unique transmasculine struggles are erased by folding the entirety of transmasculinity into, and making it subservient to, cis masculinity. Our experiences must be judged first to see if they apply to cis men before we are allowed to talk about them applying to trans men.

This affects non-binary people too in both similar and different ways. In the overlap, you see people taking the existence of non-binary people who also identify as cis to justify the idea that a certain kind of non-binary person is "cissexual" or "has cis privilege," or something to that affect. Similarly, they might isolate a part of a non-binary person's experience (such as using the pronouns associated with the gender enforced on you) and use it to say the same. An overlap, or even a perceived overlap in identity with a binary cis person is seized on to impose a binary cis person's positionality. Again, the purpose is to erase them, to silence discussion of their unique struggles, and to exclude them from community.

Another way this manifests against non-binary people is in forced binarization. A very, very common non-binary experience is the questions that amount to "are you a boy enby, or a girl enby?" and "are you an enby I will assume to have a penis, or an enby I will assume to have a vulva?" People will assign, or at least try to "figure out," which binary identity you're supposedly closest to. And once they've assigned you one, they will map a positionality onto you based on that (typically either that of a binary cis person or a binary trans person). The experiences that are distinct to being non-binary get erased in this collapse of the venn diagram.

A lot of this, I think, stems from oppositional sexism and overconfident assumptions. A member of one group, lacking insider knowledge on another group, takes the shortcut of simply making their best guess based on overlapping or "opposite" groups they assume they already understand. And then, when members of the group they confidently spoke over say "this is not true about us," the person retreats into that overlap to justify themselves. A binary trans man assumes a non-binary transmasc has basically equivalent experiences to his own, or a trans woman assumes trans men are treated better than her because cis men are.

That's where it often starts, at least, but if someone doubles down on this fallacy when confronted, they may start to believe (or act like they believe) in more and more absurd ideas based in positionality and identity as interchangeable concepts. I think this is the stage you see nonsensical arguments like "trans men have privilege over cis women," "trans women are overall more impacted by abortion bans than trans men," and "non-binary people are cis trenders pretending for attention."

This impacts other groups of queer people too, like bisexuals and asexuals for example. This post is already long and I wanted to focus on gender in particular, though. Intersex people as well, but I don't feel personally equipped to explore the examples there, and I'd welcome elaboration from anyone who does.

I feel like we might benefit from a word for this rhetoric. I'm not sure what it would be, and "positionality" is a bit of a mouthful to make affixes out of. It's also closely tied to intersectionality (as it's essentially a denial and replacement of the particular intersection a person occupies with an allegedly-similar one), but that concept is...poorly used, in queer discourse, as it is. I'm a big proponent of the utility of very specific terminology, and feel like especially as people who face so much erasure that we could use more of it.

the same thing has happened to white women hurting men of color, especially black men in the USA.

the same thing has happened to able bodied/neurotypical women hurting disabled/neurodivergent men.

the same thing has happened to adult women hurting boys.

I’m in my 40s. Trans, gay, disabled, and biracial. I am a statistic; been homeless, experienced DV and SA multiple times, have experienced exploitation, have had zero family support and been on my own for 25 years, etc.

But I’m expected to just… be happy I survived? And be quiet? Or I have even heard ‘don’t talk about the bad stuff that’s so negative and will scare younger trans people’. Usually from other trans folks, and even other trans men, which is fucking *wild* to me. I was expecting cis folks to be off put but my own community? Goddamn.

data is only one piece of the puzzle. the way that data gets interpreted can tell dramatically different stories. and the way people choose to interpret the same data can tell you a lot about that person's individual biases.

there is a reason why science doesn't jump to conclusions when we find a new protein or some correlation between two variables; we need more testing to confirm the hypotheses we have. it could be that trans men have more access to resources at younger ages, but then why is this only a recent phenomenon? even as little as 2 decades ago, the relative rate of trans men showing up at gender clinics was close to zero (or literally zero, for some years)

is it the case that trans men feel "more accepted"? then how come this is only recently the case? and how come there aren't tons of older trans men as well, shouldn't they be coming forth given that they hadn't shown up in previous years? where're the guys from the 90s and 00s who didn't show up to clinics? is it the case that trans men feel their dysphoria is more unbearable at an earlier age? then what about all of those who don't transition at a younger age? how come they exist? if trans men were less hated by society at large, then why wouldn't we see trans men of all ages represented in the data? and why wouldn't we see younger trans women in that case, actually? since the lowered acceptance would probably mean they're less likely to make it to old age than trans men?

Some people are starting from an assumption of "transmasculine privilege" and building all these things out from there and it's a ridiculous farce.

People who are victims of patriarchy can still perpetuate patriarchy, and it isn't exceptional when a trans person has to do the same unlearning as what billions of cis women have to.

Assuming a trans man has gained his misogynistic views from his transition is transphobic. Viewing him as being misogynistic uniquely from being/becoming a man is transphobic. It is extremely transphobic and villainizing to view misogyny as a motivator for a trans man's transition or a byproduct of his identity.

Assuming a trans woman who has misogynistic views is manifesting them out of lingering "male socialization" is incredibly transphobic. Treating her as hardwired to act misogynistically from her sex or upbringing, that this is coming from some internal impulse to oppress she contains is incredibly transphobic. Assuming this misogyny is coming from whatever connection to manhood you project onto her is transphobic.

Likewise for the many ways these ideas are imposed on nonbinary and genderqueer people. A misogynistic trans person learned this from the same place any cis woman did, the society around them, even when they do not benefit from it, they are not immune to internalizing it. This is internalized misogyny, which they are accountable for, but is ultimately damaging to them too.

Misogyny isn't stored in the proximity to cis manhood, misogyny is prolific throughout society. You don't have to be advantaged by misogyny to be misogynistic.

Because, reality check- cis women have to unlearn misogyny too. Cis women are frequently misogynistic, they are not immune to it, they are not the one class who is immune, who is the only one who gets to recognize that their misogyny is internalized from their oppression.

This is the same for trans people. Trans people are victimized by patriarchy, and neither trans men nor trans women nor nonbinary/gq people benefit from misogyny. Transphobia itself cannot exist without misogyny, without patriarchy. There's no such thing as a trans-inclusive patriarchy because trans people's existence inherently challenges the integrity that very hierarchy of the entire system is built on.

If you can view cis women's internalized misogyny with criticality but sympathy, understand how they're victimized alongside it, and that there is always an element of self destruction to embodying it- you need to view it as such with trans people. The expression of sexism is not proof of a desire to predate or oppress, and framing it that way singularly with trans people is coming from transphobia.

A trans person who has not unlearned every influence of sexism is not exceptional, it's what we all have to do. They're still accountable to their damaging views, but laying blame to the universal consequences of a sexist society as rooted in their identity is transphobic and rife with gender essentialism.

We all have to do the work. Blaming the capacity for sexism on any aspect of our identities villainizes transness, flattens the complexity of what produces misogyny from cis men, as well as obfuscates the work cis women have to do on their misogynistic and gender essentialist beliefs- especially to be responsible and proper allies to trans people.

Which, ultimately, cis women do have the power to oppress trans people, and through the affirmation of this very thing- of gender essentialism just like this.

otherwise, 9/10 what you are doing is insisting you know this person's gender better than they do, and however they are describing themselves/their gender/their experiences is Objectively Wrong because it doesn't make sense to with you perceive their gender. and this is often used to either harass trans men & nonbinary people talking about their experiences with misogyny, or to harass gender non-conforming & nonbinary people talking about their gender/sex/sexuality in a way that isn't monogender and binary and sex normative.

examples:

"I feel like a woman inside, but I know ultimately I'll always be a man, so I still refer to myself with he/him pronouns because I don't try hard enough to be a woman" -> if you know this woman, it would make sense to gently tell her this sounds like she's misgendering herself out of internalized transphobia. She's allowed to call herself a woman and use she/her pronouns, the only reason she isn't is because she doesn't feel that she has a right to, and a person who knows her as a friend would likely be able to clock this.

"I'm a transsexual man, but I'm also NORMAL and SANE so I understand I'm really a biological female and I don't care if my conservative friends she/her me!" -> this man is a grifter / transmed and allowing himself to be misgendered because he's profiting off of transphobia, it would make sense to point this out in a criticism of how he's harming his community. whether or not he feels he's a "biological female" isn't the issue, its him encouraging cis people to think and act this way about trans people.

"I'm a trans woman who also identifies as male, and I'm happy and comfortable in this identity." -> this woman is not misgendering herself, she is describing her own identity in a way that feels comfortable and accurate to her. it would be fucked up to say she's misgendering herself.

MBTI has been proven completely ineffective at predicting anyone’s success at a particular job, and half the people who take it twice will get different results. Reputable psychologists do not recognize it, and the company that owns the rights to it uses it to scam people. People don’t adhere to strict binaries in basically anything. Very few people are going to be exclusively introverted or extroverted. It’s just astrology repackaged as pseudoscience. Shockingly enough, you can’t boil the complexity of the human experience down to a dozen Types of Guy.

The concept of IQ is flawed from the start— “intelligence” is an abstract concept that encompasses many different skills, from social intelligence to emotional intelligence to the very narrow kind of problem solving intelligence IQ tests generally measure for. It cannot predict how fast you learn, how much you know, or how logical and well read you are. It mostly measures how good you are at solving puzzles. Coincidentally, it’s also a pretty good predictor of income and education level, take a guess why. Most people’s IQ will change throughout their lives, because it’s inconsistent bullshit we’ve only held onto this long because we’re still kinda hoping we can breed the ubermensch. IQ tests and the way they attempt to categorize people are explicitly eugenicist and racist.

BMI was developed by a man known as the grandfather of eugenics, who first of all was a mathematician, not a doctor, and second never intended the formula to be used to categorize individuals. It’s intended to give a rough estimate of obesity in populations, and it’s not even good at that. It hangs around because of fatphobia and insurance companies who want it as an excuse to charge fat people more.

The study which determined people’s prefrontal cortex was still developing at 25… stopped measuring at 25. Evidence suggests your brain probably never stops developing. Stop infantilizing grown adults. This is a branch off from the larger mess of misinformation surrounding fMRIs.

I'm allowed to be angry about the abuse I have experienced under the patriarchy and are transphobic/homophobic/racist society and I am allowed to be angry about the fact that spaces where I was previously allowed to express this anger and spaces that celebrated that anger now think it's OK to throw me back to the system that originally abused me because I have facial hair now so I'm too scary to be in these #rightious-girl-rage spaces. And I'm very much allowed to be angry about the fact that people have decided me being angry about being abused by both cishet-patriarchal society and also queer feminist circles is the same as white cishet men being celebrated for their violence.

So go fuck yourself.

This is a post about how trans men prior to our transitions build communities through constructive anger and then once we transitioned are forcibly removed from those spaces and pushed back into spaces where will be comtiunted to be abused by the cishet normative society and patriarchy.

This is a post about how we're not allowed to express our emotions once cis women can no longer view us as "special-afab-person" and are forced to actually view us as men then decide we are disgusting and threatening for existing post-transition.

So go fuck yourself.

Cis male anger in media might be celebrated, but transmasculine anger is punished by everyone and everything from the healthcare system to feminist circles, from the patriarchy to the pride parade. It's made clear by everyone the ideal trans man is completely silent at all times and certainly never voices complaint when he is abused.

It's made clear that the trans man will be punished if he is angry about being sexually assulated, he will be punished of he is angry about facing domestic abuse, he will be punished if he is angry about dealing with medical abuse, he will be punished if he is angry about the circles he will have to jump through to get the same privileges that were handed to him when he presented as a cis woman, he will be punished if he is angry about the spaces he helped build kicking him about after he starts testoerone, he will be punished if he is angry about the stigmatizion surrounding his HRT or GRS/SRS, and by God, he will be punished if he is angry about being punished for his compeltley reasonable emotional reaction to him being angry about being abused. In all situations, any expression of emotion will be used to punish him.

transfemme people also face backlash for feminine rage if they don’t pass. trans people in general face major backlash when they do anything not seen to fit in their fucking gender because god forbid they be people or feel emotions and lash out. we at least have reason to lash out because no matter what we do we’re spit on by society. we’re treated like a sick joke. and mocked and locked out of spaces even amongst ourselves because god some one not fucking perfect be trans or else that’s how everyone will perceive. the scapegoat.

Every trans person who has had to shave their face and soften their voice when speaking, so they're not seen as a "threat" (therefore making us easy to dismiss or ignore) deserves the right to scream about the fact that we are forced to become smaller and subservient around cisgender women in "activist spaces" and "community spaces".

Whether we're transmasc, transneutral, or transfem/me, "afab" or "amab", trans woman or trans man or genderqueer or nonbinary or any combination in the complex realm of gender outside the cis-binary. We all deserve respect and we all deserve the right to express our anger at both the kyriarchy as well as the queer-feminist circles that have coutninted to fail in including and protecting us.