"Death Rider Billy"

I live on like an acre and a half in Greensboro now, and for a few years, I don't know, it's just been my hobby to plant things. Mostly native plants. My butterfly weed is incredible. And, you know, I've seen finches. I've seen monarchs that never came to my yard before. And I've found something beautifully therapeutic about planting a seed.  You know, to put a seed into the soil, to take care of it, and watch with time as it becomes something beautiful.

-All trans people are whichever gender their attacker can use to hate and denigrate them most effectively, and face similar and overlapping (never opposite) forms of discrimination

-Transmisogyny and transandrophobia are both unique ASPECTS of this discrimination that CAN be experienced by any trans person (bc bigotry is stored in the bigot), but are most OFTEN used against people perceived as transfemine and transmasculine respectively

-There are unique experiences and ways these forms of oppression intertwine with general forms of misogyny and the oppression of men seen as not performing the Correct Masculinity (non-white cis straight and able bodied masc people). These unique forms of oppression need language and description and to be talked about in order to articulate and fight against them, HOWEVER, they are not and never will be the OPPOSITE or "better version" of what the trans person perceived as the Other End of that spectrum of oppression is battling. They have LARGE overlaps of who is touched by them and in what circumstances, of how they hold people away from jobs or places in society, and of how they are used to punish us for being the Wrong Genders in the Wrong Way.

-Intersex, nonbinary, agender, two-spirit, and many people presenting as a butch woman or a femme man are especially often affected by any and ALL forms of transphobia. When you start separating people into identity groups by the TYPES of discrimination they can face, rather than their CLAIMED identities, you are inevitably cutting out everyone on the borders and overlap of that type of discrimination while also presenting a false "us v them," "TMA vs those Others," dichotomy that is NOT useful. This method sorts other people by the assumptions of the speaker and their experiences rather than the identity they claim, erases everyone & their experiences in the grey in-between and overlaps, and fails to articulate anything about the oppression faced that the original conversations don't already cover. It also leans into the idea that anyone can be EXEMPT from a type of bigotry, which again fails to take into account that the assumptions of who you are and should be are stored IN THE BIGOT - for an example, look at the transmisogyny facing cis women (especially black women) who look "too masculine" in sports.

-Trans people all face both unique and overlapping forms of discrimination, all of which are manifestations of a mixture of racism sexism classism and transphobia, and all of which have more in common with other forms of trans and gender discrimination than they have discrete, separate, or "opposite" experiences of oppression. There is no core of trans people experiencing something incomprehensibly, radically different than another by gender presentation in the USA. We are all in this together, we are all suffering attacks from many of the same places people and institutions, and it does us FAR more good as a community to recognize what we have in common (IE trans women being banned from sports in similar ways to the trans men being banned from many for the last several decades) than arguing over who has it worse, who has it better in an active genocide, and who is "exempt" from oppression.

Me: “I work on a computer all day.”

Doctor: “Ah. That will do it. Right, so here’s a script for anti-inflammatories and a muscle relaxer. Also try hot and cold on it, 15 minutes each, and then gentle movements between each round. You’ll feel better in about a week.”

Me: “In a week I’m still going to need to work on the computer.”

Doctor: “And here’s also a script for 6 months of Physical Therapy.”

Me: “In 6 months I’m still going to need to work at a computer.”

Doctor: “And take breaks and do stretches between meetings?”

Me: “They book me in back to back meetings where I work. I eat lunch at my computer. I have to excuse myself to go pee.”

Doctor: “…”

Me: “…”

Doctor: “Um… it sounds like this job is actually, literally, killing you? Can you possibly work someplace else?” *

———

THE POINT OF A DEFENSE ATTORNEY ISN'T TO GET THEIR CLIENT OFF. IT'S TO MAKE THE STATE PROVE THEIR CASE AND DO THEIR DUE DILIGENCE.

IT'S TO PROVIDE A CHECK ON THE POWER OF THE STATE TO JUST THROW PEOPLE IN JAIL.

its a take from the perspective that trans men are "vulnerable" is some vague abstract generalized way, not in a way which would behoove anyone to adjust their behavior or take action on their behalf. its the erasure of erasure; the assumption is that trans men probably have enough resources and support anyways, which could not be farther from the truth. some local communities may have more transmasc-focused resources, but many others do not. transmasculine people are left out of vital conversations, are excluded from vital resources, are ignored and forgotten when they are abused and killed.

it treats transmasc erasure as something which is passive in itself and which can be solved passively. which is erasure itself in action. i do not really give a fuck about "who has it worse," it is not about that. it is about the fact that if YOU do not make an ACTIVE EFFORT to advocate for transmascs, to make transmasc suffering and oppression visible and legible, it will not happen. it simply will not happen.

erasure is an active force. we all internalize transmasculine erasure and we can all easily contribute to it; we are expected to contribute to it. trans men&mascs cannot afford the model of "well we only need to raise awareness for the most vulnerable" because our vulnerability is defined by being ignored.

or trans men like Sophie Lederer, who was only 19 when he was arrested for "talking silly and claiming to be a boy" in the early 20th century, and the only other thing I know about him is that he spent the rest of his life, over a decade, institutionalized for his transmasculinity. god only fucking knows what was done to him in those years by his wardens.

"Unless they present hyperfeminine, butches don’t have access to the job market. You will not be considered if you don’t wear nice women’s clothes. If you set up catering, you will get told, “I am disgusted; a woman who thinks she’s a man is cooking for me.” So butch lesbians normally have an assistant, or their femme partner if they have one, who is more feminine-looking to run the front so customers don’t know a masculine-presenting person is cooking behind the curtains. Many of us become sex workers [due to lack of job opportunities].… But then when police raid brothels and homes, the masculine lesbians get treated “like men.” This means more forceful handcuffing, kneeling, and stripping their shirts off." – Rosa, lesbian and sex worker rights defender El Salvador

i was thinking about this when it comes to how we describe vulnerability in our community, specifically mentioning someone is a "femme" to indicate their need for extra support. i don't know i've ever seen the same be done for butches. i genuinely cannot remember ever really seeing people talk about butches and their economic and social vulnerability, the way i see people talk about femmes.

its not that being feminine doesn't cause genuine vulnerability! but because people have such a binary attitude towards gender (and more broadly), the way we talk about gendered vulnerability leads to this view that feminine people are always more vulnerable than masculine people, that "this femme needs help" to many queers and feminists feels more urgent than "this butch needs help."

this is where we get the constant refrain of "the patriarchy likes masculinity, so masculine people are always seen as better than feminine people" & why people may find it incomprehensible that there may be situations where being feminine may be a protective factor in comparison to being masculine.

another example of this from this article:

The trio made their way down a busy street in the Santiago suburb of Pudahuel, close to where Carolina lived with her mother and father. Carolina and Estefania chose not to hold hands to avoid offending anyone. Suddenly, Carolina felt a force to the back of her head. Then darkness. She had fallen unconscious, and would remain in a coma for a week. She suffered a fractured skull, a broken nose, internal bleeding and permanent damage to her hearing. There were two male attackers. One had used a large wooden pole to hit her repeatedly on the back of her head, only stopping when Estefania threw herself on top of Carolina, using her body as a shield. This is significant, says Carolina's mother, Mariela. Because unlike Carolina, who identifies as a camiona and dresses accordingly, Estefania is femme - a more feminine lesbian identity. The attackers targeted Carolina and not Estefania, says Mariela, because she represented an "unacceptable" face of womanhood. It was not just her sexual orientation that prompted violence, it was her appearance as a camiona. "I want to make it very clear they were trying to kill her," she adds. "There is no other way of looking at it. The fact that she is here is a miracle." Carolina knew one of her alleged attackers. "Before this attack he threatened me. He said, 'I am going to kill you.' He said he was going to shoot me with a gun. He called me a lesbian and swore at me. He said, 'Why do you dress like a man?'"

there are people who have been nearly (or successfully) violently murdered for being seen as a masculine woman, while their femme girlfriends were not targeted or were not the main target. but if you reduce everything in patriarchy down to "m > f" you will miss this. and