A direct quote from the author of Whipping Girl btw, for those who are still using her work to justify hatred of trans men and denial of our experiences of oppression. She does not agree with you, and she openly says you are using her language in ways she never intended and does not agree with, and she is very clear on her experiences and motivations that led to coining the term and discussing the underlying issues she was describing.
"In the years since Whipping Girl was published, the term âtrans-misogynyâ has taken on a life of its own, and people now use it in ways that I never
intended. Specifcally, I used the term to describe how the existence of societal
misogyny/traditional sexism greatly informs how people perceive, interpret,
or treat gender-variant people who seemingly âwant to be femaleâ or âwant
to be feminineâ (regardless of their actual identity). However, many people
nowadays use the word âtrans-misogynyâ in an identity-based manner to refer
to any and all forms of discrimination targeting trans women. According to
this latter usage, some would argue that people who identify as men, or male
crossdressers, or drag queens, cannot possibly experience trans-misogynyâa
close reading of Whipping Girl will reveal that I very much disagree with this
premise. (See Chapter 48 of this book for a detailed explanation regarding why
identity-based views of marginalization tend to be inaccurate and exclusive.)
Along similar lines, I have observed people using âtrans-misogynyâ as
shorthand to suggest that âtrans men are privileged, and trans women oppressed, end of story.â I reject such oversimplifcations for the very same reasons that I rejected earlier reciprocal claims (which were quite prevalent back
when I was writing Whipping Girl) that âtrans women experience male privilege, whereas trans men do not.â Male and masculine privileges can provide
very real advantages to those who are granted them. But this does not mean
that those who experience said privileges automatically have it easy, are fully
accepted by society, and/or are immune from other forms of marginalization
It should also be said that trans-misogyny (in my original conceptualization of the term) was not intended to suggest that trans female/feminine folks
experience misogyny whereas trans male/masculine folks do not. Obviously,
trans male/masculine individuals may experience misogyny at various points
throughout their lives, including post-transition (e.g., if their trans status is
discovered). Once again, what I was trying to convey with âtrans-misogynyâ is
how the widespread presumption that femaleness and femininity are inferior
to, or less legitimate than, maleness and masculinity, creates assumptions, stereotypes, and obstacles for trans female/feminine people that are not generally
experienced by those on the trans male/masculine spectrum (unless, of course,
post-transition they are read by others as a man who wants, or is trying, to be
I was interested in articulating trans-misogyny because it both accounted
for how people on the trans female/feminine spectrum tend to face the lionâs
share of sensationalization, consternation, and demonization in mainstream
considerations of trans people, and also helped to make sense of the disparities
in acceptance of trans men versus trans women that existed within my own
queer womenâs community during the time (as I alluded to at the end of the
last chapter). To be clear, I donât think that this disparity was solely due to
trans-misogyny, but it most certainly was a contributing factor.3
Over the years, I have occasionally come across people who will protest
that lesbians in their community donât accept trans men at all, or that trans
women are accepted in their own queer womenâs community to the same extent as (or perhaps even more so than) trans men. I donât doubt that these
confgurations existâin fact, in my mind they seem to form a continuum over
time, with the former being extremely common during the â80s and â90s, and
the latter resembling where we may slowly be heading. But throughout most
of the â00s, especially in U.S. urban queer womenâs communities, the disparity
that I describe in these pieces was extremely commonplace, if not ubiquitous.
I am perfectly fne with the idea of trans male/masculine people participating in (what are ostensibly) queer womenâs communities. What I was primarily objecting to in some of the chapters that follow is how that participation
tended to be practicedâfor instance, how some trans menâs emphasis of their
former status (e.g., as âgirlsâ or âlesbiansâ) encouraged others to continue using
trans womenâs former âmaleâ status against us; or how lesbians who excluded
trans women would so frequently point to trans men in the space in order to
make the claim that they couldnât possibly be âtransphobic.â It is this latter
claim (which I heard scores upon scores of times back then) that seemed to
necessitate the coining of an entirely new trans female/feminine-specifc term.
To be honest, I am not sure that I would have gravitated toward the neologism
âtrans-misogynyâ if it were not for my activist work challenging this particular
If you are going to form the entire basis of your ideology and understanding of other people's experiences on a book from the early 2000's, maybe stay up to date on the clarifications and changing beliefs of the author of that book to see if you might be misrepresenting her position or if her position might have changed and evolved over time learning more about others and also as the culture around her changes.