Hi. As a fellow trans woman who very much enjoyed your dragon hrt comics (helped me figure out I’m therian, so, whoo. Thanks for that, genuinely) I have to call you out here. First of all, it isn’t “a few people” weaponizing this tma/tme binary to harass trans men. It’s almost all of them (including you? I’ve seen several posts on your blog about how you want trans men to shut up, how trans men are oppressive and evil, just, general hatemongering towards other trans people).
I know you’re not gonna listen to me most likely. It’s why I haven’t bothered to reach out to you until now. Because even though I, for a long time, looked up to you as a openly transfem, openly plural, openly dragon artist who made a lot of good stuff, I’ve seen how irrational hatred seems to have corroded that away. From what I’ve seen, you post more about hating trans men nowadays then about any other topic, and while you may claim that that wouldn’t be true if trans men would just shit up and stop asking for respect, I think the fact that you see trans men asking for respect as an attack on you is further evidence that you aren’t seeing clearly.
And I think it’s pretty telling that instead of engaging with this person’s ask on a genuine level, you accused them of calling you a “man hating bitch” (I genuinely can’t see anything in the ask that comes even close to an insult, let alone that particular one).
You don’t engage with the content of the argument at all, the fact that harassing and harming trans men and non-binary people fractures the community when we need unity, the fact that trans men are people who deserve decency, you ignored all of that to focus on ad hominem attacks, on accusing the asker of being a transmisogynist, and accusing them of using the same tactics of personal attacks that, as far as I can tell, you are the only one utilizing.
Listen. I get that art doesn’t exist in a vacuum, I understand that when you’re hurting your art will reflect that, as an artist and a trans woman I understand that.
But art should never be used to spread hate. Even when you’re hurting, art gives you power to influence the people around you, influence their minds and feelings, and wouldn’t you rather focus on using that power, that influence, that amazing spark that artists have, to spread love instead of hate?
You don’t even have to like trans men. For a first step, try to focus on just… not promoting and spreading transphobic hate speech towards them. Maybe use that time to make art and to talk about transfems. Ideally you’d be able to speak in support of the whole trans community, but I understand going from a perspective of “trans men are my enemy” to “trans men are my allies and deserve support” would take time, so maybe just focus on spreading love for other trans women? Cause again, to reiterate, I myself am a trans woman, and it hurts me greatly to see someone I once admired spreading so much hate and vitriol towards any minority, but especially towards other trans people.
Please. Just… try to focus more on joy than hate. It will help people around you be happier, and it’ll probably help you to not dwell on hatred as much.
TL;DR: trans men deserve respect, trans women deserve respect, everyone deserves respect, and through allyship and supporting each other we can genuinely make the world a better place. Hatred will never help anyone.