intersex inclusive transfeminism

"trans women engaging in terfism" yeah see that's giving "feminazi"

"these tgirls who used to be on 4chan" it's absolutely giving "feminazi"

All of these are ways to say "trans woman being too transfeminist" All of these are attempts to delegitimize transfeminism.

Similarly, "terfs hate us equally" and "terfs target trans men equally" and "terfs also hate trans men" are all statements that only serve to decenter trans women from the convention about "Trans WOMEN Exclusionary Radical Feminists".

Trans women are and have always been the primary targets of terfs. To make it seem like this group sees, targets, and treats trans women and trans men the same way is incorrect, disingenuous, and decenters trans women from the conversation.

At this point it doesn't matter if the origin of those two things was trans men or not. Trans men have bought into these ideas and continue to want to delegitimize transfeminism (because it acknowledges them as men capable of harming women through societal backing and privilege) and to decenter trans women as targets of specific violence (because it allows them to continue to engage in this violence and benefit from the privileges they are denying they have.)

He claims to be a believer in the idea that the way you describe your own identity has no impact on the legitimacy of other people's identities. I can't believe someone as clearly thoughtful as him genuinely believes this, there is such an obvious counterexample in the "biologically female" identity which is distressingly popular, and obviously is a political position disguised as a neutral statement. There is a long line joining e.g. "biologically female" to "AFAB lesbian" to "lesbian trans man" and presumably somewhere on this line he imagines the identity goes from political to apolitical, but he should articulate where that point is - when does identifying with your AGAB stop being a statement about other people and start being a statement purely about yourself?

He also draws a distinction between transmasc lesbians who define lesbianism as essentially "AFAB4AFAB" and those who are theoretically transfem-inclusive, in order to absolve the large majority of transmasc lesbians from accusations of transmisogyny (a word he never uses in the article btw), but this is really a strawman argument. The vast majority of transmasc lesbians do not explicitly exclude transfems but they also do absolutely nothing to include us either. It's the difference between "passive allyship" (not allyship at all imo) and "active allyship". They do not even acknowledge that they are in a privileged position over us, they don't think of themselves as "allies" at all. They can go to a lesbian event that's purely a mixture of cis women and transmascs and call it trans-inclusive, not even noticing the total absence of transfems. You are not really inclusive of a group that is oppressed by you if you can't even acknowledge that that oppression exists.

But the main thing that bugged me was when he brought up the argument that transmascs might associate themselves with womanhood because oppressed groups are privileged in progressive spaces. This point is just absurd. We all know from long experience whose voices are privileged in e.g. queer spaces and it's white men as it is everywhere else. So what is gained by a man associating himself with womanhood in such a space?

I think the key is the context of who that man is talking to. You do not generally see transmascs referring to their "connection to womanhood" when they are in the company of cis men. In fact, that is a context where most transmascs would (reasonably) resent that being brought up at all. That is because it's an assertion that reduces their social positioning as soon as it is said.

On the other hand, if transmascs are in trans spaces (especially non-binary spaces), or mixed cis woman + trans spaces (like lesbian spaces), they are much more likely to bring up AGAB-related issues. That is because these are the only spaces where having been AFAB definitely places you higher on the hierarchy. If it's already known that you are trans, a "connection to womanhood" statement is a stealthy way to bring up that you are not the "scary" type of trans.

Superficially it seems totally analogous to trans womanhood itself. There is an identity ("woman"/"transfem") whose boundaries are policed on the basis of AGAB, and part of the project of queerness is to break those boundaries. "AFAB transfem" advocates can't understand why a trans woman who has had to fight against transphobic cis women saying "you can't be a woman if you weren't AFAB" would herself turn around and say "you can't be a transfem if you weren't AMAB". It seems totally hypocritical to them.

I think a lot of non-transfems mistakenly believe that transfems are able to exempt ourselves from misogyny by bringing up our AGAB. They imagine that, if some guy assumes I'm a cis woman and sexually harasses me, I can reveal my AGAB and he will say, "Oh, I am terribly sorry sir, I will treat you like a normal man from now on, because I am a transphobe who doesn't believe in gender identity but only the primacy of biol*gical sex," or whatever. They think the reason I don't say that is because I want to be treated like a woman and not like a man. But that is not what would happen: if I revealed my AGAB to this sexual harasser he would step up the sexual harassment, the level of misogyny I face would actually increase, and he would also be much more likely to get physically violent too, he would start to be transmisogynistic as well as regular misogynstic. I cannot exempt myself from misogyny at all, because misogyny is not something that misogynists dole out on the basis of AGAB, misogyny is not "AFAB oppression", it's a denigration of femaleness and femininity in a very broad sense. Even a cis man who wears "women's clothing" will face some amount of misogyny, and he will only be able to exempt himself from that by asserting that he was wearing those clothes insincerely, such as a comedy actor on stage, or a man at a stag/bachelor/bucks party. That is to say, your assigned sex is no defense when the criticism is of your sincere expression of womanhood, because misogyny is not about assigned sex.

Now imagine an alternate scenario where an "AFAB transfem" is presumed to be a trans woman by some guy who then starts chucking transmisogynistic abuse at her. She can reveal her AGAB and his abuse of her will actually reduce. His criticism will likely switch from calling her a T-slur, to saying she's an idiot for presenting in a manner that might be mistaken for a T-slur. Whatever clothes, make-up, hair, etc that made him read her as a T-slur immediately stop being disgusting to him when he discovers her AGAB. This is what it means to be able to exempt yourself from transmisogyny.

My very first post on this blog was a screenshot of a Reddit comment where a transmasc non-binary person said they discovered that the reason no one talked to them at first when they started a new school is because they were mistaken for a trans girl. The comment implied that this misapprehension was cleared up, and subsequently people spoke to them again. That is exemption in action. Unlike misogyny, transmisogyny is specifically about AGAB, because it is entirely about the direction of our transition being a supposedly disgusting and shameful one.

Okay, well "neovagina/neopussy" is exactly the same. It's a way to say "sure, it looks like a vagina, feels like a vagina, works like a vagina, but its not a real vagina"

The forced genital cutting of trans female and transfeminine children is a topic that has thus far been under-discussed in transfeminism. There is not a single country on the planet in which trans girls are legally protected from genital mutilation. I challenge fellow transfeminists to break the silence on this issue.

On paper, cis girls in countries like the US are legally protected from any form of genital cutting regardless of severity, including ritual pinpricks. Trans female children are systemically excluded from these legal protections and can be subjected to any form of genital cutting, including complete ablation of the frenulum (which is analogous to partial removal of the external clitoris in terms of sensory significance, and is routinely practiced in the US). This is a result of transmisogyny; the idea that transfeminine bodies are less worthy of protection or respect than other bodies. It is also a result of cissexism, as it relies on the idea that trans girls are “less female” than cis girls.

While this is a bit of a tangent, I feel it is necessary to mention that current anti-FGM law is failing to protect cis girls as well. In 2018, the original US anti-FGM law was declared unconstitutional, in part because it did not protect all children from genital cutting. The revised federal law addressed several other legal issues with the original law, but failed to address the equal protection issue. As a result, legal experts are largely apprehensive or unwilling to prosecute FGM cases; they believe that the law is valuable as a preemptive deterrent, but any attempt to prosecute will likely result in the current anti-FGM law being declared unconstitutional. Several doctors who are known to have performed FGM on cis girls are currently licensed to practice medicine in the US as a consequence.

This status-quo demonstrates some of the harm caused by the atomization of cis male and cis female genital cutting survivors. The reality is that no child will be truly safe from genital mutilation until every child is. This atomization has also resulted in the total erasure of all genital mutilation victims who are not cis or perisex, including trans girls, trans boys, and intersex children of all genders.

As transfeminists, we should use our voices to combat the erasure of trans female genital mutilation victims, who have been excluded from the conversation altogether. We must speak up so that future generations of trans girls have their bodily autonomy respected. As with any social issue, it will take time to effect change in society at large, so in the meantime we must also ensure that our own spaces are safe for transfeminine genital cutting victims to open up about their experience and find community and empowerment.