It is not harmful to be upset at the transphobia that SOME “transfeminists” direct towards trans men.
(I am certain this anon is writing about THIS ADDITION I made to @mousidy's original post)
OK anon, I'm going to respond as though this is in good faith for everyone reading over your shoulder in this public forum.
Here's my question - what are you doing with "being upset" at a few individual trans women on the internet? (As I tell my 3yo, feeling something is always fine, but how you act on it may not be) Are you feeling peeved in your own home and then going about your life? Are you making lists of "bad" trans women and their "bad" tumblr followers that they've "misled" with transfeminism and leading efforts to run people off the website because they wrote a few posts you disliked? Or sending people anonymous nastygrams to feel tall for a few minutes?
Any individual person has the capacity to be transphobic to any individual other person, so sure, you can be hurt by someone's vent post. A trans woman could be nasty to you individually, and everyone has a capacity for harm. But you have to understand! You have to make the cognitive and empathetic leap to realize that some of the pain that trans women express talking about trans men is because THEY EXPECTED BETTER OF US BECAUSE WE ARE ALSO TRANS, AND THEY HAD TERRIBLE ENCOUNTERS WITH SOMEONE THAT MADE THEM DOUBT WE WERE ON THE SAME TEAM. It's not "trans men bad," it's "what the fuck, we expected better of you." Rather than a personal attack on you, I invite you to think of it as a reason to try harder. That's why I wrote I was most devastated when my bi cousin rejected me - I had counted on her knowing better. Trans women are also counting on us knowing better.
While we're listing things that aren't transphobic, here are some more:
It is not transphobic to speak out about how trans women suffer most in almost every area of public life.
It is not transphobic to seek to prioritize aid to those members of our community that are most vulnerable, and that means black trans women specifically.
It is not transphobic to inquire if a trans space has trans women on the board or in any leadership positions, and it is not transphobic to conclude that a space that ONLY caters to/is reflective of trans men needs to reevaluate its priorities.
It is not transphobic for trans women to prioritize friendships and relationships with each other, and women across the board do not owe us anything.
It is not transphobic for trans women to develop a framework of language that describes their own experiences. Transmisogyny is intersectional like the term misogynoir, and "TMA/TME" works the same as "Black/nonBlack". There are contexts when it muddies the waters to refer to every non-white person as a Person of Color, such as discussing antiBlack racism in a place like American Samoa, where I lived for a few years and about 85% of folks are Samoan/Tongan. Similarly, there are times when it muddies the waters to simply say "transphobia", because we need to have the language to describe the specific abuse that trans women are facing.
Finally: it is not transphobic to be held accountable. To be held to a higher standard of behavior than random cishets on the street is a GIFT. It is a GIFT that these women are offering to us to be in community with them. Furthermore, be aware that these kinds of intracommunity conversations are also happening on other levels - white trans women are being asked hard questions on why they aren't better allies to trans women of color sometimes, and their prickly response exactly mirrors the same protective posturing I see from trans men being asked to consider their privilege. Thank you as always to @closet-keys for articulating the model that before you look up the power structure to understand how you are being marginalized, your best first step is to look downstream to be aware of the people suffering more, because you will be better able to understand the historical forces at work.
We're all in this together, team. And that means being a loving friend and partner to trans women as we all fight together against the forces that seek to destroy us.
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