Johanna 💜

cis woman of color has a podcast & invites a white tme trans person

white tme trans person introduces crypto-TWERF shit claiming that trans women's relationship to womanhood is about "beauty" and cis women's relationship to womanhood is about the ability to be sexually assaulted, and doubles down insisting that transmisogynized kids do not face sexual objectification and harassment from adults the way kids assigned female at birth do, and basically says that trans women essentially "jump the line" in front of cis women in getting respect. but couches this by saying that transmisogynistic cis women should just not be mad about it. like literally implying everything TWERFs say is true, but they should just not react. (comments that imo seem designed to enflame transmisogyny while avoiding accountability for doing so from cis people who will just hear the surface "trans women are beautiful and people shouldn't hate them" and say okay great this person has the Good Politics.)

transmisogynists flock to the conversation to say that these comments essentially aren't transmisogynistic enough because of the couched phrasing the white tme person used to say that trans women's understanding of womanhood is "more beautiful" thus stoking the more overt transmisogyny in reaction.

this event is assigned to the cis woman of color, using her name as the shorthand (rather than the white person who actually said the thing everyone is talking about). she clearly does not actually speak to trans women & can't decipher any of the dogwhistles or parse what is even being said & thus feeds into the transmisogyny.

The genocide has not stopped.

I think a lot of them would define "transphobia" as something like "the belief that your gender is your AGAB", or "the denial that you are the gender you say you are", i.e. primarily misgendering, and everything that follows from misgendering like bathroom bans. But they have observed that they are not merely misgendered: masculine gender presentation in those assigned female is actively punished by society, which will go out of its way to make them revert to a feminine gender presentation. To them that's not just transphobia, because they are not just being misgendered as cis women, but actually being treated worse than cis women. Thus: tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a, a hatred of masculinity in those who were assigned female.

The only problem is, that is not how we would define "transphobia". Transphobia is not simply a truth claim about what your gender is, but rather a moral claim about what it ought to be: it's the belief that your gender presentation should not deviate from your AGAB. It's the belief in birth assignment as a social contract that is violated by gender nonconformity and totally torn up by transition. Transphobia is a force that punishes gender deviance in the hope of preventing it.

Any of the classic examples of tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a, such as being denied access to medical transition on the basis that it will "ruin your pretty female body", are straightforwardly transphobia. It's not about masculinity being hated specifically, masculinity is hated for you, femininity is hated for me, that's just what transphobia means.

The reason we needed a word for "transmisogyny" is because the kinds of punishments transphobia doles out to transfems end up being significantly harsher than those it gives to transmascs, and that word is simply the name given to that gulf in our experiences. "Transmisogyny" is the observation that transphobia harms us more than it harms you, it cannot coexist with tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a because its whole reason for existence is that gulf. We can't both be treated worse by transphobia than each other.

It seems to me that tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a advocates often regard "transphobia" as a fairly minor oppression, essentially just misgendering, on top of which sit two other much bigger oppressions, the hatred of femininity in those assigned male, and the hatred of masculinity in those assigned female. This seems a natural taxonomy to them. The idea that all three of these things are actually the same thing is not one that they recognise, unless as an umbrella term with these constituent parts as separate oppressions beneath it.

So, is there actually any reason to choose the transfeminist framing over the tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a advocates' framing? I think there is, for two reasons:

Defining transphobia as essentially a belief that gender = AGAB is a really bad definition, because it's a belief that no one actually holds. When people misgender trans women as "men" they do not really believe we are men (which is obvious when you look at how they treat us), they are calling us that as a punishment, not as a genuinely-held belief. To them we are not men but T-slurs. Transphobia is far better understood as a punishment for breaking a social contract, a whole host of different ways of pressuring us to conform to our AGAB, or if that is not possible, eliminating us.

Having a specific oppression name for the fact that masculinity is hated in those assigned female is a framing that focuses attention in the wrong place imo. It is not about masculinity specifically, it is about gender deviance generally. The logic of why transphobia is more severe against transfems (transmisogyny) is that masculinity is actually generally considered superior to femininity. Having an oppression that can be characterised as "hatred of masculinity" comes across as reactionary, since it is a reversal of what is globally true. This is why the tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a movement can so easily become a broader men's rights movement, because the founding principle of it is a supposed societal hatred of masculinity, when what society is actually hating is gender deviance, and in fact, if you have to be gender deviant, society would much rather you be masculine.

some asshole villain trying to get under her skin taunts her at just the wrong time and she loses it, maybe she kills them maybe they're just hurt bad but it doesn't matter, she's a menace, she's giving trans people a bad name, she's proof trans women are predators, she's not in control of her emotions.

She's had a long day, and one of the workers just made a grab for her ass. She's actively dodging everything Shocker tries, manoeuvring him away from the most populated parts of the plant, and then gets cornered when suddenly those I-beams she webbed up at the start break loose and tumble to the ground.

Still, nothing she can't deal with! Dodging and weaving and quipping in a voice that doesn't quite sound like her own, but that's ok because people are being saved and it's genuinely quite fun, despite the Shocker trying to beat her up with supercharged boxing gloves. Some of the I-beams are still on top of the structure, when suddenly a young worker - some teenager working minimum wage - runs for the door. Unfortunately, the villain's spotted them, and punches out a support pillar, sending a 2-tonne stick of steel plummeting towards the teen.

Spider-woman jumps to their aid! Catches the beam- and gets sent, along with it, into a wall. The kid runs out of the building safely, while spidey struggles to get up.

Shocker's making his way over the rubble, trying to get over to her as fast as possible. Meanwhile Parker has extricated herself from under the I-beam, and has lifted it up.

"You know, it's a shame. I always wanted to beat spider-man"

She's fine, this is just a stupid taunt

Shocker looms out of the dust, she dodges, gets up on the ceiling where it's harder to spot her, but easier to see him.

"Are you sure you aren't someone else under the mask? Did the real spidey go on vacation?"

The concrete is weirdly brittle today.

She climbs down silently and approaches from behind. A loose bit of gravel shifts, and Shocker leaps across the room. Warned by spider-sense, she webs one of his arms to the floor, then kicks him back.

A couple more missed punches, tearing loose of her webbing, and he gets a lucky hit in - sends her flying through the wall and out into a nearby street. Groggily, she looks up to see Shocker crossing the road, eyeing up some cars that have been stopped by emergency services. But he keeps walking, stops in front of her as she finally pulls herself out of the wall he punched her into. She falls to her knees, catching her breath. And he says it quietly, probably not even meaning her to hear,

"Stupid tranny."

Her kick to his chin lifts his feet off the ground - but the punch to his gut catches that momentum, and sends Shocker bouncing off the street, denting a lamppost before crashing into an auto parts store. He jolts up, wheezing, and climbs almost to his feet before a rib-snapping punch slams him into the ceiling. She lets him get up, vomiting blood, before grabbing his right arm and snapping it in half, like someone might snap a twig. Not at the elbow. In the middle, so the metal contraption on his arm screams when he does, bent into a shape doctors will need to saw through to treat him, later.

He falls to the ground, crying with pain, and Spider-woman stands overhead, breathing deeply, until the reality of what she just did sets in, and she staggers out of the ruined store, jumping up to a roof, then swinging away.

some asshole villain trying to get under her skin taunts her at just the wrong time and she loses it, maybe she kills them maybe they're just hurt bad but it doesn't matter, she's a menace, she's giving trans people a bad name, she's proof trans women are predators, she's not in control of her emotions.

His next half-dozen comics had two man-in-a-dress jokes, one of which is also a transmisogynist joke about trap/femboy porn. And now he's making a cutesy comic about a TWERF befriending a femboy.

So I wrote a pretty lengthy reply explaining the misunderstanding he had, I made up some toy statistics to give an example of how transition can make your abuse get worse while it is still lesser than someone else's (this can be tricky to understand), and I answered privately, which I normally do anyway, but this time I was particularly keen on doing so to protect this guy, who seemed to be asking in good faith and with polite language. It took me like 45 minutes because I had to re-read the post he was referring to, and I generally take my time writing to make my point as clear as possible. I did notice that his blog had no posts on it, but I didn't necessarily interpret that as a red flag, because some people just don't post or reblog on here.

The next day he sent me another ask, this time with more questions. What was my experience that made me think transfems face more abuse than transmascs? Why did tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a theory not answer my questions? Why would it be surprising if statistics showed transmascs face more abuse than transfems? Don't we all suffer in different ways? Again, the ask was phrased very politely, and by this point he had posted something on his blog, a reblog of a donation request for a trans woman that I had reblogged earlier, so I was inclined to be generous.

I spent over an hour basically writing about my life experience and involvement in support and advocacy, how just by exposure to listening to many many irl trans people of all genders talking about their lives you get a picture of what kinds of abuse are regular occurrences for what types of people. And if you've been doing that long enough, you will be surprised to read a statistic that says transmascs are more likely than transfems to face abuse, because it will seem to contradict everything you have learned.

I went back into that analysis I did 2 months ago and pointed out some interesting apparent contradictions: for example, for people who were perceived as trans at school, trans girls were twice as likely to be physically assaulted and more than twice as likely to be sexually assaulted. Yet the study also said trans men are more likely to have been sexually assaulted over their entire lifetime than trans women. So what gives?

I pointed out that the study also mentions that trans women transition on average 10 years later, which is going to affect things like lifetime sexual assault statistics. I said the "perceived as trans at school" stats were actually more useful because they are (to some extent) normalising for age of transition, and thus giving a fairer comparison of transmasc and transfem experiences. I didn't even go in to the really important point that closeted trans girls are far less likely to characterise the sexual assault they face as "sexual assault", because I thought it might confuse matters to add that in too.

I then went into a quite lengthy explanation of the theory for why transfems face more abuse, which ultimately is not that important as long as you acknowledge that we do, but still I thought it might help. I didn't get another ask from him so I thought maybe I had answered his questions.

Today, he replied to one of my posts saying that he was unfollowing me because I kept talking over trans men (I don't know how I can talk over people on a website where you literally choose what you read). He said that he followed me to learn about transfeminism, but ever since he followed me he's started to get recommended posts by others that are hateful of trans men (OK, but I never use the For You tab because it's always full of transmisogynists, and it was like that even before I followed anyone at all. The fact that you were actually able to use it at all is a privilege if anything). He said he knows I must be hurting but I shouldn't take it out on transmascs like this, and he knows other (better) transfeminist posters who make a point of not being tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*c. He says if I'm wondering why I get blocked by people it's because of this kind of behaviour (but he didn't even block me, and I've never wondered why I get blocked by people, because no one I wanted to interact with has ever blocked me). I went on his blog and saw that it is now mostly tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*a-posting, so I guess the ship has sailed with this guy, if it was ever in dock to begin with, which I doubt atp.

I think this is really a situation about the gendered labour of education. I spent two hours of my time answering questions about transfeminism from a total stranger, for free, while keeping the conversation private to protect him, only for him to contact me publicly for the first time and this time be rude and patronising rather than the politeness he showed in private. It's always been the lot of women to do unpaid labour and then take abuse from the men who asked them to do it. I made a post a while back about how, at school, those who bullied me were actually quite nice in one-on-one situations, because there was no audience for their bullying, so it served no social function. They could treat me like a person because unpersoning me wouldn't raise their social status if there was no one to watch. This guy could've privately messaged me a third time with his concerns, but I guess he decided it was time to put me on blast for my tr*ns*ndr*ph*b*c posts.

His assumption that my opinion that "transfems suffer more than transmascs under transphobia" comes from a place of hurt is quite funny, because I did actually used to be a "we're all equally oppressed" type of trans woman. I used to be in environments where transfeminist thoughts could not safely be expressed, because they would inevitably result in exclusion, and that made me suppress them in myself.

I used to have this opinion that I should wait until I had medically transitioned enough to be perfectly androgynous, and then it would be safe to join [whatever irl group] because people would assume I was transmasc. I was clearly well aware that transfems get treated worse, right? I was able to hold this thought simultaneously with "we're all equally oppressed", precisely because oppressive environments force you to hold contradictory beliefs to survive in them. I no longer have to do that because I'm not in an oppressive environment any more. Transfeminism has made me hurt much less than I did when I took the line that we all suffer equally.

When you refuse to accept that and try to deny it exists, you're literally doing the exact same "we're all faggots in the eyes of the state" bullshit that you see so many transmascs do in order to deny that they have male privilege. It's just "all lives matter" ideology all the way down.

Transmascs having male privilege doesn't erase the discimination they face for being trans. And white trans people having white privilege doesn't erase the discrimination we face for being trans.

Acknowledging this doesn't harm you in any way. It doesn't invalidate your experiences with discrimination or anything.