Oh I see. Yeah I can see how that would be confusing. Well, in the interest of sensitivity towards survivors of abuse since I donât know exactly whoâs gonna see this post Iâll mention two such incidents that were a long time ago (literally, like over 10 years ago at this point) and were widely talked about.
Content warnings: Rape, abuse, discrimination, transphobia, specifically transphobia against trans men.
One such example of the rapist and abuser tactic of being a prolific blogger and kind of a keyboard activist who wrote a lot of posts about how trans women are integral for trans women and you can only trust trans women was (sigh) monetizeyourcat AKA MYC. There are still some old posts up on my blog about her. Literally from back in the day people who knew her:
One other was âb8lâ who was one of the original âbaeddel bloggers.â Hereâs a short retrospective post explaining who the baeddel bloggers were. Hereâs a longer one, more detailed and in-depth on their ideology and has more sources. If it seems odd that iâm bringing up things that happened in 2014-2015, reading through that last post kind of makes it more clear that even movements that people can claim are âover and done withâ have connective tissue to today.
All of the perpetrators I just mentioned fucking Posted Through It in the most egregious ways. Nobody willingly took accountability, people had to fucking proactively kick them out of their social circles and it took significant time and effort.
But there is one thing from the original post that I do think itâs necessary to expound on: The socioeconomic context of this. Because beliefs donât happen in a vacuum, and neither does sexual abuse and rape. These things donât simply happen because of âevil individuals,â even though I think itâs OK to describe rapists as âevilâ because of what they did.
Transfeminine people, especially youth, are particularly vulnerable to abuse. Why is this? Because they are often abused or ostracized by their own families, and in places like the USA where there is practically zero social safety net, accepting an offer to join a sketchy housing situation by an older person in the same demographic as you is more likely. This kind of thing does not only happen to transfeminine people of course. But afaik itâs statistically slightly more common.
The other thing that makes us vulnerable to abuse is because we are feminized subjects in society. By âfeminized subjectsâ i guess you could say âTreated in a woman-like way.â
Unfortunately, if youâre a woman, you will not only be treated as a woman by men, but also other women.
So, itâs a double-struggle, involving both transmisogyny and capitalism, at bare minimum. I donât really know what this kind of struggle would look like for an ultra-wealthy trans person, so Iâm mostly speaking about the working class here.
My reaction to this fact is not, of course, to say that people who merely donât experience transmisogyny are a class of enemies. I know and have known trans men who are ardent feminists. Where, I say, is the ruthless criticism of parents who abuse and abandon their own children? Of religious leaders, politicians, and business owners who spread hate? And, lastly, if someoneâs âfound familyâ is an abusive found family, why canât we criticize that?
In the current economic order, âfound familyâ has basically the same inherent problems with its power dynamics as oneâs âoriginal family.â If you donât make a significant portion of the household income, if you donât own the house, if your name is not on the lease of that apartment, you may actually be an extremely vulnerable subject within your own household.
This is due to the current mode of economic production in society. And who maintains that mode of production?
The real and primary enemy, the particular class that is the biggest obstacle for transfeminine people, all trans people, all LGBT+ people, and the entire working class, is the fucking bourgeoisie. The capital-owning class.
But back to domestic abuse.
Itâs not a sign of a socially coherent community if your town (or your state, province, county, parish, etc) has an intermittent exodus of LGBT+ youth out of it. That indicates there is something deeply wrong with your entire society.
I donât look at places that were recipients of queer exoduses and managed a half-baked truce like, for example, San Francisco, New York City, Portland, and (sigh) Seattle as success stories. Rather, they became the sites of new forms of immiseration, even as they (and other cities, and some entire states) were held up as some kind of safe haven. Speaking generally, working class LGBT+ people in the modern era have historically had a slightly better time in cities as opposed to small towns, but a safe haven where you canât afford the rent and have to live out of your car isnât very âsafeâ in practice.
Note that one of the things that people (correctly) note as an indicator of some degree of safety is the presence of local laws against discrimination and the presence of the designation of âhate crimes.â But these have some inherent problems with them, such as the fact that if you are dependent on your abuser for income or housing, you kind of canât accuse them without your life being turned upside down.
So, with all this in mind, one of the important things to consider about anyoneâs political views is âWho benefits from believing this?â
If you are reading a set of beliefs that set trans women or transfeminine people as, like, Godâs Perfect Special Victim Princesses who have zero capacity to do harm to anyone, that is a set of beliefs that will make it hard to distinguish between victim and perpetrator in cases of abuse between transfems. It can also be used as a smokescreen by white trans women to obscure their (our) own white privilege. Iâve seen that happen before as well, many times.