We talk a lot about how the concept of "afab privilege" is ridiculous. But can we talk about how some trans people sneer at the idea that trans women experience their oppression as women.
If we believe that a person's gender is a real, it makes total sense that (binary) trans women would approach gender theory from the perspective that they are women first, trans second. With the loudest voices saying they should be banned from resources set in place to protect cis women, it only makes sense that they would find, within their real life experiences, ways in which misogyny targets them like it does cis women. Their oppression stems from the fact that they are women, an already established oppressed social category, who are also trans.
I do believe that with trans men, transmascs, nonbinary, and intersex people it is more complicated. I do believe that their oppression stems from the fact that they are trans first. Trans men are oppressed for their gender because cisgender manhood is the standard by which everyone else is judged. Nonbinary and intersex people are oppressed for their gender by virtue of not fitting into either category.
As much as I dislike the transfeminist idea that trans men's positionality is equal and opposite (trans men are privileged men first, trans second; also nonbinary and intersex people basically don't exist), I equally dislike the idea that the only thing "real" is how transphobes see us. "People who hate trans women aren't actually hating you as a woman, they're hating the man they think you are!" or heaven forbid "hatred of trans women is actually misandry!" I don't think degendering a person is ok no matter how regressive the binary is.
I find a lot of transmasc theory skirts way too close to this line. To be clear I'm not accusing you of anything, it's just something I'm seeing a lot of from this side of the debate. It's something I cannot square between transfeminism and transmasc feminism.
I think that is an easy trap to fall into, for certain. But I think its pretty easy to square, to be honest, because "the only thing real is how transphobes see you" isn't great for trans men and nonbinary people either, as that is the argument TERFs make for why identifying as a trans man or as nonbinary obscures one's "true" oppression as a female.
I would disagree with someone who reductively says that "the hatred of trans women is actually misandry" because that implies all the violence done to trans women can be reduced down to "they see you as a man," which isn't the case. It's no more the case than reducing all violence done to trans women down to "they see you as a woman."
When people talk about misandry and anti-transfemininity, it should be talked about in ways that make it clear that misandry is part of the violence, not the whole picture. When I have seen people making this point, it is largely because people will firmly ignore any influence that anti-male sentiment has on anti-transfeminine hatred and violence, even when the trans woman victim herself feels that played a major role. Trans women feel that internalized anti-male sentiment has played a major role in their negative self-image and internalized transphobia can also then lack support from their community, because they cannot describe their experiences and struggles in terms that mirror the average cis woman's experiences.
Transunity as a framework states that all trans people experience misogyny, misandry, and misandrogyny. Care should be taken to discuss these various forces in a nuanced way. The point of talking about misandry in this framework is to talk about how patriarchal anti-male sentiment is weaponized against all people who transgress the cissexist binary, and so we can talk about how many kinds of people - women, men, androgynes, enben, genderless people - are affected by misandry, in a way that does not imply being targeted by misandry means you are "really" a man or masculine in some way, or that misandry works alone.
If we believe that a person's gender is a real, it makes total sense that (binary) trans women would approach gender theory from the perspective that they are women first, trans second. With the loudest voices saying they should be banned from resources set in place to protect cis women, it only makes sense that they would find, within their real life experiences, ways in which misogyny targets them like it does cis women. Their oppression stems from the fact that they are women, an already established oppressed social category, who are also trans.
I do believe that with trans men, transmascs, nonbinary, and intersex people it is more complicated. I do believe that their oppression stems from the fact that they are trans first. Trans men are oppressed for their gender because cisgender manhood is the standard by which everyone else is judged. Nonbinary and intersex people are oppressed for their gender by virtue of not fitting into either category.
I have an issue with framing trans men, nonbinary, and intersex issues as "more complicated" than trans women's issues. That simply isn't the case. It's not that trans women's issues are perfectly encapsulated by cissexist feminism, and its just the rest of us who are left out.
I think this post illustrates my view of this kind of "woman first, trans second" feminism, and how certain trans women adopt it to seek inclusion in cissexist feminism, the best. I don't disagree with anything you've said about why many trans women adopt it, but I do question the idea that this is good for trans women and just happens to be bad for other people, or that the pursuit of this goal should be seen as natural and neutral.
"Their oppression stems from the fact that they are women, an already established oppressed social category, who are also trans" <- this mindset presumes that being a woman is more important and impactful on someone's oppression than being trans, which while some individuals may feel this describes their experiences, has plenty of issues on a broader level. It also approaches the issue of trans exclusion from feminism with "well, we'll just focus on how we're like the people who are already centered!" which only contributes to harm against trans people as a whole.
It also misses the fact that trans exclusion from feminism is part of a much bigger feminist problem, which is the idea that there is one essential "woman" experience which binds all women above and beyond any other experiences of oppression they have, and the idea that women of color, working class women, disabled women, women in the Global South, all should or can see their race, class, disability, colonized status, etc. as secondary to being a woman. This is the stance that intersectional feminism has always critiqued; intersectionality is not merely acknowledging that other forms of oppression exist and affect women, but goes far deeper to the frameworks we use to think about gender oppression and its relationship to other forms of oppression as a whole, and who and what we imagine feminism is "for."
This is the problem with "being a woman is more impactful than being trans"; we need to complicate the idea of "being a woman," since we are talking about systemic oppression in society. Trans men and nonbinary people are regularly, profoundly affected by being perceived as and classed as women while also being perceived as and classed as trans. While the exact expressions of this can be different, ultimately this is not radically different than the position trans women are in. But the perspective that trans women are women and that this makes their experience of misogynistic oppression fundamentally distinct from trans men who are simply perceived as women, is to me unhelpful. It misses the opportunity to emphasize shared experiences of misogynistic oppression by clinging to gender essentialism.
My point here is not that trans women are not women, to be clear. I think gender as a social construct means we should actively decide how we construct gender, and I think choosing to identify as a woman should be seen as real and valid womanhood. That isn't just individual, either, as gender identity rarely has no material impact on a person's life. I think trans women should be understood as women both as a matter of their personal self-perception and on a social and political level. But at the same time, I feel that focusing so much on "trans women are women, and being real women is what makes them oppressed" fails to actually integrate the "gender is a social construct" critique into cissexist feminism which has long relied on a very essentialist view of gender.
When we are talking politically (and thus socially), I feel we can talk about people being a gender as part of a larger conversation about being gendered, and developing a strong consciousness of gender as something which is socially constructed and utilized for specific political purposes. This framework allows us to include a wide variety of subjects in feminism and discuss many people's issues, without relying on the cissexist model of "you either are a Real Woman and thus affected by misogyny, or you aren't and are thus an outsider to feminism, if not an oppressor." That is the framework which is used to exclude trans women from feminism. That some trans women try to use that framework to seek inclusion is perfectly understandable, but very deserving of criticism.
Additionally, saying that trans women are oppressed for being "women first" but that trans men are oppressed for being "trans first" is a confusing kind of hierarchy to me. It presents a trans man whose live has been defined around being forced into the role of daughter and wife, who was married off young and subject to misogyny in many ways, as not being as primarily affected by misogyny as a trans woman, by virtue of him not being a woman. This "oppressed as a woman first" idea thus contributes to the silencing of trans men and nonbinary people on their experiences and oppression under misogyny, and again, it is the same sort of logic that is also used to silence trans women on this issue. We simply don't need to say anyone is "a woman first" as, again, that language stems from racist, cissexist, essentialist feminist perspectives. We can say that both are oppressed for being classed as women and being classed as trans, both are targeted by misogyny and misandrogyny and misandry in order to punish them for threatening the gender binary that upholds racist capitalist patriarchy.
This is why I prefer language like "people classed as / perceived as women"; with this language, we can talk specifically about experiences of misogyny in a way that covers many people without assuming that their social experience of being gendered is equivalent to them being a certain gender. This also allows for more flexibility, as one can be perceived differently in different contexts.
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