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i was incredibly dysphoric about my round face and softer features until i started looking at the faces of hispanic men and realized that those features weren’t feminine at all, they were ethnic features white supremacy had conditioned me to see as less masculine

A small compilation of posts from the latest trans twitter discourse. I haven't bothered to screenshot all of the most viral tweets, but also I think it's important to include a lot of the smart ass replies to really help you simulate just how many people are going under black posts and asking "well, what even is racism really?" And if you'd like to know, one of the largest black trans women on twitter was harassed off of the site. No she did not do anything in particular, just posted an image of a sign she didn't make herself that claimed white trans people oppress black trans people (referring to I believe the silencing of a black trans woman who was slated to speak at the protest but was kicked off last minute. @/septembersister, If that's accurate.)

I don't think it ended up in the screenshot but the scenario of the trans bipoc sex worker they were called sex pests in a reply. Victryena was harassed into deactivating.

I think posters who are attempting to swing back on this conversation claiming this is an organized attack against trans women and fems are willfully ignorant. The sign does not name transfems. The sign is in defense of a trans woman. The vast majority of people making this about trans women are trans women posting racist bullshit. It's not my fault they are trans women. My go to search has been 'white trans' as well as off of my feed. Klansmascs and klansgender nonbinaries are also a plague on our spaces that keep us from community or action, but to dismiss this behavior as a psyop is to engage in apologia for racist communities and erasure of transmisogynoir.

Racism is a "personal grievance". Racism is a "niche cultural issue." Racism takes up all the air in the room and addressing it is hampering REAL action. Antiracism is "liberalism".

The most disgusting idea I have seen thrown at Vic, who is an asian trans woman, is that she is weaponizing racism or the struggles of TWOC/TPOC. Absurd as an idea of that is it makes me furious that we as a community continue to use the statistics of violence, sexual assault, and murders of black trans women to push for trans rights but when black trans women attempt to discuss racism they face backlash like this. We have tokenized the idea of the black trans woman as a silent victim, the emblem of transmisogynistic abuse, and continue to deny her her struggles lest she be masculinized and deemed an oppressive force herself.

Victry's racial identity is also important. As an asian woman and due to the racist misogynistic associations we, largely as American and Europeans, fetishize the 'natural femininity' of Asians. Her dysphoria is invalidated, she has had an 'easy transition', her sex work is weaponized as equivalent to racial violence. For those who haven't followed along, she returned to twitter with an eloquent statement I will add here.

I think its also important to notice how many of these creeds attempt to call on ones marxist values and position TPOC and POC as welding imaginary economic power over white victims. Sex work is continually used as a bludgeon (perverted sexually deviant TWOC are whining when they reap monetary gain vs white trans women as the victims of sexual violence forced to participate in survival sex work are being looked down upon by rich TWOC who never have to experience sexual violence to benefit)

For every singular person rolling their eyes and proclaiming their oppression has tuned them into the concept of suffering, that their experiences make them the true savior of the oppressed masses who doesn't NEED to ever listen to another group, theres 10 more replies 'just wondering' why we 'even bother to see color', or if antiracist action was CIA funded to erode leftist unity, and all of them are trying to make this exclusively about trans women. It's insane.

A couple more to close this out.

Racism is trivial. What even IS race? These rich blacks are speaking over fragile abused white trannies. Racism is a niche issue, you're distracting from actual problems. Calling organizations racist is too aggressive, you can't speak here. You're being inflammatory. You're not showing enough nuance. How was I supposed to know theres a victim when all your political slogans are so mean and violent? Discussions of race is a CIA psyop meant to dissolve the left. I'm angry you called me white and this is YOUR fault. Calling me racist is the justifying transphobic violence. You're equating me to a police officer murdering black people right now! YOU support trans peoples deaths because of the color of their skin! I'm not racist! YOU'RE racist for noticing race!

I understand how your experiences must make you quite averse to the term, but unfortunately that's not fully true. The term was used for police officers as early as 1811 in England's London (source, source, source). There are different theories on why the term was used, some believing it's linked to the term "nose" that was also used at the time for sniffing out crime. Some believe that the term was used to invoke the idea of being greedy, hoarding wealth.

The term regained popularity in america in the late 1900s. I'd invite you to read this speech by Bobby Seale who was chairman of the Black Panther movement at the time. I can highlight the main anecdote, which is about a man trying to get clean water but cannot find any. He finds another man who "says "there's a hog in the spring." He says "there's a hog in the spring, and a lot of those pigs are running around too in the spring." All we want is a little freedom, all we want is a clear drink of water, but there's a hog in the spring!

Look, how should we try and how should we work to get the hog out of the spring? Now the spring has been running dirty for a long long time for peoples in Vietnam, for peoples in Africa, our black brothers, for our black brothers and colored brothers and sisters in South America and Asia and the Caribbeans etc., throughout this world.

Where three-quarters of the world who are non-white who've been brutalized and beaten and exploited and colonialized etc., by this racist power structure here in America. The hog has got to be removed from the spring."

The main comparison to being a pig here is the association with filth and the idea that they pollute the surroundings for everyone else with their presence. Seale goes on to call them "Pigs. Hungry, exploiting, robbing, thuggish pigs. A whole power structure and all its racism." Further comparisons highlight them (the police, which he is calling pigs) as a source of incredible violence.

People wanna pretend it was all in good fun and only got racist afterwards (if they'll even acknowledge it ever was racist) meanwhile some of the earliest TikTok making clanker jokes were skits that were just "racist dad hates his daughter's black boyfriend" only the boyfriend is a robot instead, and before that, these exact same kinds of jokes were circulating the Star Wars fandom for over a decade

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.

With regards to this:

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.

A single asterisk (*) means that it in itself alone should not be grounds for suspicion, although it is great as a piece to line things up.

Two asterisks (**) means that it has been reclaimed by the offended groups.

White Supremacist/Nazi-adjacent

Calling themselves a “National Socialist” or saying their views align with “National Socialism”

Germany, Germany above all/Deutchsland, Duetschland über alle

Unusual focus on blue eyes, blonde hair and/or pale white skin, which are the so-called features of a “Aryan” person

Wokeness*

“Noticing”/“Nooticing”

14 (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”)

14/88 (numbers)

Celtic cross*

Iron cross*

“Western values”

“Western culture”

45° swatsika

White Pride/WP (acronym is not to be confused with “Widespread Panic” as in the band, and Wikipedia alongside many others)

White Power/WP

White Nationalism/WN

RAHOWA (“Racial Holy War”)

ROA (“Race Over All”)

Unusual focus on genetics and pseudoscience

Antiwhiteness, “whitemisia”, and focus on whiteness as an oppressed group

((Double, or (((triple))) parenthesis echo, usually to signify somebody or something as Jewish))

Two lightbolts together*

TND (“Total (N-slur with the hard R) Death”)

White genocide

Focus on Greek, Roman and other European mythology*

Globalists/Deep state/shadow government/cabal/elite

New World Order

Oven dodger (in reference to Jews who survived the Holocaust)

109/110 countries (in references to Jews)

Frens*

Pepe the frog, soyjaks, wojaks and similar memes*

Triskele symbol

“Truther”

Blood and soil/blut und boden

Cultural Marxism

Posting images of egg dumplings on Hitler’s birthday

Christian nationalism

Themes of crusades

The Wolf Sign (Wolf’s Hook)

OK sign*

Three Percent sign (This one is done by doing a peace sign with a stretched out thumb. A normal 3 in ASL generally has the fingernail facing away)*

Transphobic-Adjacent

wymbyn and similar words that remove or add unusual letters

Transwomen (no spaces)

Transmen (no spaces)

Trans-identified male (code for transgender woman)

Trans-identified female (code for transgender man)

Biological male (people with Wolffian/“male” reproductive systems)

Biological female (people with Müllerian/“female” reproductive systems)

Biological sex/sex essentialism

Unusual focus on “basic biology” and chromosomes

Unusual focus on bathrooms

TTD (“total tranny death”)

Talks about rapid-onset gender dysphoria

Talks about detransition in a positive light

Talks as if being transgender is just a phase

Female, male

TRA (transgender rights activist)

TMRA (transgender men’s rights activist)

41% (in reference to attempted suicide among transgender people)

I sexually identify as […] (partially reclaimed)

Unusual focus on pronouns

Gender-critical

Transgender agenda

”Let kids be kids”

Protection of women

Unusual focus on genitalia

”Real” women

Big pharma

”Adult human female”

Homophobia-adjacent

”Natural” and “unnatural”

Gay agenda

”Let kids be kids”

Focus on religion, almost exclusively Christianity and the Bible

”Respect, but don’t support”

DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion)

Woke (a term originating in AAVE, often used incorrectly)

Blaming everything on communism (also used in general white supremacy)

“Forced diversity”

Modern audience

To add to this, here are some additions and corrections:

White Surpremacy/Nazi-dog whistles:

it's actually "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" - this is the first line of the so-called "Deutschlandlied". The Deutschlandlied as a whole is also used by Nazis. (Sidenote: the third stanza of the Deutschlandlied serves as the national anthem of Germany and is fine on its own. But the first two stanzas are only sung by Nazis.)

18 - code for "Adolf Hitler"

88 - code for "Heil Hitler"

The Sig-rune (a bastardisation of the Sowilo-rune ᛋ, where the rune is shifted to look like an S or a lightning bolt. Two Sig-runes together form the symbol of the Waffen-SS.)

The Sonnenrad/sun wheel (basically a Hakenkreuz but round instead of a square)

The Black Sun-symbol (a sun wheel, but with twelve arms)

basically all other runes are also used as dog whistles (but not every usage is a dog whistle, of course)

pseudo-Viking-imagery (not everyone who is interested in Vikings is a Nazi, but Nazis really love pretending that Vikings are their Aryan ancestors)

regarding the usage of European mythology: It really depends on who is using it and why. It's usually white people from Western Europe (Germany and everything west of it) and North America, who use these mythologies for their nationalist myth-making. That national myth-making is usually achived by removing these mythologies from their roots and whitewashing them, without any regard or respect for the anchestors of the people who created these legends. Often while simulteaneously being incredibly racist towards said anchestors, who are often treated as non-white (especially in the case of Southeastern and Eastern Europeans.)

Gender Related dog whistles:

TIF/TIM - the acronyms for "trans-identified female/male"

FTM/MTF(*) - These are terms that originated within the trans community and are still in use as such. However, TERFs have appropriated these terms and use them to call trans men female(s) and trans women male(s).

AFAB/AMAB(*) - These terms were originally created to discuss how intersex people are affected by gender assignment. By now, the terms have spread within the trans community (and beyond) and are often misused to refer to biological sex. TERFs use these terms to call trans men female and trans women male.

"sex based rights" and "sex based oppression" - originally coined by second wave feminists. Has been used in transphobic feminist theory since at least the 1990s. TERFs have used it as a transphobic dog-whistle since at least the 2010s.

"sex based reality", "erasing sex" and "sex is real" - more language used by TERFs to center biological sex as the sole root of gendered oppression.

"LGB", "LGB without the T" - an attempt made by transphobes to separate trans people (and the rest of the LGBTQIA+ acronym) off from LGB. Classic devide-and-conquer tactic.

"Queer is a slur" - used by TERFs to argue that ony gay men and lesbians are allowed to reclaim the slur, because trans people were supposedly not targeted by that slur

"cis is a slur" - used by transphobes to reject the usage of the term "cis"

Transgender ideology/theology - used to present transness not as a fact of live but as an ideology/religion

Trans Rights Activist (TRA) - acronym used by TERFs to compare trans people to MRAs, to accuse them of being misogynisitic predators in order delegitimize the fight for their rights (Men's Rights Activists - a misogynistic hate movement created to oppose feminism.)

Trans Men's Rights Activists (TMRA) - acronym created to compare trans men to MRAs to accuse them of being (trans)misogynistic predators in order to delegitimize the fight for their rights (I don't know who coined that term, but it's used in the same way as TRA is used by TERFs)

calling women "female"(*) - MRAs and incels love to call women "females", because it allows them to reduce them to their reproductive capabilities and dehumanize them. TERFs love to call women "females", because it allows them to reduce them to their reproductive capabilities, which they then use to exclude trans women.

Femoid/foid - 4chan-speak, slur used to demean women.

Moid - 4chan-speak, same slur like foid, but for men.

Passoid - 4chan-speak, slur for a passing trans person.

Pooner - 4chan-speak, slur for non-passing trans men. (Poon = vulgar slang for vagina)

Theyfab - slur used to demean non-binary people who were assigned female. Is now also used to demean trans men.

Theymab - slur used to demean non-binary people who were assigned male.

Transtrender - transmedicalist slur for non-binary/gender-diverse people and for trans people who do not (for whatever reason) medically transition

transsexual(*) - old term that was used to refer to trans people before "transgender" became more common. Some trans people still use the term to refer to themselves, but the term should not be used to refer to others without their consent. TERFs use the term to paint trans people as deviant predators. Transmedicalists use the term to reinforce the belief that only trans people who (want to) medically transition are really trans and that everyone else is a faker.

cissexual - used by transmeds to reclassify certain trans people (especially non-binary/gender-diverse people and people who do not medically transition) as cis, in an effort to push them out of the trans community. Often used in conjunction with the accusation that non-binary/gender-diverse people and trans people who do not medically transition are harming transexuals and preventing transsexuals from being accepted by cis people

female privilege - a misogynistic myth that claims that cis women actually have privilege over and oppress cis men. (Sidenote: because this myth was coined by misogynistic and transphobic cis men, they did not use the term "cis", but that's what they meant.) Important features of this myth are the beliefs that cis women are privileged, because - because they receive justice for sexual harassment and violence and men don't (This should go without saying, but they fucking don't. The conviction rates for rapists are abysmal across the board. Most cis women who got raped don't even report their rapes, because the potential harm and danger they would face for it far outweighs the benefits) - because they supposedly can harm men by falsely accusing them of being rapists (Again, the conviction rates for rapist are abysmal. Most rape-victims who report their rapes suffer further victimization at the hand of the police and the justice system and/or social consequences for supposedly damaging the reputation of their rapist. This is especially true for victims whose rapist belongs to the same social circle as them. And most rapists do.) - they benefit from anti-discrimination measures - benefit from social norms, that require men to pay for dinners, making gifts, opening doors, being "nice", etc. - don't have to work and can stay at home, and because they aren't targeted by drafts/conscriptions for war - because they have access to rape shelters that are funded by the government - because they are favored in child custody battles - because they can wear trousers/pants, but men can't wear skirts (as if that isn't a right, feminists have fought for literal fucking decades. And as if that isn't a right that only applies in regions where that fight was successful and even then is usually restricted to feminine clothing with a masculine-like cut and no pockets) - because they supposedly can use their womanhood to deflect harm and make the oppression they face go away (they can't. If they could, misogyny would not exist.) - because they can harm men by withholding sex

AFAB privilege - the same as female privilege, but now trans people who were AFAB are actively included in the list of oppressors, while trans people who were AMAB are centered as victims of that oppression. The arguments are pretty much the same, including the claims that trans people who were AFAB are privileged because: - they supposedly experience less sexual harassment and violence, and can receive justice for the harassment/violence they do experience by highlighting their female-ness. (Both claims are wrong. Trans people experience very similar rates when it comes to the risk of sexual violence, with non-binary people who were AFAB being among the most affected. However, the biggest factor in this is race, not gender.) - they supposedly benefit from support systems for women, including rape shelters and AFAB-only spaces like housing (They don't. To access these spaces, they are regularly forced to detransition. Trans men who benefited from anti-discrimination measures, when presenting as cis women, will often lose access to these measures when they come out and start transitioning.) - Masculinity is supposedly always rewarded. Which is why they are allowed to wear masculine clothing, while people who were assigned male at birth are punished for wearing feminine clothing (Again: That's a right, feminists have fought for and it only helps people who live in regions where that fight was successful. And even in these regions, there this often only allows for feminine clothes with more masculine cuts. Masculinity is only rewarded in people assigned male. Claiming that it is rewarded in people assigned female - when feminists fought and bled for that - is erasing feminist history and deeply misogynistic.) - they supposedly can use their AFAB-ness to deflect harm and make the oppression they face go away

I've thoroughly updated this public health propaganda zine! It's free for anyone to print and distribute.

Citations and further resources at newlevant.com/COVIDzine.

Thank you for reading!

Citations and further resources: newlevant.com/covidzine