If trans mascs and trans men can be lesbians trans women and trans fems can be gay men. Also multigender people exist.
So unfortunately that’s not really the case. Just because trans men can do something, that doesn’t mean that trans women can do the opposite of that. My experience as someone who transitioned from a gay man to a bi trans woman is that as soon as you transition to a certain point, the door of the gay male world slams shut in your face. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the door to the lesbian world opens wide.
When I go to gay male bars, I’m either welcome only as a guest or I’m not welcome at all. Because I’m a WOMAN. They don’t even want CIS women there, why would they want a tranny like me unless i’m on stage?
Trans men are often still welcome in lesbian bars in the US because of the specific history here. Trans men have often been welcome in “female only” spaces to the exclusion of trans women, as long as they misgender themselves. The Michigan Womyn’s Festival is a prime example. Trans girls, though, we don’t usually have this option in gay male places if we look too femme.
The funny thing is, now that gay trans men are gaining more acceptance (happy for y’all btw) i can go to a gay bar and see trans dudes there having a blast or i can go to a lesbian bar and see trans dudes there having a blast, but in either space, the trans girls are usually shuttled off to some dark corner or are absent all together. I could only be the “main audience” of those places if i detransition or pass completely for a cis woman.
That’s why i said that a trans woman can’t be a gay man. Because we simply aren’t allowed to be! And this can be painful, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. For many years, trans women were just seen as extremely effeminate gay men. Our lives were NOT better then. We fought to have the misogyny we experienced recognized as such and we fought to be recognized as the women we ARE. I don’t need other people trying to be progressive to come in and undo that work.
Maybe if we fought really hard, we could be let back into the gay male world, but I don’t know a single transfem who actually thinks this should happen. Myself and the other transfeminists in my circle are instead fighting more important battles. Is there misogyny in the gay world to be addressed? Sure, where isn’t there!
But rather that going on a holy conquest to break into the darkrooms of the gay leather bars, it’s much more important to fight for trans women to have equity in labor, access to medical transition, and equal rights with not only cis women, but cis men as well.
SOME people are allowed to be a gay boy one day, a genderless angel the next, and a butch4butch lesbian the day after. Transsexual women, for the most part, are not. Past a certain point of transition, there is no escape we can find from the transmisogyny we face outside of detransitioning or complete passing. Without a better way to describe it, I think this freedom or the lack thereof is the epitome of how transmisogyny is selectively applied to trans women.
That lower social class we occupy, shuttered out and ridiculed, that IS trans womanhood. We can be whoever we want inside, identify however, present however, but if we transition, transmisogyny is going to be our lot. It exists outside of us and is applied TO us no matter how we identify. We don’t receive the leisures, endowments, and privileges that gay men do. We don’t experience the leisures, endowments, or privileges that cis women do. We share in the struggles of both. There is no opt-out we can take. Transmisogyny reigns.
At least, until my sisters and i are victorious against it. And one day, we will be.
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