#racismdocumentation

What it meant to be a woman in many African pre-colonial societies was not rigid. “Among the Langi of northern Uganda,” writes Sylvia Tamale, dean of the faculty of Law at Makerere University Uganda, “the mudoko dako, or effeminate males, were treated as women and could marry men.” There were also the Chibados or Quimbanda of Angola, male diviners whom, some scholars have argued, were believed to carry female spirits through anal sex.

[...]

This practice of same-sex marriage was documented in more than 40 precolonial African societies: a woman could marry one or more women if she could secure the bridewealth necessary or was expected to uphold and augment kinship ties. The idea that a female could be a husband perplexed Europeans, and often lead to fantastical conclusions.

[Context]

@/autogynamelia is a self-proclaimed baeddel. She's got it in her title here on Tumblr, and she's notorious for it over on Twitter:

She's defended her use of the word further here, stating that her original tweet (above) was "ironic (though tbh I'm no longer sure how ironic)" and that the original baeddels were "flawed", "under attack", and "onto something". She also only said it was ironic after a ton of backlash (from transmascs and transneutral folks as well as transfemmes), so I, personally, am not sure how seriously I can take that.

@/borntobaeddel1312 has a "#baeddel on main" tag where she openly and frequently espouses straight-up baeddel rhetoric, using the word to call it what it is. Don't think you could make an "it's ironic" claim for that one- particularly when I am fairly sure Jess was also one of the original baeddels back in 2014.

I generally don't care who people reblog from- it's only in conjunction with posts they've reblogged (or personally made) that do uphold baeddel ideology that it makes me genuinely suspicious.

Which is why I included links to posts where they'd claimed trans men have privilege over trans women, openly compared trans men to women and misgendered them, claimed that TERFs only harm trans women (use of "TWEF" instead of "TERF"), implied that trans men who speak to our experiences with transphobia are "TransMRAs", and implied that trans men cannot experience misogyny.

I know baeddel ideology is not well known; you can see examples and explanations of where their ideology ties into the above here and here.

Again, I'm not trying to accuse any of these people of being baeddels themselves. It's the endorsement and espousal of important facets of baeddel ideology that makes me suspicious, and should, imo, make people view their claims about transmascs with suspicion as well.

Like, whenever black people center our selves in conversations of racism and anti-blackness, we’re often accused by other minorities of being racist, or being selfish, or hypervisable. We can’t talk about the privliege that most of the world has over us just by not being black without people taking it personally. 

We’re often told to just get over it, and that we need POC solidarity more than anything. 

But like, how can you expect solidarity if every time we attempt to be vocal about our issues, we’re being “divisive” or we’re causing a split with the community. 

Why get angry at us for being vocal about our experiences? 

Likewise, the same thing happens to trans women? Their hypervisibility is seen as a privliege, and not a result of the sheer amount of violence they experience. When they do try to center themselves in certain conversations, they’re often told that they’re pushing everyone elses concerns aside or ignoring them. 

People take it personally. 

It’s all, “we need to be unified as the trans community, but at the same time let’s bar trans women from talking about the shit that happens to them, and when they do try to talk about it, lets tell them they’re trying to split the trans community.” 

There is just so, so many similiarites between how society gaslights black folks and trans women and trans femmes, and I think about how in America at least, some of the most prominent trans women were black.