#trans unity

They have released a Transfeminist Toolkit (English) designed to help folks talk to cis feminists, allies, and soon-to-be-allies.

I think it may also be extremely helpful to many trans people who do not seem to know what transfeminism is.

Across Europe and beyond, feminist movements are facing intensified attacks on women’s and LGBTI people’s rights. Coordinated efforts by authoritarian and anti-rights movements are undermining democratic rights, restricting bodily autonomy and deepening divisions within feminist and broader social justice movements to retain and gain socio-political power. Tensions around gender, safety, resources and identity are instrumentalised under the guise of “protecting women” to justify surveillance and control, and roll back the hard-won rights feminists have fought for. Many feminists want to come together to overcome these challenges and need the tools to navigate complex and nuanced discussions constructively. With this toolkit, we aim to respond to that need, sharing our learnings and practical guidance from our recent research on how to build common ground, strengthen transfeminist solidarity, and develop effective messaging. At a time when we need each other more than ever, our hope is that the insights from this research will help feminists speak about the rights of trans people with others who might be on the fence, engaging in conversations from a place of shared values, compassion and care. The insights are also aimed at feminist organizations keen to build bridges across movements, especially those with members who might hold a diversity of views and are interested in finding ways to navigate conflicting perspectives.

i thought we understood that trans women hypervisibility and trans men hyper invisibility were both very notable things in the community and both harmful. how do you expect people who aren't even considered as an after thought in the community to use their "privilege" to uplift others?

hiya, i think i slightly miscommunicated what i meant with that one. trans men do benefit from some privilege over trans women on account of being transmisogyny-exempt (see my previous posts on this terminology if you like!) but the situation regarding visibility and erasure is a little more nuanced i think. when it comes to the common public, trans men are generally ignored and erased and trans women are generally focused on. i would say within the general queer community neither group is listened to (cis people lol) but when it comes to the trans community on Tumblr, trans men's voices are notably more represented compared to trans women's, notably because of the banwaves that staff love to go on targeting us. what i'm hoping for is that trans men on this platform use that increased visibility to bring attention to the transmisogyny that thrives on Tumblr and therefore combat it, that's all.

(the poll in question)

While I think the tone you chose to approach me with is incredibly rude, I do agree that trans men and cis men are going to have very different experiences with misogyny. But you should know as well as I do that a tumblr poll was always going to provide skewed data. The point was not to get a perfectly accurate result that can generalize to all of society, but simply to open up a dialogue and get people thinking about where misogyny comes from and who enforces it against whom. In that regard I think the poll has been somewhat successful so far, though I'm still hoping to get more respondents.

And if we're being honest, I genuinely think the amount of cis men who respond to the poll at all is going to be negligible. I think it's pretty safe to assume that based on the tags I posted in and the overall demographics of tumblr that most of the respondents who identify as men/masc are going to be trans.

But I do want to ask you a question: genuinely, what would you have preferred I do? There are simply not enough options on a poll to separate trans men and women out from cis men and women. I could have left cis men out entirely, but that would imply that cis men are never targets of misogyny, which is simply not true. I could have made two separate polls, but that could throw off the results as well if people respond without seeing the second poll. I had to compromise somewhere; if you're going to criticize the decision I made you could at least be constructive about it and tell me what you would have done differently.

transphobia is a system of oppression that exists to punish the gender transgressions of people who transition. since patriarchy likes to think of the two sexes as discrete, non-overlapping entities (see Julia Serano’s definition of oppositional sexism) anyone who falls outside of the category of cisgender and gender-conforming is punished by transphobia.

under patriarchy women are thought of as the lesser of the two sexes. the existence of people who transition to a comparatively “lower” gendered status presents a particularly pressing threat to the existence of the patriarchy, and so patriarchy punishes these transgressions in a way which we call transmisogyny.

the existence of transmisogyny as a systemic impulse does not negate the oppression of non-transmisogynised trans people. the position of trans people who begin as perceived females and transition to a “relatively higher” gendered status are particularly vulnerable to corrective sexual assault and will be rigorously infantilised by patriarchal forces in order that the boundaries of womanhood remain strict and discrete. this is the oppressive system we call transandrophobia.

the terms “transmisogyny-affected” and “transmisogyny-exempt” exist as an inclusive alternative to just saying “trans women and transfems” or likewise. these terms should be used inclusively by default — inclusive of nonbinary people and intersex people who want to describe themselves as such.

transmisogyny overlaps with a lot of other gendered oppression systems in terms of the tropes it uses (for example, casting a demographic as inherently violent, especially sexually) but it is important to remember that it is not the same as misogynoir or intersexism or any other oppressive force (although it’s possible to experience those things and transmisogyny at the same time).

if you are someone who is trans, but is not the primary target of transmisogyny, please please please try to be aware of how it affects TMA people e.g. hate campaigns, bullying and pedojacketing in queer and trans spaces. if you’re a transfeminist, make sure you’re being a transfeminist inclusively. all in all, listen to other trans people, they always have interesting things to say. <3

this also applies to name calling: TRFs, transandrobros, theyfabs and whatever else you guys come up with to avoid empathising with “the other side” is anathema to having good discourse and one step closer to dehumanising people outside of your in-group and killing your movement-building momentum.