#transunity

The trans community has a specific type of transphobia towards nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth, and that is forcing womanhood onto them posed as purification or salvation.

The reverse, forcing nonbinary people assigned female into the man role, also exists, but it's frequently done with open hatred (e.g. "those they/thems are actually men trying to sneak into women's spaces") and therefore it has been called out by several people I interact with.

The former, not so much.

Many tend to see misgendering of someone amab towards womanhood as fundamentally benevolent or unserious. Real people develop new kinds of dysphoria and quit trans spaces because of that, including some of my acquaintances, but it's all seen as accidental collateral damage for the noble goal of making more women discover themselves.

"But what if you're denying a closeted self hating trans woman a chance to be called a woman" is seen as a more valid argument than the distress being actively done to people of other genders, and it's fucking bonkers.

I refuse to keep centering non-abinary* perspectives in this conversation.

Now that people see me as a feminine girl, I face a lot of misogyny that's new to me. There are absolutely people who see femininity as a negative trait and who see feminine girls as ditzy and vapid.

This makes me understand where trans radfems are coming from. When you transition from being masculine or androgynous to being feminine, you face a specific kind of misogyny that's very real.

But that doesn't discount the misogyny faced by trans men, butch women, and many non-binary people. When I was seen as a masculine woman, I faced a completely different kind of misogyny. Just because many people see feminine people afab as being inferior doesn't mean they see masculine people afab in a more positive light (and I'd argue that these people face even worse misogyny, based on my lived experience).

primarily because i think its fucking weird to have catty little insults for trans people we disagree with, even and perhaps especially when we disagree with them over actually harmful things they've done or rhetoric they contribute to. its unhelpful and adds fuel to the fire of emotion-first "my pain justifies being an asshole, if you want me to be kinder you just don't get my suffering" trans infighting, and no matter how good it feels i do not think it is right! it hurts all of us whether directly or indirectly because it contributes to a toxic culture, and it is genuinely poison to organizing socially and politically against patriarchy.

but also, on a practical level (which as a pragmatist i do not think is actually separate from the ethical level), its a bad fucking look! it is weird and shitty that people are so invested in coming up with catty little insults, or just adopting pre-existing slurs, to describe trans people they think are being transmisogynistic instead of just saying they are being transmisogynistic, and i think it is illustrative of the trends prevalent in the "transandrophobia isn't real" sphere that this is a thing people engage in and defend so much. if you agree with that point, you should understand that turning around and calling trans women "birthday girls" weakens that criticism! it makes it look hypocritical and easily written off!

Does anyone have any ideas what to do about that? Perhaps a more specialized tag? I would like to hear suggestions, primarily from those who feel personally affected.

-All trans people are whichever gender their attacker can use to hate and denigrate them most effectively, and face similar and overlapping (never opposite) forms of discrimination

-Transmisogyny and transandrophobia are both unique ASPECTS of this discrimination that CAN be experienced by any trans person (bc bigotry is stored in the bigot), but are most OFTEN used against people perceived as transfemine and transmasculine respectively

-There are unique experiences and ways these forms of oppression intertwine with general forms of misogyny and the oppression of men seen as not performing the Correct Masculinity (non-white cis straight and able bodied masc people). These unique forms of oppression need language and description and to be talked about in order to articulate and fight against them, HOWEVER, they are not and never will be the OPPOSITE or "better version" of what the trans person perceived as the Other End of that spectrum of oppression is battling. They have LARGE overlaps of who is touched by them and in what circumstances, of how they hold people away from jobs or places in society, and of how they are used to punish us for being the Wrong Genders in the Wrong Way.

-Intersex, nonbinary, agender, two-spirit, and many people presenting as a butch woman or a femme man are especially often affected by any and ALL forms of transphobia. When you start separating people into identity groups by the TYPES of discrimination they can face, rather than their CLAIMED identities, you are inevitably cutting out everyone on the borders and overlap of that type of discrimination while also presenting a false "us v them," "TMA vs those Others," dichotomy that is NOT useful. This method sorts other people by the assumptions of the speaker and their experiences rather than the identity they claim, erases everyone & their experiences in the grey in-between and overlaps, and fails to articulate anything about the oppression faced that the original conversations don't already cover. It also leans into the idea that anyone can be EXEMPT from a type of bigotry, which again fails to take into account that the assumptions of who you are and should be are stored IN THE BIGOT - for an example, look at the transmisogyny facing cis women (especially black women) who look "too masculine" in sports.

-Trans people all face both unique and overlapping forms of discrimination, all of which are manifestations of a mixture of racism sexism classism and transphobia, and all of which have more in common with other forms of trans and gender discrimination than they have discrete, separate, or "opposite" experiences of oppression. There is no core of trans people experiencing something incomprehensibly, radically different than another by gender presentation in the USA. We are all in this together, we are all suffering attacks from many of the same places people and institutions, and it does us FAR more good as a community to recognize what we have in common than arguing over who has it worse, who has it better in an active genocide, and who is "exempt" from oppression.