People insisting, “no matter what, transandrophobia theory always leads you to hating women/trans women,” with no ability to actually prove this beyond circular logic and cherry picking
is no different from people insisting that the idea of aphobia existing necessarily is homophobic and transphobic, with no ability to actually prove this beyond circular logic and cherry picking
and no different from people insisting that the idea of biphobia existing necessarily is homophobic, with no ability to actually prove this beyond circular logic and cherry picking
and is no different from people insisting that the idea of nonbinary people/exorsexism existing necessarily is transphobic, with no ability to actually prove this beyond circular logic and cherry picking.
We keep doing this because there are people who will always balk at the idea that they could ever possibly be participating in the oppression of another group of people if they’re also oppressed within a similar axis.
To go back to the aspec discourse example: the perpetuators of these discourses will say that LGBT people can’t oppress aspecs—LGBT people are oppressed for their orientation or gender so they can’t oppress that way.
But of course, that doesn’t mean there can’t be an oppressive force you perpetuate against them. But to these people who keep perpetuating these discourses it should mean that because you see them using “I’m x I can’t be x-phobic” all the time.
Point that out and you always end up in, “okay but my group is more oppressed than the out-group we’re discoursing about,” territory. Which is useless, because it’s the same argument. They can’t perpetuate that thing you’re saying that they can perpetuate. Because they’re too oppressed to be able to. Which isn’t how it works.
And they make assumptions about how our theory must function based on that same viewpoint they have. Our theory must be insisting that the out-group we’re discoursing about can’t perpetuate oppression against these other groups if we can perpetuate oppression against them. When that’s not how the majority of us are discussing the topic. But they insist that’s what we’re trying to say. Because that’s how they think about oppression.
Anyway. I’m just tired. It’s all the same and I so want to be done with it all because it’s so obviously the same.
(And it is amazingly funny to me that someone saw that they were perpetuating this whole thing and said, “ah yes, my pet theory, this is so big brained of me that I employ circular logic (which when someone describes out how circular logic works I recognize that as what I’m doing) just with a new fancy word I’ve given it; that it’s working on you proves I’m right.”)
