doudle beesechurger

>open book

Change lawyer to cop and this is perfect methinks

Type: Forest/Shadow

Powers: Dig, Truffle Find, Radiant Death Flare

especially when they are fat. especially when they are Black or Native or Asian or any racial/ethnic group that isn't white. especially when they are tall and broad and have a deep voice and a beard, and especially when they like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering. especially when they have gone on E and T blockers and have gotten facial feminization and vaginoplasty and have DD tits and like themselves that way and still are hurt by misgendering (even when people think they should be grateful for it, even when it feels like the lesser of two evils). especially when they transition in ways people see as "only halfway" and dress androgynous and use contradictory labels and call themselves femboys in the same breathe they do tgirls and they like themselves clockable as fuck and still are hurt by transphobia and exorsexism.

Gender is constructed, yes, but there are some things that are indeed mutually exclusive. From a class perspective, a trans woman cannot be a gay man. Man and woman are, at the same time, totally-constructed, mutually exclusive categories AND (!) material realities that exist. The class conditions of men and women are different, because women face structural misogyny, and men do not. People split the lines of these two classes all the time, but this doesn’t mean these two, specific, mutually exclusice classes don’t exist.

While the classes of woman and man as well as their class interests (the destruction or the continuation of misogyny, respectively) are real, the concepts themselves of man and woman don’t map neatly onto reality, and this absurd imposition of fiction onto reality creates massive suffering, as does the real class structure this fiction supports. Just as there’s no innate, permanent, immutable, and solid difference between a capitalist and a worker, there’s no such difference between men and women. This is the ground reality below the infrastructure, below the structure, and below the superstructures of society. Those structures also have no innate, permanent, immutable, or solid existence. But the experiences that people have from them are just as real as anything else. These structures and categories are constantly shaped and reshaped by the actions of society. People move between the gender classes all the time. Pointing out the absurd difference between how people are treated as classes by saying oxymoronic identities like “gay man who is a trans woman” can help reduce their power, trying to get rid of class labels altogether won’t undo the conflicts between classes. It just makes it harder to see what’s going on while those class conflicts happen out of sight if nobody can talk about it.

I am one of the women you were talking about in this post, the fat trans woman who has facial hair, and a trans woman who tried being a gay boy. I seriously identified as a girlfag for years. I stopped, though, when I saw that I lost access to my gay male life completely once I transitioned past a certain point. The moment that I was seen as a woman, trans or cis, by gay men, I was an outsider to them. Sometimes there are gay men who see me as a man. They are a little more warm to me, but only when they can fuck me. Which I don’t like doing bc they think i’m a dude and it feels terrible for me ewwwwww.

But can you see where I’m coming from? I’m just one girl, but I think that adopting the framework of real class interests/constructed gender could contribute to the liberation of women and therefore the complete freedom to move between categories. Also, I think this is important enough to write a response to a stranger because this very conversation could change how some trans women are treated. The treatment we got as “gay men who identify as women” was something we fought to change, and I don’t want to see that clock turned back.

I just fundamentally disagree on pretty much every level that how people should identify needs to be exclusively grounded in their material class position (as decided by The Council, I suppose, because clearly they have no say in the matter). Again, I see no real difference between what you have said here and the well-formed, earnest, rational arguments made by many transphobic feminists as to why they may sympathize with trans women but fundamentally disagree on a materialist basis that they should be allowed to call themselves women given the perceived danger of making it harder to discuss the class differences between females and males. Its the exact same line of thinking.

I am sorry you had those experiences while identifying that way. You are correct that you are one girl, and your experiences and feelings are one individual's experiences and feelings, and what you have said is not all that convincing to me. You seem to be engaging with the idea of "a trans woman who is a gay man" on a largely theoretical, ideological basis, which is, again, always bad for all trans people. Using your personal experiences and feelings as proof to back up your theorization does not make it more grounded in the material reality of many people, including people who identify as trans women and gay men and do not feel the way you feel and do not interpret their experiences with transphobia & othering in gay men's spaces the way you do.

Men do face structural misogyny. Trans men exist. And trans women who also identify as men exist. I myself am multigender and am both a man and a woman, although given what you've written here, I can only imagine you feel that identity is impossible or harmful in some way because it is not binary and "materialist" enough in your eyes. But frankly, there is no way to be anything other than hostile to nonbinary people given the very limited version of trans materialism you've described here. Clinging so hard to the gender binary & basing your materialist analysis, not on many people's material experiences but on theoreticals and your personal feelings and experience, is harmful to other trans people.

If you are curious, my pinned post has a lot of links regarding the kind of transfeminism I engage with, although much of that is focused on anti-transmasculinity. To quote Emi Koyama, author of the Transfeminist Manifesto:

Cis feminists do not own feminism. We don't need to "fit trans people into feminist theory"; we simply need to challenge cissexism in feminist movements and theories. Trans people do not need to be explained by feminist theory; we need to start from the fact that trans people exist and matter.

Transmasculine people have BEEN writing feminist theory centering the trans experience - Judith Butler, Jack Halberstam, José Esteban Muñoz (edit - incredible theorist, not transmasc sorry!!! more transmasc theorists in reblogs), Toby Beauchamp, Hil Malatino, Abram J. Lewis, Christopher Lee...

Do not believe anyone who tells you transmasculine people aren't speaking about our experiences, aren't theorizing, aren't publishing theory.

For example, a couple years ago, while learning Spanish, I encountered the word for a store, "la tienda." I thought "huh, that's a lot like tener (tiene) - the word for store in Spanish literally corresponds to 'to have/keep'. How interesting!"