Tragedienne

Trans women are women.

Trans women are female.

Our femaleness is not dependent on surgery or any other medical intervention. If you are a non-op woman, then your genitalia are female genitalia, because they are attached to a female body.

At the same time, if you experience dysphoria related to your body and need hormones and/or surgery to alleviate it, then that care is a medical necessity and should be treated as such.

Some TERFs claim that our usage of HRT somehow invalidates the idea that we were always girls/women. It does not. Needing HRT as a trans woman to correct the distressing effects of an imbalanced endocrine system is no different than a cis woman needing HRT to correct the distressing effects of an imbalanced endocrine system.

Trans women can be lesbian, straight, bi, pan, ace, etc. Any sexual orientation that a cis woman can have, so too can a trans woman. Because we are just normal women. The lesbophobia experienced by sapphic trans women is largely recycled from lesbophobia experienced by cis women. In the 1970s, newspapers published articles fear-mongering about cis female lesbians “invading” women’s restrooms. Bigots have no original ideas.

It can be difficult not to internalize transmisogyny when it is so thoroughly baked into our current society, but we are not lesser women. We are not “guests” to womanhood. Our unique experiences of femaleness and femininity are equally valuable to those of cis women. The areas in which our lived experiences differ from those of cis women are not divergences from the female experience; they are variations within it.

The issues experienced predominantly by trans women are women’s issues just as the issues experienced predominantly by cis women are women’s issues. If a feminist organization’s approach to women’s liberation only addresses issues that affect cis women, then it is an incomplete vision of women’s liberation no less worthy of criticism than if they were only interested in furthering the liberation of white women or wealthy women.

Trans women are simply a subset of women, just like cis women, tall women, blonde women, queer women, etc. One day a future society will be horrified that this was ever considered up for debate.

The forced genital cutting of trans female and transfeminine children is a topic that has thus far been under-discussed in transfeminism. There is not a single country on the planet in which trans girls are legally protected from genital mutilation. I challenge fellow transfeminists to break the silence on this issue.

On paper, cis girls in countries like the US are legally protected from any form of genital cutting regardless of severity, including ritual pinpricks. Trans female children are systemically excluded from these legal protections and can be subjected to any form of genital cutting, including complete ablation of the frenulum (which is analogous to partial removal of the external clitoris in terms of sensory significance, and is routinely practiced in the US). This is a result of transmisogyny; the idea that transfeminine bodies are less worthy of protection or respect than other bodies. It is also a result of cissexism, as it relies on the idea that trans girls are “less female” than cis girls.

While this is a bit of a tangent, I feel it is necessary to mention that current anti-FGM law is failing to protect cis girls as well. In 2018, the original US anti-FGM law was declared unconstitutional, in part because it did not protect all children from genital cutting. The revised federal law addressed several other legal issues with the original law, but failed to address the equal protection issue. As a result, legal experts are largely apprehensive or unwilling to prosecute FGM cases; they believe that the law is valuable as a preemptive deterrent, but any attempt to prosecute will likely result in the current anti-FGM law being declared unconstitutional. Several doctors who are known to have performed FGM on cis girls are currently licensed to practice medicine in the US as a consequence.

This status-quo demonstrates some of the harm caused by the atomization of cis male and cis female genital cutting survivors. The reality is that no child will be truly safe from genital mutilation until every child is. This atomization has also resulted in the total erasure of all genital mutilation victims who are not cis or perisex, including trans girls, trans boys, and intersex children of all genders.

As transfeminists, we should use our voices to combat the erasure of trans female genital mutilation victims, who have been excluded from the conversation altogether. We must speak up so that future generations of trans girls have their bodily autonomy respected. As with any social issue, it will take time to effect change in society at large, so in the meantime we must also ensure that our own spaces are safe for transfeminine genital cutting victims to open up about their experience and find community and empowerment.