Hey, just say your tags about TME/TMA language being problematic. Genuine question: what is the issue with them? Is it that transmisogyny can be directed at people who aren't considered "TMA"?
I've talked about it here and there, but maybe this will be the time my thoughts are organized.
Up front, let me note there could be more elements involved the TME/TMA than I'm familiar with. I also feel it could be a useful tool in the right circumstances (for example, if you pursued research specifically focused on transmisogyny). My subjective experience is that TME/TMA are not used in this way, and the functional use of them isn't beneficial in general to trans people.
For those unfamiliar, TME means "transmisogyny exempt" and TMA means "transmisogyny affected." Now, as a thing that happens, these make sense. However, as commonly used, TME/TMA describes innate traits, which is where they stop being useful for me.
To start at the broadest scale, TME/A is often used reductively, with the principle that general bigotry against trans folx is in effect all derived from transmisogyny. I'm simplifying a little bit, but if we cut through some of the theory mechanics, we end up left with a broad generalization of transmisogyny as the primary and defining feature of the effort for trans rights, transphobia, and such. And, not to undermine the substantial effect transmisogyny has on the whole community, but this is not completely different from treating misogyny in general as the defining characteristic of all inequality. Misogyny is a significant form of inequality, but reducing all inequality to misogyny is kinda radical feminist territory. What with radfems generally wanting to wipe trans people off the map, I'm not comfortable standing on an ideological platform that close to theirs.
Related to this, there's no terms like "Transandrophobia Exempt," nothing at all addressing what kind of exemption / effect would apply to anyone off the gender binary - if it's going to be used to examine different kinds of bias against different kinds of trans people, or if it's meant to represent a state of being for trans people, there should be versions of it which apply to other people affected by bigotry who aren't trans femme. I suppose it can be argued that it's only to define one category of people (TMA) versus any other people (TME), which is true but again defines away the experiences of a large number of different trans people, or necessitates other trans people's experiences being defined through transmisogyny. To me that's not useful, because it excludes a significant amount of the complexity of the trans experience for the sake of only understanding a narrow band of it.
This leads into some further difficulties with the term. As a group, trans people have a great deal of insight to share with one another about our positive and negative experiences. The great variety and range of experiences in our community is fantastic, because I can find the experience of people who are trans men, agender, genderqueer, nonbinary, or anything else very relatable. I don't need to limit my understanding of gender via my specific experience as a trans woman either to share in how other trans folx view gender, nor to share my experience with the trans community at large.
We're getting deep down into it now, but related to the above and your note, I see TMA/E used as interchangeable with AFAB/AMAB, while being affected by transmisogyny isn't particularly limited to your assigned gender at birth. Bigotry expressed against trans people is not complex - it's a matter of a person or person who thinks any expression of gender they perceive as out of sync with what they assume is an intuitive understanding of innate gender characteristic should be must be resisted in the strongest possible way.
Or, more succinctly, transphobes do not care your agab, where you fall under the trans umbrella, or if you're trans at all. If a transphobe sees a cis woman and thinks she looks like a trans woman, they'll be transmisogynistic. If they see a trans woman and thinks she looks like a trans man, it's transandrophobia for them. They don't believe they ever have or ever will encounter anyone intersex, because they're really bad a statistics (fun fact, a small percentage is still a huge amount in any kind of city or town population). Bigots do not slow down to decide what kind of specific form of hate they're expressing, because the only thing important to them is that they're seeing someone who deviates from their internal belief system, and that person must be penalized for deviation.
We can certainly dissect how bigotry affects us all after the fact, the particular and (importantly) varying social lenses people are experiencing when they direct prejudice based on gender. I think that's a very complex and interesting question but it can't be examined via transmisogyny alone, because it's not limited to trans feminine people. Gender is one component of the many facets of how society can exert controls over disenfranchised groups, and it's tied into race, income, religion, nationality, and so forth. It's not impossible to examine one facet, it's just important to recognize that one facet is neither universal nor exclusive.
So far, the issue I have with TMA/E is that in a broad sense it seems to be used in an exclusionary way, as well as used in a way that re-creates a gender binary, and limits understanding bias towards trans people clearly. But all of this overlooks one very important issue.
We don't define who we are by how we are hated. I don't want to define myself as TMA. I'm a trans woman, I'm awesome. My gender isn't defined by someone who hates me for my genitals, my gender is defined by how much I love who I am, how much better my life is for being a trans woman. I do not find it useful to define myself by whether some specific kind of hatefulness is directed at me. To me, that's the component of TMA/E I cannot find a way around.
I am a depressed lady with massive anxiety, sometimes to the point I can't function, okay? I don't want to designate myself by another reason to be unhappy. So I don't find it useful, I kinda get why it's used, because it feels like a more inclusive way to talk about being trans and being expected to conform to an idea of femininity but not doing so. I do not think it succeeds in that capacity, and my overall experience with the term is that it does not usefully serve the trans community. My personal feeling is that it makes me uncomfortable. Despite being TMA by technicality, I haven't experienced much in the way of transmisogyny, and I would rather use a positive term to describe who I am.
(i haven't checked this for typos or spelling or inconsistencies)
