Ruthless Crow

Trans women, however, are still slandered and bashed with their AGAB because they were raised accordingly to it- this is not treated nearly as delicately, this is not given nearly the same respect. It's treated as a fair debate/discourse, whether trans women should legitimately be respected as women despite the fact that they were 'supposed' to belong to a different gender, and were just not 'raised the right way to be a girl'.

Masculine traits are held against the validity of their identities, the way they were raised is somehow meant to permanently prevent them from being able to meaningfully transition (despite having rejected the roles of gender assigned to them, and often the sex they were born with)... but somehow, the same is not true for nonbinary people who were raised in accordance with being AFAB; somehow, they deserve more respect.

Their voices are given respect and amplified, but trans women with essentially the same complaint- that they are being misgendered, invalidated, and bashed for an abuse that was inflicted on them without their choice (having been raised with masculine gender roles forced onto them, which is deeply scarring for many transfeminine people), where others, like nonbinary people 'raised feminine', are not bludgeoned with these disrespects by people claiming to be 'trans-accepting' or progressive.

I'm not about to suggest that this is because AFAB people face a privilege where AMABs are discriminated against, because that just doesn't hold with reality in the same way that sex-based oppression never holds well with reality. No, trans women speaking up about the bias and injustice here are treated the same way that any other woman speaking about prejudice is treated. Like a whining bitch, who needs to accept her place. Their issues are dismissed, and they're expected to wait for their respect until the 'debate' of 'male-socialization' is settled, to finally be treated as women rather than men who want to play dress-up. It is fucking disgusting that it's even a question, that it's a 'debate' or a 'discourse', whether it's acceptable to treat a girl like she's a sexual threat because you don't think someone 'raised' like her could ever be a "real woman".

When other groups raise the same issue with really fucking offensive language- like "theyfab" and other similarly stupid shit- they're listened to, pretty much across the board outside of blatant, admitted transphobes.

But that's the thing, is that trans women are identified as women, and prejudices that people hold against feminine people- which anyone can have, AFAB, transmasculine, queer, alike- are going to be applied against them. They aren't being listened to, because they are women. They are treated like a predatory threat because that's a prejudice that is constantly leveled against trans women. More so than transmasculine people, because it is considered a perverse delusion to want to be a woman, because- due to the misogynistic perspective- women are far more sexualized and objectified. Due to those biases, it is far more likely that they can and will be discriminated against, and shut down. Those aren't just abstract or unrelated prejudices, that is exactly the tone people take when shutting down transfeminist criticism. It's pointless, frivolous 'bitching'; they can't be separated from the AGAB because it makes them sexual predators; and they hold less social and economic power to defend themselves, because they face wage discrimination that only worsens when they demand better treatment.

Even inside their own 'queer community', women are facing harassment campaigns and threats fucking daily, being banned off this site for these criticisms, having fucking basic day-to-day completely chaste selfies taken down under the 'porn ban' while any other NSFW content is more or less allowed to fly unless it gets mass-reported. It's harder for them to gain an audience to take their self-defense seriously, and it's easier for people to write them off. Even among other queer and trans people, they are marginalized.

I respect people who don't see the constant discrimination ongoing. I don't hate people for not already knowing what it's like for us, but they don't see the issue because we are made damn-near invisible. Our social spaces are 'niche', people online generally lean young, and trans women more often come out of the closet later in life (because it is fucking shameful and terrifying to do so at all)- you can see the membership differences in groups like 'FTMblr' to 'MTFblr' for example, or similarly-themed subreddits, or even in many in-person queer community events. It is hard to hear us, and many never identify the bias until it's pointed out to them, much like other prejudices of misogyny and racism that are baked deeply into culture and go undetected.

I respect that it looks like bickering, or it looks like aimless conflict grounded in misread theory. But a message of bland 'unity' does not convey the fact that we are not all on equal ground. Not all queer people are equally marginalized. The line is often repeated that, "we're all faggots in the eyes of the state", but the state is not the only entity capable of discrimination. Being queer does not exempt you from being prejudiced, experiencing a holocaust did not exempt the Jewish people who settled Israel from being Islamophobic colonials who would go on to engage in a genocide, being racialized does not exempt a person from being misogynistic. Nor does being trans.

There is nothing wrong with being queer; beyond that, nothing wrong with being transgender; further then, nothing wrong with being a woman among the trans community. There's nothing wrong with wishing you didn't always feel pressured to be a man, or anything other than what you want to be, even if you don't know what you want.

We are all faggots in the eyes of the state, but even Ted Cruz just condemned Republican politician Andy Ogles yesterday for claiming "Homosexuals have no place in America." They still hate gays, but they sure as fuck hate trans people more; and among trans people, they're the most ferocious against the women, our most vulnerable. All we ask is to be uplifted, and for the people we hoped to share community with to include us- rather than allow bigotry and transphobia to run rampant against us as insidiously as the rest of the world.