S.E.A.S.

No one is exempt from any sort of societal prejudice. When people try to argue for the use of this term, they more often than not explain that it is for people not explicitly TARGETED by transmisogyny (meaning people who are mistaken for transfeminine people). To widely use a term that implies exemption from a spcietal phenomenon is to, frankly, be antithetical to transfeminist discussion because it simply removes all nuance regarding the way prejudice is pervasive. To remove that pervasiveness from the discussion is to have an incomplete discussion that is not as productive as it needs to be.

It shuts out anyone who isn't a transfeminine person (or more exclusively, a trans woman) from transfeminism. It defines us, not by what our experience IS. But what our experience ISN'T. By trying to first and foremost group us by things we dont experience, our actual experiences with privilege and oppression are demoted to secondary importance. It creates hierarchy of what experience is given weight in discussions, and what experiences are more easily erased. As a result, Ive seen well meaning transfeminists speak up about how transfeminine people are affected by a specific issue, failing to realize that a very close counterpart to that issue exists for transmasculine people, non binary people, intersex people, etc.. By classify us as exempt from that experience, and thus exempt from that issue, our voices are disregarded as less important, and ultimately erased from discussion altogether. As a result, we are not given the support we need, while simultaneously expected to wield privilege we simply do not have to both protect our siblings and ourselves (which is not a bad thing to do, but exhausting to do alone without the support that might be granted if given the chance to articulate ourselves). Now this point might not be so bad (if still questionable)...if transmasculine people were not ONLY called TMEs in transfeminist discussion.

Who exactly is TME (and by extension, TMA, tbh) is poorly defined, does exist in a rigid binary, and is entirrly dependent on the person using the term. There is no easy defined lines separating the two, espesially when considering intersex and nonbinary people. (Where is the line drawn. If you would consider a closeted trans woman TMA, would you also consider a GNC cis man with the same manurisms to be TMA? What about cis gay men historically feminized in order to brutalize them? And then how useful is a term that values cis men as more uniquely oppressed on the basis of gender as to require an unique term, than other trans people?) As a result, it sort of just is reduced into meaning "transfems and not" or "AMAB and AFAB" (which are also reductive and exclusionary, but thats a different discussion). At that point, not only do the terms lose all meaning or usefullness as descriptive terms. But as per point 2, it only serves to define who's voices are valued, and who's are not.