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hungry for therapists

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Trans women are women!

Is it bad if I've been on tumblr for 5 years and I still don't know what this means? And how can I say it with my whole chest if I don't know what it means?

Of course there's the surface version: It's a slogan progressives say to 1. be nice to people with dysphoria 2. signal in-group cohesion 3. shut down debates about gender inclusive policies. This meaning is not worth much, so let's move on. (to be clear, I'd still say it if it was only to be kind to people with dysphoria, but I think we all want it to mean something more.)

Interiority? I don't believe men and women have different interiority. We're all just human; there's no gendered brain; women don't experience consciousness in a fundamentally different way from men. Gender is a socially constructed artificial division. There is no biological or psychological marker that signals a person's "true gender".

Marxist class analysis! The history of gender is a history of class struggle. The two biggest classes are cis men and cis women. The struggle is between men, who try to own women like property, and women, who try to get liberated. There's reproductive coercion, marriage as indentured housekeeping and childcare, stratified social standing, sexual exploitation, restrictions on legal rights such as voting and owning a bank account, child mutilation, medical misogyny, dress codes, and so on.

Among perisex people I can see four subclasses: cis women, cis men, transfems, and transmascs. Each of the four classes has somewhat coherent class interests, though they can change when they intersect with other axes of oppression like race. I'm glossing over the class interests of intersex people here - most trans people are perisex, so let me get an idea of where perisex people stand, and then someone who knows more than I do can talk about intersex class interests. (last time I started this conversation, someone said trans women need abortions too. That's true of intersex trans women, but I want to put meaning behind "even perisex trans women are women", so let's put it aside for now.)

When a marxist says "trans women are women", they mean that trans women and cis women form a natural grouping in the study of gender class struggle. There is alignment on sexual exploitation, coerced labor, dress codes, medical misogyny, social standing, and so forth. There are many similarities between misogyny against trans women and misogyny against cis women.

However, cis women group with trans men on the issues of abortion and reproductive coercion (for perisex people) as well as fgm and pink tax re: menstruation. Furthermore, cis women group with all trans people, not just transfems, on low social standing, sexual exploitation, medical misogyny and restrictions on legal rights! Furthermore, trans women group with trans men on access to HRT and transphobic discrimination. So I think organizing the classes into taxa is not 100% clear and obvious. Still, grouping all women together for marxist analysis makes some sense. We can say that trans women navigate through social life in much the same way cis women do.

The real problem is when we get to the counterpart slogan, "trans men are men." From a marxist perspective, this would seem to imply that trans men and cis men share a class interest in upholding patriarchal oppression! Some transfeminists, taking the slogan as an axiom, seem to have reached this conclusion: see the discourse regarding "tma/tme." Contrary to this position, my lived experience and listening to trans men have made me see clearly that trans men are oppressed by patriarchy to a much greater degree than they benefit from patriarchal oppression.

Now some of you quoting Bell Hooks might say that the same is true of cis men: the cis man suffers more than he benefits from patriarchy. This is false. Patriarchy supplies cis men with an exploitable class of servants who are not fully free to reject men and live their own lives. Even if a man is one of the good ones, his career benefits from workplace discrimination, he benefits at home from unequal division of household labor, he benefits in romance from lowered expectations (where a woman will settle for a partner who gives low effort because he's at least not abusive), and he's exempt from most forms of misogyny. If the man is a bad actor, he gets many additional benefits.

Men pay a price in emotional and sartorial self-expression to access their benefits, but we can see that the price is comparatively small: at any point the man could stop paying the price, give up some of his privilege, and become a gender outcast, but most men choose not to.

Some stealth trans men can access some of these benefits, but they are not available to all trans men in a systematic way. Trans men are not exempt from most forms of misogyny. Trans men suffer medical misogyny, they suffer and do not benefit from sexual exploitation, they are at risk for needing abortion, they may be expected to perform household labor like women, and so on, and unless they pass perfectly 100% of the time they are at risk of involuntary gender outcast status.

In the marxist framework, grouping gender class struggle as "cis and trans men versus cis and trans women" doesn't make sense taxonomically. I think the obvious grouping, if there is to be a grouping, is "cis men versus everyone else."

Where does that leave our slogan? Maybe you disagree with my marxist analysis, and you can show me where I'm wrong? (I'm not here to win any debate, I'm here to learn and refine my model of the world, so please show me my errors.) Maybe it's interiority - gender essentialism is unpopular on tumblr, but I know there are trans gender-essentialists elsewhere. Is the slogan only for them? Or maybe there's a fourth framework - not marxist, not essentialist, not liberal-progressive sloganeering, but another aspect of human existence I don't know about. In that case, please enlighten me!

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I’m a simple guy. I like prettyboys, men with tits, entities, and deep-voiced women. But more than that? I like Critters

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My part of the cities for the Apostle Contemnant mod (available on steam) It was fun

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did anyone tell her she was supposed to ascend at seven

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Another apothecary doodle

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Don't talk to me, I'm in the zone right now

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goodbye 2023👋hello 𓏏𓉔𓇋𓋴 𓇌𓅂𓄿𓂋 𓇋 𓅃𓇋𓃭𓃭 𓎼𓅂𓏏 𓄿 𓅓𓅲𓅓𓅓𓇌 𓃀𓅱𓇌𓆑𓂋𓇋𓅂𓈖𓂧 𓅓𓄿𓇌𓃀𓅂 𓉔𓅲𓋴𓃀𓄿𓈖𓂧 𓇋𓆑 𓉔𓅂𓂕𓋴 𓎢𓅱𓅱𓃭 𓅃𓇋𓏏𓉔 𓏏𓉔𓄿𓏏

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its always nice to hang w the girls!

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saints summer bod is ready

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happy pride month to the fuck tree I guess

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Reminder that if you’re a trans girl today, you’re beautiful and I’m proud of you <3

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very very evil to be a child in 2008 and an adult in 2025

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When the way the NPCs calls you affects the way you see yourself