sirenesism

[sirenesism]

Does anyone know definitively who actually coined CAMAB/CAFAB first? In my exploration of older writings I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff that points to the narrative being that trans people coined it first, only to have cis intersex people claim it, and then also try to stop us from using assigned as well. I have also come across interesting arguments about how AFAB/AMAB are actually worse in various contexts than or just as bad as FTM/MTF when coercion is not noted.

[sirenesism]

Anti-transition is not a fundamental terf position, it does not define it, many terfs are in fact pro-transition. What you're pointing out is a generic anti-trans stance, not what terfism fundamentally is.

Transmasc TERFism (and other terfisms) for example, does not oppose transition at all and does not seek to force trans people to identify with their assigned sex. You're either dishonest or very ignorant about this subject, which isn't surprising from a tme.

Terfism involves creating/maintaining or reinforcing a power imbalance between cis women, transmascs, tme enbies (TMEs) and TMAs, where TMAs are the subordinate class and TMEs the dominant group, something in which TMEs are highly invested, even within trans spaces.

what refusing to listen about transmascs experiences does to a motherfucker. yeah you know the ideology that pushes for taking away your bodily autonomy and sending you to conversion therapy? that's to your benefit actually

[sirenesism]

People on this site so gleefully engage in transmisogyny.

A post how queer people who aren't trans fem have a bad habit of actively excluding trans fems, and even when discussing trans issues will sometimes invite trans mascs but no trans fems and all these people do instead of listening is go

"Hey, you bringing this up is dividing the queer community please stop mentioning it."

Or

"I object to your terminology, transmisogyny effects all of us equally, there's no unique facet of oppression towards trans women. No, I'm not trans fem. Why do you ask?"

[sirenesism]

One thing most transmascs (not to mention transandrodorks) will never admit is that TERFism is a TME ideology and benefits not just cis women but also transmascs and other TME trans people.

Terfism blooms out from that power position (TME) and manifests itself differently across TMEs, but it maintains its fundamentals. Queer/transmasc TERFism looks different from traditional TERFism.

What unites TERFs and TME trans people is their shared interest in keeping trans women, transfeminine individuals, and other TMA people subjugated. That's why virtually all trans/enby terfs are TME. It's an ideology that helps them mantaning their power over TMAs. It directly and indirectly benefits them even if they are trans.

[sirenesism]

Reminder that transmascs oppress transfems

This shouldn't be a controversial fact in queer spaces, but unfortunately..because TMEs dominate them, it is

[sirenesism]

The amount of cisbian meltdowns when a trans woman says they, as a group, are transmisogystic and have power over transfems (transfeminism 101) will never cease to amaze me.

They want us to continue pretending that transfem/cisbian power dynamics are equal and that their transmisogyny is an accidental phenomenon of a few isolated cis lesbian cases, and not a historical and collective problem.

[sirenesism]

How can you not hate TMEs after reading this?

[sirenesism]

here we are, a he/they TERF !

[sirenesism]

tirs are just terfs in denial

[sirenesism]

Theyfabs dare everything. Their audacity knows no bounds

[sirenesism]

love those posts about trans mascs/cis lesbians getting pulled into terf circles and how we should feel bad for them. who fucking cares. they're violently transmisogynistic. do you think they give a single flying fuck about the trans womens lives they destroy? zero sympathy. if you join a hate group because it makes you feel nice and fuzzy inside then congrats. you're still part of a hate group. you're still 100% responsible for your actions because you're a fucking adult. mind-blowing I know

[sirenesism]

for a few years now (like since at least 2021) i’ve been occasionally seeing isolated individuals try on “AFAB trans woman”, “AFAB transfem”, “AMAB trans man”, “AMAB transmasc” and dreading the possibility of this becoming an inclus/exclus thing where there’s a huge vicious debate and a ton of people develop calcified stances that it’s “valid” because they are straight ticket voters on uses of language being “valid”. i’ve recently come across multiple fairly high-note promotions of each of 1) yeah, sure, anyone can be a trans woman (normal understanding of the language of AGAB, replaces meaning of “trans woman” with “someone who is a woman and also trans” or, worse “someone who identifies with the vibe of trans womanhood”) and 2) your AGAB is whatever you decide it is, maybe even a neolabel (completely opposite the concept of gender assignment at birth). i’m crossing my fingers that these uses somehow go no further, or that if they do the ensuing fight blows over quickly.

as an individual topic, it’s frustrating because it points to the complete failure on a lot of people’s parts to absorb or understand the basic premises of this idea of transgender.

we live in a world where, when humans are born, the adults around them decide what role they are going to have in a system of male/female boy/girl man/woman. usually they pick based on a quick look at the child’s external genitalia. if the quick look doesn’t match their idea of what a baby boy or baby girl is supposed to look like, they might or might not do further physical investigation, and either way they will pick a role for the child. if the child doesn’t look one of the ways expected, they might enforce this decision through surgery to conform the child’s body to their ideal for the role they chose. whether the decision was immediate or after deliberation, whether surgery was performed or not performed, this process of role picking is coercive. a first act of coercion in a childhood of coercion in a lifetime of coercion.

children are raised to the roles they were assigned. sometimes this involves the deliberate imposition of a lot of restrictions and expectations about how the child will look and behave, sometimes fewer, sometimes almost none but that they will agree that they are what the adults said they were. even if it is only the last, the child will sooner or later feel the weight of much greater expectations, because they will become aware that wider society says girls should look girly and do girl things and boys should look boyish and do boy things. sometimes it becomes apparent that a child’s body is growing to not match the adults’ idea of what a male body or a female body is supposed to look like or do. if this happens, the adults might allow or force the child to switch roles, might ease or double down on their expectations, and might or might not give the child a choice in whether they biomedically intervene in the child’s physical development.

sometimes, a person grows to refuse the role they were assigned and adopt a new one. sometimes they only refuse the role they were assigned. sometimes they only adopt a new one. sometimes they only refuse the expectations and restrictions. sometimes they refuse being a boy-male-man or girl-female-woman. sometimes they first do this as a child, sometimes as an adolescent, sometimes as an adult. sometimes they conform to the expectations and restrictions for the role they adopt on purpose, other times less so, other times not at all. sometimes they seek to change their body. rejecting one’s assigned role is an opportunity to escape the pain of the old coercion and find new joys in new, chosen ways of being.

to adopt a new role is simultaneously to adopt that role and to adopt the social position of a role-adopter and the social position of one-who-has-moved-from-that-role-to-this-role. these social positions come with expectations and restrictions in addition to the ones associated with the role adopted. having rejected the assigned role, more possibilities are available to a person. there is a great deal of free choice available for those who are willing to make it. sometimes there are special roles that are never assigned at birth and can only be taken on by someone conscious enough to choose.

gender assignment at birth isn’t an identity, it’s an act of coercion. trans womanhood isn’t a feeling, it’s a particular confluence of adoption and abandonment in a social system premised on gender assignment.

the prospect of discourse fights over “AFAB trans girls” and etc. is unpleasant because they’ll suck super bad and exhaust tons of people for nothing, but more present and disturbing is this even being an issue. understanding the nature of gender assignment is such a keystone in trans theory that i genuinely do not know what models of transness people are functioning on without it.

[sirenesism]

the hilarious part is that the same people who rip your throat out for calling an egg and egg and suggesting hrt to an adult, who dogpile you and pedojacket you for saying that a cis woman has tgirl swag as a joke, are the most ardent defenders of "afab transfems"

[sirenesism]

let's say hypothetically, you dislike the implications of the terms tma and tme, that only transfems are affected by transmisogyny, that there is misdirected transmisogyny or whatever argument you want to trot out today. do you also deny that transfems have a unique relationship with transmisogyny? do you think that transfems lived experiences are not unique? if you say no, of course transmisogyny is real, of course transfems are affected by it more than non-transfems, how are we supposed to talk about it? are we supposed to get a bunch of big smart men in a room and let them come up with a term that's more inclusive because women can't be trusted with serious thinking?

[sirenesism]

with reference to this post. In case you dont want to click through, it's a reddit-style Am I The Asshole post, where someone was posing as transfem (claiming it fit her because she had socially transitioned to man and then decided it didnt fit, and grew her hair back out), and the asker was warning transfems new to their discord server that despite her "relatable transfem" memeing, she wasnt actually trans and so wasnt the person to go to for advice (which she was trying to give!)

i wouldve just responded to that post, but last time i dared to talk about transmisogyny on a tme post about transmisogyny they told me to shut up and make my own so

this is always where mogai/radqueer/"everyone's identity is valid" bullshit was going to lead, isnt it?

I'm. not even sure how to phrase this one, like. some of y'all clearly need schooling, but i did just block everyone in these screenshots and i know my follower list, im preaching to the choir here so.

Identity labels in the queer community, from the start, and fundamentally, are not a method for self-expression. They can be, sometimes, especially with cool stuff like xenogenders and neo-pronouns. But that's not really what they're for.

Just like plenty of words outside the queer community (like indigenous, disabled, homeless, etc) queer identity labels, while they might tell you something about that person, are actually about a relationship to oppression, and to systems of oppression.

If there were no societal or systemic distinction between any gender or sexuality, we wouldnt have labels for them. But we do, and those labels fall into two boxes: "normal" and "queer". Any label in the queer box is opposed to the normal, that's how it works.

So! We all know transphobia exists, right, thats a fair baseline to set? Being trans then, is about a relationship to transphobia and cisnormativity. It's not a fun word you can pick for yourself with no meaning or consequence; its a statement: that if i, as a trans person, dare to live life the way i want to, as the person i want to, i will be setting myself against the normative ideas and systems of gender.

Labeling yourself trans is a political statement.

Trans man and trans woman, are also political statements, setting opposition not just to the concept of immutable binary gender, but towards a specific gender as well. Trans woman says "I can be a woman, even tho I dont fit the traditional definition." Trans man says the same, towards the "man" gender.

Transfem and transmasc are.. annoying. They were intended to be useful political statements ("I might not want to be fully inside the box of man/woman but my existence and lived truth will still force you to reassess what those labels and boxes mean") but they are currently being muddied to the point its difficult to read any coherent statement into them, by shit exactly like whats in the post im referring to

(As an aside, this is why the theyfabs are what they are, and why that word exists. They see being trans as a fun expression word, and often make no political statement with their identity, sometimes even reinforcing the "normal", and also why not every afab nonbinary person is a theyfab)

Anyway we've now reached the point, that someone living in the "normal" box, (a woman who ids with the gender she was assigned at birth, i.e., cis) feels comfortable stealing the word "transfem" to describe herself, merely because she once dared to touch the "queer man" box, so that gives her the right, with literally hundreds of tme queers jumping into the notes to defend her

This is.... bad. Even without bringing up the transmisogyny scary baeddel word, we have a cis person using our political statement, and larping as a trans woman online, giving actual trans women advice on transition from a position of perceived authority, and tme transes ready to die defending her idiot hill.

Like. We know! We know thats shitty and bad when it happens to other marginalized identities! How many fucking times has someone on tumblr been outed as pretending to be black, faking having aids, pretending to be native etc, and immediately lost all credibility.

But for some reason, we've decided queer labels dont have as much weight or meaning. They're not political statements anymore, they're merely marketable demographics. Well fuck that, and fuck you.

Okay, tmes can stop reading here, i'm gonna bring out the scary baeddel word now.

This is also, plain and simple, transmisogyny. This is a person trying to pretend they are a trans woman in order to speak on issues of transfemininity and transmisogyny from a position of perceived authority.

Transmisogyny is the relevant topic of the day in trans spaces online at the moment. Any perceived authority has value within this social space. And I should be clear: The authority on transmisogyny comes from a life of experience being affected by it, from discussion and conversation with other transmisogyny-affected people, and from reading the many and numerous writings of trans women.

And what those authorities inevitably keep saying is that YOU NEED TO UNLEARN TRANSMISOGYNY. And no one wants to hear that, so a hell of a lot of people are in search of a second opinion.

This is why tme trans people are so eager to invent their own word, "transandrophobia", or to obscure their own assigned gender at birth, to oppose tma/tme labels, and to larp as trans women: They want to be able to tell us to shut up, talk over us, and reassure themselves that they're still good queers.

And now, right now, this massive wave of transmisogyny roaring through this side of tumblr, is the direct result of that. Just making a supposition here, but I wouldnt be surprised if its the result of younger queer people just now exploring these queer communities, at a time when everyone is pretending to be the smart knowledgeable authority, and so of course those of us being mean and angry and telling them to unlearn bigotry are just a bunch of baeddels who can be dismissed with a millenia-old slur.

And this is why this shit Is. Not. Okay. whether this wave of transmisogyny is because of young queers or old ones doesnt matter, because the reality is that today, there is someone out there who's never had community, trying to find it. And they're going to find a community that is either actively hostile to them, teaches them to be actively hostile to the most vulnerable members of our community, or they're going to find this corner of tumblr, with a bunch of us too burned-out from all this bullshit.

I cry for that person. I am so sad and angry and just fucking. devastated that this is the state of community for anyone that looks for it on the "queerest place on the internet". I sincerely, desperately hope that those young queers, young trans women especially, can find community offline, with people who are willing to care and listen and dont give a shit about all the petty squabbles of a dying microblogging website.

Cause as it is? They're probably better off looking for community at Susan's Place. And that fucking sucks.

[sirenesism]

i maintain that the whole "tme/tma is a rehashing of agab" bit is just afabs upset that their culpability in transmisogyny is (correctly!) for once equated to cis mens, even when it's done in the most roundabout way. ontologically incapable of violence, and such

[sirenesism]

@molsno hi ! would you by chance have any reading recommendations concerning transmisogyny? you speak very well on what you discuss and I thought you might have some clues