#disclaimer im afab nonbinary btw. if transfemmes have anything to add be my guest

[thosemintcookies]

Cw: transmisogyny, as in, discussions of

I keep seeing really shitty takes out there in the world about transmisogyny and even transmascs (who should really know better) acting really badly about the whole concept but we have to be really really honest about how patriarchy, transphobia, bioessentialism (plus racism and colonialism but we font have time for that here) all interact to produce transmisogyny, which isn't just transphobia + misogyny.

Because lbr, transmasc people are also subject to transphobia. Like obviously. And therefore, having their masculine gender derided and negated, they are also subject to misogyny because they are assumed to be women.

But its about the dominant patriarchal and bioessentialist narratives we have: specifically about the "aggressive," "ugly" penis, about the amab body as inherently violent, and about femininity as inherently lesser than masculinity. Its about narratives of predation automatically being applied to transfemmes in ways it is not applied to transmascs.

Like we have genuinely be nuanced about this. It's not just about trans men getting male privilege (which lbr, doesn't apply in all cases) but about the ways shitty transphobic narratives harm transfemmes specifically.

Its about how mainstream society privileges masculinity and maleness and that therefore, transfemmes, who are seen as failed men and, in desiring femininity (of any expression) which further marginalizes them, are seen as more "degenerate" than their transmasc counterparts. Its about this specific narrative. It's about how cisnormativity can't understand why someone with male privilege would "want to be" a woman (because they can't conceive of a woman just being a woman by virtue of being a woman). It's about that dissonance being resolved through characterization of transfemmes as predators.

Like yes trans men experience their own struggles distinxt from trans women but the whole thing about transandrophobia and transmisandry is getting pretty transmisogynistic.

And this is the limitation of the model of thinking about marginalization solely through the lens of "privilege" and who has/does not have it. Because there are some trans femmes (who are not out, who have masculine names, who choose to present in masculine ways, etc) who may still experience male privilege in certain contexts. But the narratives that harm them and dehumanize them still exist and harm them through transmisogyny. The framework here is about dehumanizing narratives. Not solely privilege, because this is an extemely murky discussion and is not straightforward. Though let's also be honest, transfemme bodies are not treated in our mainstream society with the reverence they should be.

(Though to be actually precise here: trans men are exempt from transmisogyny and that is a privilege)

(To a lesser degree, I think this was the problem of trying to discuss anti-asian racism because in a lot of ways Asian people in White Society do not have the same struggles of being erased through genocide and dehumanized as commodity. Asians do have a economic privileges because our exclusion from immigration meant we don't have the same connection to genocide and slavery in our histories on settler colonial states for the most part. But we're still poc and the ways we get dehumanized and used as model minorities to justify racism to other groups is still not ideal. Asian labour is devalued, and struggles of identity and cultural consildation also get erased.)