#like my own experience in transmasc-heavy spaces has been positive!

[severalowls]

Its absolutely no coincidence that the people being sent baseless sexual assault accusations against predstrogen have, from what I've seen, been young transmascs.

The terfs behind the harassment campaign are so brazenly trying to prey on anybody they reckon might have any transmisogynist tendencies and are trying to use that to sow discord in the trans community. They see transmasculine people as potential avenues for recruitment (and eventual detransition) and it's extremely fucking important that the people being sent these anons do not fall headfirst for the bait. They want you to go 'uh oh, guess trans women are sex pests after all' and that to stick with you and fester, and turn that seed of prejudice into the continued harm of transfem people.

If you want to be a meaningful ally to transfem people right now you have to be vigilant for this shit, and correct it where you see it. If you think being used as an angle of recruitment by bigoted harassment is gross, imagine how it would feel to be the damn focus of the harassment.

[thedeadflag]

I saw the post about lesbians using he/him pronouns and tbh I think it lacked nuance given every lesbian I've met who does that is a WOC who struggles with being involuntarily distanced from femininity due to racism and/or has linguistic difficulties with English being a colonialistic language that can't really truly convey their specific womanhood. That said, given this is a consequence of racialized misogyny this is a separate issue than white gay men using she/her and I won't defend that.

I mean, as I said in my notes, I’d never personally, individually call anyone out for it, and I get that gender can get complicated for folks, especially across the intersection of race given how femininity in women is positioned in alignment with whiteness, by and large. I won’t pretend to understand that sort of experience. 

I can only speak to my experiences with afab people who use he/him.

And in my experiences, the vast majority of afab folks who have a stable lesbian & woman identity, who also use he/him, have been major transmisogynists and cissexists, similar to the way transmisogynistic/cissexist transmasc folks and trans men in their approach to defining lesbian identity/women’s spaces/lesbian spaces/womanhood/femaleness/etc. (and there is a notable diff between that group’s handling of those concepts and your avg cis lesbian’s) They’re often the first to degender trans women and undermine our womanhood (often coincidentally narrowing womanhood and lesbianism to ‘female experiences’ in ways that almost always distance trans women and keep afab trans masc folks and trans men closer to lesbianism than us) in my experience, far more readily and easily than other lesbians in the community. Anecdotal? Absolutely, and I’m the first to admit that, but that does play a part in how I feel. A lot of the transmisogyny I faced in community spaces came from (or was directed through the community by) folks with he/him pronouns…mostly trans men and trans mascs, but a few butch lesbians, too. 

So that, on top of my own experiences with recognizing that he/him are primarily infused with maleness even if there’s some wiggle room, and that I fought tooth and nail for the she/her pronouns I use as a means of communicating my womanhood?

Yeah, I take some issue with it all. I think it’s a largely cis experience of being able to take up the pronouns of the opposite binary gender and still have a reasonable expectation of maintaining their core gender validity. I think afab nb woman-aligned folks by and large are able to leverage their proximity to their birth assignment in this way as well.  I think this particular form of expression is often cis privilege at play being wielded around often uncritically, with no thought to the existence of trans folks, particularly trans women, and no thought to how that usage impacts trans folks negatively. I think there’s an extensive history of trans dudes and trans mascs using this very reasoning to push trans women and transfem folks out of women’s spaces, out of wlw spaces, and being very successful in the process. I think there’s a link between the reasoning that approves of those pronouns for women and the essentialist bullshit that distances/excludes trans women from womanhood and lesbianism while holding up birth assignment and socialization as essential, and simply tagging on a “this is inclusive to trans butches” does nothing to erase that.  

I can wrap my head around why some would do it instead of opting for gender neutral pronouns given the right argument, and I can even respect some of those reasons well enough, while recognizing there are some reasons I will lack the experience to be able to understand. Still, unless it’s a language barrier issue of someone coming from an inherently gendered language, whose folks have their own way of navigating gender and sexuality through language that don’t translate to English…then yeah, I’m almost certainly going to be uncomfortable and wary around those folks until they prove they can be trusted. 

When the majority of afab non-men I’ve encountered who use he/him have reproduced transmisogyny at the same degree and fervor as trans men and trans mascs, I’m not going to give them the benefit of the doubt. They’d have to make it explicitly clear that they hold no transmisogyny or cissexism inside them before I stop expecting them to behave and think like male and male-aligned folks in the community.

It’s complicated stuff, and I have no doubt it causes a lot of heartbreak and pain and confusion for a hell of a lot of folks. However, I have to prioritize trans women above all others. And I know the impact this sort of thing has had on us, and it’s not good, so I have an obligation to be critical of it and boost the voices of those directly affected (trans butches). A solid chunk of lesbians of colour do use those pronouns (I’ve personally seen more white afab lesbians use them, but I do recognize it’s a more popular form of expression among woc in general), and as a white woman, it’s not my place to tell them they can’t ID certain ways, or can’t express themselves in ways that help them navigate the racialized misogyny they face. 

But any time transmisogyny or cissexism pops up, that’s going to affect me. And while I sincerely hope my past has been an outlier, and things will be much much better in the future within this context, I’ve come to expect a heavy dose of transmisogyny and trans male/trans masc-style bullshit from people in the wlw community using he/him pronouns. Such folks have very rarely managed to avoid sinking down to my expectations, so I’ll refrain from trusting them and will view them as a threat until proven otherwise. I think that’s about as fair a compromise as I could provide on that front.