#like no trans men are not comparing all trans women to terfs when we say that tma/tme dichotomy echoes radfem rhetoric. like it or not.

[8-evil-annoying-catboys]

sometimes i see a take on transness that truly demonstrates that someone has never talked to a trans person who is not of the same coercively assigned sex at birth as them and i simply have to sigh heavily, unfollow the person who put that shit on my dash, and move on

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/746553097204203521/the-fandom-hates-women-response-to-lack-of-ff

The "fandom hates women" part of it comes from the fact that fandom as an entity just doesn't watch the kind of media that draws femslash, even if it ticks all of the boxes of things those very same people say they like. There are so many times I've watched a show that I've seen mega-popular Tumblr posts wishing existed, and then the fandom is so, so small comparatively and often in general. There have been superheroes, vampire/supernatural shows, fantasy shows, movies, books, the list goes on, that feel like they were generated out of Tumblr's desires for ideal fandom media, and everyone knows they're never going to attract anywhere near the same attention for fandom and fanworks because the common denominator just tends to be that if there isn't a full ensemble of attractive men to ship either with each other or with the women, fandom's not interested.

So it's not about prioritizing women in that sense, it's about people witnessing hypocrisy over and over again the second a show doesn't have a mostly-male ensemble. The people who are in these fandoms are frustrated that good faith attempts to get people interested are met with every excuse in the book that all eventually boils down to "I don't like watching stuff with women in it as much as I like watching stuff with men in it." And if that's how people feel about it... sometimes the conclusions are going to turn into the more uncharitable take of "fandom hates women."

--

Maybe, but whenever I see a "fandom hates women" reblog of my stuff, one or two reblogs further down the chain I get an overt TERF. I just had to go block several people today, in fact.

The first person to reblog with a comment like that is usually subtle, but their friends and friends of friends are not. The rhetoric that very quickly starts is the fandom equivalent of that "All the butches are becoming trans men! We're losing lesbians!" stuff.

Here's the thing: I've been in ten billion fandoms that were so awesome and fit fandom's supposed tastes to a T and yet no amount of promoting them could get anyone to try the canon. This goes for canons that are all men or all white men or all majority ethnicity men or whatever else.

The default state of media is to not engender a big fic fandom.

I agree that the rare outliers mostly follow certain patterns, but we extrapolate too far when we say that a lack of those patterns is why a fandom is small.

A fandom is small because that's the near-universal default.

--

Yes, a small slice of fandom consists of guilt-ridden queer fujoshi who say they want more f/f but don't make much of a move to make that happen. I tend to run into that a lot because of my own tastes and having friends who share those tastes.

Far more of fandom is people talking generally about how representation matters without saying they would personally join these fandoms if they existed.

Neither group is large enough to be the real reason some woman-heavy canon fails to take off to HP levels.

The real reason is not hypocrisy but the fact that most things don't take off like that. Most things without massive, massive audiences especially don't take off like that. And the very few things that do are flukes and don't actually predict that another similar thing will take off in the future.

--

Go to AO3's tag search. Search for all canonical fandom tags. Sort by uses and descending order.

Right now, I get 64,390 tags.

The first page, 50 tags, goes from HP with 497,845 works to the Thor movies with 59,266 works. By page 6, we're below 10 thousand works.

By the end of page 10, we're down to Labyrinth with 3,906.

Somewhere in the top 500 AO3 fandom tags (many of which are just franchise metatags for each other), we go all the way from megafandoms to medium size and down to relatively modest ones.

That's not a lot of room for a big f/f-heavy fandom given the trends in mainstream media and that mainstream media is where most really big fandoms come from.

--

I also notice that you're conflating a lack of desire to watch something that's primarily about women with a lack of desire to watch something that includes women.

There are tons of fans who want something more like The Mummy with a leading man and leading woman they love.

Granted, that's not me and that's not a lot of my fujoshi/slasher audience, but it's extraordinarily common. I know plenty of people who don't like canons that are only dudes, but since they also don't like canons that are only ladies and they don't ship f/f, this gets spun into "fandom hates women".

--

Let me be clear:

Conflating "lesbians" and "women" is a radfem position.

[euniexenoblade]

I'm transmasc and I don't think I completely understand the discussion around TMA/TME.

I'm pretty sure I mostly agree with you. Like, "transandrophobia" is not a helpful or accurate description of the transmasc experience, and I can see how it could be used to belittle what transfems go through.

Transfems definitely get more attention from hate groups. Transmasc erasure sucks, but it can definitely be a blessing when the bigots are picking their targets.

I keep seeing posts comparing trans men to incels and MRAs. I haven't seen many transmascs who would warrant that comparison.

That's not to say it's necessarily an unfair comparison. On the contrary, it probably means that there's a lot of transmisogyny going around that I'm not seeing. And if I'm not seeing it, that probably means I'm inadvertently participating in it.

IDK why I felt the need to send this to you. I guess I was hoping you'd tell me how to do better, which totally isn't your job. Feel free to ignore me and/or tell me to fuck off.

I'll send you $20 for tolerating my bullshit. Have a nice day.

Ok I wanna answer this before I get too high (I'm honestly feeling it already). Thank you for the $20, when I realized I forgot to pack a lunch today that money helped me eat still so legit thank you.

So first off, "trans women get more attention from hate groups, transmasc erasure sucks but can be a blessing." (I can't copy and paste on this screen, so I'm paraphrasing) yes but I wouldn't call erasure a blessing, no matter who it's for. They're two sides of a very fucked coin, on the one side transfems get lots of attention and vitriol, and the erasure of transmascs makes it harder for some transmascs to understand they can be trans. But on top of that, the form of transfems we see are never real representation, 99% of the time it's a transmisogynistic ideal of trans women, it's the weirdo white boy spreading lipstick all over their face just before they smash the mirror in a fit of "dysphoria" kind of shit. Though transfems have extreme visibility, our actual selves are not visible, we are ultra violet rapist horn dogs or we're the super ignorant, super emotional crybaby.

And, a side tangent, cuz you sorta did a thing the transandrodorks do that is frustrating. It's not a measurement of what's "worse." That's not how oppression works, that's not what we are saying, we are talking about the forms of oppression.

Men are not oppressed for being men. They can be oppressed for a variety of things, racism, ableism, interphobia (is this the right term I forget), homophobia, etc etc. Masculinity is rewarded, masculinity is the desire, patriarchy exists so men get to be above women. Things like "misandry" do not exist, they are inventions of violently misogynistic men, your MRAs, your incels, your conservatives (this includes liberals btw).

The person who coined "transandrophobia" used to talk about wanting to correctively rape lesbians. I'm not gonna go at someone's kinks, but the blog was not presented as a kink blog, I literally went there myself and read the posts when this first popped off and they come off as true lesbophobia in the context of their blog and coupled with the misandry posting, this person literally looks like MRAs and incels. The defense the community uses is "it's a kink are you kink shaming?? It was on a private locked blog!" Which, the latter, no it wasn't, I literally went there and looked, and the former. Idk I think if you're saying you want correctively rape lesbians while also talking about misandry and counting "transandrophobia," you look misogynistic and homophobic.

The main writers people follow for transandrophobia related content are straight up liars, who make shit up, and one specific non horse entity consistently cites himself as his own "source" and when he doesn't, he cites terf blogs that are connected to kiwifarms and sites of the sort. They will take bits talked about in feminism and present it as a thing they discovered and present it as transandrophobia. Ie. "Men can't show any femininity and can't cry and that's misandry" despite things like this are discussed at length in feminist texts, men can't do these things cuz that makes them more "woman" in the societal lens. Yeah it's fucked, but it's misogyny, not misandry.

I am, consistently, misgendered by the transandrodorks, and so is every other trans woman that disagrees with them. And it's definitely intentional.

Then there are token trans women who don't know much of anything about feminism or transphobia and will straight up harass you for saying women are oppressed. They often weaponize transmisogyny against other transfems, they misgender, suicide bait, or in velvetvexations case, will stalk your blog for two days even though you ignore her and when she's sees you're on a date with your wife, she goes to your wife's blog and starts messaging her instead. Legit, this woman is one of the worst people on this website, the only reason she's not seen as communismkills 2 is cuz men like her.

On top of this, terfs consistently support "transandrophobia" as a concept and constantly say that transandrophobia is compatible with terf ideology. The transandrodork community is ripe with terfs and crypto terfs. Like that one who said he hoped a friend and I get raped, cuz saying "men arent oppressed" warrants wishing rape on people. Or the trans guy that outright said "trans women are male" and tripled down harder saying "trans women don't experience misogyny and oppress transmascs cuz they're really men," claims that were so wild that even velvetvexations couldn't agree with them lol.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: not every person that believes in transandrophobia is a bigot or a bad person. A lot are just young transmascs who are under read about oppression and history, and this terf/transphobe community swoops in and pretends to be representing them and sucks them in. For every disparaging transmisogynist piece, there's two more that are talking about the problems of transmascs. So when you tell these guys "that's a hate group" they don't remember the post calling trans women men, they remember stuff about T being super illegal. So they think we are attacking them for having a problem, not the actual bigotry on display.

Honestly, if these people would just stop misgendering trans women, they might have more trans women who'd be nice to em. But that's the consistent trend.

Transandrophobia is a violent, transmisogynistic ideology that is propped up by terf ideology. That's why they are compared to MRAs and incels.

[pillarsalt]

I'm in friend groups with trans women and I can't help but notice that my opinions get dismissed a lot compared to them.

The other day I was pointing out misogyny from a gay dude in a group and a trans woman agreed with me. He listened to her not me, she got an apology and I didn't. We said literally the same things.

I'm losing my mind. I can't talk about misogyny because I'm worried I'll get called a TERF. I honestly don't care about what people want to identity as and I'll be happy to oblige but I hate how I can't talk about how we have different needs. Like sure trans people perceived as their gender are in the same group as me, but they face specific fetishization or discrimination that they can talk about and have a word for but if I want to talk my issues being a cis woman I can't. I have to put 200 disclaimers to say I'm not a Bad Person.

Like it genuinely pisses me off so bad when issues get diluted out of misogyny. Like people refusing to say the abortion bans affect primarily women and are women's issues. Non progressive circles ignore me because they hate women and progressive circles don't care about misogyny unless it's towards trans women. I'm ignored everywhere.

This is why it's both hilarious and hair-tearingly frustrating when men who identify as women claim that everyone (especially women) are nicer to them when they are "seen as" women. Really it's that people see men who want others to treat them like women, and treat them not as women, but as a special class of men whose desire to control the way they are perceived is of dire importance. So important that they will threaten dissenters with violence and social ostracization. Have you ever seen any misogynistic man threatened by women with violence for insulting and dehumanizing women? And then how many women are threatened with assault, the loss of her livelihood, even murder for simply asserting that male and female people have different experiences and needs for social services? for refusing to capitulate to the assertion that someone born male can become a woman? for acknowledging a worldwide history of institutional sex-based injustice and subjugation? It isn't that the majority of people actually perceive transwomen as women; they are afraid of what the consequences will be if they don't bend to the fiction about a subcategory of men who are upheld as divinely infallible (and somehow, the epitome of womanhood). And as usual, male opinions, desires, feelings are prioritized over the dignity and class consciousness of female people.

Speaking of consequences, unfortunately, the current state of things means that talking unabashedly about misogyny, even non-trans-related misogyny, makes you a target for "terf" accusations. That's why it's so important that as many women as possible speak up about it. The animosity that feminists endure for talking about misogyny, the oppression and subjugation that women, female people, endure, is not new. "Terf" is just a new iteration of witch, bitch, feminazi. The same old venom. Women have been villainized for fighting back against misogyny throughout history, and even under a veneer of progressivism, male supremacy remains the same. You should not be made to feel like you are a bad person for pointing out obvious inequality. And you don't have to just take it. More and more women are realizing what a sham it all is, you aren't alone. It's hard to stand up for what's right when it's unpopular to do so, but it's very very necessary.

Be well, anon.

[snekdood]

rewatching that video natalie made about cringe and she gets to a point where shes talking about how there were trans women using “cringe” trans women as examples of Bad Transgenders Which They Are Not and how they’ll go as far as to misgender and dismiss their transition to justify their exclusion. and i really think yall need to read this and internalize it and realize you’re doing this about trans men who talk about our oppression:

(in reference to the video clip she’s responding to, she says;) “Rose… gorg. Jessica Yaniv is not one of "the biggest characters in the world" at any moment. This is not a world historical figure. At the end of the day, this is a more or less random civilian sex fiend off the streets of Vancouver BC. The only reason anyone has heard of her at all, is that Vanessa decided to go full "To Catch a Predator" and turn this grimy reprobate into a minor anti-celebrity. She's not one of the biggest characters in the world. But it sounds like what she is Rose, is one of the important characters in your brain.

This is distorted thinking. It's like A-Log comparing Chris-Chan to Hitler. You're so deep in the morbid cringe obsession that you've lost perspective. And I'm sure you have what seem to you like perfectly logical reasons for devoting so much attention to this. And I know that videos about Yaniv get a lot of views, so I'm sure that's a factor too. But Rose, I also know a morbid cringe obsession when I see one. And I know that being a visible trans woman on the Internet is more difficult than most people can imagine. And I know that pretty much every trans person is bullied or shamed or humiliated at some point in our lives. And I know how good it can feel to take all the horrible things that transphobes and bullies and TERFs have said about us, and repeat those things verbatim about some “big, fat, fake, dangerous, delusional, disgusting male fetishist”.

Oh, it feels good to get to be the TERF for once. It feels good to be the judge rather than the judged. Because when you point the finger at someone else, you're also pointing away from yourself. And it's not lost on me that in conservative circles, queer people are often treated like suspected sex criminals by default. So there's safety in being the one who spearheads the “think-of-the-children” type moral crusade. And when you expose a trans predator, you get that feeling of safety plus the relief of having someone in particular to blame for the shame and the stigma we all feel. Jessica Yaniv is the reason people hate us. But that's just not true. It's a simple answer to a complicated problem. It's scapegoating.

When I look at the Yaniv obsession on trans YouTube, I see a community trying to cope with stigma and hoping that destroying a scapegoat will bring relief. It's basically a blood sacrifice. It's not rational. It feels good for a moment, but it's an addiction. It won't ever erase the stigma and the shame. And Yaniv is simply the latest and most deserving in a long line of bad transgenders who aren't real transgenders and are giving us a bad name and are the reason people hate us and must be condemned and destroyed.

But when Yaniv is finally gone, when you get her sent to prison or whatever your goal is, you're just gonna find a new scapegoat to take her place. And the shame cycle continues. The humiliation and bullying we've experienced is internalized as shame. When we project that shame onto scapegoats and onto each other, it becomes cringing and contempt. And we voice that contempt by shaming other people, which starts a new cycle.

So you can keep finding new scapegoats, new punching bags, new shamedumps, new lolcows, and you can wind up like one of the people who's been archiving Chris-Chan for 13 years. But that will never really heal us.”

‘n i kinda feel like thats whats going on right now....

[genderkoolaid]

the whole point of that anon was saying that there is not always a study that can "prove" things but that you should listen to the female victims of trans women and the many, many examples of outed trans rapists who are female/afab compared to those who are male/amab. you posting a study saying there's no pattern doesn't prove anything because the whole point is so much of rape can't be documented legally, esp when there's social pressure not to report bc you will be called a bigot or terf

Man there have been multiple anons I've gotten from trans men talking about being sexually assaulted by trans women and how they were afraid to talk about it because they didn't want to give more ammunition to y'all. You make it harder for people to talk about this kind of interpersonal violence because they don't want to be associated with people who lie about the very real oppression trans women face. Because the rest of us would like to be able to discuss this shit without acting like trans women are privileged or especially dangerous when the truth is they are just people who can do evil shit. & the reason there are "so many cases" is because y'all are fucking obsessed with trans women being rapists. That's why there are millions of news articles foaming at the mouth every time a trans woman could have potentially sexually assaulted someone. The idea that society at large is protective over trans women is fucking laughable, especially with the amount of police brutality trans women face.

You can make this exact same shitty argument for Black men too and racists do it all the time. How many cis woman rapists are out there? Do you know how wildly underreported is that?

I don't doubt you seriously are concerned about rape victims but I also am very sure that everything you say and do is motivated far more by your need to demonize trans women than your desire for accuracy and truth. Because the only way we should be having a conversation about trans women who have sexually assaulted others is in a context which fully acknowledges their very real oppression, and does not view them as radically different from the many, many cis women who are also sexual predators. But again, you are more motivated by your bias against trans women than anything, so the vast underreporting of sexual violence done by cis women is ignorable while any single thing a trans woman does wrong is representative of a population-wide trait. Any evidence of trans women's oppression is written off while you pretend like there are people getting rich as hell off of fearmongering about trans women being rapists, because that's what people WANT TO BELIEVE.

Saying "trans women are rapists" isn't transgressive or brave, its the status quo. If you actually want to help rape victims, stop living in your fantasy world where trans women are catered to by the justice system.

[velvetvexations]

My controversial opinion about gendered socialization is that it IS real, with two caveats:

1) it is inherently trauma. Whether you are cis or trans, gender socialization is about conforming to binary gender standards, and that requires the repression of the self for any ' inappropriate ' traits

2) it is not universally experienced across culture or individual. I see gender socialization as, for example, when schools divide teams into boys versus girls and when children are discouraged from engaging with other children of the 'other gender' and when children are punished for their interests- it's something done to us by systems of power tied to White Binary Genders. Not something inherent to us, or monolithic. I *would* say we're better about this now but I think we're just different about it.

I do see myself as "socialized female" under the White American Gender Binary - I was the only child in my family who was taught how to tend a home and was told over and over (as a literal child) that the reason I had to tend the home was because I was a girl; I was pressured from pre-school age to marry and reproduce because Girl, my interests and skills were clipped and oppressed if they didn't tie in to stereotypical feminity because No One Will Marry You If You're Like That. And I saw it happen in its own way with my little brother, and how to make him conform to masculinity they socialized him in ways that weren't natural to him and denied him his interests and belittled his emotions (as a literal! Child!); and while I can only speak for myself, I think refusing to teach your son how to clean a house because you can just make your daughter do it since you've been making her do it for so long she's the only one in the house who can, is socializing both of them into tradcon gender roles. And I also don't think I had it that bad compared to other people I've known in regards to the trauma of binary socialization, because my parents were actually TRYING to be progressive and "let" me be a tomboy.

The fact that gendered socialization always comes back to claiming women are victimized empaths and men are emotionless sex pests is infuriating, when I want to have a conversation about systems of gender conformity and how that's weaponized against children everywhere from the home to their educational buildings. IMO as a non binary person, gender socialization is an element of how the binary sustains itself and we NEED to find a way to talk about it without falling into radfem nonsense.

I think that's somewhat different, at least enough that I wouldn't refer to it by the sane name.

When TERFs talk about gendered socialization, it's in the context of how an AMAB person will have been raised to have specific beliefs and patterns of behavior that makes them a risk. The idea is that every AMAB person runs a very high risk of having fully internalized, for instance, the idea that they should just get a woman to do all their cleaning for them. Basically, the idea of socialization is, imo, more centered around the end result of what you're describing, and mostly serves as a deterministic model of male behavior rooted in radical feminist separatism. Instead of doing anything about how children are "socialized", they just take for granted that AMAB people are programmed one (violent, selfish) way and AFAB people another (safe, innocent) way.

I don't think much if any radfem ideology actually has any interest in engaging with how children are raised - like that one post I love so much says, they can't imagine a world where feminism is actually successful and society is deprogramed of harmful memes, so they don't even try and are focused simply on separating "men" and "women". So like, everything you said is definitely correct, but it's my view that it should be kept conceptually distinct from the other thing.

[neotrances]

What opinion?

on my old blog i was talking about the porn industry preying on marginalized communities namely corporal giants knowingly hosting trafficking material / underage material / swarms of incredibly racist and bigoted content and ignoring the people begging to have their content taken down / introspection of the content being hosted on their platforms and how different irl sex work (stripping, full service, escorts) is from onlyfans and essentially how different irl sw is from camming regarding basic risk and battery ect ect and ppl got rlly mad about it but my main point is not that swers cant make choices or shouldn’t have the right to make their career however they see fit bit that the industry is deeply misogynistic in nature and saying so is not an attack on them but rather a criticism of why sex sells, namely the discussion had points about the differences of how statistically transfems swers have a wildly different experience with sw compared to people who offer services solely online and we should be listening to experiences from all sw and not just online creators who have the opportunity to screen and choose clientele that many irl swers do not have, only bringing this up bc of seeing mutuals comment on a post where the op centers men who pay for sex services and incels (they specifically mentioned incels im not just calling these clientele incels) as ‘sad’ and in needing of defense for mild mockery, which to me i don’t find the act of purchasing porn or paying someone for sex inherently harmful to a degree but i don’t understand how mildly being like “lol this guy had to pay someone to sleep with him” is bad or evil especially when the op themselves mentioned incels in regards to who could be clients as if being a self identified incel isn’t an inherently misogynistic state, yadda yadda before someone gets mad no im not a terf, trans women r women, and trans women across the board make up a large portion of irl sex workers specifically bc of facing transphobia that often makes it hard for them to remain in the regular workforce, feminism has to be intersectional or it is meaningless, criticizing industries that are built on the backs of mostly women is not an attack on women who participate but just a criticism of how they are often not protected and subjected to unfair treatment by their bosses and the police force, i think my experience of growing up and mainly seeing curb escorts in my community as well as being trafficked myself has given me a lot of ig perspective? i think the convo is more nuanced than “all clients are saints and if u joke about them being lame ur just a misandrist / hate sex workers” and i also dislike how a lot of the conversation centers online sw when a majority of swers are irl workers, not to say online sw isn’t real and has no risk but that it is a different ball park

[yuridovewing]

this is in no way pro-terf, their ideology is absolutely vile, but a lot of people have begun using “terfy” as a replacement for whining about misandry & associating being a terf w any kind of hate on men. which arguably feels more transmisogynistic, considering that it’s mostly trans women who are terf’s victims? i guess the argument is that the sisters are bioessentialist or whatever but i don’t think it’s fair for us to fault them for that assumption. we don’t know how they would treat a trans cat when trans cats *do not exist* in warrior cats bc the WRITERS refuse to write them in. take it up with them! you’re making things up and getting mad about them! enjoying the sqh readthrough ^-^

(gonna preface this with saying i am tme for clarity's sake)

yeah. just yeah. thats what bugs me about the terf argument, it feels like its coming from people who's definition of "terf" means "woman who's kinda mean to men" and not "political ideology that wants to eradicate trans women". i do think its important to be able to distinguish when someone is talking bioessentialist ideals and using "men" when they really mean "trans women"... but some people have taken that to mean "anyone who criticizes misogyny and how some men uphold it are actually closet terfs". which leads to actual trans women getting called terfs for talking about their own oppression (bc yknow. they're affected by misogyny), which is unacceptable to me. it also ignores how terfs actually ally themselves with cis men more often if it means abusing trans women.

anyways, the sisters have issues. but i think holding them accountable like they're real people and not poorly written writing devices is a little disingenuous. i find it hard to get angry over the exile thing when in this very book, squilf is demeaned and abused and treated like dogshit compared to her male love interest. when squilf's idea of being "useful" is having more children, which isn't really challenged by the narrative and really just gets resolved with "she shuts up and learns to be a grandma". when in the main series, its literally a trope for there to be a male protagonist that shits all over his "perfect" sister. when even in this no men society people are upset about, the women cannot fathom not having children (line said by moonlight in this book). the writers cannot entice me with the "in this world, men are oppressed" premise here.

i think applying a queer lens to what we consume is a valuable thing to do, and there is something to say about how the sisters are presented. but we also have to acknowledge author's intent, and lbr, the sisters do not exist to say anything about trans people at all. they're like that because they're based on irl cat colonies, and are formed by the author's strange views on women.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Ayyy.

So I got a little into the tags on this one. And it's wild. (Transphobia discourse ahead including brief mentions of sexual violence, physical violence, and police and prisons. feel free to scroll past if you don't want to see it.) (btw I'm talking trans fem and trans masc a lot and I realize some non-binary people don't think either term is really applicable to them and...I think that's legit I just don't know what to say about it. Apart from yeah exorsexism is also its own thing. Sorry.)

Here look. Do trans women and trans femmes have some pretty epic issues that are much more a thing they face than a thing that trans mascs face? Of course. If I walk down the street in a short haircut and a binder, I'm not going to be especially worried that a cop will decide to harass me because they think I'm a sex worker. I'm not at especially high risk of a lover murdering me because he's so freaked out at the idea of maybe being a little bit gay because the woman he fucked turned out to not have been born in a body the doctors recognized as female. If I get arrested, well, a lack of hearing about transmasc prison horror stories does not mean they don't exist, but I have heard transfem prison horror stories and they are horrific.

Plus the extra layer of some feminists (terfs) being utterly convinced that trans women are a unique and terrifying threat to feminism and should not be allowed in women's spaces or to even, like...work for feminist organizations? Anyways. It's a whole thing.

And I've known about at least some of this stuff for as long as I've known about any trans issues. And it's horrifying and very much worth talking about and doing stuff about. And it also as far as I can tell does get talked about extensively when people talk about trans issues at all. Which I mean. They often don't.

At the same time, I have also seen a sort of overcorrection, more from cis people than trans people I think, to go "well ok clearly we have to draw the line somewhere, if feminism can include trans fems we have to exclude someone so I guess that means feminism does not apply to trans mascs."

Which is ludicrous.

Misogyny affects trans fems. Street harassment and job discrimination and a million other feminist issues affect trans women. (In fact, trans fems often offer a uniquely valuable perspective on these things, as they can compare how people treat them at different stages of how other people see them.) Misogyny affects trans fems, again not surprisingly because is there any group of women that misogyny does not affect, so feminism should include trans fems.

And misogyny affects trans mascs. Abortion access and contraception access affects us. The restrictions placed on girls affect us, since most of us didn't transition at age two. Clothes without pockets often affect us. Sexual harassment and sexual assault and unfortunately in some cases corrective rape affect us. And here look, I pretty much look like a cis woman who doesn't shave her body hair, but trans masc who look like guys have this really unpleasant problem where often they still need "women's health care", Pap smears and whatnot, because "women" need a lot of health care, while looking like guys, where the worst scenario is getting refused care and the next worst one is getting care but being misgendered the entire time and the best case scenario of getting appropriate care and not being misgendered and also not being slammed by dysphoria or the psychological residue of past health care experiences too hard, is hard to find. Ok?

If misogyny affects trans mascs, and again it does, then trans mascs belong in feminism, ie the struggle against misogyny.

If misogyny affects trans mascs in a way that intersects with transphobia -- if trans mascs get special experiences that are much more common for them than for either cis women or trans fems or cis men -- then there should be a word for that. And in theory you could talk about transmisogyny to cover both, because hey intersection of transphobia and misogyny what else are you going to call it, but a lot of people are deeply convinced that transmisogyny means specifically the oppression that trans fems expeiences so it's almost less effort to just coin a new term than to fight over what transmisogyny should mean. So. Here we are.

It's really wild that any of this is controversial. Let alone that people will get so intensely angry about it.

[mouseratz]

trandsandrophobia/transmisandry discourse ahead. sorry. warned you.

sigh. yes transphobia against trans men is real. but it's called transphobia. it's not because we are men it's because we aren't seen as men. therefore, not misandry, even if misandry was a real widespread issue (it is not). also, transmisogyny isn't just transphobia against trans women. it is the result of both the ways society hates trans people and hates women.

Comparatively, there is no "intersection" at the issues trans men face, because it's just about being trans, not actually about being a man (because, and say it with me: society at large, structurally, does not hate men.) we do face some specific issues when we are targeted by transphobia! but that's.....what it is. misandry isn't at play. they just hate us for not being cis & straight.

terfs & radfems may genuinely hate men and are bioessentialist dickheads, but they are not society at large & the beliefs that are gaining traction are the ones that they ally with regular flavor misogynists over, the transphobic goals they prioritize over any specifically feminist beliefs; and while they say they hate men, they don't really go out of their way to harass cis men, do they? Rarely, if so, and not to the extent they harass trans people (they look to trans men for "recruitment", even, because they so truly don't believe we are men. If they did, they'd probably leave us alone, because they don't really have any problem with cis men who stay in their lane, so to speak.) If they truly hated all men as much as they said they did, you wouldn't see them licking so many fascist cis men's boots. hence, you can't even find real individual, not structural, "misandry" there, they just say they feel that way cause it's convenient (and really, when you're a fascist's friend, you'll say whatever belief is most convenient to you- whatever belief gets rid of the people you don't like in society. They have already given up their moral integrity & consistency in favor of this, once they've gone far enough down the far-right hole.)

anyway. so that's why I think talking about trans men's issues isn't wrong, because they are there.....but so many of the discussions around them are woefully off track. even really when you take misandry out of the name, to be honest, because even when you take that word out, the concept is changed none at all, bc the underlying concept wasn't unpacked. so........that's just how I view it.

[radkindoffeminist]

There's a social media influencer/political commentator that I follow on Instagram. She hates the Tories and I agree with her on 99% of things. But today she's put a 7 slide post up containing statistics showing transphobic crimes but with no context, the last slide just says Fuck Terfs, and half of her post is just going to town about feminists who don't include transwomen in their feminism.

It's just sooo disheartening. How can you profess to be a trans ally and yet send all your vitriol towards women who say biological sex matters actually, rather than the men committing these crimes? How can you put up statistics showing the rise in homophobic crimes at the same time as transphobic crimes and not see the potential link? As per usual, anyone who tries to point out that not agreeing with every facet of trans ideology doesn't make them hateful, gets piled on. I really think if people could post anonymously on Instagram, there'd be far more people willing to speak out against this nonsense. But as it stands, you just end up getting thrown to the wolves.

When will this nonsense end 🙄

Yeah, it fucking sucks. Especially when they put up the numbers with no context or comparatives to make it out like trans people are suffering so much. Like, the worst one is the people who put up that list of all the trans people who are murdered in a year as evidence that they’re so heavily victimised, but then when you work out the numbers you realise that trans people are murdered at lower rates. They simply ignore that fact because it doesn’t feed into their delusion of being the most victimised group ever.

It’s also just funny, though really sad, that people have this massive disconnect when it comes to trans people. Like, with every other movement we have evidence and historic stories. We have mothers who couldn’t leave abusive relationships, we have statistics on domestic violence, we have laws which prevented financial freedom. PoC struggle with police brutality and poverty, among a host of other issues. Trans people… don’t feel validated and believe that they’re targeted for being trans and that’s enough evidence to make them the most oppressed people ever? Oh, and let’s not forget how much it feeds into then ignoring women’s issues and silencing them.

[vintage-bentley]

Comparing jk to men accused of SA is a whole new low. It was a shock to see that post

A woman that won’t back down in her protection of women and girls rights and safety is the same or worse than r*pe to them? Shows how far they are removing themselves from reality and is just scary tbh

Tumblr/Twitter has been just as radicalized and extremist as facebook just in a different way. No one is allowed to have even slightly different feelings or views. No one is allowed to voice even discomfort

Just upsetting the mere fact the second a woman wont just fall in line, shut up and obey it’s totally ok for death/r*pe threats and to dehumanize her and i have seen people here cheer on the physical violence on women cause it’s ok to assault “terfs” and a terf is anyone that won’t obey

I was on the bandwagon but this is the shit that pushed me off and is really turning more and more against the movement. It feels like dressed up homophobia and anti women

It’s been about a month since this was sent—sorry for taking so long to answer!—, and this is still happening. There are currently five different women who’ve credibly accused NG of sexual abuse, and people are still comparing him to JKR.

The only comparison that’s appropriate to make is pointing out the enormous difference in how people reacted to both situations. When JKR made a very lukewarm, barely offensive tweet making fun of gender neutral language for women’s issues like menstruating…everyone declared her a hateful awful person and started burning her books and making “jokes” about wanting her to be raped and/or dead. She stands firm in her position, and it gets worse. Because she believes biological sex and rights/protections based upon it are real and important…she becomes the face of Evil Celebrity.

But NG is accused of rape, and admits to having sexual relationships with young women who he holds significant power over as either a celebrity they’re a fan of, or their employer…and it’s all “we don’t have enough information!” And “he’s not a monster, he’s human!” And “I don’t like the news source so the women must be lying” and “well actually one of the reporters believes women are female so she’s a terf which means this is actually a terf conspiracy because NG said trans rights on tumblr”.

The difference in how people are reacting to both situations, and how people are treating JKR vs NG, are fair things to discuss. But to use their names in the same sentence when talking about Bad Celebrities? To say “this is just like what happened with JKR”? Or worse, to say that somehow the JKR situation was worse than NG’s, and while she’s completely unforgivable, he’s still redeemable??? Absolutely disgusting. A woman having opinions, even ones you find wrong, is nowhere near being in the same category as a man abusing his power to take advantage of women.

[pineapplerightsideupcake]

ah, the radfem blogs.

god, I love familiarizing myself with your guys rhetoric. (Or should I say girls??) (are there any male radfems???) (is it like only women??? Because I’m literally a feminist times 7, but idk what’s going on here.)

I try and exist, and my trans moots and friends and you guys just appear out of the wood work and just be so awful for literally no reason.

like, you guys say trans people are all awful. I’m really saddened by that because that’s a VERY big generalization, you’ve met Trans people in real life before?

like wow, that’s actually crazy. I’ve met what 50+? trans people both irl and online, and they have been the sweetest and also the most supportive people I’ve ever known.

just in life and shit.

and I’m a woman, and I don’t understand your ideals.

trans people have been fighting with us in All gay rights things, it’s literally called LGBT.

like, I agree there’s shit tons of absolutely despicable men out there.

and I agree there’s absolutely despicable trans people too, but that’s life??

anyone and everyone can be despicable, and whatever. Evil isn’t limited by race or gender, evil is just evil.

Am I calling you evil??? Fuck no!

but I’m genuinely confused to why you think trans people are invalids.

what’s the reason? You personally were attacked by literally all trans people for something??? Idk (wo)man

Also am I the only person who’s unsettled by women being called females? Because that’s just ew.

we literally have words in not only English but literally every language ever for women. And just why being referred to females better?

it feels so dehumanizing, I’m a woman. Not a female, and trans women are women.

yeah, I know. Pull out the whatever, but also being referred to male is dehumanizing too.

WE LITERALLY HAVE WORDS for it, idk why we all want to go and use dehumanizing language on both sides.

I’m so confused why you think trans people are “holding themselves hostage to have surgery, because they’ll kill themselves” because that is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life, more ridiculous then pigs flying.

who said that, literally I want you to quote more than 20 trans people that have said that. Not radfem blogs, not terf anything.

just actual trans people, and if you can’t find anything! Then great!

“Why are trans suicide rates so high?” Um, do.. do you think transphobia literally doesn’t exist.. literally your contributing to it my guy (girl).

if I can speak to not only 50+ trans people, and none of them literally ever has called me names or anything. I think it’s a skill issue, (translation: you’re doing something wrong.) because like how.

I’ve done DEEP research into trans stuff, for literally like 4+ years.

talked to 50+ trans people and their experiences.

and done deep reflection and also talked with trans people about their relationship with gender and all that.

if I can realize that trans people aren’t crazy. (also, being trans btw is not a delusion. A delusion you’re probably thinking of is more like thinking you’re Elvis when you’re a woman. Or thinking you’re princess Diana when you’re a man. And you fit the criteria of a delusional disorder or something.)

and are just idk existing then what’s the point, I don’t hate you and I never will.

but just why?

also as someone who’s talked to numerous victims of grooming and of other internet predators.

I’ve literally heard of exactly 1-2 trans groomers, and I’m also like 90% sure they were lying and were men trying to groom trans kids.

I’ve been on the web, and in real life my whole life. (Call me chronically online, but this is literally the only place safe from my parents abuse lolzor)

and I just don’t get it.

maybe we live too different lives to compare, but I just don’t get it.

why are trans people so bad in terf’s/radfem’s eyes?

when they are just your neighbors, cooks, artists, architects, coders, doctors, and scientists.

idk 🤷‍♀️

tell me why?

I don’t know what you actually wanted out of this unfocused rant where you accused me of saying a whole bunch of stuff I never said and you just decided I must believe.

I can’t and won’t argue with this make believe person you’ve projected onto me. If you’re actually interested in what I think and why, ask me specific questions.

I can say that I don’t believe every trans person is bad or a groomer. In fact many trans people are perfectly lovely. I think trans people deserve to live their lives free of discrimination and violence and like all people deserve the right to self expression.

Where I disagree with you is how the current trans activism movement is conducting itself, along with concerns about intertwined but broader cultural trends. I believe the current movement is doing more harm than good. To trans people as well as women and the LGB.

If you’re actually interested I’d be happy to explain each and every conclusion I’ve reached and why. But I doubt very much this was a genuine attempt to understand me. It is far more likely this ask was a performance that reinforces your own sense of being “good”. And yet you don’t even have the strength of conviction in these beliefs of yours to attach a name to it. If I really am an evil bigot, you have done nothing brave by sending a long winded anon to someone whose opinions you haven’t even bothered to learn.

[genderisareligion]

We (black women): *found a place in radical feminism because since black women are one of the most oppressed groups in the world and radical feminist's goal is to end male supremacy and overcome all classes, we are/ would be highly benefited from its politics*

TRAs: wait, what are you doing black terf? 🚫 🙄😑😡 How do you dare to be a radical feminist if I say it is dangerous and murderous since it exclude males? Are you so dumb to the point of not noticing that you have been used by these white female supremacists nazis who uphold patriarchy and want all women to be feminine?

We(black women): Radical feminism oppose to the whole sex industry and fighting against it benefits black women. Radical feminism want to end the domestic abuse and considering how high the rates of domestic violence are towards black women, this political goal is beneficial to us. Radical feminism is against the beauty industry because women aren't objects and the burden of the dehumanization and hypersexualization affects black women the most.

TRAs: uhu, terfs are white female supremacists nazis who uphold patriarchy and want to control women and kill trans people

Okay, being serious now their ability to make this reversal logic where fighting against male supremacy is actually oppressive and negative to black women, while their activism are good for us even though they rely on the idea of us being privileged for being “cis” never fails to amaze me. Their level of projection and delusion is scary but certainly not unintentional.

“Fighting against male supremacy is actually oppressive and dangerous to black women” has been a thing with black men forever in order to protect themselves and continue abusing so it’s discouraging to see nonblack people co-signing this shit and calling me the racist for not liking it.

This obsession TRAs have with “black women have more masculine features!”/making it seem like it’s harder to tell the difference between male and female Africans is feeding right into black male supremacy, meanwhile they think they’re helping us 🙄 The black men who are statistically hurting us most and getting away with it love to project black women as bigger and uglier compared to other women. So that when we defend ourselves against them they can claim it was a “fair fight” and “mutual abuse” (with someone who “might as well be a man”). TIMs just do a version of this, they pretend we resemble them so that people will continue to dehumanize us in comparison to them

[frostops]

when a lot of these guys will go from "stop demonizing masculinity as toxic" to "i lived as a woman for x years so i understand misogyny and feminism better" without skipping a beat. like its not even two different groups both using "transandrophobia" because youll see the same guy complain about trans women demonizing men and then pull women rank five minutes later.

And maybe this is a hard pill to swallow, but modern terfs and mras arent as far apart from each other as either group likes to think. Both believe women need to be protected by men (mras argue this is why women cant be independent, terfs say they need to send their husbands/boyfriends into women's bathrooms to root out trans women), they express disgust towards trans women while having fetishistic obsessions with our bodies (the trope of conservatives watching tranny porn exists for a reason, and there are a thousand terfs stories about them being unable to look away from trans women in changing rooms and that somehow being the trans women's fault), and both believe "male" and "female" are immutable categories. both ideologies serve the same purpose of maintaining the gender binary.

that last part is why transandrophobia guys, despite pulling from both groups, cant quite be accepted by either fully, but they sure as hell are trying, which is how you get people reblogging posts about how ridiculous it is to compare you to terfs and say "i thought we agreed it was bad to stereotype lesbians as terfs" with zero self awareness.

and this is all because they decided to make a transmasc making a joke about getting other transmascs pregnants about trans women making rape jokes. If you see everything as trans women being predatory, you cant complain about being compared to groups that also think that way.