#tme/tma

[estrogenism]

very very funny how intersex transfems are by far the most vocal haters of tme/tma as binary terms because of the way that perisex people use them to discredit intersex trans people's complex experiences. but sure it's just those horrible afab trans people again!!

[Plaintext: very very funny how intersex transfems are by far the most vocal haters of tme/tma as binary terms because of the way that perisex people use them to discredit intersex trans people's complex experiences. but sure it's just those horrible afab trans people again!! End Plaintext.]

(also do not fucking try to witch hunt these people. i will block you on sight, i cropped out the urls for a reason)

edit: reminder that this post was made first and foremost about intersexism, and while it's okay to discuss other forms of oppression in the tags and reblogs (especially since i tagged them as such), please stop trying to brush off the original point.

[thee-radio-host-is-a-kookaburra]

i think we should start telling all the tme/tma mfs to put whether they're isa (intersexism affected) or ise (intersexism exempt) in their bios

[strawberry-crocodile]

TMA? TME? What's that?

This is a question I get a lot on my posts talking about transfeminism; I intend to make this a masterpost with which to send people if they are genuinely curious.

What does TME/TMA mean?

TME- Transmisogyny Exempt

TMA- Transmisogyny Affected

More specifically, TMA is a catchall term for people whose experience being assigned male and transitioning to a feminine gender or presentation has made them the focus and primary target of transmisogyny. TME people are everyone else.

But isn't everyone affected by transmisogyny in some way?

In some way, yes. But TMA people are, by definition, the ones who are the primary target, and the ones who cannot escape it. A trangender man might be mistaken for a trans woman on the street and accosted, yes! However, his interactions with family, the legal system, other queer people, and any partners are going to be affected by transphobia, but not transmisogyny, because these people see him as outside the "MtF" category. This is the core of transmisogyny and why transmisogyny as a term exists separate from transphobia.

Why not use transfeminine/transmasculine?

Where I'm standing I'd like to be able to use those words with the rough understanding that they are related to one's relationship to assigned gender and transmisogyny, but there are people who do not feel that this adequately describes their identity (ie transfem people who were AFAB). I'm taking these people on good faith, but I still want to be able to discuss what TME/TMA is discussing.

Isn't this just reinventing the gender binary?

It's describing a preexisting one. The White/POC dichotomy is not "reinventing race science", it's describing how the society built on that lie affects people. Someone who uses the word "nonblack" probably knows that racial categories are artificial, but is still affected by anti-black racism, and deserves the language to talk about it. Understand TME/TMA the same way.

Also, to be clear, cisgender men are TME. It is not just restating your AGAB.

What about intersex AFAB people?

This is where I am going to bow my head and admit that I do not know, exactly. It's undeniable that there are similarities in the bodies of TMA people and a cis woman with PCOS, just for example, and that the hatred that such bodies attract are going to affect her. However, it's also true that having been assigned, raised, and legally defined as a "female" is going to provide a different set of problems. If someone wants to have a genuine discuss about this, my ask box and messages are open- however, if you are not yourself AFAB and intersex, I do not care your opinion on the matter.

If it has so many problems, why use it?

Every term used to discuss marginalization has problems. "White", for example, is a category that can include or exclude Ashkenazi jewish people depending on context and usage; the border between cis and trans is one that has edge cases. But these terms are important for describing oppression and helping marginalized people! It would be absurd to completely abolish them, wouldn't it? It's the same with TME/TMA.

I fundamentally disagree that this category of people you're talking about deserve or need a word to describe their oppression, or that they have a unique relationship to that oppression.

Well. You're wrong, so

[textk4kira]

Stop using TME/TMA

The problem with the labels TMA (transmisogyny-affected) and TME (transmisogyny-exempt) is that you cannot decide for someone else what forms of oppression they do/don't experience.

People in the trans community oftentimes use TME as a synonym for AFAB or transmasc.

You can't possibly know if that transmasculine/nonbinary person has been on the receiving end of transmisogyny or not.

Transphobe: *says something transmisogynistic*

Transmasc/Nonbinary individual: Actually! I am AFAB and therefore exempt from transmisogyny!

Transphobe: Oh! I am so sorry Sir, I mistook you for a transgender woman, please be on your way.

This interaction would never happen in real life.

TME/TMA excludes the experiences of trans poc and intersex people.

[butchesanddykesandqueersohmy]

Reminder that binaries (e.g. man/woman, tme/tma) are always always always gonna be intersexist

That's because we quite literally do not have binary experiences that map 1:1

Stop trying to force us into categories that aren't meant for us

[narrator-navigator-storyteller]

"you're clearly TME because you think TMA/TME are stupid terms. " i have had kids ushered away from me while i was literally just looking at getting dolls to customize because i am transfemme and obviously that means i am a threat. I have been told off for 'roleplaying' when i took a pad because my period started unexpectedly. I was aggressively and assertively called he/him in an attempt to misgender me. I was bullied in high school because I didn't wear swim suits that at all showed my form, especially waist down, because clearly i was hiding a dick. I have been told that I'm invading female spaces after I try to find camaraderie.

You people do not support intersex people. You are shoving us into the same fucking boxes as our oppressors. You do not understand our experiences, and as long as you clutch these terms made by intersexists like pearls, you aren't going to.

[0w0tsuki]

My only criticism of TME/TMA is that the use of the word "affected" is the primary source of semantics based arguments against the terminology. It allows people to frame TMA as "somebody who has had transmisogyny happen to them once" instead of "someone who is at constant risk interacting with transmisoginistic society and has to consider this in every social interaction"

You know? The classic "bigots don't care about your pronouns" argument. The idea that if someone is transmisogynisticly harassing you they are likely to be every other type of bigot under the sun (which isn't true. Just look at the transmisogyny in the queer community) so they won't care that you aren't trans and beat you up anyway (which makes me disbelieve that they are even speaking from personal experience because from someone who faces that harassment daily, the goal often not to engage you with violence but to intimidate you into feeling like going outside is unsafe).

Like even taking them at their word that they HAVE had an experience with transmisoginistic harassment, they are still speaking from an individual experience and do not have to consider wider societal transmisogyny outside of the lens of potential being mistargeted by it. They are using the grammatical definition of affected to go "I was individually affected by this mistargeted transmisogyny so therefore I'm transmisogyny affected " which is why I'm calling it semantics.

The types of people who make these arguments are the cheekiest motherfuckers and are often treating it as a "gatcha" argument. They aren't arguing in good faith. Which is why I doubt that they are even speaking from personal experience and not just using "maga Mikey from some southern state that I definitely don't have classist views about" as the reason transmisogyny affects everyone equally.

It also allows for the pickme argument that is often just the acception that proves the rule. I'm talking about the "Well IM a trans woman and IVE never been affected by transmisogyny so really it's a useless term because it doesn't describe all trans women". This argument is using the fact that this individual trans woman has YET to experience a personal Hot Allistic Load treatment that she has not been affected by transmisogyny. This ignores how much she has had to curate herself and make herself as presentable as possible to transmisoginistic society to avoid this treatment. They do not live in magical fairy Christmas land where transmisogyny simply doesn't exist and isn't something they have to worry about.

In short I think the specific definition of the word "affected" allows those approaching in bad faith to conflate a lived reality to an individual experience.

[trans-androgyne]

Most recent stupid argument I’ve seen against “transandrophobia” is that transmascs’ experiences also line up with gnc cis women. Like no kidding!! They fucking do!! I’ve seen it widely acknowledged that transandrophobia doesn’t just affect transmasculine people but anyone perceived in a similar way (cis butch lesbians are the biggest example—transandrophobia and lesbophobia are deeply intertwined). It’s not just a word, it’s a framework. This criticism falls in line with the argument that transmascs are just trying to feel like their experiences are special and unique to them. But that’s literally one of the huge differences from popular conceptions of transmisogyny (tme/tma); transmasc folks I’ve seen are very willing to point out they’re not the only ones affected by transandrophobia even if it primarily targets them.

[meowtismz]

tme/tma believers please refrain from interact.

[somethingmissingthiswaycomes]

I just read a post I would have liked to reblog for some points, but not for others — so I think I'll just muse about it in my own post.

The post was about the dichotomy of TME and TMA — terms I at first accepted without thought and then began to criticize and eventually grew annoyed with, then saw them as a straight up red flag because of how big the center circle of the Venn diagram seems to be between people who use those terms regularly online and people who use them to disparage trans people who were assigned female at birth. The crossover with people who use insults like "theyfab" seemed to be pretty big too. And it's inaccurate of course; you can't say anyone is transmisogyny exempt based on an innate aspect of their identity. And people who use TME as an insult (seemingly anyone who used it at all) seem to all be hateful about transmascs having terms like transandrophobia to describe their experiences.

But the post that made me muse right now started out saying that yes, it's not precise, it's not fully accurate, but there's something experienced in perpetuity by transfemmes, assigned male at birth, that isn't experienced by anyone who can convincingly assert that they're not trans women — and TMA is trying to reach for that, and transmisogynists wouldn't grant us any language to describe our experiences.

I've been wrong a lot about fundamental things, and realizing where I've been wrong tends to start with a feeling that there's something I'm trying to reject, because it's uncomfortable to me or violates my previous worldview. Learning I was trans, learning about plurality, the process of noticing transandrophobia within the trans community... and long before that, when I lost the faith I'd been raised in and came to recognize it as highly damaging. It's deeply unpleasant for these shifts to happen.

I've been getting a feeling like that lately, but I wasn't sure where it was placed exactly. Each time I notice a problem with my worldview, I get more cautious about what possible new problems could crop up. It makes things, well, more uncomfortable.

Anyway, this one post I'm mulling over phrased things in a way that made me start looking more closely at what it is I've been avoiding. Because my mistrust of people who talk about TMAs and TMEs came alongside a rising pride and solidarity in transmasculinity, and a frustration with people who deny the trans community language by calling us "transandrophobia truthers" and other closed-minded, bigoted nonsense. (It's so fucking frustrating.) So... I haven't been looking for discussions about the terms TMA/TME outside of the hateful context it was showing up for me in.

And this post I'm mulling over mentioned requiring language to talk about experiences, and that clicked. It clicked with me that, while there are a whole lot of people playing boys v girls 2.0 in all this, there's an underlying need to be able to discuss the unique experiences that come with every aspect of who and what we are — and we're trying to categorize, categorize, categorize.

Part of what made me decide not to engage with the post that made me start talking about this is that the OP brought up the idea of transfeminine people who were assigned female at birth... and how that's, to them, a ridiculous idea. The thing is, it's not, and accepting that is part of not overcategorizing. It's an unusual thing, but it's real, and it can mean different things. You can't restrict the type of people who can exist.

But it's true that there are experiences specific to one's assigned gender (like AMAB) and to one's physiological reality associated with it that, in an intersection with a specific or adjacent actual gender (like trans woman, transfeminine, or transneutral with perceived femininity), are important to recognize as, for the most part, unique.

My ability to be specific here breaks down, though, because I know from reading the words of certain intersex people that a lot of the intersection of transfeminine and perisex AMAB isn't actually unique unless you ignore intersex people. I don't think I can say more than that. I don't think I can get nuanced enough.

But I can use an "opposite" example to try to draw a parallel. Because there is an AFAB trans experience that isn't shared by perisex trans people who were assigned male at birth: the risk of pregnancy, and specifically restrictions on bodies with uteruses. That's a difference that TERFs like to prey on to drive a wedge in the trans community. They like to convince us that they're the only ones who care about that part of our lived experiences. That is wrong. And we shouldn't let that difference divide us.

In the same vein, we shouldn't let that difference being something that could divide us turn the topic into one that trans people who have uteruses need to sacrifice in order to stand together with trans people who don't. I think that's contributed to transmasculine erasure. The assertion that it must be so would fall under the umbrella of transandrophobia, a much needed term for the sake of discussing that.

Now back to transmisogyny affected/exempt. An argument I've often shared and agreed with and been fervent about is that it's just recreating the AFAB/AMAB binary. And I have seen people argue that no it's not, it's different, but in recognizing how often it's used that way by bad actors, I decided to ignore that argument. I'd say it doesn't matter; it may as well be that.

I think I've been wrong. And I've known I was wrong, in the back of my mind, for a while. My initial acceptance of the TMA/TME dichotomy had me making that same argument, so it felt like something I had moved beyond. Now I'm letting myself look at it more closely, I'm coming to a less accepting-it-on-faith understanding of the argument.

I'm also forming a new way of explaining my own experiences as a genderfluid person. Hopefully doing so will help to articulate what I'm thinking;

I am, currently, TME. Not in the literal sense that I don't experience transmisogyny at all, but in the sense of, "I have a body that allows me to avoid and avert transmisogyny directed explicitly at my person." I'm affected by transmisogyny in a lot of ways I've been working through for some time now, and it's for that reason that I still await better terms for this concept—but using these terms as I believe good faith actors do, while I'm not exempt from transmisogyny in general, I am TME.

But I won't always be.

I am a genderfluid person who was assigned female at birth. I started testosterone a few years back, and then I stopped because I wasn't sure how far I wanted to take it. I've been coming to terms with the fact that I need to go further and I may have to be on HRT indefinably to be able to be my full, real self... but I'm still also a woman. And it will cause me dysphoria if I can't present as a woman at times when my body has been fully affected by testosterone.

I don't know if I'll be able to be stealth in any direction. I will be affected by transmisogyny in a way I'm not right now. The difference between how I'm affected by transmisogyny now and how I will be then can, at the moment, be communicated with "I'm TME now, but I'll be TMA when I transition."

And that terrifies me, honestly. I had recognized that terror as being me internalizing transmisogyny, but not as me being afraid of it. I know I'll be more comfortable with myself, but...

The forms of transmisogyny experienced specifically by people who are perpetually perceived as male (or "supposed to be male") while presenting as female are more scary than what I experience now.

And that is worth being able to talk about.

And that is worth having a term for.

And I suppose "TME" and "TMA" are the terms people are using right now, at least online. Imprecise language is something we have to work around sometimes.

I do hope that the discussion can evolve language that doesn't so easily allow bad actors to use otherwise potentially useful terms as a weapon of lateral bigotry.

And, in general, I hope the discussion can move in a direction that discourages that more by rejecting separation of trans people into boxes based on AGAB without erasing experiences that come with AGAB. Categories are good and useful to a point — but not as boxes so much as colors we're painted with. You can't split people into groups based on any one category they're colored with without forcing some people within those groups to de-prioritize something else they are.

...

This feels like it could be a draft for a real good blog post, but I know I won't post it if I wait and try to rewrite things later, so it'll have to be the finished thing.

It's been a while since I tried to add to the conversation like this. Gonna turn my anons off in case of problems. I am OUT of spoons and won't be able to respond to any opinion about this, but feel free to say things anyway if you're nice.

[thee-radio-host-is-a-kookaburra]

intersex ppl: can you please listen when we say we don't wanna be put into boxes

perisex trans ppl: ok but rq can you tell me if you're afab or amab so I can decide whether to make fun of you or ignore you completely?

[jackalpants]

One of the nice things about being a The Magnus Archives/The Magnus Protocol listener is that when the language discourse that orbits the transmisogyny discourse spins up, and someone uses the term "TMA/TME" meaning "the terms transmisogyny affected/transmisogyny exempt" my brain has a lovely little moment of going "Ah, yes, The Magnus Archives/The Magnus... Experience?" And I get to have a little chuckle to myself about whatever the Magnus Experience might be (my bet- spooky escape room)

[strawberry-crocodile]

to me, tme/tma and people who are offended by it is like- y'know how "person with uterus" is a very specific term that's meant to describe something in a specific context? Like cis people are shocked by it because, to them, it's replacing "woman" with a very clinical term, when in fact, it's meant to be used specifically when talking about, like... uteruses. Like abortion rights and tampons and stuff need to be inclusive.

To me tme/tma should be similar- it's just words used to describe the specific intersection of oppression that trans women and other transfems face, and like... it really should be used in that context. People should not have to label themselves or identify themselves as tme/tma without context.

I guess what I'm saying is "some people use tme/tma as a way to ask 'whats in your pants' and that's bad" and "tme/tma are important terms that are useful in discussing a specific form of oppression" can be and are both true statements. I see and appreciate the pain caused to people who have been subjected to the former, but please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[dementedmk]

Controversial Opinion Time: TMA and TME are the most useless fucking terms I've ever seen gain widespread use on this site. There is no need to keep splitting us into smaller and smaller boxes and fighting between them. We don't need to Oppression Olympics our way into 2 different trans communities that hate each other. We're all dealing with the same type of shit. Transfem people have it harder in some ways, transmasc people have it harder in others, but it's the same groups of people who want us dead, and every time you encourage divisions in our community you're giving the people who want us dead exactly what they want.

Signed, a transfeminine person.

[wolvesbaneandbuttercups]

imma be real, I hate the terms TMA and TME. It divides trans people much in the same way AGAB does (which, ur assigned gender at birth is honestly imo only important for doctors to know), yes trans women and trans men and nonbinary folk all face seperate flavors of misogyny, but instead of dividing it up on "who has it worse" Trauma Olympics™️ style we should work together to uplift eachother instead of creating a divide away from eachother. Stop dividing us up into categories based around who experiences the "Worse" oppression, because we fucking all face it and we all are fucking dying!! Community infighting makes this shit worse.

Trans women get killed because of transphobia

Trans men get killed because of transphobia

Nonbinary people get killed because of transphobia

Instead of TME/TMA labels why don't we, idk, fucking help eachother not die???? Instead of creating labels like those and fighting over it fucking help eachother instead, dosnt matter what flavor of trans you are because to the transphobics and TERFs we're all dirty trannies.

Uplift eachothers voices, stop putting eachother down with pointless community infighting and trauma olympics

[transunity]

The terms TME and TMA are not compatible with transunity theory. 

I just had to revert these bad faith (and ahistorical) edits from Wikitionary on the use of the term Baeddel. I am not the only person to revert these edits. 

Using terms like TMEs is othering other trans people. When TME is used 90% of the time in reference to other trans people, it is not a term which includes cisgender people. Pretending that TME is just a quirky shorthand for trans men/ afab nonbinary people is derogatory. 

The terms TME and TMA are not helpful and cause a lot of harm. The trans community does not need to be split into a binary of TME or TMA. That does not promote unity. 

Instead, abandon TME/TMA terminology and actively work to understand your trans sibling’s oppressions and how they bleed into your own. Or how your own oppression bleeds into other trans people’s. We are all in this together and we all suffer equally. 

Be a positive influence on the trans community- don’t fill it with meaningless hate and othering!