#to exclude trans women and amab nonbinary people

[angel-archivist]

It's so interesting and so exceedingly frustrating how agab is being utilized now within the queer community as a way to isolate and sort nonbinary and genderqueer folks into binary boxes that determine their moral purity levels, and their authority to do and write and exist.

The way nonbinary writers are being put under accusation of fetishizing gay men while their AGAB is continually brought up in a way that feels like queer-space-approved misgendering.

The way feminist circles that are supposedly trans-inclusive will use the word AFAB in a way that implicitly but intentionally isolates nonbinary people who aren't AFAB from joining. It's for women*.

The way the language is already flawed and leaves out intersex folks from the conversations while focusing on a binary of sex that isn't truthful.

The constant obsessing over whether someone is AFAB or AMAB and whether or not that gives them the privilege to join, do, write, or be present in certain spaces really really concerns me. How are we supposed to dismantle a binary system of gender if we can't even move past forcibly assigning and focusing on people's genders assigned at birth?

[discodeerdiary]

Linguistic drift is an inevitable result of majority groups adopting language developed by minority groups. To give a silly example: when I first heard the phrase "theydies and gentlethems", it was legitimately funny. It was taking a traditional greeting that excludes nonbinary people and making it all about nonbinary people. What happened next is that the phrase spread and found its way to the cis majority where it started to take on connotations of "greetings to nonbinary people of both sexes" and instead of being a subversion of something else it became a reference to itself, and a tool cis people could use to sort nonbinary people into "really men" and "really women". A similar thing happened with "afab" and "amab". Their coinage by trans and intersex people originally served to make visible the act of gender assignation itself, instead of sweeping it under the rug with terms like "mtf" or "born female". Then cis people got a hold of them and used them mostly to talk about other cis people and the words started to take on connotations of "men and people I think of as men" and "women and people I think of as women".

I don't think there's an easy solution to this problem. I do however think that being aware of it is half the battle. When you recognize that language shifts fast, you can be more accepting of people who use language you think of as outdated. When you see that the connotations of words are not fixed, it's less tempting to sort them into "objectively problematic" and "objectively unproblematic" and to sort people into good and evil by which words they use.

[astraltrickster]

Since the wave of mass site migrations there is one REALLY worrisome trend I've been noticing: the number of radfem posts I've been seeing ending up on my dash, reblogged unknowingly by people who think they're just base-level feminist statements, has all but gone back to c.2014 levels. Everything seems good on a surface level, but I spot one dogwhistle, or something strikes me as being a little too absolutist, and I check into that...and sure enough, the road leads back to terf city.

So here's a quick PSA:

Please be careful with your Feminism 101 sources.

See, terfs and their close relatives KNOW we don't like them here, so they don't tend to lead with their well-known hatred of trans women. On top of that, there is a problem with a subset of radfems on this site who purport to be trans-inclusive - i.e., they openly support trans women...but DESPISE trans men (often more than they hate cis men, because of the whole "joining the enemy"/"gender traitor" myth pushed by terfs) or any nonbinary person who aligns partially with manhood or masculinity, especially if they're AMAB (they often think they can "save" - i.e., conversion-therapy - the AFAB ones).

Therefore, on a single-post level, it is very, VERY hard to tell the difference between a basic feminist statement that, yeah, patriarchy exists and that means there are lots of awful double-standards around gender where women broadly get the shorter end of the stick and these standards AFFECT every individual in a society and that's something we should work to change, and a statement that these things are absolute and inevitable, either because Biology or because those double-standards are too deeply ingrained to EVER overcome without giving up and starting over from scratch (whichever is convenient), and the only solution is hardline female wombyn-born-wombyn separatism or at LEAST excluding trans people from public life for, at best, making it too hard to tell who's ~safe~. In fact, sometimes on that single-post basis, they could potentially even be identical - though less frequently than many people thought in the heyday of "OP was a terf so I stole this post but anyway all men are walking rape threats and need to accept that any reasonable person will always hate and fear them on sight".

So what can you, random newbie, do to avoid unwittingly passing one of these messages on without turning into some kind of horrible "feminism is cancer" chud?

Well, one of the easiest ways is the Shinigami Eyes browser extension, but I personally don't like to rely on it because 1) you can't use it on every platform (sorry mobile app likers), 2) in my experience it's somewhat common for "trans-inclusive" radfems to be flagged as safe because someone saw their positivity for trans women but not their hatred for trans men, and 3) I just don't like to promote the use of browser extensions as a substitute for learning what radfem rhetoric is and why it is, in fact, anything but feminist; it is very beneficial to terfs if the ONLY thing you know of their rhetoric is "they hate trans women".

The hard but better way is to actually familiarize yourself with what to look out for. Here is an inexhaustive list:

Category 0: Tags to add to your blacklist

Your blacklist filters out posts with the blacklisted tags in the reblog you're seeing, OR in the root post. Therefore, if a radfem post that looks like it's just base-level feminism does breach containment somehow and end up on your dash through someone else, it will still get caught if it's tagged with any of these:

Terfsafe

Radblr

Radfem

Terfs/radfems do interact/do touch/please interact/please touch, etc

Category 1: Terf-ese and dogwhistles

Some of these, especially those near the top of the list, are immediate telltale signs. Others are less certain, but they should at least raise some eyebrows.

"Gender critical" - literally a synonym for terf just used to make the ideology sound more legitimate; they often claim that terf is a slur

"TIM/TIF" - "Trans-identified male/female", a way to delegitimize trans identities

"Febfem" - female-exclusive bisexual woman; a bisexual woman who rejects her attraction to men; essentially a modern term for "political lesbian" (a group which claimed that lesbianism is not a sexual orientation that some people just Have, but a political choice to reject men)

"Butch flight" - the claim that trans men are butch lesbians transitioning to escape lesbophobia and gain male privilege

"Adult human female" - this very simplified dictionary definition of "woman" is something of a rallying cry

"Let girls be tomboys/butch" - some people say this in response to old repressive gender roles in things like dress codes, or even people holding trans women to a higher standard of femininity than cis women, but if that is not explicitly the context it's very likely that this means "stop the evil plastic surgery racket from force-transing every little girl who even looks at a truck, which they're TOTALLY doing"

The inverse, while less common (terfs tend to be very open about not wanting men to be feminine in any way because of "deception" and "false security"), is also one to look out for - sometimes it's a statement against binarism and gender essentialism, sometimes it's basically an assertion of the Blanchard "feminine homosexual man vs. autogynephilic man" model of what a trans woman is

"Compulsory heterosexuality/comphet" - an aspect of heteronormativity whereby it's common, especially for younger people, to try to force themselves to experience heterosexual attraction when they don't. Useful as it may seem, the term was coined by radfems. Most people who are not terfs or other radfems who want to discuss it will discuss it under the umbrellas of heteronormativity and amatonormativity

Hogwarts houses - this is a sneaky one; far from everyone who read those books or even enjoyed them is a terf, but since JKR's full-tilt descent into fascism via the gateway of transphobia, terfs HAVE been using this as a way to seek out their own and mark themselves as safe; let this also serve as a reminder that if you are NOT a terf PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM YOUR BIO; it WILL both draw them to you AND cause you to be immediately distrusted by anyone else, saying "I DO NOT CONDONE THE VIEWS OF JKR" will not help because terfs can and do lie about that too in communities where they have to stay crypto, at best you're granting them plausible deniability

Referring to men and women as "males" and "females"

Usernames referencing "female" reproductive anatomy - may be a good sign if they're attached to trans-positive modifiers like "boy" or "they", but a username like "divine-vagina" or "ovariesofpower" (note these are theoretical usernames, not ones I've encountered in the wild; if someone does have one of those usernames and isn't a radfem I'm deeply sorry) is probably a terf

Hatred of makeup and plastic surgery - look, no one likes the beauty industry, no one is going to dispute that beauty standards are a nightmare, but this is frequently a smokescreen for hating gender confirmation or anything that helps with the "deception" inherent to transness; be ESPECIALLY wary of anyone talking about "TikTok plastic surgeons trying to sell their services to impressionable teenage girls", this usually translates to "gender confirmation surgeons telling young transmascs that there are options for them", and remember that you either believe in bodily autonomy or you don't, there is no third option

Category 2: Ideological concepts to look out for

This is some of the beginnings of crossing the line from feminism to radfem bullshit - if the rest of the post seems cool but starts heading in these directions, don't assume it's hyperbole; get it as far away from you as possible.

Patriarchy, men-oppressing-women, is THE root system of injustice from which all others spawn. Some will acknowledge that other factors may intersect, but will still claim that they are lesser. Bringing up the long history of white women getting men of color, especially Black men, killed via weaponized fragility and false claims of sexual violence, is just a series of flukes and pointing it out to refute this notion that men vs. women outranks all other inequalities is just whataboutism.

Because patriarchy is so far-reaching, it affects every individual, and because it trumps all other axes of oppression, this means that in every interaction between any man and any woman, the man will be the one with more power.

Men, due to socialization, biology, or both, are categorically incapable of recognizing women as full people. This is not only a broad pattern, but an inevitable fact, true of every individual man, no matter how hard anyone tries to change it.

There is a singular Universal Female Experience. According to terfs, this is an external force; trans women don't have this socialization experience, therefore they can never truly know what it's like to be a woman. According to tirfs, it is internal; trans men process their experiences internally as men from birth to death and therefore have no claim to truly understand any experience of misogyny directed at them.

The experience of being a woman is, first and foremost, suffering. It is therefore to be expected that a certain subset of people would transition to try to escape it - but it's the wrong answer, and this practice of either self-destruction or betrayal must be stopped at all costs. Anyone who wants in on the miserable experience that is womanhood, on the other hand, is at best insensitively looking at a burning building and going "wow, that looks so warm!", blissfully but cruelly unaware of the misery of the situation, and at worst is lying to satisfy a fetish.

Women are categorically incapable of abusing men, because patriarchy outranks all, down to the individual level. Some may also say that this is true because of biological differences in physical strength. (Very feminist, isn't it, to say "the strongest woman is still weaker than the weakest man and nothing can ever change that"?)

There is, fundamentally, no difference between a person with some subconscious misogyny problems and an incel mass shooter; both will abuse women, and therefore both must be treated as threats.

Because the power differential between men and women is so great, a woman cannot TRULY meaningfully consent to sex with a man; all sex between a man and a woman is rape.

Because rape is such a common trauma among women, the very existence of men - or penises, for that matter, even fully clothed ones - in a space where a woman doesn't expect them is traumatic and itself tantamount to rape.

Lesbians don't just have their own unique flavor of oppression experience like any other queer subgroup; they are in fact THE most uniquely oppressed and vulnerable of all, because being a lesbian is first and foremost not about attraction to women, but rejection of men (recall the ties to political lesbianism). Some radfems will embrace contradictory labels or slightly varied personal definitions for other queer subgroups - but if you're anything but a Kinsey 6 who would never even consider making an exception, and 100% a binary woman, you CAN'T identify as a lesbian. You cannot identify as a lesbian if you wouldn't dump your partner or try to conversion-therapy "her" if "she" came out as transmasc. To a tirf, you cannot identify as a lesbian if you're on the butch-transmasc cusp, if they're willing to admit such a cusp exists in the first place. To terfs, you cannot identify as a lesbian if you would ever date a trans woman, let alone if you ever have.

Again, this is far from being an exhaustive list, but it covers most of the most common things that set off my own alarm bells. Additions are more than welcome.

Remember, the danger of letting radfem posts slide because they seem okay on the surface is twofold: one, you're directing more people to their blogs and exposing them to more people they may then target, and two, when those concepts that cross the line bleed out into your gender theory, the result is bad for you and everyone around you.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

Okay, this is not without a point, but (screenshot):

(A post and reblog which read: Nonbinary legit means outside established gender ideas yet you racist, transmisogynist, otherwise bioessentialist assholes keep bothering amab nb people because you think theyre too masc or whatever to be nb. Hey newsflash not all nb people are androgynous-femme white stick thin transmascs with undercuts - and - We're never making it out cisheteropatriarchy without you analyzing your beliefs on who is trans or nb enough)

If you think "transmasc" is the default nonbinary person or even considered to be the default nonbinary person, perhaps you haven't unlearned your bioessentialism either. And like, sure, maybe they don't think that way and meant "afab nonbinary person" by "transmasc nonbinary person", which is itself bioessentialist as those aren't equivalent in either direction (there's plenty of amab transmasc and afab non-transmasc nonbinary people), but the specific issue they're talking about (being perceived as too masc to be nonbinary) actually very specifically prominently affects transmascs as well.

It's almost as if your sex OR gender OR presentation being perceived as too masc can cause this, and also that trans people's AGAB (especially transitioning and intersex trans' peoples AGAB) can be misread by other trans people. Like do you think that all AMAB nonbinary people face this forever, or could this perhaps have a whole lot to do with passing as binary and AMAB people who transition and pass as cis women might in fact face this less than AFAB people who transition and pass as cis men? Never mind that this affects people who are androgenous in an additive way (tits and a beard, as an example) rather than a subtractive way (neither masc nor femme characteristics).

I'd also wonder about how they seem to be conflating "nonbinary" with "nontransitioning" in the way they describe the theoretical standard "femme androgenous transmasc" nonbinary person and think that AMAB nonbinary experiences are somehow universal.

Like, newsflash, anyone who appears masc enough gets hit with the essentialist (bio AND gender) antimasculinity that is such a problem in the queer community. Anyone who appears femme enough typically doesn't, though there are always exceptions. This includes presentation, perceived sex, and perceived gender. Butch trans people in general also face this regardless of gender.

Also this is bothering me especially so. AFAB≠transmasc. AMAB≠transfem. AFAB transfems and AMAB transmascs exist. Nonbinary people who aren't transfem OR transmasc, or who are both, exist. Transmasc/transfem as a new binary just excludes the majority of nonbinary people, because not all nonbinary people are "masc" or "femme" and in fact that's kinda the whole point of nonbinary as a gender category, not JUST that most nonbinary people aren't "men" (only*) or "women" (only*)

*because multigender people who experience binary genders are also just as nonbinary as any other nonbinary person

But (screenshot):

(A comment marked as by the original poster which reads: Transandrophobia believers don't rb this btw. heart emoji I'm late but whatever)

Ah, right, you haven't unlearned your bioessentialism. You seem to think only AMAB nonbinary people face exorsexism, or perhaps you don't even understand that exorsexism is a specific type of transphobia to nonbinary people and think AFAB nonbinary people "only" face transphobia. And I shudder to imagine your opinions on intersex trans people in general.

"Transandrophobia believers" like sorry not sorry I actually believe that transmascs face specific targeted transphobia and that transfems aren't the most oppressed, and also that all trans people can experience any type of specific transphobia and that bigots who famously don't respect trans people's internal identity and infamously can't "always tell" don't choose to be bigoted based on either your ontological identity or your physical sex. It's almost like I base my understanding of oppression on actual material experience and not just what I want to be true so I can pretend I'm punching up at vulnerable people in my community

Also wtf (screenshot):

(A comment marked as by the original poster which reads: Proshippers also don't rb i fucking hate you all)

Like not surprised this person has dogshit views lacking any critical analysis whatsoever but honey sweetie baby pie this is just sad

Anyway take your own advice and analyze your own beliefs on who is trans or nonbinary enough and also unlearn your own bioessentialism because simply saying "only AMAB trans people face more than basic transphobia and are the most oppressed" is bog standard gender essentialism and bioessentialism, and in fact treating all AMAB trans people as transfem or transfem adjacent is WILDLY exorsexist and misgendering a WHOLE lot of nonbinary people

[sometimesraven]

reading a trans magazine and oh boy

i know that there's a lot of public violence directed specifically at trans women and so the pushback is going to largely give them support but

it's really disheartening to read a magazine "celebrating gender diversity" and realise just how little support there really is for transmasc and nonbinary people out there. There were a couple of articles about transmasc and GNC people but the rest of the entire magazine was directed almost exclusively at trans women. The article about a GNC/Genderqueer person was an AMAB person which is great!!! they need more visibility!!!! but!!!! that makes exactly one AFAB or even transmasc article in the entire magazine.

even the ads were all for trans women. Like, basically all of them. Even the ad for their club night only had trans women on it.

And no, I didn't pick up a transfemme magazine by accident, it's described everywhere as a quarterly mag for all trans people

idk it's just feels,,, so isolating being AFAB trans in any way. I shouldn't read a magazine made to celebrate and give us advice and feel more alone

this on top of even drag kings being excluded from drag events is just,,, it feels gross

[nothorses]

In my city we have a lot of places that have “WTF” nights (women, trans, fem) where anyone to identifies with any of those (trans men, fem cis gay men) can come, often for free. These places are like the maker spaces, bike shops that teach bike building/repair, rock climbing gyms and blacksmith schools. I think it could lend themselves to the issues you were describing depending on the particular place but it always came off to me as a good way to be inclusive and make these places accessible. What do you think of that type of wording?

oooh, I kinda like that! I like that it's more explicitly naming "trans people" instead of a specific and arbitrary section of the trans community, and I think it's snappy enough to catch on, too.

I do wonder what they mean by "fem", though; you say it includes anyone who identifies with the term, including femme cis gay men, by why are only femme gay men welcome- what do they think they have in common with the rest that other cis gay men don't? How do they know for sure that's universally true? Why is it so important to exclude non-femme cis gay men?

The use of that word specifically makes me think they're still centering the spaces around cis women primarily, and are not really going to be friendly to anyone who appears too "masculine" to fit in with cis women- i.e., the same problem other spaces have.

I don't think I'd be comfortable enough to go to that kind of space without verification from another trans man, or someone else usually rejected from those spaces (AMAB nonbinary people, non-passing trans women, any nonbinary person who calls themselves a man, etc.), first. Especially considering I generally do pass as cis, and the cold discomfort I have experienced from fellow trans and queer people- even after knowing I'm trans- because of that.

But maybe that's just me; I do think spaces like that should be catered to everyone marginalized on the basis of gender, rather than trying to chop up the trans community into "seems like a woman" and "probably a predator", and I think "WTF" does a better job than anything else I've seen. But I'm honestly wary of anyone tossing the word "femme" around in this context, given how often it seems to be an indication that someone thinks it's shorthand for "woman-adjacent".

But I also like the "This is a space for Whatever" vibe, and again, it could just be me. 🤷‍♂️ I'd love to hear what other folks think.

[the-delta-quadrant]

there's absolutely no valid reason that things that should be for all marginalised genders are often only for "women and nonbinary people".

trans men have a marginalised gender. there's no valid reason to exclude them. in fact, it only plays into the further erasure of trans men and their struggles, because the main reason they're not included is because people think they have a similar societal standing as cis men.

i mean i've literally seen arguments supporting "women and nonbinary people" stuff because it's a "space away from male privilege".

trans men do not have male privilege. and trans men are men. these statements can and do coexist. male privilege is tied to cisness.

trans men experience all the things that cis women experience, and more for being trans.

there's no valid reason to exclude trans men when your goal is uplifting marginalised genders or "a space away from male privilege". at least learn who actually has male privilege and who is marginalised for their gender.

i'm an enby and not a trans men, but i don't trust those "women and nonbinary people" things at all because they always claim to want to support marginalised genders but then exclude trans men. if they think trans men aren't marginalised for their trans manhood, i cannot trust them to actually understand the nuances of trans marginalisation and of transness itself. i cannot trust that they didn't only include nonbinary people because they're basically women. i don't trust these people if they paint trans men as male-privileged oppressors. and this isn't even getting into the exclusion of amab nonbinary people and/or nonbinary people who "look like men".

depending on what the space is actually for, it might just be ok to have a women's only space and a trans only space and a nonbinary only space. but if it's specifically about uplifting marginalised genders, it cannot only be about "women and nonbinary people".

this isn't me saying trans men should feel happy and safe and comfortable in "women and nonbinary people" spaces. heck, i'm included in the name and i usually avoid those spaces because they're still women centric and treat nonbinary people as an afterthought, just because they have nonbinary in the name doesn't mean they're actually nonbinary-friendly. most of these originated from women only stuff and at some point they went "oh, nonbinary people too, i guess" but do nothing to make it comfortable for us.

these spaces should a) change their names to be included of all marginalised genders, b) do some work on learning who's marginalised for their gender (women, ALL trans people, ALL nonbinary people) and c) actually work to make their spaces more inclusive of all of us. simply changing the name isn't enough if the space is still centred around (usually cisgender) women.

[quark-nova]

Do including t4t folks who date outside their gender include nblnb and nblm/nblw? Does it include people in these groups who are in an AMAB+AFAB relationship? IDK if this is tmi, I'm AMAB transneutral enby, my husband is a AFAB trans man. We've been together a decade , he's currently also pregnant: we're in the process of having a child. Whenever we bring up our relationship in t4t spaces, people either treat me like a cis man who doesn't belong in these spaces and as if our relationship is basically c4t MLM, or treat him as as a bi butch woman as opposed to a trans man especially when people found out he was pregnant and wasn't interested in his explicitly queer masculinity and transition making him identical to a cis man.

Plus, neither of us really pass due to how we present ourselves, I at most look like a flamboyant gay man, tall lanky hairy and bearded who plays around with makeup expression but doesn't gravitate towards feminine wear. He's gendered as a butch lesbian almost exclusively as opposed to a man, he doesn't bind which alone gets him misgendered, he wears masc clothing but a variety of factors in which he presents himself and even basic things such as how his voice sounds are enough for him to lose that association with manhood and gets him clocked. Do I need to be transfem and transition to look like a woman for our relationship to be seen as "t4t" enough? I'm not a trans woman or transfem and I'll never be, does that make me a cis invader incroaching on actual t4t people? Does he have to transition specifically in a way to fit cis centric standard of manhood, does he have to desire top and bottom surgery as opposed to "just" hormones in order to be seen as his actual gender in t4t spaces? Are t4t people not allowed to have children nautrally, does that makes us too close to cishets in their eyes for people's comfort?

We have mutual nblnb friends , same AMAB+AFAB, agender + multigender. Both of them present in ways that align with their AGAB, they're not men or women but their relationship in t4t spaces has been dismissed and treated as a "cishet relationship" constantly, with them being actively misgendered even in trans positive spaces. Are they just straight too, silly little cishets who want to hog up t4t resources from? Do t4t relationships only count as queer if they're binary/binary? If both people have the same gender? If people go through full medical transition? If they're both the same AGAB? What makes t4t inherently worthy in the eyes of people within the community, none of us are aware because we've all been actively excluded or dismissed for one reason or another, had our transness intrinsically erased due to not being the "expected" t4t couple.

The way people talk about t4t as this club which queerness is so narrow and if you fall out of what's expected for t4t you're basically straight? There are straight t4t people who are awesome and face their own isolation within queer spaces that I cannot speak on, so I won't. Having different AGABs or not being strictly MLM/WLW just feels like a quick way to get misgendered or to have your queerness and transness taken into question. It sucks. T4T is celebrated but only if you're a certian type of T4T.

Yes, both you and your friends should absolutely be included in T4T discussions! These are an extremely valuable experiences that you're bringing, and dismissing it as "c4t" or "cishet" is just misgendering. NB4NB relationships are not any less queer, and they're not "cishet lite" just for being of different AGABs - once more, it's reducing nonbinary people down to their AGAB, which is sad to see so often in queer/trans spaces.

I haven't been in T4T relationships myself so I can't comment on the isolation that some kinds of T4T relationships face, but it's absolutely true that some types get talked about more than others, creating unfair expectations for people whose relationships don't fit inside this norm. Which is sad, as subverting expectations of gender like you do is as queer as queer can be!

[this-is-exorsexism]

here's the thing:

exorsexism functions differently than antitransmasculinity and transmisogyny, which is why binary trans people do have privilege over nonbinary people.

exorsexism is based on identity and not/hardly about how you are seen by society. this is because the gender binary has been created to exclude nonbinary genders/gender identities. the gender binary positions two valid options when it comes to gender: (exclusively, fully and always) male and (exclusively, fully and always) female. the gender binary is not about gender roles, as there are plenty GNC men and women whose identity comfortably fits into those categories - gender expression doesn't equal gender. the gender binary is also not the same as cissexism or cisnormativity, as many trans people comfortably fit into one of the two aforementioned options. nonbinaryhood is about identity and realising you're a man after falsely believing you were a woman before is not the same thing. in hindsight, a lot of trans people, binary or nonbinary, actually do realise that they were their gender/gender identity all along. the gendef binary is also not the sams as gender oppositionism (the idea that men and women are exact opposites from one another), as many people who defy that logic comfortably fit into a binary gender. the term exorsexism was coined to refer to an identity-based oppression because that's simply how the gender binary works. there are some people who may be - as much as i hate this term - "collateral damage" of systemic exorsexism (such as binary people using they/them pronouns). but they don't experience exorsexism the way nonbinary people do. nonbinary people are the core target of exorsexism, and the only people who are systemically affected by it. it is quite literally impossible for exorsexism to be about anything else than identity, because in s society that barely recognises nonbinary people, let alone as any sort of comprehensive group, it's basically impossible to exist and be mistaken for nonbinary.

transmisogyny and antitransmasculinity however very much are based on how society sees us. claiming manhood/womanhood or masculinity/femininity when it's "not ours" or being seen as doing so or being seen as "moving away from womanhood/manhood" and many more arr all things that lead to people being subjected to antitransmasculinity or transmisogyny. this is why transmisogyny is not exclusive to transfems and antitransmasculinity is not exclusive to transmascs, but rather they are experienced by transfems and transfeminised people (i.e. people who are regularly seen as transfem), and transmascs and transmasculinised people (i.e. people who are regularly seen as transmasc). transmascs can be transfeminised, transfems can be transmasculinised, nonbinary people can be either, intersex people can be both. it really depends on how an individual is perceived by the world which may vary from person to person because bodies are different. especially as trans and intersex people are often perceived to occupy some sort of visual, physical middle ground of gender expression, it's highly subjective whether a cis person perceives us as transmasc or transfem. we may experience antitransmasculinity and transmisogyny both in the same day, looking the exact same but being perceived by different people. this is especially true for non-cis-passing and GNC trans people. and because they're both based on perception, people like (perisex) afab demigirls or (perisex) amab nonbinary guys absolutely need to be included in those discussions as well, because they're still seen as moving away from cis manhood/womanhood, and, due to exorsexist ideas, often assumed to be moving towards the other binary gender. there's some "collateral damage" here too, where some cis perisex people are seen as transmasc or transfem, but never to the extent or as frequently as trans and intersex people.

experience of transmisogyny and antitransmasculinity are also different depending on your identity though. i know that my experience with antitransmasculinity is different from transmascs and trans men as someone who doesn't identify as either, and i know that my experience with transmisogyny is different from transfems and trans women as someone who doesn't identify as either. not just because people who transmasculinise or transfeminise me are misgendering me and erasing me, but also because it just feels different to be mistreated for your actual identity rather than a constant misperception of who and what you are, because at least i have somewhat of a chance to brush certain things off because i don't actually identify as masculine/feminine or male/female.

it's also important to note that neither-transmasc-nor-transfem nonbinary people being subjected to antitransmasculinity, transmisogyny or even both is rooted in exorsexism and the erasure of nonbinary gender identities, because we're always effectively misgendered in being transmasculinised or transfeminised when we're not, because people think if we're "moving away" from our AGAB, we must be moving towards the other binary gender because there are only two options.

now you might be thinking: what about binary trans people who experience both transmisogyny and antitransmasculinity, who are discriminated against for being seen as "in between"?

let me introduce you to misandrogyny, the hatred of androgyny and people perceived as androgynous, regardless of their actual identity. misandrogyny affects all kinds of trans people across the board, as well as many intersex people.

exorsexism functions in similar ways to bimisia: both are based on not fitting a binary, either the gender binary or the gay/straight binary, both are based on supposedly occupying some kind of middle ground between the two that's seen as not real, both nonbinary and mspec people are seen as not trans/gay enough while still experiencing the full blast of transmisia and homomisia, both exorsexism and bimisia are deemed not real and seen as "misdirected transmisia/homomisia", both are mainly identity-based and rarely on other factors, both nonbinary and mspec people face significant erasure and misgendering/mislabelling, both identities are seen as a phase and a stepping stone towards "the real deal" and so much more. and the conversations around exorsexism and bimisia also sort of mirror each other, with mono gays refusing to acknowledge that being mono and not experiencing bimisia is a privilege, and binary trans people refusing to acknowledge that being binary and not experiencing exorsexism is a privilege and both groups complaining about supposedly being lumped in with straight/cis oppressors. both exorsexism and bimisia are erased because people think nonbinary people are only oppressed for not being cis and mspec people are only oppressed for not being straight, when we are specifically oppressed for being nonbinary or mspec on top of being (seen as) gay or trans. both identities are seen as "only queer because they're not cis/straight" while the inherent queerness of not being binary and being attracted to multiple genders is erased and our identities are flattened to conform with binaries as much as possible. both exorsexism and bimisia are identity-based because there's always this idea that if we simply stopped insisting to be nonbinary or mspec, no one would actually mistreat us. we are mistreated because we disrupt binaries and assert an identity outside of it. both nonbinary and mspec identity is seen as inherently more of an ideological choice than being binary trans or mono gay is. binary trans and mono gay identities are seen as inherently more genuine whereas nonbinaryhood and mspecness are seen as people just trying to be "extra".

and i would like to explicitly state that when i talk about privilege here, it's not the same as actually having the power to oppress, i am merely talking about the privilege of not experiencing a certain kind of oppression, and to be taken more seriously etc. binary trans people don't have power to oppress nonbinary people, but they do have the privilege of not experiencing exorsexism, they do have the privilege of cis people being more likely to listen to them, so it's important to acknowledge that privilege so that you can use it responsibly to be an ally to your nonbinary siblings and not do a Buck Angel on us.

[redtail-lol]

heyey dw abt dykepridee

everything theyve sent was in assuming bad faith and theyre not worth arguing with. they're just trying to stir up discourse to feel superior about themselves

dont worry, dont waste your energy, Im sorry theyre bothering you. they came up to me and 2 other people as well, assumed I romanticised stalking with 0 proof past the gender itself, called faunic attraction 'no-dick attraction' which is super insensitive, and reblogged someone else assuming a term related to sleepiness must be romanticising... narcolepsy, out of every other possible sleep disorder?

I have no idea how someone is okay with being a pan lesbian while they constantly assume bad faith about identities theyre unfamiliar with, aka you know, the same thing people are doing to mspec lesbians.

@kirugorture

Thank you. I don't get why someone, especially someone who is nonbinary, sees a post that essentially boils down to "nonbinary people are not men or women and they shouldn't be misgendered by people calling themselves monosexual because apparently being attracted to nonbinary genders 'doesn't count' as mspec because they're not one of the 'REAL genders' and people who are attracted to women and enby genders only can call themselves mspec lesbians or just lesbians but by calling themselves mono they are saying those nb people are just women" and has an issue with it.

Also good to know about faunic, because I literally... Am faunic?? It's not "no-dick attraction" it's being attracted to people who are not men, and I'm actually favorable to dating non-op trans women and AMAB enbies. I'm a non-man and I'm attracted to non-men and I'm allowed to have a label to describe that. If it's a bad definition for lesbian then fine now it isn't for lesbian it's for faunic/daunic. Not being attracted to men, and wanting a label for that... Isn't wrong? At all?

(also genital preferences are valid so L + Ratio dykepridee people are allowed to not like dick or not like pussy and that's FINE.)

I don't think they even understand what I was saying. I wasn't excluding nb-attracted lesbians from being lesbians, or even exclusive lesbians. I am one! I call myself an exclusive lesbian all the time. It's just not mono. It will never be mono to be attracted to women AND to people who are not women!! Yet exclusionists constantly define themselves as mono even though they include nb folk, which is misgendering them, and my post was to call out the rampant misgendering of nonbinary people that these lesbians partake in, even some being nonbinary themselves, because otherwise they'd have to acknowledge that mspec lesbians make sense and are valid

In short: my whole purpose in writing the post was to call out the rampant misgendering of nonbinary people within the (exclus) lesbian community for the purpose of pretending lesbian is a strictly monosexual label. People never talk about it and it needs to be talked about.

Their "counterpoint" that no one cares in real life is so... Bad. It missed the point, it was pretty clear they had entirely missed the point, and also, "no one in real life cares" is a stupid counterargument in any "debate." For one, I exist outside of tumblr and I care. For two, I don't care what happens at pride parades. Misgendering nonbinary people (who do not identify as women at all) is not okay, no matter how much people at a parade care about strangers. If you can't actually prove why I'm wrong, your point is null and void.

Also "I'm almost 30, my back hurts, and I just woke up" bitch nobody gives a fuck about your back hurting, it's clearly too early for you to use your brain, and you're a whole grown adult arguing with a child online. That's real mature.

[spitblaze]

Cis Men run... every institution. Cis men are at the head of every government in the world, Cis Men created the system we all have to live in and made themselves the Societal default. It's kind of hard to feel sympathy for Men on anything other than an individual level when in a broad sense, Men are the reason for literally all of their own problems. Men are the ones who protest ANY form of progress, even if it would be beneficial to them, even when it means addressing and getting rid of things like Toxic Masculinity and allowing them to live in a freer, less rigidly definitive way. Men are the reason we literally all have to be scared all the fucking time just to stay safe. That's not TERF shit. That's literal centuries of oppression and the result of everyone who isn't a Cis Man having to learn very quickly how to keep themselves safe FROM Cis Men. Masculinity isn't the problem, Maleness is not inherently the problem, not all Men are inherently the problem. But in an abstract sense, assuming all Men are untrustworthy or potentially dangerous is the only way to keep yourself safe. I'm a Trans Woman. Yes, the TERF movement is primarily made up of Cis Women. But when I go outside the reason I try to make myself as unnoticed as possible, the reason I am afraid for my safety, the reason I don't present unless I have people around me, is because of what a Man could potentially do to me. Because of what Men HAVE done to me. And I'm not an outlier. It's all very well and good to say "viewing Men and Maleness as inherently bad is wrong" in the abstract? But in practical terms if I suddenly let my guard down I'm fucking dead.

Hi, I'm a trans man. I know exactly what you're talking about, I've been there during the time before my egg cracked, I've been there AFTER my egg cracked, and I'm not about to tell you you should innately trust every man or masculine person. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, it's the most surefire way to stay safe. I get it, I've had that moment where a man approaches me in a way where I'm positive I'm about to become a statistic, I've seen the kinds of grifts run by men to convince other men that the only way forward is domination and fascism, I've seen how many men see any sort of pushback on their privilege and place in the world and go berserk. 'Misandry' is a loaded word thanks to MRA shitheads, and it's not one I like to use. Cis men have historically not faced sex discrimination anywhere in the GALAXY of the magnitude of women.

The point I am making is not that you have to trust and love and tolerate every single man. I would be a goddamn hypocrite if I told you to do that, I don't even do that. What I'm saying is that there are a lot of people who, for whatever reason, see men as inherently inhuman, inherently incapable of love, inherently predatory. It's what fuels TERFs in their ideology, the idea that someone within spitting distance of masculinity has only one goal, and that is harm. There are people who look at men expressing their love for other men and mock them or react with disgust, not because of garden variety homophobia, but because they are men, and who could possibly love a man? You see people in queer spaces get uncomfortable when someone who doesn't shave their facial hair walks into the room, exclude trans men and nonbinary amab people on the basis of their proximity to manhood. I understand why it happens, but getting jumpy right off the bat in situations like this helps nobody. Designating women as the 'victim' gender and men as the 'predator' gender is reductive, and while I understand a lot of this behavior is an overcorrective (healthy) fear of strange men, the real fact is that, like...most men aren't dangerous. There are a lot who are, and I'm not asking you to lower your guard on the bus or whatever, just to realize that like. Someone being a man does not preclude them being inherently predatory or regressive, and someone being a woman does not preclude them being 'safe'. That's all.

[dinitride-art]

Okay. This post is about a poll that was about queer identity and I don’t feel like I could pick any of the options. My identity is not a debate and when someone has a different life experience than you and tells you, hey. What you did kinda excludes my existence and experiences. You listen to them, okay?

I have learned today that sapphic and achillean are two words being used to describe experiences of queer women and identity (and others- but I’ll get into that in a sec) and queer men and their identities. And those are neat. They’ve got a cool theme to them and historical significance. However, I have come to the realization that some people don’t actually understand what it means when I say nonbinary/genderqueer/gender is a wild spectrum.

First of all, I cannot define my sexuality by anything but the word queer. I’m sure there’s some very complicated words floating around somewhere that I can list to describe my exact experience but that sounds like far too much work. If a gay man doesn’t have to list twenty different things and explain them to simply say hey. I like men and I am a man. Then neither should I. However, I’m going to try and explain my experiences the best that I can because whatever most of you are thinking is wrong.

I call myself genderqueer because I like the word queer and nonbinary has simply never felt right for me. Now, you might have a basic grasp on what this means; someone who isn’t a man or a woman. That’s a great start! If you can understand the concept that there are people who exist who aren’t either men or women than that’s great. But it’s way more complicated than that. You’ve probably heard the terms afab and amab in regards to trans people. If you haven’t they’re acronyms for ‘assigned female at birth’ and ‘assigned male at birth.’ Basically whatever the doctor decided to write on your birth certificate. Now, listen very closely because I’m going to say something very important.

AFAB NONBINARY/GENDERQUEER PEOPLE ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY WOMAN LITE.

What that means is that the phrase “nonbinary women” is the bane of my existence and if you say this to me in my vicinity be prepared for a fight. Now, people can identity as women and fuck around with gender, and hell, if someone calls themself a genderqueer/nonbinary woman they’ve got every right to do that. No one else can tell you who you are. It’s a problem when that is taken away from you. People still view afab and amab genderqueer and nonbinary people are two separate groups of people. And to that I say, I think the fuck not.

It’s okay if gender identities outside of the realm of men and women are beyond your comprehension. But at least have the decency of trying to understand us.

Hi, my names fisher. I’m genderqueer. I am not a man or a women but I use gendered terms as I see fit. Sometimes I look like what you would think ‘masculine’ is and sometimes more ‘feminine’ and sometimes neither and sometimes both. The expression of my gender identity is perceived in different ways, but it is not masculine or feminine no matter what anyone else thinks about it. Other peoples opinions on my identity and how I chose to live my life don’t matter to me. I am not a combination of a man and a woman, and I am not a gender less being (although some people are and they are in fact cool af). My gender expands beyond the idea of what a man is and what a woman is. It is best described as the endless expanse of thoughts and ideas from the core of the earth to the unknown depths of space and time.

You see how that’s hard to explain to people? You see how you might now understand that at all? You see how that’s probably extremely confusing to most people and doesn’t fit into any categories of gender and identity that most people have been taught?

You see how it’s easier to not tell me to pick between “trans and achillean” and “trans and sapphic” because there’s no way in hell either one of those describes me as a person?

Just. Give me another option because I’m telling you- me as a queergender person- that this isn’t enough. I would accept “other” or “queer” or “beyond your fucking comprehension apparently”. All of those are fine to me. But “who knows?” Me. I know. And I know that you probably don’t, and might never understand, and that’s okay. That’s how I live every single day of my life. I’ve accepted that. But give me the decency of another option. Because then I can at least say something in the tags. You don’t have to understand me, you just have to tolerate my existence. That’s where we are right now. Think about that for a bit.

And as my last thought on this post; don’t ever tell anyone that how they understand their identity is wrong because it doesn’t fit into how you understand the world.

[xxlovelynovaxx]

The end of a whole post about genuine transmisogyny and bioessentialism (that didn't cover how trans men and transmascs and plenty of AFAB and intersex nonbinary people are treated as violent invasive inherently dangerous monsters in most queer spaces, but y'know, we'll ignore that since it was a discussion specifically of transmisogyny)

So... people call nonbinary people "theyfabs" instead of calling them "female"? If an AMAB person was going off about "male solidarity" and "only males being safe" (or as I've explicitly seen in multiple spaces, "transfem only spaces" and "only transfems are safe" and treating nontransfems as violent invasive inherently dangerous monsters tainted by masculinity and femaleness... oh wait, can't ignore that part after all), they'd just call AMAB people "males" and not "theyfabs".

What is calling those people assigned MALE at birth doing, then? What makes separating trans people into aFab and aMab and deciding that one is inherently safe and trustworthy and the other are dangerous (trans) misogynist predators out to get everyone of the "other" sex any different? What about that behavior would not earn the name "theymab", except maybe that the people objecting to reducing nonbinary people down to their assigned gender at birth aren't the ones doing the disgustingly transmisogynistic "female solidarity" shit in the first place, and that they find that as disgusting as they find the fact that you used it as an excuse to do the exact same violence back at them?

Oh, you don't wanna hear that, do you? You don't wanna acknowledge that when you were excluded because of transmisogyny, you turned right around and instead of attacking the assholes that did it, you decided to coin a term that literally is about "afab nonbinary people being inherently dangerous" to have "solidarity against transmisogyny" by violently reducing other trans people to the genitals they had at birth.

Instead of just, y'know, calling them "transmisogynists who weaponize their agab", or even "bioessentialist transmisogynists", or hell, even "afab solidarity" fuckers or hell, some acronym about "assigned transmisogynist at female" idfk. No, there has to be a snappy exorsexist term that takes the violence of being called "male" and decides to throw that right back at a bunch of unrelated trans people for BEING afab regardless of them never once weaponizing it.

Let's not pretend theyfab in usage is anything other than "(sometimes afab) trans person who uses they/them who I don't like". Let's not pretend that it's actually primarily getting wielded against the "afab solidarity" shit people. Let's not pretend it's just a way of calling, usually nonbinary people, "females" in a "progressive" way.

(Also, being treated as a disgusting hideous freak by other trans people? Have you SEEN how the trans community treats testosterone, phalloplasty, breast-removal top surgery, metoidioplasty, being masculine or a man... etc?!)

Like, I've literally been called a theyfab, and I'm not female, nor have I ever been!

(I'm actually a visibly intersex person with very obviously mixed sexual traits, but IRL, about 50 percent of people think I'm male and the other 50 percent think I'm female. I regularly face every kind of transphobia because half of transphobes assume I'm a trans women and half assume I'm a trans man and they somehow manage to be both right and wrong)

It's funny, too. I've seen nonbinary AMAB people talking about being "cursed" with an "ugly gross" male body instead of the "other prettier body they could have been born with" who aren't called theymabs for it. On the other hand, I've seen transmascs called theyfabs for lamenting not being born with the handsome male body they so desperately desired called transmisogynistic theyfabs for... not wanting to be afab?

Like I'm not saying that tweet isn't grossly bioessentialist, I'm just saying it's hypocritical to not acknowledge that calling ALL male bodies gross and ugly and bad is just bioessentialism no matter who it comes from. I'm saying that if people are theyfabs for identifying as trans and female, but also theyfabs for not wanting to be female/wanting to be male, and even theyfabs for identifying as male when they transition (one I've also seen)...

... then maybe you just want an excuse to call trans people "females" in a socially acceptable way and to do some "only (trans) women and femmes are safe and pure and good" shit.

That's a you problem. Because tacking "trans" on the front of "women and femmes only" doesn't actually make it better. "No men or females" isn't actually any better than "no men or males". And judging whether nonbinary people are "safe" not based on their actual gender, but by their infant genital configurations decades ago, is just basic fucking transphobia

[riverofrainbows]

Hey if you're a leftist, and you write a post or comment on something related to gender norms or gender etc, and you write 'afab people' and then you write men or boys. Please think about why you do that.

Why didn't you write amab people instead of men or boys? Why didn't you write women or girls but did use agab language there?

Do you know that people can be afab and men/boys? Being afab and being a man/boy is not mutually exclusive.

Have you thought about why you didn't find it important or didn't think to be inclusive to amab nonbinary and trans people the way you are trying to be to afab nonbinary and trans people by not assuming their birth gender assignment is the same as their current gender?

Nitpicking the definition of women is radfem shit. Especially when people don't do the same about men or people amab. Assuming only people afab would be nonbinary and reflecting that with agab language but not giving the same awareness to nonbinary people amab is pretty rude. Using afab when women would have been more accurate is excluding trans women. Using afab when it's about trans men and transmasc people feels like misgendering by putting the focus on birth assignment.

Think for a second what you are actually trying to say and then use that, and use whatever it is consistently. Don't just use afab as a "progressive" synonym for 'woman'.

[surpriserose]

why do you use the label tme

okay im gonna assume youre here in good faith

i use the term tme because while im trans and experience transphobia i dont experience specifically transmisogyny and i think its important to let people know that even though i post about transmisogyny i dont experience it myself and may miss or get some things wrong in discussions about transmisogyny because of that. And i want trans women to feel safe and know where i stand on supporting them and being an ally in even small ways.

as for tme/transmisogyny exempt and tma/transmisogyny affected they are not a way to "ask whats in your pants" or new afab/amab binary just because theres two terms. and thats why i prefer tme/tma over afab/amab, especially as i have seen a lot of examples of things using the term afabs to exclude trans women from feminist and womens events and places.

Cis men(amab), cis women(afab), trans men(afab), and some nonbinary people and intersex people who may be either afab or amab (and i know it gets more complicated with intersex people because of our medical system doing its best to preserve the gender binary) are all tme, while trans women and nonbinary transfems are tma.

[lighthousegod]

Recently, my cis lesbian roommate made a comment about "he/theys" that kinda stuck with me. She said these people, on her dating app, were matching with her and ignoring that she had lesbian in her bio.

We'd had convos about whether trans mascs and trans men could be lesbians (im a transmasc person, but not a lesbian, although ive identified with the label before), and I'm all for he/him lesbians and trans men who are lesbians- I've researched, I know Stone Butch Blues, I don't think telling anyone they can or can't be anything is right.

So this sorta stuck with me. I went, "but. They probably identify as nonbinary if they use they, and even if they don't, trans guys sometimes ID as lesbians too." And she was like "well, but I'm not attracted to masculine people." And I brought up that she does usually like butch lesbians (who definitely use other pronouns besides she/her sometimes!), and she sorta brushed me off, saying there was a different "vibe" between transmascs who use he/they and butches (even though they... sometimes are the transmascs she's talking about???)

So I was like "well, do you have 'looking for femmes' in your bio or something?"

"No."

"Then how are they supposed to know??"

"I don't know it's just my preference!!"

It was super. Odd. I should say, my roommate is cis but uses she/he pronouns. She is, in fact, a lesbian who uses he/him sometimes, as he identifies as bigender *but not a man, ever.

I just find this all so confusing. I mean, let's think about it, fr.

So the popular idea today is that lesbians cannot be men, so trans men can't be lesbians.

Now, here's what that implies: if trans men can't be lesbians, then they are always in the same category as cis men. Now, of course, some trans men ARE in that category, usually binary trans men- and they're all men, right, so every man is under that umbrella. But still, gender isn't so simple. Trans men and transmascs have vastly different experiences between each other and especially cis men. This isn't to do with internal identity, but outward perception. Regardless of whether I'm a man or not, the world has seen me as a woman all my life. That makes it very hard to be accepted and comfortable in mlm spaces, especially when theres so much transphobia in the cis gay community. Plenty of trans men are stealth, or simply have a supportive community, and are welcomed like a cis man would be. But that's not the case for everyone, and not every trans man WANTS to be treated in the same way a cis man might.

But whatever, okay, let's go with that. Trans men are men and lesbian means non-man attracted to non-man, so they're not included cause it's invalidating to (some) trans men, regardless of if they've identified with the label lesbian for years or feel unsafe in mlm spaces bc of how overwhelmingly cis they can be, or whatever else.

So... what about nonbinary men, then? Nonbinary women seem to be accepted, not just nb fems but those who identify as both nonbinary AND a woman- so why are nonbinary men not?

"Because they have man in their identity and lesbians can't like men"

So.. what about bigender people? People who are both men AND women. They can't be lesbians? I guess not.

But let's say they can, and we're just excluding binary trans men from the term lesbian..

People often bring up "would you accept a cis man identifying as a lesbian?" As an arguing point here. Bringing it back to my original point, would you accept a "he/they"? What if they were amab, and had no interest in transitioning? Or a transmasc person who DID? I just saw a transfem lesbian saying she couldn't possibly let trans men with full beards into lesbian spaces as it was transphobic and wrong- aren't there transfem lesbians who don't want to shave or get their face lasered? What do sex characteristics have to do with it? I thought we were trying to avoid labels based on that sort of thing.

So at the end of the day, I guess it really is about the label of "man." What's that even mean? That's literally just a word. I'm so confused.