#which means that transfems have ALWAYS been accepted by lesbians (what a way to phrase that btw) and it's ahistorical to say anything else

[stackslip]

lots of really good criticisms about sbb and dtwof coming out on the dashboard which are all great to see, but honestly i'd feel hypocritical for reblogging them because it would feel like going SEE I TOLD YOU MY HATE FOR THEM WAS JUSTIFIED when my distaste for these works didn't have anything to do with the actual good criticism here on my dash. no, my distaste for them has always been primarily driven by the behaviours of the people who tend to uphold stone butch blues and dykes to watch out for as The Two Seminal Lesbian Works That Every Dyke Must Aspire To Or Else, when these same people have always tended to minimize the prevalence of transmisogyny and whorephobia in lesbian communities while wailing that it's lesbopobic to even imply that this might be an issue, while simultaneously swearing by the works of transmisogynists and whorephobes such as rich/dworkin/mckinnon. also participating in transmisogynistic whisper campaigns (and throwing away trans girls the moment they become a bit of an inconvenience or feel too "male" to them), backing deeply reactionary movements and tendencies, and treating bi women like the dredges of the deep lmao

[exeggcute]

just a heads up - the whipping girl is great and does a really good job at describing transfem experiences imo and ring true to my life but based on conversations with transmasc friends its not as good of a reflection of transmasc experiences n can even read as offensive? idk how u identify or if that matters. I do think its worth reading for a good transfem perspective tho :3

interesting... I suppose I'll have to read on and see lol. I assume you're transfem based on the phrasing here and like, obviously communicating with me in good faith, so I mean this with no malice towards you or your transmasc friends—but I'm curious how much the "offensive" part comes from an honest/earnest reading of her work and how much stems from a more general kneejerk reaction from certain stripes of transmasc people who bristle at any descriptions of power dynamics that might implicate them in transmisogny... which, tbqh, the growing prominence of those kneejerk reactions is part of why I finally picked up whipping girl in the first place!

so I'm definitely interested in the transfem perspective, especially going back to the root of the term "transmisogny" amidst a climate where it's being repurposed for increasingly removed ends, but even as a transmasc(?)* person I've already been nodding along with stuff she's described in the foreword/blog posts that I've read so far. the only thing I would strongly disagree with is her assertion that masculine gender presentation is valued more highly than feminine gender presentation in lesbian communities, because in my experience that's not always or even often the case, but I also assume a lot of that has to do with cultural shifts over time considering that she's a few years older than my mom. lol. I actually wonder if the newfound dominance (or at least what I perceive as a dominance) of feminine perspectives in lesbian communities comes from the fact that, like, both gayness and general gender nonconformity are more culturally acceptable than they were even 15 or 25 years ago, but the former has gained more ground than the latter, and so being more "normatively" female (and therefore more mainstream) has become the new metric for assigning value in gay spaces versus an old school approach that simply valued masculinity as-is. times change etc etc. and in the act of typing all that out it also occurred to me how much the current plight of masc lesbians might be collateral damage from modern flavors of transmisognystic radfems who target trans lesbians in a way that also leaves cis butches in the lurch. much to consider...

* just to lay my cards on the table, I don't strooongly align myself with "transmasc" as a label but it does describe the general... direction in which I have moved, lol. in any case I'm certainly not transfem but I do believe in their beliefs.