I just wanted to let you guys know that adding an asterisk to “trans” and also to things like “trans woman” or “transphobia” is transphobic in that it’s used to exclude people who arent “trans enough” (so they cant be trans, but they’re allowed in if there’s an asterisk), and also from what i understand it is commonly used against trans women as a form of transmisogyny. thanks!
I actually had no idea that was considered transphobia. Thanks for informing me!-L
What I’m saying is that JKR, like so many average people, very likely started off in a place of well-meaning ignorance. Then she started exploring new and different ideas being shared online. Some ideas resonated deeply with her experiences as an abuse survivor, so she began exploring them deeper. Then, wham, public backlash. Her trauma is triggered - but so is her curiosity. After all, if something she did or said set people off, maybe she’s onto something. So she starts exploring more. Starts asking more questions. And when she does this in public, there is always backlash. Meanwhile, however, in private, her new friends are telling her “See? This is proof we’re right. This is proof that the world wants us silenced, because they’re scared of the truth, and they really hate women that much.” And what do you know, what they’re telling her starts sounding more and more reasonable, especially since the outside world is becoming more and more hostile.
People keep searching for ways to argue that JK Rowling has always been a horrible person deep down as a way of explaining her recent behaviour.
But here’s the thing: that’s probably not true at all.
Pretending it is discounts the harsher, scarier truth: that even decent, well-meaning people can be radicalised by dangerous, hateful, predatory groups, and given enough time they can become truly hideous versions of their former selves.
It can happen to me. It can happen to you. It can happen to any of us, given the right mix of circumstances. And over the past few years, we’ve seen it happen to one of the most famous children’s authors of our age.
Nobody is immune.
So you’re saying that The Clown wasn’t always… outright evil?
No one is born evil
Good point, but prejudice is best installed at a young age. Why is why I assumed the said Clown was just evil since some early part of their life.
And round and round it goes, until you have a radical.
This is absolutely how radicalization works. I started out “I could never be a feminist, they hate kinksters” (yes, this was a massive oversimplification) and within, oh, i think two years? i was saying “well, i don’t like the overtones of ‘radical feminist’ but what’s so wrong with saying you’re a radical AND a feminist? we need to make sure there’s space for traumatized women who really do legitimately hate and fear men.”
When you become an extremist, you become UNRECOGNIZABLE even to YOURSELF.
This isn’t to apologise for her behaviour or rehabilitate her into some former activist who is still worthy of saving; it’s to contextualise her recent descent into TERFdom compared to her previous political stances she’s openly held. She was probably never going to be a staunch ally for equality and diversity, and yes, a lot of the HP series were very problematic in retrospect, but she could very easily have gone the other way and at the very least turned out to be less of a bigoted shitbag she is now. The fact that her politics in late 2000′s/early 2010′s were similar to so many people who are now activists and organisers for queer, BIPOC and vulnerable communities should tell us to be all the more careful about radfem ideology and transphobia in progressive spaces.
It’s comforting to say “we should have known in hindsight that she was always going to become a TERF, the early signs were all there!” but that’s also not true. We have to recognise that the toxic ideology, the active harm she chooses to participate in, was a deliberate choice; this was a path she chose to go down, not one that was pre-determined for her. It’s also an easy way to separate ourselves from being critical of radfem influence; “JKR was always a right-wing bigot and that’s why she became indoctrinated with radfem bullshit. I’m not a right-wing bigot, therefore unlike her, I will never fall for radfem bullshit.”
People who become radicalised, including those to become radfems, were not always irredeemable right-winger proto-Conservatives doomed for extremism and hatred, and that’s the point. The revisionist idea that she was always beyond salvaging erases how TERFs recruit people (especially vulnerable, impressionable people) in queer, progressive and liberal circles and how easily their dogwhistles can go undetected. The idea that JKR was already a closet right-winger from the get-go and therefore could never have been a good person is ultimately unhelpful because all it does it separate from the reality of how radfem doctrine spreads. TERFs sell their own toxic, harmful views packaged as progressive ideas as part of their strategy and that’s why their ideology is dangerous and requires constant vigilance to drive out.
mads mikkelson is refusing to condemn jk rowling just because he’s on her payroll now. like this interview is so obnoxious and it just turns into him complaining about how both sides need to be nicer and “everything is political now”
he even implies that people don’t know what they’re talking about… but also admits he didn’t read what she said, so he can’t comment on it. like…… my dude……. if you can’t comment, don’t fucking “both sides”transmisogyny
and i know since he’s been elected tumblr’s decrepit man of the year people will let it slide or be like “well at least he didn’t defend her” but just because he didn’t aggressively say he’s right doesn’t mean he didn’t passively say ‘well at least let her use her platform to say it”
Things you say when you’re totally not transphobic.
[TW for discussion of forced sterilization and racism]
So someone on Feministing (I think) finally made the connection that trans* rights and reproductive rights/abortion are both fundamentally about bodily integrity and autonomy and therefore have many intersections, and proponents of both should be working together (something I’ve been saying since day one, along with many other trans* people before me).
Well radical feminists aren’t having it. Apparently the fact eludes them that forced sterilization and forced birth are two sides of the same antichoice coin. Which brings me to my main point. This so-called “conflict of interest” has happened before (maybe more than once?). During the second wave the interests and reproductive rights of wealthy, white feminists and WoC were going in opposite directions. White women were demanding access to abortion and to voluntary sterilization without restrictions from paternalistic doctors and simultaneously WoC were struggling to: be allowed to have children, not be demonized for having children, not be forcibly sterilized (often without their knowledge or consent), and not be tested on for development of contraception or other medications. Guess who was prioritized. Exactly. There’s a history here and a lot of tension and mistrust (rightfully) still remains because rich, white women made “reproductive rights” synonymous with what they needed access to and completely avoided the fact that the right to have children is as much of a reproductive rights issue as the right to abort/not have children.
My point is we know these radical feminists hate intersectionality because they think sex-based oppression is the only thing that matters (this is racist all on its own) and we know they hate trans* people. The fact that they don’t see how important forced sterilization is now anymore than they did back then has some serious implications considering the intersection of race and trans* status. Forced sterilization affects us all but TWoC are disproportionately the victims of violence and often have an even more precarious and tenuous relationship to the medical establishment, opening them up to all kinds of violations, particularly in regards to reproductive rights. That once again forced sterilization isn’t a priority for radical feminists and reproductive rights activists is further proof of their racism and the fact that White Feminism™ is alive and well, in case you doubted it for a split second.
as is the case in every cis community, transmisogyny is structurally embedded in the culture of the cis lesbian community, and its getting pretty absurd that we can point this out for straight cis people or even cis gay men without tumblr freaking out about it, but the second you mention that cis lesbians are not exempt from reproducing and enacting transmisogyny a massive contingent of people in here will accuse you of “calling all cis lesbians TERFs” and even of, somehow, being directly responsible for cis lesbians being recruited into the TERF movement, as if our attempts to combat bigotry and oppression against us somehow were so inherently wrong that they justify our oppressors radicalizing themselves into exterminationist politics.
it would appear that this website would rather trans lesbians never speak of the fact that we are, on a very fundamental level, alienated and marginalized within the greater lesbian community, and that this is something that is enacted upon us by the dominant and majority group of the lesbian community, that is, cis lesbians. TERFs are an easy target because they represent a political group of women who have enshrined their own transmisogyny to the point of developing radical exterminationist politics based on bringing transmisogyny to its ultimate conclusion, but this doesn’t change the fact that this group could not exist or be capable of carrying out recruitment without transmisogyny being a largely everpresent factor in the culture of cis women regardless of sexuality.
frankly it seems that a lot of you are so hung up on the fact that greater society demonizes cis lesbians that you’ve become so defensive you will refuse to accept any and all criticism towards how cis lesbians as a community behave, even if its coming from other lesbians who happen to be marginalized, excluded, mistreated and oppressed by the people you are so keen on treating as flawless.
Lesbophobia is real. It’s the prejudice, bigotry, and oppression that exists at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny. Let me say it again: Lesbophobia is real. Hate for lesbians is real.
However, it is essential to acknowledge and understand that the term lesbophobia has been co-opted by a loud and growing contingent of LGBTQ women in communities that share troubling ties and ideology with factions that exist inside the alt-right movement — worse, the dangerous dogma that’s attaching itself to word the lesbophobia has found a new home at AfterEllen.
I first encountered the word lesbophobia in response to the post I wrote called Queer Women Take Over The 2016 Emmys.Her Story got a revolutionary nod for Outstanding Short Form. Kate McKinnon took home a trophy for Saturday Night Live. Sarah Paulson won for The People vs. O.J. Simpson. And Jill Soloway scored another victory for Transparent. On social media there was a small outcry that I hadn’t chosen the headline “Lesbians Take Over the 2016 Emmys,” despite the fact that Kate McKinnon was the only winner who explicitly identifies as a lesbian. (In fact, Sarah Paulson is on record saying, “I refuse to give any kind of label just to satisfy what people need.”) The reasons the handful of dissenters gave for my decision to call the Emmys queer was that I am a lesbophobe, an espouser and executor of lesbophobia.
To be very honest with you, I shrugged it off. The most unwinnable battle we have at Autostraddle is labeling LGBTQ people in a way that satisfies everyone. It’s such a constant struggle, we laid out an explanation about labels in our official comment policy. Recently on a Pop Culture Fix, I wrote about the new queer characters coming to The Good Wife spin-off. One of them will be a lesbian, according to the show’s writers; the other’s sexuality has not been labeled. So, I said, “The Good Wife spin-off will prominently feature two lesbian, bisexual, gay, homosexual, or otherwise queer-identified women.” Just to cover all my bases because it was almost Christmas and I was tired and I didn’t want to have to argue about labels. And yet, the cries of lesbophobia came in again. I got a couple of emails, a dozen or so tweets. Essentially: “Lesbian is not a dirty word! Saying queer is lesbophobic!”
So, on December 26, I tweeted something I think is a true, fair, and accurate analogy:
Yelling “lesbophobia!” when someone says “queer” is like yelling “war on Christmas!” when someone says “happy holidays.” Come on, y'all.
A couple of days later, AfterEllen’s official Twitter tweeted at me and said: “@theheatherhogan oh, agreed. It’s like yelling “biphobia!” and “transphobia!” when someone says lesbian.“
“AfterEllen is three weeks shy of transforming their website into an online support group for victims of wyt lesbian genocide. This is honestly the most ridiculously entitled white lesbian coated petrified bullshit I have seen in a long time. And if you don’t think white supremacy has reached out its dirty little fingers and touched a few groups of marginalized white folks, well. Keep an eye on their feed here and there. Keep an eye on their former writers. They aren’t just trying to Make Lesbianism Great Again… They are asserting their strength. They are erasing the visibility of the defectors. They are sliding their salty little asses into spaces and feeds where they must know they are clearly not wanted or cared for. I was never a fan of AE but this new image they’re building for themselves is a little too Nazi-adjacent for my galaxy Blaaaack aaaass.”
Dickens was, of course, correct. And her point was proven once again the very next day when an article blasted out to the 125,000 followers of AfterEllen’s official, verified Twitter account cried: “Lesbian Spaces Are Still Needed, No Matter What the Queer Movement Says”. It suggests that trans women and bisexual women’s desire to be included in queer women’s spaces is to blame for the decline of lesbian-specific spaces, which lesbians need to stay safe from trans and bisexual women.
That kind of rallying cry feels very much like the “Save Our White Neighborhoods” rallying cry of the alt-right, so I went on a deeper dive to try to find the origins of what I called “the lesbophobia movement” on Twitter. And what I found was more horrifying than I ever imagined.
A few weeks ago AfterEllen — which everyone presumed dead after the company that owns it effectively fired everyone, including longtime editor in chief Trish Bendix — announced it had acquired a new editor named Memoree Joelle. In October, Joelle, tweeted a Change.org petition that she’d signed called Take the L Out of LGBT. The petition is a direct response to a previously failed petition that called for GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign, HuffPo Voices, The Advocate, etc. to Drop The T from LGBT. The most popular supporter of the petition is a guy you might know called Milo Yiannopoulos. He signed it, tweeted about it, and dedicated 3,000 words to it in a post on Breitbart. Thanks to Milo’s urging, Matthew Hopkins, one of the main perpetrators of Gamergate, wrote a post called “Why #GamerGate Should Help the ‘Drop the T’ Campaign” on his personal blog. Hopkins called it “one of the most politically important campaigns of our generation.”
In addition to signing and tweeting about the petition, Joelle commented her approval. When former AfterEllen writer Elaine Atwell brought Joelle’s support of the petition to light, Joelle’s comments disappeared from the petition, and so did Elaine’s byline from the hundreds of articles she wrote over the last five years at AfterEllen.
The comments on the Change.org petition mention lesbophobia multiple times and equate it with trans activism, as do the subreddits that discussed Joelle’s contribution to the petition. “Part of lesbophobia is hating us for our same-sex attraction, but another very big part of it is hating us for our rejection of men,” one user wrote on /r/GenderCritical/. (Trans women are almost always referred to as men on this particular subreddit.) Another Redditor on /r/actuallesbians decried the “male entitlement and lesbophobia” of protesting the petition. “The moment we talk about your rape culture or your male violence we’re ‘transphobic’ or ‘biphobic.’” (The men in this comment are actually trans women and “rape culture” refers to the constantly espoused idea in TERF communities that trans women are male predators.) The lesbophobia tag on the blog GenderTrender is a deeply disturbing trip down an anti-trans rabbit hole. The lesbophobia tag on the website 4th Wave Now is horrifying; it equates allowing trans kids/teens to come out and live openly as their true gender with child abuse, ideas that are — again — shared with Breitbart and Milo Yiannopoulos. Reddit and Tumblr are absolutely flush with lesbians using the word “lesbophobia” to back up the ideas presented in these “Drop the T”/“The L Is Leaving” petitions.
These spaces that use the word “lesbophobia” to attack trans and bi women or people who use the word queer share more than than an ideology with Breitbart. You’ll find them saying things like “trans women want to colonize the lesbian community.” You’ll find them using the phrase “SJW” (meaning Social Justice Warrior), a pejorative term coined by the Men’s Rights Activist movement. And you’ll find a lot of talk about how the correct “biology” is the thing that allows people access to the protections of the majority. And lots and lots and lots and lots of just truly sickening propaganda leveled at trans and bi women. It’s very much about creating an in-group and scapegoating an out-group through tried and true tactics that have been — I’m sorry — utilized by Fox News and the alt-right for years.
I wrote about these things on Twitter, and you can read Dickens further unpacking them hereandhere. (You should read that last thread before you jump in here and call her “my black friend.”)
Look, we didn’t just wake up one day with an openly racist, openly sexist, openly xenophobic, openly ableist, openly anti-semitic president in the White House, appointing the leader of the most dangerous white supremacist website in history to his top advisor position. We watched blatant and unabashed white supremacist language and ideas slowly take over the movement from the inside. We watched the most powerful scapegoat the most vulnerable. We watched Fox News make heroes out of the white men who murdered unarmed black children and terrify people with their whole War on Christmas bullshit and equate all Muslims with terrorists. A Nazi didn’t walk into the West Wing and have a seat; the slow creep of white supremacy laid the path for him.
Vox did a fascinating interview with former conservative talk show host Charlie Sykes earlier this year. He quit over Trump. But the whole interview is him agonizing about how, to him, the GOP had always been about fiscal conservatism and states rights and he believed in that ideological purity so deeply that he fooled himself into believing that’s what the GOP was about to everybody, despite the fact that he saw the white supremacy and fascism slowly gaining power and momentum until it took over.
To realize, first of all, that you’re part of a movement that was not the movement you thought it was, that you’re aligned with people that you didn’t really understand you’re aligned with, and to realize that everything that you thought about the conservative intellectual infrastructure was really piecrust thin. You thought you had this big principled movement and then suddenly along comes Donald Trump and you realize that it was just was just the pastry on top. So I think disorienting is a great term. Disillusioning is not too strong either.
To me, what we’re talking about with lesbophobia is a similar thing. Is lesbophobia a term some lesbians have rallied around to protest the prejudice and bigotry that exist at the intersection of homophobia and misogyny? Yes, of course. Absolutely. HOWEVER. I had to go searching for people using the word lesbophobia like that because my entire experience with the way the word kept popping up in my timeline and in my comments and in the comments sections of other websites was to decry the use of the word queer and to espouse anti-trans and anti-bi ideology. And that includes every single person who landed in my mentions on Twitter when I started talking about this. I did not click on a single profile without finding anti-trans, anti-bi language; or ask a single person if they believe trans women are women and have them say yes.
If you are a woman who is using the word lesbophobia to NOT do those things, and you’re more angry at me for pointing out that it’s happening than you are at anti-trans/anti-bi people who have hijacked its meaning, I … I truly don’t understand. What’s happening at AfterEllen is terrifying me. Maybe the website is technically dead, but it still has clout and power and it’s using it to push some really dangerous ideas about lesbian exclusivity, and those ideas are shared by a very loud group of people who use the word “lesbophobia” on their blogs, social media, Reddit, etc. to vilify the people (like me) who stand against them.
I don’t want to cause anyone pain. I don’t want to make anyone feel unsafe or unloved or unaccepted. I DO NOT BELIEVE LESBIANS ARE NAZIS. I AM A LESBIAN. If you truly think that’s what I was saying when I unpacked these ideas on Twitter, I’m sorry. It was not my intention.
I do think, however, that it’s imperative for you to open your eyes to how the word lesbophobia is being used to persecute and oppress trans and bi women in very vocal and influential spaces that have direct ties in ideology and language with the alt-right.
An incredibly important read.
Via Crystal; language in propaganda is important, and often subtle.
Lesbian trans woman here and I appreciate this post, and I really hope TERF infiltration stops sometime soon
the thing is, that, like, no one really questions you if you say, “i was bullied in school for being gay,” even if you didn’t know you were gay at the time, we accept that people, even by the time they are children, have a sense for those differences which make someone an acceptable target.
and yet. when trans women say that they were victims of misogyny before coming out, suddenly people throw up their arms and insist that they cannot possibly understand how that would be the case, even though it’s explained by a model of behaviour they already readily accept in another context.
Being a Trans woman complicates everybsingle social interaction 1000% and there’s no way to explain this to cis people.
Literally every single aspect, legitimately. Going out for groceries, applying for jobs, working your job, everything. And you try to explain this and I usually hear back something along the lones of “well fuck em! They dint matter u just gotta be u!!1!1” and like yes, sure totally in theory, you’re so right, but in the real world where people have very bigoted and violent prejudices,,, when almost every1 u interact w/ looks like they’re about to burst ot laughing @ u, when people just look so straight up grossed out by you,,,,,like shit it gets so fucking rough and it’s every day
It’s so bad most of us avoid going out at least part of the time if not most
That’s true, when I first started getting involved with the Trans community I was surprised by how many people just stayed at home all the time, but now that’s how I am, I hate being outside my apartment with strangers staring at me.
this is going to be a very long post. it has to be, because i know a lot of people are going to disagree with it, and i dislike arguing so i am trying to lay out everything, pre-empt all possible questions and challenges, right from the beginning. i am sorry if you have trouble reading it. i will probably not explain much. it’s about a difficult subject, one I do not enjoy talking about it.
it’s about genital preference, which for those of you out of the loop, is the idea that in addition to only dating people of certain genders, some people will only date people with certain genital configurations, or in other words, of a particular coercively assigned sex. if you havent figured it out by now, this usually means they dont date trans people. or sometimes that they date based on coercively assigned sex at birth, regardless of gender. this post is going to focus on trans women and cis lesbians because that is my experience. if you find anything i say rings true for other groups, great, but if you want to talk about that further then make your own post.
the discourse is this: some people think this is an apolitical stance, just a quirk of human sexuality - some people like their partners with X genitals and thats just the way it is. others believe this is a product of the way society encodes meaning into bodies - its not really about the shape of the genitals, its about what they represent. if the second one is true then we would have to understand this preference as being influenced by transmisogyny, because transmisogyny is present in the way society encodes meaning into bodies.
when i talk about transmisogyny like this, i mean it in a material sense. i mean that something has a measurable, negative impact on trans women, on our quality of life, on our access to community, on how we are treated, and regarded, and talked about, or that it is a consequence of these things. i am not talking about an ideological transmisogyny i.e., one that is merely about how people feel. i think that a lot of the people who express this preference probably dont hate trans women. i think they think of us as women, they think of us as an oppressed and exploited minority, i think a lot of them want to be good allies to us. i dont doubt that. but i think they also think of their sexual preferences as unrelated to that, which is where we disagree.
so that’s the subject matter, and just a few of the disclaimers i feel i have to make before diving into this. now here’s my take -
if a cis lesbian knows that she is uncomfortable with trans women’s genitalia, acknowledges that this is probably a product of the way patriarchy coercively assigns meaning to bodies and, although potentially also a product of her own traumas, is ultimately a result of transmisogyny, and not an innate biological urge or otherwise something that trans women have no right to question, but is still actively committed to materially supporting and defending trans women in her life, then like, whatever. we can probably still work together.
now i want to be very clear. this is not about sex. this is not about me, or any other trans woman, wanting to have sex with anyone. im mostly interested in other trans women anyway. i am dating one cis woman currently, and i hope to be with her for the rest of my life, but if we break up i consider it very unlikely i will date a cis woman again. so it’s not about sex. it isn’t about that. but it’s still important.
since we know that there is a clear and measurable exclusion of trans lesbians from lesbian spaces, communities, organisations, that there is a clear and measurable lack of friendships between and social circles that include both cis lesbians and trans lesbians, compared to what you would expect given our shared lesbianism and relative numbers. given that lesbian groups and women’s groups generally, where they exist, are by and large hostile to the inclusion of trans women, not always openly hostile, but materially hostile -
then who would deny this is a consequence of transmisogyny? you cannot argue that is just biology or innate preference. and yet, when it comes to who cis lesbians date, we are supposed to believe it has nothing to do with who we can see they would rather be friends with? or who they would rather organise with, or live with, or talk to, or, like, play sports with? that is an absurd claim. an unsupportable claim. if the trends the previous paragraph describes are undeniably transmisogynist, and genital preference is undeniably both a consequence of those trends and a contributor to them, which it is, then genital preference is transmisogynist. it’s transmisogynist because it has both the effect of and is a consequence of isolating and othering trans women. it’s transmisogynist because it’s a product of the way patriarchy coercively assigns meaning to bodies. it’s a product of transmisogyny. it’s by definition transmisogynist. intent doesnt come into that. cis lesbians’ internal experience of it doesnt come into that. if your preference is traumatic in origin then it is a trauma shaped by transmisogyny. our traumatic responses are not immune to criticism.
even supposing some individuals might still possess this preference in a genderless society, since we cannot knowthis, assuming this and basing your politics around it is not a position you can possibly defend as materialist since we already know that patriarchy and transmisogyny are also shaping even our most private responses. to pretend like that’s not the case - to pretend like you can knowthat’s not the case, is to live in a transmisogynist fiction.
but the question this raises then, presumably, is does this reaction by cis women not in fact betray something deeper, that they must not really believe trans women are women, or care about us, or some such. and i would only say that wantingto fuck us does not rule out this possibility either.all it really tells us is that they, like all cis people, has internalised the value system that is transmisogyny. but we already knew that. that’s a given. we havent acquired any new information.
what i find really condemnable is defending this position as value-neutral, or demanding trans women reassure you about the way you see our bodies. what is also obviously unacceptable is pretending that trans women’s objection and discomfort with your preference comes from a place of “pressuring lesbians to have sex with trans women,” and not in fact from a place of trauma and exhaustion with the way we are seen and treated across all facets of our lives, not just sexual. if you tell a trans woman about your preference and she reacts badly, she does so because she is upsetwith you, not because she wants to fuck you. get over yourself. all of this is a mark of far greater transmisogyny than your initial reaction to our bodies.
like, here’s the thing. i have never seen a justification for genital preference by a cis lesbian that did not misgender trans women and our bodies (with words like dick, vagina, male & female, see this post for clarity), that did not subtly demonise us, that did not portray us as sexual aggressors, that was not patronising,that did not show a supreme lack of empathy for us, or that showed any attempt to understand how this is a traumatic subject for usas well. if it was not already deducible from the nature of genital preference that it was a transmisogynist position then it would still be obvious from the way cis lesbians talk about it.
to act like all these trans women, for all these years, offering all these analyses of this situation are all wrong, or misguided, or irrational or over-emotional or predatory, that is what betrays your real feelings towards us. that is not a defendable position. not without denying transmisogyny, not without denying the power cis women wield over trans women and trans women’s position as an oppressed and exploited group, not without denying our humanity, our subjectivity, our basic ability to understand and talk about our situation.
and if you do feel this way, and you recognise its origins in transmisogyny, and you’re just not sure how to change it or if you can, the correct thing to do is to keep it to yourself. no public confessional, no “i feel like i should tell you this to be accountable.” you literally just dont tell us. if you keep your sexual preferences private, like you should be doing anyway, and commit yourself to combatting transmisogyny in all other respects, including in yourself, then your preferences become irrelevant. in that situation i literally dont care.
this includes making posts on your blog about it. this includes talking privately to other cis lesbians about it and sharing how you think we are being unreasonable. (this does not necessarily preclude the possibility of anydiscussion on the subject between cis women, cis women should, after all, talk about transmisogyny and combatting transmisogyny amongst each other, as well.)
and oh my god does this ever include tagging or replying to this post with some shit about how it applies to you and you want to do better. dont do that! i dont want to know. if you really want to change then all of the above advice is probably how you do that. the way to unlearn the dehumanising responses you have to trans women is to treat us like human beings, and that includes not exposing us to your harmful beliefs about us and that especially includes not asking us to process those feelings for you. if you can do that, and treat us that way, maybe change is inevitable consciousness follows material events.
if you think any of that’s unreasonable, consider that this is how you should be approaching anyoppressive attitude or reflex you recognise in yourself. you dont make it the problem of those people the belief hurts. you commit yourself to the struggle and deal with it privately.
and like, i do not want you to feel ashamed. i dont want that. shame doesnt help me. shame doesnt allow change, or growth, or healing. it actually hurts me. it hurts me the same way it hurts trans women when people feel ashamed *because* they’re attracted to us. shame leads to lashing out. shame leads to the kind of diatribe against trans women from up-til-then good allies i have seen too many times already. none of us are trying to shame you. we’re not doing that. we’re not in a position to do that. you’re doing that. it is cis people’s ideas about who and how trans women are that produces the shame you feel about how you relate to us, however that might be. stop blaming us.
anyway that’s like, literally the most compassionate take i can offer on this. anything else would demean myself.
and, can i add, finally, that as a trans woman, who has not always known she was trans, who did not always know trans women even existed, but who has never the less alwaysbeen a lesbian: i’ve been there? i grew up thinking i was only attracted to cis women too. even after transitioning i had to learn to look past the ingrained responses i had to trans women’s bodies. like, you aren’t that special. you’re not having some secret lesbian reaction that only cis women will understand. i’ve been there. i unlearned it. it wasn’t innate. there’s a reason this “preference” is so common among cis lesbians but virtually non-existent among trans lesbians. its not a lesbian thing. stop hiding behind that. we’re lesbians too. stop forgetting we’re lesbians too. not less lesbians. not lesbians with any other qualifier. lesbians as much as you are, exactly the way you are.
I probably shouldn’t be surprised about this, but a lot of people missing the point here. the joke isn’t “terfs calling Sigourney weaver, a hot woman, unattractive” and tbh I think seeing this post and going “terfs are so stupid because Sigourney weaver is obviously gorgeous” is even potentially harmful or at least hurtful
the joke here is terfs seeing a picture of Sigourney Weaver, famous actress and cis woman, but because they were told its a picture of a trans woman they’re immediately yakking about how ‘clockable’ she is
saw a stupid post on my dash and now i feel like swinging a bat at a hornets nest
when people say transandrophobia doesn’t exist they aren’t saying trans men don’t face specific experiences of transphobia, they’re saying that there is not a form of combined oppression that occurs at the intersection of being trans and being a man, because being a man is not a trait people are oppressed for. there is no systemic androphobia or misandry in the first place, so it cannot be compounded upon with the addition of being trans. all bigotry trans men are subjected to because of their gender is the result of transphobia.
in contrast, transmisogyny is more than just “transphobia aimed at trans women”. the term exists to describe the way that in addition to transphobia (which affects all trans people) and misogyny (which affects all women), trans women are subjected to a unique oppression that is greater than the sum of its parts where those two forms of bigotry meet. to use the term transandrophobia when you ARE talking about “transphobia aimed at trans men”, you’re just displaying your lack of understanding about why the phrase transmisogyny exists at all.
yes, the transphobia aimed at trans men often looks different from transphobia aimed at trans women. yes, transmascs deserve to be able to discuss the specific ways they experience transphobia. but it’s still important to be cognizant of the implications behind the words you use to describe it. “transandrophobia” inherently implies the existence of unadulterated androphobia affecting all men. to dismiss that fact by saying it’s Just Semantics is to say you don’t actually care about the term that transandrophobia came from and it displays a willful apathy towards the true meaning of transmisogyny.
#also the way intersections work is that not all phobia directed at a person at an intersection IS that intersection #im a lesbian. not all homophobia i experience is lesbophobia #because lesbophobia is a seperate thing created by my identify as a gay person AND as a woman’ #not all prejudice a trans woman will be faced with is transmisogyny some of it is just misogyny and some of it is just transphobia #transmisogyny does not mean ‘transphobia but it’s at a trans woman’ #it is a SPECIFIC and DIFFERENT thing
heard someone say “people act like cis people have a monopoly on gender” and that’s exactly what it is that makes people so adverse to transandrophobia. They consider cis people the definers of gendered oppression- men oppress women, there you go, case closed. and this works to an extent when talking about transmisogyny, sure. But you can’t be that lazy forever, you have to acknowledge the deeper systems at play, why exactly it is that *cis* men oppress cis *and* trans women, how they are similar and different and why. If you can’t do that, you are leaving out a lot of people in your activism who don’t neatly map to the expectations of womanhood.
When it comes to transandrophobia, cis men do not define manhood alone. as trans men and transmasculine people we have our own experiences. It’s frankly lazy to just say “men oppress women” and move on with your day. It’s lazy, damaging, and hurtful. Do better, listen to transmasculine people. We are not out to get anybody, we are literally just trying to keep our head above water while we keep getting pushed down.
Many “gender critical” people on this website like to site a 2011 Swedish study to claim that trans women have the same rates of violence as cisgender men. This claim is a gross misreading and should be challenged whenever seen. Below I will be showing quotes from one of the researchers from the study showing exactly how wrong the “gender critical” claim is.
For starters the study found that women who transitioned from 1989-2003 did not even demonstrate a male pattern of criminality let alone anything close to the same pattern of violence. Which means that the claim of trans women being as violent as cisgender men is definitely false as a general statement for all the women who transitioned from 1989 onward.
The study as a whole covers the period between 1973 and 2003. If one divides the cohort into two groups, 1973 to 1988 and 1989 to 2003, one observes that for the latter group (1989 – 2003), differences in mortality, suicide attempts and crime disappear. This means that for the 1989 to 2003 group, we did not find a male pattern of criminality.
However we also need to look at another key distortion of the facts that the “gender critical” camp manufactured. Pattern of Criminality does not mean the same thing as pattern of violence. Even the trans women in the 1973-1988 group were not shown to exhibit the same rates of violence that cisgender men do. What the study actually does show is that prior to 1989 trans women were being convicted at the same rate as cisgender men, not for the same crimes.
As to the criminality metric itself, we were measuring and comparing the total number of convictions, not conviction type. We were not saying that cisgender males are convicted of crimes associated with marginalization and poverty. We didn’t control for that and we were certainly not saying that we found that trans women were a rape risk.
The idea that trans women are just as likely to rape as cis men is a lie. It is a lie which has become a central tenet of denying trans women access to life saving shelter and community and this lie needs to be confronted where ever it tries to take root. Whenever you see this lie, shine a light on it because it can only grow in the dark.
stop judging transfems worth and validity by how “passing” their voices are.
ok but seriously this is such a big problem. my voice does not pass and i honestly love that! my voice is great! i dont want to change it. people shouldnt have to change parts of themselves just because others dont find it to their liking.
stop treating voice training like its some necessary crucible all transfems must endure to be a “real woman”. voice has no bearing on gender. voice training is hard! not everyone has the time, energy, motivation, or will to do it. thats not a bad thing!
i could elaborate more on this but i dont feel a particular need to grovel on the ground and explain exactly why its okay for a woman to have a deep voice. its really goddamn simple honestly. if you cant understand that, youre transphobic, plain and simple.
actually I don’t feel particularly sympathetic towards reformed terf trans men lmao like a month ago you wanted transfems dead and now you’re some kind of speaker for the trans community and we’re all supposed to clap? no lol
I’ve noticed a “trend” of transphobia from black cishet male celebrities, and I wanted to take some time to discus it. Specifically the kind i’ve noticed directed at trans men. Kendrick’s “Auntie Diaries” came out and detailed his understanding and progression in accepting his uncles transition.
I haven’t listened to it in full, but I’ve read articles detailing it, as well as the constant misgendering of his uncle throughout the song. I’ve seen a lot of attempts to explain that what he’s doing is okay, and that by using slurs and misgendering it’s him “coming to terms with it”.
In “DNA” he also had a line that’s always stuck out to me, the “You a bitch your hormones switched inside your DNA” and understanding his journey into understanding and accepting his uncle as a trans man, that puts things into context.
But still…I don’t think that necessarily excuses anything?
Congrats that he accepted his uncle, but the title is absolutely misgendering. The references to pronouns are misgendering. It’s still disrespectful.
Like we don’t give J Cole a pass when he talks about how he used to call women bitches because he still does. We still hold black male celebrities who’ve seemingly become “more progressive” accountable for their perfomativeness or their lack of actually addressing their past actions. I think people hailing Kendrick as a revolutionary artist should still consider the harmful implications of what he did.
Don’t even get me started on Dave Chappelles joke about being attacked by a trans guy.
Black media and rap also still has a history of equating pussy to weakness, and women–which also excludes trans women from being women.
I think black hip-hop is a great example of how misogyny and transphobia do impact trans men, and how transmisogyny impacts trans women.
It also contributes to the invisibility of trans men in conversations of misdirected misogyny as well as sexual harassment/assault.
On the opposite end of the coin, it contributes to hypervisibility and risk of physical harm and homicide for trans women.
And non-binary people just don’t exist to them lmao
So like…he tried I guess lmao. But he could’ve done better.
I really love to hear opinions for other black trans folks, especially black trans men.
All in all we talk about the impact that white cis men have in terms of transphobia, but i think we need to also begin to address black cishet men, and black cishet patriarchy’s role in this. As well as black cishet toxic masculinity.
Non-black people can share, but please don’t clown.
So many of y'all love to call yourselves trans allies until you see a trans woman who doesn’t pass. You know how many trans women I’ve seen labelled as “cringe” and like. Bullied online just for being themselves??? Allying yourself with trans women is great, but include the ones that don’t pass.
And yes, this includes trans women who don’t pass for any reason, including that they might not want to. There are a thousand reasons why a trans woman might be more masc, and it’s literally none of your business. Trans women can be GNC just like cis people can.
