I'm not going to link to it, it's disgusting as hell, but JKR has *again* gone after Imane Khelif, hours apart from her lauding the HBO reboot trailer.

Support of her show *necessarily* validates not only her transphobia, but also her using transphobic hate to justify racism.

@xgranade I feel like your thesis is off here. transphobia, specifically transmisogyny, is used as an excuse to police othered cis bodies - and transmisogyny is also transmisogyny. we, as trans women and transfeminine people, are still the ones in the crosshairs, and most of the damage is being done to us.

we, not cis people, deserve to be centered in discussions about our own oppression.

@YKantRachelRead I think you're missing my point. I, as a white person, do not get to hold my oppression over people of color of any gender modality, but must take an intersectional approach.

Rowling isn't using transphobia to hurt cis people, she's using transphobia to hurt cis people *of color* along with both trans people of all racial identities.

(con'd)

@YKantRachelRead My point is not to center how cis people feel about our oppression, it's how my oppression along one axis can easily be shifted into oppression along another axis.

@xgranade

I, as a white person, do not get to hold my oppression over people of color of any gender modality, but must take an intersectional approach.

I don't understand what you're saying. the act of centering trans women and transfems in discussions about transmisogyny isn't "holding our oppression over" anyone.

what do you think "an intersectional approach" means in this case?

@YKantRachelRead An intersectional approach requires, as a specific example, white trans people like me to look at how JKR is using the rhetoric that she and others have normalized about people like me to go after people of color like Imane Khelif.

Being intersectional means not flattening that to "transphobia hurts cis people," but recognizing that Imane Khelif is subject to racism that I will never experience, and that transphobia directed at me can transmute into racism against her.

@YKantRachelRead It requires me to recognize that I cannot simply fight for my own rights as a trans person oblivious to the role my whiteness plays in racial privilege, but must recognize that my fight for my rights has common cause with the fight that people of color of all gender modality have for their rights.
@YKantRachelRead I've seen any number of people being racist in their own fight for liberation, and that's inherently self-defeating. Not only does that throw people who are *both* trans and who are oppressed on a racial basis under the bus, it ignores that part of the transphobia I'm receiving is as a proxy for hurting people of color.

@YKantRachelRead Let me try another example.

Trump, up until about two or three years ago, never gave a *fuck* about trans people. He has, though, and for *decades* gotten out of bed so that he can start his day and go to sleep hurting Black people. Being transphobic makes it easier for him to hurt Black people.

At some point, he just interrupted his own speech to make that explicit! He directly told the audience he was transphobic because they ate it up! And now he has the power to be racist.

@YKantRachelRead None of that means that his transphobia hurts white trans people like me any less. It means I cannot fully understand my own oppression without *also* recognizing the plight of others around me, especially including people of color.

@xgranade it seems to me like you don't know what intersectionality theory is or means in practice. I recommend reading Kimberle Crenshaw's original essay on intersectionality if you haven't already. in short, intersectionality theory doesn't posit that transphobia also hurts cis people - it states that multiply marginalized trans people's needs and concerns deserve to be elevated in discussions about transphobia.

to be clear, I don't disagree with you that our struggles are shared with other marginalized groups. and also, while you keep repeating the claim that you don't mean to de-center us from our own oppression, you're also pairing that claim with the idea that institutional transphobia and transmisogyny are proxies to hurt marginalized cis people. which is, in effect, doing the thing that you're claiming you're trying not to do.

@YKantRachelRead Yes, I have read it. And I'm done with this, I've tried to explain my point several times, and you keep repeating back to me a completely different strawman point that I am very much so *not* making.

I said what I said, and I stand by it.