big content warning for sexual assault and prisons, look up "v-coding"

#meme #anarchism #anarchyMeme #trans #prisonSystem #prison #abolition #prisonAbolition #democrat #liberal

it's slowly dawning on me how my aversion to the term "transsexual" as a self-descriptor, on the assumption that it's binarist or truscum language, is almost certainly a psyop peddled by the same sort of people who accuse transfeminists like me of "gender essentialism" or enbyphobia or whatever for talking about how non-transfems can't, or shouldn't, laterally appropriate the concept of transmisogyny.

I'm still learning and growing and self-critting, bitches

one of the most enlightening things for me in Trans/Rad/Fem is the fact that Serena Nanda, author of Neither Man Nor Woman, the book that set out a theory of India's hijra as "third-gendered" "homosexual men," was a cis TERF who cited Raymond's The Transsexual Empire in the book's first edition.

Neither Man Nor Woman contains the foundation for much of western scholarship on non-white, non-western, transfeminized "third genders." and this shit - the conception of exoticized/Orientalized "third genders" versus an imperialist western transsexuality - is basically mainstream feminist thought now. I see it show up regularly in everyday discourse, voiced by white people who no doubt innocently believe that they're engaging in anti-racist praxis through being inclusive of these "third genders" and their totally wholly different conception of transfemininity that definitely wasn't imposed upon them by cissexist patriarchy.

and it's all just TERF rot to its core.

at least on fedi, the state of discourse on trans women and transfeminine people's oppression is such that - outside of the transfeminist circles I choose to dwell on the margins of - I see more discussion about how transmisogyny supposedly affects men and cis women than I do about how it affects transfems.

apparently, a ton of people on here see nothing wrong with a state of affairs in which violence against transfems matters less than violence against people whom others mistake for transfems.

so, what I've learned on queer fedi these past couple of years is:

transfeminine anti-transmasculinity is literally everywhere all the time in queer spaces, requires no concrete proof of its widespread state, requires our hypervigilance to root out, and if you deny any of the above then you're anti-transmasculine.

transmasculine transmisogyny might happen in isolated cases in queer spaces but isn't in any way a widespread problem, requires extraordinary proof at best (and then we probably still won't believe you), doesn't require our vigilance, and if you deny any of the above then you're... anti-transmasculine.

hmm.

I've previously discussed transfeminized labor quite a bit in my longer posts, and today I want to dive into a specific type of work that queer communities periodically, implicitly demand of transfems.

over the weekend, a trusted - and observant - friend expressed to me that, in her view, one of the reasons why so many transfeminine people lean so hard into advocating for transmasculine people is that there are extreme, and often terrible, social consequences for being viewed as an anti-transmasculine transfem person. these consequences force transfems into a position where we need to periodically prove that we're not anti-transmasculine through performative shows of support, or else be branded a "TIRF" or "baeddel" or "transmasandrist" and subsequently rendered a pariah.

on fedi, this phenomenon results in a constant trickle of, "I support my transmasc brothers, and if you don't then fuck off" posts coming from transfem accounts. elsewhere, it means transfems publicly accepting that we have the responsibility to use our supposed, and always ill-defined at best, "privilege" to lift up non-transfeminine trans or queer people in various ways. but either way, this reoccurring demand for our labor results in transfems living in a constant state of social precarity - one predicated on our reflexively responding, "how high?" when we're asked to jump on someone else's behalf - even as these shows of mass solidarity only flow in one direction.

now, I should note that this phenomenon isn't limited to just transmasculine support, though pressure on transfems to labor on behalf of transmascs has become more frequent and pronounced as of late (for reasons that would take a whole other essay to dissect). it can also apply to enbies (a category which, oddly, never seems to include transfem enbies like myself), intersex people, cis racial and racialized minorities, disabled people, or others. and to be clear, supporting marginalized people is a good thing! but what makes this demand on transfems unique is that no other intersectional marginalized group in the queer community - let alone one in the crosshairs of a literal global genocide - is subject to this constant questioning of our values.

and if one of us should fail to sufficiently, performatively express our support when it's demanded of us? well, she's just one of those problematic Bad Trannies, someone who's anti-transmasc and gender-essentialist and enbyphobic and, hell, let's toss racist on top of the pile too. after all, a Bad Tranny can never be anything less than ontologically evil, or else we'd never be fully confident in inflicting social death on her.

all of the above inevitably results in a reality in which, every time someone publicly side-eyes a supposed Bad Tranny somewhere, we transfems fall over each other to prove that we're a Good Trans Girl - one who supports transmasc people (and intersex people, and enbies, etc). we write and boost screeds about the ever-at-our-doorstep intra-community bigotry targeted at people who aren't us, we order others to listen to [X group] even when few people from X group ever listen to us, and we publicly point fingers at other potential Bad Trannies in our midst in the hope that snitching on others reinforces our Good Trans Girl image. in these instances, we are the crabs in the bucket, climbing over ourselves to prove to the rest of the queer community that we're One Of The Good Ones, unlike that Bad Tranny over there who said that she doesn't owe men her labor.

in that way, queer communities regularly sift their transfeminine members into Good Trans Girls - girls willing to lend their energy to others even while leaving none for their own self-advocacy - and Bad Trannies. Bad Trannies are most often girls who unwittingly fail the test for whatever reason (no Good Trans Girl is ever more than one failure away from being branded a Bad Tranny). but sometimes we're girls who eventually come to recognize the general unfairness of it all and opt out of the game entirely, flipping everyone the proverbial finger when the queer-community equivalent of "but do you condemn Hamas?" starts circulating for the fifth time that month.

the end to all of this lies in our collectively recognizing when these tests arise and refusing to indulge in them. not only do they serve to perpetually sap transfems' energy as an intersectional group - energy that we could be spending on solidarity and self-advocacy - but they also keep us divided and internally over-policed, constantly suspecting each other of being a Bad Tranny in waiting.

but it also demands something of non-transfems: that you stop fucking scrutinizing us as rigorously as you do, and that you stop demanding our labor. it's ours to keep and dole out as we like, not yours for the taking.

and if saying that makes me a Bad Tranny? well, so be it.

if you think there’s a transfem nazi phase, then prove it

give me reasonable, non-anecdotal (in other words, not one girl you met or heard about one time, or vibes from social media, or vague insinuations about “4chan memes”) evidence that transfems are statistically more likely to be nazis or otherwise harbor fascist tendencies, compared to general population

go on. since its such a widespread problem, you shouldn’t have any issue presenting me with evidence