In a post late last year, I outlined a framework through which we can view the constant performance that’s required of trans women and transfeminine people in queer social spaces. That framework proposes that there exists two basic categories of transfems: Good Trans Girls, who willingly perform transfeminized labor to the best of our ability; and Bad Trannies, those of us who either fall short of the mark, or who refuse to perform transfeminized labor entirely. Today, I’d like to revisit that post and discuss what it means to perform the labor required of Good Trans Girls as a non-negotiable condition of our belonging.

On a basic level, the Good Trans Girl believes in essentialist assumptions about her sex assigned at birth. In other words, she believes that she was a man pre-transition. She therefore feels that she needs to atone post-transition for the “male privilege” that she received while in the closet. Additionally, she sees transfeminine hypervisibility as a “privilege,” theoretically bound up with our being “former men hogging all the spotlight.” The Good Trans Girl therefore arrives in new spaces duty-bound to labor on behalf of others, and she eagerly takes that duty on without asking for compensation or even acknowledgement for her work.

In her performance, the Good Trans Girl is polite, soft-spoken, and mild-mannered. She fawns and dotes on others at a whim, seeing doing so as a necessary overcorrection for the “male socialization” that she internalized while she “was a man.” In certain cases, usually when engaged in showing up for others, she is permitted some leeway to be outspoken, but never too much. Otherwise, she risks becoming a community liability for letting her cloaked “male socialization” show.

In contrast to their status as “former men,” Good Trans Girls see trans people who were assigned female at birth as having endured gender-based oppression their whole lives. As a result, they sincerely believe that AFAB trans people, especially trans men and transmasculine people, have it “worse” than them, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. If a Good Trans Girl dares to suggest otherwise, she’s told - either explicitly or through implied group pressure - to keep her “male privilege” in check and show up primarily for the “AFABs” who have no such privilege. If she fails to do so, she quickly falls from grace in the community’s eyes and becomes a Bad Tranny.

The Good Trans Girl always shows up for others, even at her own great expense, and always with the most altruistic eye. She expects no compensation for her efforts, holding not the slightest assumption that the people she supports will support her in turn. She also actively shouts down others like her who engage in self-advocacy on the basis of their transfemininity, readily piling on to campaigns aimed at rendering Bad Trannies social pariahs. On the occasion that she does advocate for trans women and transfems, it’s cloaked in overly abstracted and/or academic language that rhetorically excuses everyone around her from responsibility in fostering her oppression.

Good Trans Girls handle conflict with unflinching grace and tact. They are quick to relent, quick to admit “guilt”, and quick to forgive those who have hurt them. Another community member could be yelling slurs inches from the Good Trans Girl’s face, and she will still be expected to maintain her poise, reserving her tears for a more private venue. Good Trans Girls involved in conflicts are never messy, emotional, or assertive, because “messy,” “emotional,” and “assertive” are all traits endemic to Bad Trannies.

Good Trans Girls are implicitly forbidden from excluding most anyone from their periphery, no matter how abusive or hurtful they may be. Men in particular use this unspoken taboo to abuse them in private, without repercussion. Good Trans Girls are also forbidden from refusing to associate with minors, to whom our labor is always assumed to be available. In fact, the only people who Good Trans Girls are categorically permitted to exclude from their personal space are Bad Trannies, toward whom exclusion is a moral imperative.

Good Trans Girls recognize that their “former manhood” makes them latecomers to femininity. Thus, they must prove their bona fides through performing hyperfemininity in both appearance and behavior. In in-person spaces, a Good Trans Girl proves that she’s Sufficiently Feminine through showing up in full feminine presentation wherever possible. In online spaces, pictures of her in full femme getup must be readily available, preferably as her avatar. (Avatars such as anime characters - or, say, a grey cat in a horned helmet - inevitably garner her suspicion of being either a Bad Tranny, or a cis male troll.)

[cont.]