EinsPossum

Today i saw a post on tumblr complaining about a trans woman being shitty to trans men, with someone putting „this is why im wary of transfems“ and „they actually legitimately scare me“ in the tags. And i sympathise because i have similar irrational anxiety towards transmascs *¹.

I dont begrudge transmasc people for being resentful of transfem people based on the constant barrage of transandromisia and ignorance coming out of transfem spaces. Transfem people need to realise that there is a genuine big problem. But i also need transmasc people to realise that transfem people expirience very similar things from transmasc spaces and also carry resentment based on actual hurt. What i need transmascs to realise is that a lot of transmasc spaces i have seen back in my twitter days and especially on tumblr are exhibiting the same patterns of behaviour they rightfully complain about in transfems without realising it. Quantifying any of this is impossible, so i wont even try. There are transfem radfems, but trans radfem is not limited to transfems. I have seen transmasc radfem, based around the idea of female and male socialisation. There are both transfem and transmasc people who try to manouver themselves into the „victimised class“ of primitive feminism while claiming the other group to belong to the „oppressor class“. Transfem people who more or less openly claim themselves as part of the „victimised class“ for being women, and claiming transmasc people as part of the „oppressor class“ for being men. And transmasc people who more or less openly claim themselves as part of the „victimised class“ for having female socialisation, and claiming transfem people as part of the „oppressor class“ for supposedly having male socialisation. I remember an example in the time a transmasc person on Twitter posted about how all the white transfems are supposedly racist, but none of their white transmasc friends are racist, and transmasc people in the replies argued that this must be because white transfems supposedly grow up super privileged while white transmascs grow up to not be racist because of the misogyny they face. Yes racism is a problem in trans spaces but this line of argument is a radfem argument. I remember the quite popular thread by a transmasc complaining about radfem trans women doing self-victimisation and dismissing suffering of trans men, and then claimed they were just like Incels and MRAs. I think that even was the person that posted on the same day about being „hounded by accusations of transmisogyny“, i might be misremembering though. Equating egocentric transandromisic trans women to violent misogynist cis men is really transmisogynist for anybody that didnt immediately catch that. And transmasc mutuals that thought themselves aware shared this thread. At least the person i DMed to explain did eventually understand. This is a pattern i have seen so many times: Transmasc and transfem people being completely oblivious to the transmisogyny and transandromisia they peddle, thinking themselves to be unable to do harm. I’ve seen many transfem people claim transmasc people have „joined the oppressors“, villainise Testosterone, justify transandromisic and exorsexist slurs and similar clown shit without giving it a second thought.

There is a problem both in transmasc and transfem spaces of self-victimisation, villainisation of other trans people, isolation into echo chambers. None of you are the „smoll bean“, none of you are unable to do harm. Anybody who claims their flavour of trans to be the sole punching bag of transness is flat out wrong, because there is a lot of punching going around. Anybody who thinks they can only ever punch up is prone to cause a lot of unjustified hurt. Anybody who believes that only people like themselves are „safe“ and all other queer people are evil and out to get them are going to end up in spiraling echo chambers.

Transmisogyny provides the grounds for villainising transfems. Transandromisia provides the grounds for villainising transmascs. When i look at transmasc spaces, i see a lack of awareness and care for transmisogyny. And when i look at transfem spaces, i even see a lot of clowns treating the very concept of transandromisia as a joke or an attack and openly peddle radfem ideology.

I have seen a lot of heinous transmisogyny from transmasc people on the internet. I have also seen a lot of heinous transandromisia from transfem people on the internet. Both of these things can be true at the same time. I have also seen a lot of heinous exorsexism but thats not the point of this text.

There is no flavour of trans people that has it too good or too easy. There is no flavour of trans people that is overrepresented in media. From personal memory, i remember 1 sympathetic portrayal of a trans woman and a whole bunch of trans woman villains. I remember 2 sympathetic portrayals of trans men. Thats shit, thats nothing to be envious of, even though there are queer people who have even worse representation. We are much more likely to expirience sexualised violence than cis people. We are much more likely to expirience homelessness than cis people. We are more likely to be killed than cis people. We have a lower life expectancy than cis people. Its shit, and its important to talk about specifics of suffering (especially when intersecting with other forms of marginalisation), but minimising others suffering or focusing on envy is misguided.

A lot of us have expiriences of hurt and trauma through other queer and trans people. But it is incredibly difficult and perilous to try to extrapolate from these personal expiriences of hurt and trauma to generalisations of society, at least when it comes to relations between queer people *². There are a lot of different expiriences of hierarchies and hurt among trans people, but people need to realise that these expiriences are extremely dependant on context and will look extremely different in different contexts. But none of these expiriences should be constructed into some kind of universal truth about queer people of certain flavours being inherently victims and queer people of other flavours being inherently oppressors.

The expiriences of hurt are real, the trauma and feelings are real. But they must not delude us into radfem ideology. We must keep trying to work on our trauma and try to not let it make us hurt others. We must keep trying to be aware of our trauma and not search out theoretical justifications for unhealthy trauma-induced reactions. And we must try to keep in mind that the people we talk to and have fights with in trans spaces are almost guaranteed to have lots of trauma and hurt as well. I started sketching this text after shaking and spiralling because of trauma being triggered by transmascs on tumblr, i know that you dont have reasonable thoughts in those moments. We need to give each other more grace and also just block more if necessary. Just blocking is always preferrable to having public escalating fights between groups of triggered trans people.

I will risk making a sweeping claim of my own: I think the danger transmascs as a whole pose to me is miniscule compared to the danger posed by cis people. And i do think the danger an average transmasc person poses to me is very much lower than the danger posed to me by an average cis person. And i think the same is true for the danger posed by transfems to transmascs. And i think we have a lot to offer each other. Trans people who would rather ally themselves with cis women over their fellow trans people are misguided. But that also means we have to work to understand and accomodate each other.

*¹ For context, i am an AMAB nonbinary genderfluid person. Transfemininity is part of my gender but most of the time not the foremost part. I do identify with femininity and masculinity to a varying extend. I write this text from a transfem perspective because thats mainly how this topic impacts me. Im mainly talking about transmasculinity and transfemininity in this text because thats how these topics are usually framed, i know there are other trans people, nonbinary people, genderqueer people etc.

*² When i talk about expiriences of hurt and trauma, i am not talking about racism, ableism, classism, antisemitism or other forms of discrimination that also take place in queer spaces. I will not attempt to negotiate these to any significant extend in this text.