It’s Time For People to Stop Using the Social Construct of “Biological Sex” to Defend Their Transmisogyny

“If sex isn’t the All Mighty Binary Universal Constant that some people think it is, why do they place so much importance on it? The easy answer is that it gives them an excuse to misgender and exclude trans people, and specifically trans women. They can pretend they’re just standing up for science, but they’re really just saying that trans women aren’t fully women and that trans men aren’t fully men. People need to start learning about what sex really is and what social constructs really are. People need to stop misusing biology and spreading ignorance and misunderstanding.”

mxbees:

[Image text reads: The Secret to Decoding Transbr0 Rhetoric]

Prologomena

Overall, I think that the trans community is particularly vulnerable to men’s rights activism, particularly as it instantiates itself amongst trans men. A lot this has to do with the erroneous idea that there exists a singular trans community. But as I’ve written in the past:

the fiction that there is an ~umbrella~, that there is a ~trans community~ hurts trans women of colour most

The trans community is a curious community in the sense that it is one of the only I allegedly belong to that truly thinks that transness, on its own, is enough to overcome the differences that exist between men and women. Obviously, I don’t mean physical difference but differences in power and oppression. It treats ‘trans’ like this great leveler rendering trans women and trans men (and enbys) alike in our experiences of oppression.

Of course, reality shows us that this is far from the truth. Trans women (in general) do not experience gender-based oppression like trans men. Indeed, white trans women do not experience gender-based oppression like trans women of colour. Why? Because overlapping oppressions compound each other and cannot coherently be extricated from the whole. None of this is particularly controversial. Indeed, many of the transbr0s I refer to in this piece explicitly acknowledge that trans women of colour have it worse. The problem lies in how they use this information.

Nothing discussed in this essay is particularly new, especially not if you’ve paid any amount of attention to the arguments radfems typically use to dehumanize trans women. Which, on its own, should tell you something about the nature of these statements and why they should be treated with great suspicion.

It isn’t even new for transbr0s to regurgitate radfem ideology as their men’s right activism. Here’s a great example of how this looks in practice:

I’m not using [female socialization] to justify excluding trans women from women’s spaces though, just because that idea has been used against trans women doesn’t mean it doesn’t hold any truth…The idea that trans men were never socialized as female hurts trans men.

I’ll discuss this example later on in greater detail. For now, simply take it as evidence that some of these transbr0s are fully aware that the ideas they espouse have been used to harm trans women. That this isn’t just some clueless men asking ‘what about teh menz?’. That this is a real problem that is growing and becoming mainstream. But becoming mainstream just as the wider trans community fully begins to grapple (at long last) with the violence that trans women of colour have to deal with. This timing isn’t accidental.

No, there isn’t a conspiracy or anything like that… but we are seeing the same growing backlash within trans discourse that feminism has been experiencing for a while. Elements that have always existed moving out of the fringe and into the mainstream. The fact that we have people within teh ~community~ taking up radfem ideology and dressing it up as 'inclusive’ politics should concern everyone, given that trans men have the potential to damage and harm trans women in ways that radfems only dream of. Why? Because they (and many other people) think they are fully entitled to the spaces, energy, lives, labour, of trans women. Trans women are pressured to work with and accept trans men in ways that has never been true of radfems.

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spookradia:

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fuckyeahlgbtqartists:

Jean-François Bouchard’s Transpose

“I didn’t want this to be sexual or shocking,“ he explained in a recent interivew with Canada’sNational Post. “I wanted this to be about the personal stories. I could have shot this in a far more shocking way — scars, things like that. But I didn’t want to take over the personal stories that are more important.”

Fittingly, the spare, deceptively powerful portraits are accompanied by personal statements from his subjects, a diverse group of young and middle-aged trans men with whom Bouchard, a cisgender (nontrans) man, worked after three years of research. A statement by subject Alex reads simply, ”[My] tattoo means strong because you have to be. Five and a half years of weekly injections, two surgeries, and I now finally feel comfortable in my body.“

(Source)

Support the Gender Identity Bill! from Egale Canada Human Rights Trust

As you may or may not know, transgender people in Canada are still do not benefit from basic human rights. We are not legally protected from discrimination in housing, employment, education, or health care, nor is trans-related violence recognized as a hate crime.

Advocates have been trying to get Bill C-279 passed in parliament for almost 3 years now, which would amend the Canada Human Rights Act to include gender identity as a prohibited ground for discrimination. But despite support, we are still sitting at a stand-still.

If you live in Canada, please visit trans.egale.ca to learn more, contact your senator and urge them to take action about this important human rights issue.

This Big Transgender Ruling Is Worth Your Attention

Wayne Maines was in a meeting when he got the call. His daughter, a transgender teenager who had been fighting the state of Maine for years over her right to use the girls’ bathroom at school, had finally won. “I just broke down right then …

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Anonymous:

What about nb afab people who are like bigender or genderfluid or have some chunk of female in their idetntiy? Genuinely curious as I want to make sure I understand this correctly. I'm neutrois so I know I dont really face misogny. But my partner is androgynous and was curious for them.

lostb-questions:

ok, i rly hate that im having to explain this bc i feel like this should be coming from a woman, but since there arent any women present, here we goooo…

• misogyny is discrimination against women, girls, feminine-identified people. it is not synonymous with sexism, it is not discrimination based on perceived gender or physical sex. often times it does not even take the form of discrimination, but in cultural violence that you internalize or do not internalize based on your female identity or lack thereof
• afab trans people can experience misogyny if they identify at least partially on the feminine spectrum. feminine non-binary? you can experience misogyny. genderfluid and sometimes a woman? you can experience misogyny. bigender and identify partially as a woman? you can experience misogyny. do you not currently identify as a woman, but feel truthfully that you were a woman before you became a different gender? you can say you used to experience misogyny.
• if you insist in every other aspect of your life that you are not a woman, you do not experience misogyny, and you do not get to pull out your assigned-female membership card to gain access to women’s spaces or dominate discussion about misogyny. the fact that (trans) men so often freely invalidate their own genders and refer to themselves as “former” or “basically” women only when it is convenient for them to take up space in womens discussions is an appalling display of privilege.
• trans men and AFAB non-women do not internalize misogyny in the same way women do. they may feel inferior because of their assigned sex and gender, but often* they feel that their gender assignment and the treatment thereof is unjust and feel they rightfully should be treated the same as men, whereas women (including trans women) more often internalize misogyny and the messages that, because of their gender, they are inferior to men and masculinity. these experiences exist before people even realize they are trans or have the ability to articulate why they feel this way.
• trans women, even before coming out, demonstrate internalization of feminine body standards in a way that non-feminine people do not. the eating disorder statistics and body dimorphism statistics for transfeminine people demonstrate this. whether or not they have the language or self-awareness to articulate it in terms of “transgender identity”, many trans women are attempting to conform to feminine beauty standards and punishing themselves for their genders and bodies long before the idea of transgender occurs to them. i specifically have two transfeminine friends from highschool, one of whom was treated for severe eating disorder and both of whom spoke to me about how they felt they would never be attractive because of their masculine characteristics, years before realizing they were transgender.
• likewise, trans men and AFAB non-women, before they even realize they are not girls or women, are already showing resilience and resistance to feminine beauty standards and gender roles long before considering the possibility of being transgender. i saw this displayed in myself, and in both of the 2 other transmasculine friends I had in high school.
• there is something to be said for the violence experienced by people who are perceived to be women. it may be sexism, it may be misdirected misogyny, but it is not actual misogyny. the same way if a straight man gets attacked for being perceived as gay, he is still not a victim of homophobia, but misdirected homophobia, since he does not have to cope with the day-to-day struggle of having his actual identity attacked. the violence was intended for a gay person, but was misdirected at him. the solution is not for him to go “how horrible that me, a straight man, am being treated as a gay person”, but to say “hey i cant believe gay people have to deal with this shit, we should start treating gay people better.” whenever there is a violently oppressive power dynamic there are always people caught in the cross-fire of misperception, but the solution is not to highlight their experiences, but to understand that they are victims of association with an marginalized class of people and the only way to solve that is to dismantle the system that subjugates the group they are being falsely associated with. we should take it as having special insight into some of the lived experiences of women, and let that motivate us to protect women and promote feminism more fiercely.

-newt