can yall fucking stop saying 'transmasc' when it applies to nontransmasc enbies too like this is really getting fucking irritating

idk i was angry abt this again bc ppl on here cant seem to shut up about "thin white feminine afab they/thems" but i really need everyone to really think hard about what it is that's making you read every 'neutral' or 'non-transitioning' nonbinary person as feminine.

like. where are people getting this strawman from. have you like. spoken to these thin white feminine afab they/thems? are they... like... actually femmes? are you ignoring and downplaying their nonbinary identity in favor of your own perception of them as feminine? and what exactly is it that youre reading as 'feminine'? is it just their bodies? is it their clothes? have you asked if their clothing is feminine to them? is their clothing actually feminine at all or is it you yourself who is needlessly gendering fabric? how do you know theyre afab? did you ask?

bc to me all it looks like is if an afab enby isnt transmasculine, you force a "feminine" identity and label on them that they didn't ask for. you rebinarize them, and then treat them like your own perception of their supposed femininity isnt transphobic and doesnt hurt them. like theyre privileged for your mistreatment of them.

can yall fucking stop saying 'transmasc' when it applies to nontransmasc enbies too like this is really getting fucking irritating

Always gotta laugh when radfem trans guys get brought up as a gotcha like they don’t make up more of my blocklist than anyone else. (And as if I don’t explicitly talk about and challenge them constantly)

Only, when they say radfem trans guys they either mean 1. run of the mill anti-feminist trans/misogynists or 2. trans men defending themselves and not like…the trans men/mascs who spend all their free time attacking other trans men/transmascs and accusing anyone who defends them of being trans men (excuse me, TMEs), and calling trans men whiny theyfabs, and harassing freshly-out trans guys about how inherently misogynistic they must be, and constantly pushing gender essentialism. Like yeah, there ARE trans guy radfems and you reblog from them and call them “allies”

No, self-declared baeddels have very minimal influence on anyone and are by their very nature extremely exclusionary and so even if they were more of a threat they won’t be able to do much and so discussing them alone is useless and painting then as unique villains is transphobic.

YES the concept is worth discussing and using as an example of the ideology that created it: cis radfeminism. Baeddelism doesnt exist in a vacuum, it is a trans spin on radfeminist essentialism but rather than make it about bioessentialism (born inherently bad as ‘males’), it is about gender essentialism (all the same principles of bioessentialism but based in the idea of choosing maleness.)

It is necessary to combat lateral aggression from people adopting radfeminist points to attack trans men and transmascs AND it is also essential to combat as any form of radfeminism for its misogynistic roots. As cis radfeminism eventually wraps back around to become wildly misogynistic (and often intersexist and racist) to cis women who fail to perfom womanhood to the satisfaction of her peers, so too do these trans groups become misogynistic and transphobic (and transmisogynistic and intersexist and exorsexist and racist) towards trans women who fail to perform womanhood to the satisfaction of her peer.

Every ideology that thrives on separatism, exclusion, and uno-reversing the language of their oppressors will eventually make enemies of the in-group who cannot meet the demanding requirements to not be part of the “them” in an us vs them dichotomy.

I’ve written it like 200 fucking times at this point but trans folks turning to radfeminism is such a self-destructive choice (and also laterally violent move but y’all don’t seem to care about that)

People will bitch and whine about ‘tme gender theory’ and then praise cis women whose entire ideology is ‘men are born evil but you can reject maleness and be good again.’ Do you, transfemme, really think these women are talking about you when they say if you reject maleness enough then you’re made pure? Do you, transmasc, really think there will ever be a point where you groveled enough to be forgiven for ‘joining the enemy’?

Cis radfems think you both are freaks! They do not actually believe you can change or repent or distance yourselves and the goalposts will move forever and ever! What cleared the bar today won’t be enough tomorrow. There isn’t a threshold to grind towards that grants you acceptance and forgiveness from transphobic theorists! Reject bioessentialism! Reject gender essentialism!

Stop bootlicking for closet terfs!

I’ve written it like 200 fucking times at this point but trans folks turning to radfeminism is such a self-destructive choice (and also laterally violent move but y’all don’t seem to care about that)

People will bitch and whine about ‘tme gender theory’ and then praise cis women whose entire ideology is ‘men are born evil but you can reject maleness and be good again.’ Do you, transfemme, really think these women are talking about you when they say if you reject maleness enough then you’re made pure? Do you, transmasc, really think there will ever be a point where you groveled enough to be forgiven for ‘joining the enemy’?

Cis radfems think you both are freaks! They do not actually believe you can change or repent or distance yourselves and the goalposts will move forever and ever! What cleared the bar today won’t be enough tomorrow. There isn’t a threshold to grind towards that grants you acceptance and forgiveness from transphobic theorists! Reject bioessentialism! Reject gender essentialism!

Stop bootlicking for closet terfs!

Can't find the posts rn, but we've seen twice now, from different people, the phrase "transitioning to be a man is not a politically neutral choice".

And we are so utterly fascinated by this claim. Because both times, the statement was not elaborated upon, so you're left to ponder the implications on your own.

Let's grant them that claim, shall we? Say, OK, transitioning to manhood is not politically neutral. What now?

Are you saying that transitioning to be a woman is politically neutral? Because if transitioning to manhood is political in some way, then surely the same can be said for womanhood? Women are a marginalized demographic, and are heavily affected by politics in general. So that choice must carry political connotation then yeah?

Am I to assume that transitioning to manhood is some sort of "negative" political choice? What direction does it lean in? What ideology does my transition support?

Is transitioning to womanhood a "positive" political choice? Is it inherently more progressive, more feminist? Does it make a statement about womanhood, or misogyny, or feminism?

The statement that it's "not a politically neutral choice" feels like a dogwhistle of some kind. Like there is some sort of implication that follows. "It's not a politically neutral choice, therefore, it's..." ? What follows from this claim?

If anyone has insight on this talking point, we'd love to know, genuinely.

its just such a basic view of feminism to me i guess. like we cant talk about how emasculation is an enforcement of toxic masculinity, how it is racialized, how it effects both transmascs and transfems. bc mens rights arent real, of course, feminism is about womens liberation, not destruction of the patriarchy.

we cant talk about how misandry (such as it is) is a dogwhistle for terfs, bc of course they only ever mean transfems when they say "men". we cant talk about the ways white cis women have utilized toxic masculinity and white supremacy to harm black men, specifically. we cant talk about the ways cis women hold privilege over trans men.

its just so... like... you rush to say "misandry isnt real" because you dont want to engage with the more complex dynamics of oppression that arent as clear cut as "cis man oppress cis woman". and like, sure, misandry isnt real. i dont care enough to squabble over what language we use. and i dont care enough about whatever silly jokes you make on your blog. but you have got to realize that by only ever seeing men as inherently oppressive to you by merely existing you are actively aiding radical feminism.

you are lending legitimacy to bioessentialism by refusing to engage w these more complex gendered oppression dynamics. you are lending legitimacy to bioessentialism by treating men as inherently different and inherently oppressive to women.

“Me hating men isn’t radfem behavior! TERFs don’t even actually hate men, they just hate trans women.” Radfems would beg to fucking differ!! They most certainly hate men, and they will tell you so with pride. Have you ever actually heard from a radfem? They think all men are inherently predatory and dangerous and should be kept as far away from women as humanly possible if not outright be killed. Yes, they hate trans women the most—because they conceptualize them as men mocking and harming “real” women. That doesn’t mean they aren’t also misogynistic towards trans women; they are. That also doesn’t mean they don’t team up with cis men against trans people sometimes; they do. But if you look into it literally at all you will immediately see that radical feminist ideology hinges on blaming not just the structure of patriarchy but individual men for the oppression of women. If coming to terms with that makes you uncomfortable, sit with that for a while and figure out just how comfortable you are with bio- and gender-essentialism.

its less that 'baeddelism' has poisoned queer communities or politics or whatever and more that radical feminism has. bc people dont recognize radical feminism as anything other than "hates trans women", they dont really know how to recognize its more insidious political beliefs when theyre from, say, trans people.

it's shitty to call random transfems baeddels like that should be obvious to anyone with a head. but i think it happens bc of an inability to recognize radfem politics outside of terf mouths. for some people, esp on tumblr, it's the only word they have to describe politics like this. (that was true for me, too, before i heard of 'tirf')

it's kind of ridiculous to act like the baeddels-the transfem separatist group- were anything other than a tiny, cruel, TRANSPHOBIC AND RADICALLY FEMINIST group. they had no reach. but ignoring their radical feminism and transphobia, dismissing them bc of the groups 'inconsequence' is... a pretty big fucking issue, to me.

it's ALSO kind of ridiculous to act like people who self identify as baeddels currently are completely unconnected or ignorant to The Baeddels - the transfem separatist group. esp on tumblr. like "baeddel" is an archaic term. it was no longer in use. the people that 'founded' the group are still active even if the 'movement' itself disintegrated. and radical feminism will always be a problem in trans spaces. its ONLY use recently was in fact The Baeddels - the transfem separatist group.

the majority of tirfs, however, dont know what a fucking "baeddel" is. it was a micro community that was just... a symptom of a way bigger problem.

the understanding of transandrophobia will remain incomplete as long as we describe the trans community as an incidental participant rather than an enthusiastic one. There can be no analysis of trans men's erasure that is of any use to anyone, unless we start taking into account the ways erasing, infantilising and demonizing trans men benefits trans people of all genders. Until we understand that we're not dealing with a million oopsie-daisies, but with a motivated pattern of behavior - not in the sense of some kind of master plan, but of a system of incentives that make transandrophobia beneficial to the people enacting it. We're stuck playing whack-a-mole with symptoms of a sickness that's been passed down in the community since before the time of Magnus Hirschfeld.

sorry can you explain how baeddel is a slur? to me that's like saying terf is a slur

The original use of the word baeddel is Old English to mean effeminate man or hermaphrodite, largely used as a derogatory term for intersex and trans women. So, a slur.

Fast forward to the early 2010s, and we have a small, mostly fringe, group of trans women who have some fairly concerning politics and also are calling themselves baeddels as a form of reclamation. The group self-destructed after a fairly significant scandal where one high ranking member raped another and the subsequent falling out and choosing sides did the rest.

So I can understand trans women of today being uncomfortable being called a baeddel, especially with how tumblr uses labels that only tangentially apply to mean "person of this demographic I dislike". (TERF is included in this- there is a difference between a TERF and a run of the mill transphobe, but I see pretty much all transphobic behavior including from people who are very much not feminists being called TERF and, um, that "radical feminist" is an important distinction here)

But, again, if [general] you're reblogging from people calling themselves baeddels, and/or you have a username calling *yourself* a baeddel, and/or you continuously spout baeddel ideology or say outright that baeddels were right... I'm kinda... not really seeing how it can possibly be offensive for someone to call it like they see it. As said, looks like walks like quacks like hangs out with and calls itself a duck? It's a duck. Don't be mad when people call you a duck.

like it is really really really obvious when you say stuff like "(feminine) nonbinary" you mean afab + "non-transitioning". you mean female.

can yall fucking stop saying 'transmasc' when it applies to nontransmasc enbies too like this is really getting fucking irritating

What do you think about afab transfems (intersex or no)

I'd really need to see their perspective to form an opinion. Intersex AFAB transfems are a very complicated subject I can't even begin to get into for lack of knowledge but on the face of it they would seem to have a strong argument that merits discussion. I'm skeptical that non-intersex transfems even exist so in regards to them it feels almost like asking the Pope about aliens. Nevertheless, I will indulge in hypotheticals.

Right out the gate it's not entirely outside of the realm of possibility to me. I know an AMAB person who identifies as a cis woman, like, she loves and supports the trans community and acknowledges that she is part of it, but prefers not to personally use those labels and just considers herself so much more aligned with AFAB women in contrast to the transfem experience.

And like, "you don't fit the definition of this thing so you can't claim that identity" is a hard thing to say, I think. If we can be like, hey, actually, gender is a social construct and isn't based in hard biological facts, I can see a lot of room there for what you feel is the most fitting to you. If you can identify as a woman despite having been born AMAB, then why can't you identify as a transwoman despite having been born AFAB? It's not like "transwoman" is less of a social construct than "woman", as an identity.

But I've literally never seen anything from AFAB transfems so I have no real idea what their deal is beyond knowing people freak out about them.

I'd like to talk for a bit about the genre of post that's like "sure you're a boygirl fagdyke genderfreak but do you respect [trans identity]?" I think these sorts of posts do address a lot of important points, such as:

Even if you're genderqueer and going "gender isn't real! smash the binary!" there's a real possibility you haven't unlearned or might still be upholding some very transphobic sentiments, and you should do some introspection about that

Some people only want acceptance for their trans identity but don't want to do the work to deconstruct what gender looks like, stop holding other people to their own gendered expectations, and unlearn their internalized bigotry about different trans identities

Sometimes the [trans identity] is specifically relevant to the identities referenced, such as people who will do surface level acceptance of "boygirls" but then call multigender people problematic for using "contradictory" terms like male lesbian, or asking "are you normal about intersex people?" to point out the prevalent intersexism in the multigender community.

But if the [trans identity] or intersex identity being asked about isn't related to multigender community issues, it seems a little strange to consistently single out labels like boygirl and fagdyke that tend to be used by multigender people in these posts. All kinds of trans people can be transphobic about other trans identities. All kinds of trans people are capable of fighting for their own acceptance but not anyone else's. But these posts are pretty frequently just about boygirl fagdykes.

It reminds me of posts about a "theyfab named Sock being transmisogynistic." Are there transmisogynistic FTX nonbinary people? Yes, no one is immune from perpetuating transmisogyny. But these types of posts are still exorsexist.

Similarly, though I'm not saying the pattern of "sure you're a boygirl fagdyke genderfreak but do you respect [trans identity]" is necessarily exorsexist or transmultiphobic, since like I said they do address important points, some of which actually are multigender community issues. But people do use those types of posts to be really transmultiphobic and exorsexist, but in an "acceptable" way, because the boygirls are transphobic so it's okay to hate them.

Some examples in the notes of this sort of post asking 'are you normal about trans women?":

This assumes that multigender identities are only an online thing, only a young person thing, that all multigender people look cis in real life, that no multigender person has experienced real transphobia.

Again, this assumes that no multigender person "looks like a freak" for their gender, that they never struggle with transphobia offline. And straight up saying they have a "huge issue" with girlboy genders.

Multigender labels aren't "performative titles," they're our genders. This person is just straight up admitting they think our genders are fake, that they're only "titles" and not real fucking identities.

"I tend to Not like multigender people" okay so we're just saying the quiet part out loud now

By all means, keep talking about intracommunity transphobia. It's important. But don't throw multigender people under the bus to do so.

if u call nonbinary spaces "womens" spaces you are directly contributing to the problem youre supposedly so concerned about (the erasure and exclusion of mtx enbies)

can yall fucking stop saying 'transmasc' when it applies to nontransmasc enbies too like this is really getting fucking irritating

you're assuming a lot about binary trans people, and if anything it makes me think that our understandings of our genders aren't actually that different? Not every binary trans person wants to pass as a cis person. I don't want to pass as a cis woman, I want people to understand me for what I am, a collection of internal beliefs and thoughts that I've constructed an identity with. It sounds like we both have created identities for ourselves! If you think that non binary people are the only people capable of creating their own identities and striving to be seen as them, that's on you

im gonna try one more time. i cant really tell if youre being sarcastic or not so im gonna assume youre being genuine when you say you think we have similar understandings of gender. but to me it sounds like you are deliberately ignoring the Actual Words i am saying.

we need words to describe our experiences, both different and common ones. those words may be in themselves faulty or somewhat inaccurate, but they are what we have to discuss important concepts, and they function well enough if they have a generally agreed-upon meaning. right?

so. the dominant culture of the imperial core is one of strictly binary sex. anything that breaks this, is deviant of the "rules of nature", to this dominant culture. right?

so then we call people who are NOT of this binary system multiple different things depending on cultural context and personal identity and personal circumstance. right?

'nonbinary' is only one of those words. to each individual it may mean any one of hundreds upon thousands of different things. everyone has their own personal identity, and while we may use the same word to describe said identity, no two people will have the same definition.

this is true of 'manhood' and 'womanhood' as well. every individual, cis trans both neither intersex perisex and so on and so forth, every single one of them has different PERSONAL interpretations of these words and the concepts they are meant to describe.

but 'woman' has to mean something in order to function as a real concept. it has to have some semblance of shared meaning, shared experience, shared conceptual feeling and vibe, for it to work within the imperial core as a means of systemic control and oppression, for it to work as a communicable identity, and for it to function as a word in a language.

in the same vein of thought, 'binary' is a word we are using to describe someone whose gender, in some way, shape, or form, fits into the schema of 'man and woman'. your internal definition of your own gender does not actually matter very much to other people who do not know it exists.

for me, it matters that i am percieved as a binary gender no matter what i do. it matters, and hurts, a lot. and for some people, it matters and hurts less. for some people, it matters and hurts not at all.

whether you consider yourself binary or not is entirely up to you and how you interpret your own navigation of the world. its very strange to act as if im saying anything otherwise. YOU defined YOURSELF as binary in your responding to me. you said you were also agender, so, like i said in my prev tags, i dont think youre the target audience. but the way youre reacting, it seems you think you are. i am also going to reiterate that 'binary' is not a bad thing to be - binary trans people and for that matter, binary cis people, are not my enemies. but i deserve to have the language to talk about my experiences as they compare to binary people. that's all it is.