I Have Such A Hard Time - Tumblr Posts

Hey there, so something that's been on my mind a while but have had trouble articulating is how in terms of trans discourse, and understanding of our issues, it often feels like people only focusing on the people who have it worst in their minds, trans women, makes the true picture of how transphobia and other oppresions intersect incomplete. Without the consideration of transmasc oppression, it's a picture that is incomplete, but people try and get stuff done with this incomplete picture anyway, and its interesting, because once you add in more voices, it should theoretically help our understanding of everything,? Right? I hope that you see what I'm getting at here, but if you red this, thank you, ^^ -transmascnotes85

Absolutely! And I think it goes beyond just a focus on trans women- because a lot of transfemme issues get ignored, too. Like, their experiences while closeted, their interactions with feminism before they realize they’re trans, the way being seen as a man impacts them- or being seen as a feminine man. This article, written by a closeted trans woman about her experiences, really covers that. I think the reason folks tend to pick up trans women specifically is because there’s easy-to-digest overlap between misogyny, and transmisogyny. It’s easy to constrain understandings of their experiences to “woman plus trans”, say they’re your queens, your sisters, and then pat yourself on the back for being a good trans ally & call it a day. It allows cis women to focus on the overlap of experiences between them and trans women; misogyny. And then they focus on misogyny. “The patriarchy only hates trans women because “choosing” to be a woman is the worst thing you can do”, they say, and it lets them ignore the fact that cis women oppress trans women, too. Anyway, all of this to say that it’s not even just about the focus on trans women’s issues- because it falls short of that, too. It’s a way of ignoring the fact that transphobia as a system even exists, that it’s something they, too, benefit from as a system. The reason they don’t like to think about transmascs as a whole, or even AMAB nonbinary people, is because we complicate things so they aren’t able to do that. If a woman is the worst thing someone can be, why then are trans men oppressed? Why are nonbinary people oppressed? And their answer tends to be: well, they aren’t. If the patriarchy hates trans women ONLY because they “choose” to be women, then it must reward transmascs for “choosing” to be men- and nonbinary transfemmes, and AMAB nonbinary people in general, don’t really fit this narrative, so they’re ignored. Obviously, that doesn’t make any sense. Provably. Quantifiabley. We know transphobia is real; we know it doesn’t reward trans men. We know nonbinary people suffer under it, too. But cis people don’t like that, and they don’t want to talk about it, so they’ve found another convenient way to ignore it while seeming just as “woke” as if they didn’t.