It feels like I should start this by saying I’m sorry to trans women. So genuinely, I’m sorry. I was made aware that I did not fully understand the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto and some of the other concepts I used in the post. I feel like a critique of the GAM could still be useful, but evidently I am not the one to write it. I would like to double down on my defense of trans men, but certainly not at the expense of trans women. I see now that TME/TMA can be useful to people. I have seen (mostly on tumblr) people using them to punch across at trans men, but I can accept that it is useful and helpful, not just harmful in that way. I also mentioned in the Critique that I saw a “dangerous trend” of people considering trans women as much or more oppressed than cis women. This was just not right for me to say. Cis women are certainly oppressed, but trans women are also excluded both from men’s and women’s spaces a lot of the time, so if it were a competition, trans women would win it. I don’t like making a competition of oppression, but even in my own words I already had, so that was not okay. In conclusion, I’m sorry for the discrimination I gave and for trying to write about something I evidently did not understand.
I get that you’re apologizing, but this bit right here
I also mentioned in the Critique that I saw a “dangerous trend” of people considering trans women as much or more oppressed than cis women. This was just not right for me to say. Cis women are certainly oppressed, but trans women are also excluded both from men’s and women’s spaces a lot of the time, so if it were a competition, trans women would win it.
Shows that you do not understand why what you said was wrong. A lot of people spent time explaining to you in that thread, go read their words, go read linked works like Talia bhatt, go read Serrano (though be mindful of some enbyphobia in there), go read literally anyone saying anything productive about transmisogyny.
An apology is meaningless if you dont understand why your apologizing, and it comes across as just trying to do damage control. This comm is called self crit, take some time and do actual self crit
if it were a competition, trans women would win it
If it were a competition, wed be banned for having a “biological advantage” /hj
I know that I hurt people, and that was never my intention. I have so much to learn, and I shouldn’t have been trying to write an essay with this level of knowledge. I thought I knew something worth sharing, but ultimately I just perpetuated transmisogyny. I honestly feel sick over what I’ve done, even if I don’t fully understand it. I repeated TERF rhetoric, even in this apology saying that trans women might be trying to get into men’s spaces, as SerialExperimentsGay pointed out. I spoke out of ignorance and should really just do a lot more listening. This may not be a satisfactory apology either, but I want to at least say I’m going to do the reading and the learning where if I just didn’t respond, it would seem like I’m just ignoring you all.
This got super rambly, sorry. But here’s a rambly exhausted response. I’m sorry if I’m saying things that hurt, it’s not my intention.
I feel like an asshole for writing all this shit out. You're trying and thats more than most people. Thanks for at least doing that.
So, its not the end of the world to say shit things. Like, I get that you feel sick over it, and its good that you’re reading and trying to understand. We all get transmisogyny drilled into us, and does the fish notice the water? Of course not! Its hard to recognize and approach social structures we live in like fish in water. You tried, and fell on your face due to a lack of critical engagement with the text and the social structures it is criticizing and occurring in the context of. I didn’t say all ive said to make you feel poorly or sick, I wanted to point out that an apology needs to be rendered in a way that shows understanding in order to effectively communicate “this behavior will not happen again”.
Its ok to not be perfect, but you also gotta be ready for when you hurt people. I’d hazard a guess that every single person has hurt someone. We can’t prevent it from happening in a categorical sense, we can work to minimize it and work to show up and own our shit and engage in repair processes when it does happen. You’re at least attempting to do that, and while yeah I’m a bit pissed I also am trying to extend benefit of the doubt and take you at your word.
So yeah, you repeated terfshit, missed points, and didn’t really understand some things. Thats not the end of the world, it just means you hurt some people and need to grow. oh fuck, a personal growth opportunity. Growth is hard and painful.
Im not gonna try to be educator, and hopefully this isnt insulting to lay out, but the mens/women’s spaces thing is incorrect because we aren’t men and should not be included in mens spaces (to say nothing of our safety in them). Those of us who are women should be included in women’s spaces, but often are unsafe in them or excluded from them¹. This isnt even exclusive to trans women. How many black cis women see a women’s space and know in their bones from all the other context clues that its not a women’s space, its a white women’s space? I know ive talked to a few people who have had that experience, cause segregation never went away its just got a layer of abstraction over it.
Anyway, I guess in summation, I appreciate that you feel sick and I dont want to minimize that, but its also frustrating to, as a demographic/community, see transmisogyny and then have to deconstruct it and then see apologies that dont reflect actual learning. I’m glad you’re taking the time to read and learn, genuinely, it makes me happy. And i dont want you driven from the site or anything like that. You seem to be engaging in good faith and I appreciate that and it makes me feel at least a bit more comfy. Its just exhausting is all.
Idk, maybe I’m just making things worse with this. I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but I do want to express my frustration. I probably won’t engage further, but do feel free to respond and I will read it. I just dont think I have the capacity to engage more around this.
Footnote 1 (cw nonconsentual touch mentioned)
Like, ive been catcalled and thats pretty exclusively men that have done that. But the touch? The people who have felt entitled to grope and feel and do whatever? They have all been cis women. The point of saying this is: we live in a society that has a lot of violence, and that violence gets expressed through and upholds a hierarchy (well, many hierarchies). Trans women are pretty clearly below both cis men and cis women in the gender hierarchy (when all other traits are equal, something that I shouldn’t need to say but it seems I do and I want to be not misunderstood).
I would like to double down on my defense of trans men, but certainly not at the expense of trans women.
The entire problem with your “defense of trans men” is that it comes at the expense of trans women.
I have seen (mostly on tumblr) people using them to punch across at trans men
Tumblr routinely harasses and mass bans trans women. It does not do that with trans men. You are AGAIN engaging in a reversal of victim and attacker with this claim. Antifeminism, transmisogyny and lesbophobia do not suddenly become acceptable when the attacker also faces transphobia or other forms of discrimination. Queer men do not get a free pass to opress trans women. Queer men have to face the difficult situation that even while they suffer from homophobia, transphobia or other forms of gender and sexuality based opression, they also access some amount of male privilege, even when it is conditional (for example, on factors like passing) and limited (for example, to queer spaces). That may not be noteworthy in some individual cases, i get that there are trans men who genuinely do not derive significant benefits from patriarchy as individuals. Particularly not when they fortunately have no interest in bullying trans women out of queer spaces. I understand that obviously, a lot of trans men do not want that kind of privilege. But it’s still something that happens frequently. I have over and over again experienced this myself or seen it happens to TMA friends of mine. Queer spaces absolutely and routinely reproduce patriarchal modes of opressing women in general and trans women in particular and even though my personal encounters with that largely happened irl or on other platforms, tumblr absolutely is a prime example of that.
trans women are also excluded both from men’s and women’s spaces a lot of the time
WHY THE FUCK WOULD A TRANS WOMAN WANT TO BE INCLUDED IN MEN’S SPACES??? What gives you the idea we want or need that? Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Including either of us in spaces reserved for our AGAB, spaces that do not match our gender identity, is automatically transphobic and discriminatory. It is an act of violent misgendering. What point are you even trying to make? Is transmisogyny truly that incomprehensible to you? How can you claim to be a leftist, in a world that churns out transmisogynist propaganda every day, and walk away from that with the impression that our marginalization rests on an exclusion from men’s spaces?
Seriously, what the fuck is even going on here?
I’d also like to point out that exclusion from single sex spaces is definitely one of the ways we are discriminated against, but far from the only one and for me personally right now the bottom of my list of issues. The fact I use the men’s bathroom right now sucks but is NOTHING compared to everything else.
Bang on comment though :cat-trans:
At least to us the problem w being forced to use mens spaces is as much or even more “we feel/are unsafe as a woman surrounded by a bunch of men” as “just” being misgendered (which obvsly sucks on its own too)
