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rescuemonsterif there is a discourse to be had, you know our opinionated ass will be at the scene of the crime. I have never been chalant a day in my life.
will be discussing transphobia and compulsory heterosexuality and oppression and stuff so if that's not your thing for the day, feel free to skip!
first up, I wanna talk about a post I saw on twitter dot com, which is a place that, as we all know, is great for nuanced, compassionate and empathetic takes. definitely no pervasive issues of self-centeredness going on over there.
I lost the post itself, so everything (except for some specifics I'll uh, well, specify) will be paraphased.
it started off along the lines of "non-binary people need to understand that not everyone is comfortable being referred to neutrally / degendered. I'm a woman and you will refer to me as such."
I think this is a super understandable perspective and one I think is empathetic, but it's a little short-sighted. while it's true that cis people will degender trans women when they know they're trans women, finding it suddenly super easy to refer to a she/her only trans woman as they/them when they otherwise believe singular they/them pronouns are "illogical" or "impossible", genuinely advocating for "refer to someone by the pronouns you assume they have by appearance" is ultimately only really going to do harm, right? it'll mean that not only do non-binary people get misgendered, but any non-passing or GNC individuals do as well. it reinforces a bioessentialist view of gender. so, while I find it super sympathetic to not want to be misgendered by someone using they/them pronouns for you (and it reminds me of that contrapoints tweet where she expressed how while it's ultimately a good, progressive thing, it sucks to be a trans woman in a room full of cis people who go "let's all share our pronouns!" as it ultimately does just feel like they're trying to subtly say you don't pass), it's like... a brief moment of dysphoria versus an approach to understanding and being inclusive of all genders that I think does more to try and deconstruct cisnormativity as opposed to just play into it.
so, I check the replies. she follows the tweet up with "people are taking this to mean I hate non-binary people, which isn't true, and simply shows that trans fems are always at the bottom of this community's priorities."
and this is where I go ahh... yes, I think I know where this is going. LOL. I think I know exactly what brand of online trans fem this is.
the online trans community as well as transness as a whole, typically, is usually synonymous with trans femininity. I think that if you asked most regular, uneducated cis people what they think of trans people, if they gave an answer that mentioned either trans fems or trans mascs specifically, they'd probably mention trans fems. not to say this is a purely good thing, or that trans fems are privileged or anything, they are just simply hypervisible, and this does impact and play into their oppression as well (the same way that trans mascs being invisible plays into and impacts theirs). but to say trans fems are the lowest priority, when they're honestly the group I see discussed the most, on and offline? is a little disingenuous. so this is where I start to go ah, this person might be one of those sorts of people...
which is immediately proven when I check the quote retweets, and say that this woman said "I shouldn't have to be misgendered for the sake of some clocky theyfabs." clocky theyfabs is the only part of this entire post that I have not paraphased.
so, yes, this is one of #those cases. a case of a white trans fem online thinking that she is the be all and end all of victimhood, which is something I see happen unfortunately often, personally. it's a loud group, I hope minority, that seem to think that the transmisogyny they face is the absolute worst form of oppression one can, while discounting their white privilege, and downplaying or even outright erasing the misogyny and transphobia that trans mascs and AFAB non-binary and intersex people face. they seem to think that there are levels to transphobia, and that "transphobia" (which everyone experiences) is level one, while transmisogyny is level two. this is completely antithetical to intersectionality, and it's why we personally really push for there to be some sort of understanding of the fact that trans mascs likewise face a unique form of transphobia (called transmisandry by some, transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, etc.). by doing that, we understand that the intersectionality of transmisogyny isn't transphobia+, and therefore that trans fem people have it worse than those who aren't, since they only experience regular transphobia, but rather an intersectionality of transphobia and misogyny that affects a specific group of people. trans mascs experience a different intersection of transphobia and misogyny! neither of these are worse than the other, they both come with different struggles and we face different forms of violence. both need to be talked about, advocated against, and prevented.
(I guess both are transphobia+ in their own way? point is, we all experience transphobia, and then based on what little box cis people put you in based on your birth sex, you get your own little unique DLC. and that DLC varies based on if you're intersex, if you pass, if you're white, if you're Black, etc. that's intersectionality. it isn't saying that X is worse than Y, it's acknowledging how X is different to Y! and acknowledging that if someone has transphobia++ (double DLC), then you have some privilege over them. in the case of trans fems and trans mascs I would say, neither has privilege nor power over the other, unless there is an aspect of another axis of oppression at play besides from gender. (discounting intersex people of course, I'd say that's another axis of oppression. sex-based oppression as opposed to gender, maybe?))
anyway yeah. it sort of reminds me of how we heard that a friend of a friend claimed that there was such a thing as "AFAB privilege." absolutely bonkers.
I think too, and this'll tie into my next point about compulsory heterosexuality, that it's better to look at cisnormativity and transphobia and misogyny and how it affects absolutely everyone and try to dismantle or challenge it as opposed to wield your oppression as a shield or weapon or to make yourself "special" or a victim, if that makes sense. a lot of people do this online, white women are suuuuuper guilty of it, that's what the whole karen thing is: weaponising your white womanhood. and I say this as someone who is positionally a white woman.
but like ultimately, cisnormativity and transphobia hurt... cis people. they hurt everyone. and I've seen people word the way transphobia affects cis women as "inconveniencing" them recently, which I think is uh. not it. I remember seeing a while ago that a Black cis woman was killed due to the fact she was presumed trans. of course, we shouldn't only care about transphobia if/when it hurts cis people (like with the whole Olympics debacle) but to call any instance of transphobia, accurately targeted or not, an "inconvenience" is to downplay the violent nature of it. transphobia is used to kill, and if someone believes you are trans, they will kill you. if you take this to mean "someone who isn't trans and is being wrongfully targeted isn't deserving of that violence" and not "nobody is deserving of that violence, and the fact it can be used against even those who aren't the intended group should radicalise you and wake you up to how completely illogical this rhetoric is" then um. like, don't? I guess? I don't know.
my next point is on a post I saw about comphet. first post was a screenshot of someone on tiktok drawing a MLM ship to chappell roan's (love her my lord) good luck babe, and someone correctly saying hey, this isn't cool, don't change the lyrics to "when your wake up in the night, you're nothing more than her husband" and some people responding to that in very lesbiphobic and misogynistic ways. then someone quote retweeted this and said (and I have the tweet this time! yay) "oooh, gay comphet isn't the same as lesbian comphet, which is strongly driven by misogyny. ooooh the lyric "you're nothing more than his (her) wife (husband)" will never apply to your little yaoi boys ooooh" and this is great and funny and I totally agree.
but then in the comments, people start discussing if the term "comphet" can even apply to men, which OP said it can't, actually, so let's talk about that!
compulsory heterosexuality, which you will learn with even just a quick scroll through the wikipedia page, is a term that was originally coined in reference to lesbians and their relationship to patriarchal heteronormativity and how that influences the way we navigate the world, especially in relationships. BUT: it is not exclusive to lesbians at all.
when you analyse the framework of patriarchal society as a whole, you'll find that the experiences that highlight it most obviously as those of lesbians: women whose identities are absent of men, who are the center of patriarchal society. you can learn a lot about the patriarchy specifically through the lens of lesbianism simply because it's devoid of said men, but it doesn't mean that what you learn here doesn't apply to everyone else, ever, who are likewise participating in and experiencing the patriarchy.
compulsory heterosexuality is the expectation and pressure to be in a heterosexual relationship. it is the expectation and pressure for men to be husbands and women to be wives, and for them to fulfill their given roles as husband and wife. compulsory heterosexuality is an institution under which we are all, uh. instituted. so while its affect is most obvious on lesbians, a group who exist without and beyond the concept of men, it affects all queer people and, in fact, it can even affect cisheterosexual people in my opinion, because there are relationships that happen to be heterosexual and between two heterosexual people, and then there are "heterosexual relationships", in which the couple are not simply two people in a relationship, but are playing two very specific roles, and honestly? dehumanised in the process.
while compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity obviously affect queer people the most, and will have more of an obvious effect the further away you get from the cisheteronormative ideal (i.e., lesbians are most obviously affected, because women are defined by their usefulness to men as wives and caretakers, so when you do not want men, you will see the effects of this most; then you have say, gay men, who are obviously counter to the "hetero" part of all of this, but ultimately still somewhat benefit from the patriarchy, and then bi men and women, who can very easily and do often very easily conform to compulsory heterosexuality because it's safer, easier, and what's expected of them) it'll still ultimately affect pretty much everyone.
there was a post circulating a few months ago, I know nerve read it to keons on call because we found it like... both very insightful and incredibly funny. it was about a cis man going through his "gay awakening", and sounding completely insane the way he went about it. it's on reddit, something about him seeing an Asian twink's penis at a bathhouse and then deciding to go on a queer adventure. he's nuts. but that post I think really well highlighted how comphet/heteronormativity literally affects straight people?
for context, the emphasis this guy had wasn't on the fact he was realising he always liked men. it was him (albeit tooootally unaware that was what was happening) realising that the institution of heterosexuality had been stifling him. he didn't view women as women, he viewed them as a role, as an object, as a role that he was playing his own role alongside, and as a result, he didn't like women. when he began exploring queerness, he began exploring self-expression more than anything. freedom. and while he was ultimately just conforming to a new set of roles and stereotypes instead of doing the actually self-actualising, healing thing of throwing them away altogether, it felt pretty clear to me that honestly... this man doesn't even like men. the "gay" experiences he talked about were all with trans women. I think it's pretty likely he's actually just cis, but due to the institution of heterosexuality, he views any woman he dates as a role he's playing alongside and not a person, which prevents him from forming actual human attachment and bonds, and isolates him.
but a trans woman? well, that's already so far out of the bounds of the institution of heterosexuality to a straight man that he can set aside and forget about those roles, can actually connect with her, and can be a human, as opposed to the role that is a straight man.
my point is, intersectionality isn't about working out who's the most oppressed. it's about identifying what the standard is, what the powers that be want to make the boxes we must all conform to are, and then identifying the ways in which our divergence from these boxes hurt us (while likewise being mindful of the fact that the boxes themselves are harmful and need to be disestablished. it's about realising that misogyny obviously hurts women the most, and obviously hurts women who do not meet the standard of womanhood mostest, but that likewise, cis men being harassed, hurt or otherwise prevented from doing something like cross-dressing or otherwise expressing themselves, is a form of misogyny, and shows how these things suck and are bad for everyone. privilege is the opportunity and ability to conform to these boxes — but you are still in a box. the only truly privileged people are those who well and truly belong in these boxes, and as long as society is telling you that these the acceptable boxes to be in, how many people are ever truly going to realise they don't belong there, and the boxes are what's making them miserable?
so like basically if we can destroy the institutions of compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity, all the andrew tates and incels of the world will disappear. (/lhj but not actually a joke like this is true)
reminds me too of how "white" as a culture (box) is ultimately likewise damaging to even the people who benefit from it because it annihilates culture and removes people from their ethnic ancestry systematically for the sake of upholding and maintaining power over groups those in power wish to suppress and oppress. maybe I will talk about that another time.
(to be clear since that's a super quick throwaway comment I am not saying whiteness is not a privilege, holy shit is it, I'm simply saying that whiteness destroys absolutely EVERYTHING in the name of power, even the culture of said white people. it's why both say, a white european person living in a european country, and a white american, are white, but have different experiences and relationships to culture. and it's why white americans who's great grandmother was italian will call themselves italian, because they ultimately have no cultural identity. it was destroyed in the name of whiteness.)
closing thoughts: diversity good, intersectionality good, fuck the patriarchy, fuck white supremacy, fuck these boxes.
and oh my god fuck trans in-fighting yeeeeeeesh.
will be discussing transphobia and compulsory heterosexuality and oppression and stuff so if that's not your thing for the day, feel free to skip!
first up, I wanna talk about a post I saw on twitter dot com, which is a place that, as we all know, is great for nuanced, compassionate and empathetic takes. definitely no pervasive issues of self-centeredness going on over there.
I lost the post itself, so everything (except for some specifics I'll uh, well, specify) will be paraphased.
it started off along the lines of "non-binary people need to understand that not everyone is comfortable being referred to neutrally / degendered. I'm a woman and you will refer to me as such."
I think this is a super understandable perspective and one I think is empathetic, but it's a little short-sighted. while it's true that cis people will degender trans women when they know they're trans women, finding it suddenly super easy to refer to a she/her only trans woman as they/them when they otherwise believe singular they/them pronouns are "illogical" or "impossible", genuinely advocating for "refer to someone by the pronouns you assume they have by appearance" is ultimately only really going to do harm, right? it'll mean that not only do non-binary people get misgendered, but any non-passing or GNC individuals do as well. it reinforces a bioessentialist view of gender. so, while I find it super sympathetic to not want to be misgendered by someone using they/them pronouns for you (and it reminds me of that contrapoints tweet where she expressed how while it's ultimately a good, progressive thing, it sucks to be a trans woman in a room full of cis people who go "let's all share our pronouns!" as it ultimately does just feel like they're trying to subtly say you don't pass), it's like... a brief moment of dysphoria versus an approach to understanding and being inclusive of all genders that I think does more to try and deconstruct cisnormativity as opposed to just play into it.
so, I check the replies. she follows the tweet up with "people are taking this to mean I hate non-binary people, which isn't true, and simply shows that trans fems are always at the bottom of this community's priorities."
and this is where I go ahh... yes, I think I know where this is going. LOL. I think I know exactly what brand of online trans fem this is.
the online trans community as well as transness as a whole, typically, is usually synonymous with trans femininity. I think that if you asked most regular, uneducated cis people what they think of trans people, if they gave an answer that mentioned either trans fems or trans mascs specifically, they'd probably mention trans fems. not to say this is a purely good thing, or that trans fems are privileged or anything, they are just simply hypervisible, and this does impact and play into their oppression as well (the same way that trans mascs being invisible plays into and impacts theirs). but to say trans fems are the lowest priority, when they're honestly the group I see discussed the most, on and offline? is a little disingenuous. so this is where I start to go ah, this person might be one of those sorts of people...
which is immediately proven when I check the quote retweets, and say that this woman said "I shouldn't have to be misgendered for the sake of some clocky theyfabs." clocky theyfabs is the only part of this entire post that I have not paraphased.
so, yes, this is one of #those cases. a case of a white trans fem online thinking that she is the be all and end all of victimhood, which is something I see happen unfortunately often, personally. it's a loud group, I hope minority, that seem to think that the transmisogyny they face is the absolute worst form of oppression one can, while discounting their white privilege, and downplaying or even outright erasing the misogyny and transphobia that trans mascs and AFAB non-binary and intersex people face. they seem to think that there are levels to transphobia, and that "transphobia" (which everyone experiences) is level one, while transmisogyny is level two. this is completely antithetical to intersectionality, and it's why we personally really push for there to be some sort of understanding of the fact that trans mascs likewise face a unique form of transphobia (called transmisandry by some, transandrophobia, anti-transmasculinity, etc.). by doing that, we understand that the intersectionality of transmisogyny isn't transphobia+, and therefore that trans fem people have it worse than those who aren't, since they only experience regular transphobia, but rather an intersectionality of transphobia and misogyny that affects a specific group of people. trans mascs experience a different intersection of transphobia and misogyny! neither of these are worse than the other, they both come with different struggles and we face different forms of violence. both need to be talked about, advocated against, and prevented.
(I guess both are transphobia+ in their own way? point is, we all experience transphobia, and then based on what little box cis people put you in based on your birth sex, you get your own little unique DLC. and that DLC varies based on if you're intersex, if you pass, if you're white, if you're Black, etc. that's intersectionality. it isn't saying that X is worse than Y, it's acknowledging how X is different to Y! and acknowledging that if someone has transphobia++ (double DLC), then you have some privilege over them. in the case of trans fems and trans mascs I would say, neither has privilege nor power over the other, unless there is an aspect of another axis of oppression at play besides from gender. (discounting intersex people of course, I'd say that's another axis of oppression. sex-based oppression as opposed to gender, maybe?))
anyway yeah. it sort of reminds me of how we heard that a friend of a friend claimed that there was such a thing as "AFAB privilege." absolutely bonkers.
I think too, and this'll tie into my next point about compulsory heterosexuality, that it's better to look at cisnormativity and transphobia and misogyny and how it affects absolutely everyone and try to dismantle or challenge it as opposed to wield your oppression as a shield or weapon or to make yourself "special" or a victim, if that makes sense. a lot of people do this online, white women are suuuuuper guilty of it, that's what the whole karen thing is: weaponising your white womanhood. and I say this as someone who is positionally a white woman.
but like ultimately, cisnormativity and transphobia hurt... cis people. they hurt everyone. and I've seen people word the way transphobia affects cis women as "inconveniencing" them recently, which I think is uh. not it. I remember seeing a while ago that a Black cis woman was killed due to the fact she was presumed trans. of course, we shouldn't only care about transphobia if/when it hurts cis people (like with the whole Olympics debacle) but to call any instance of transphobia, accurately targeted or not, an "inconvenience" is to downplay the violent nature of it. transphobia is used to kill, and if someone believes you are trans, they will kill you. if you take this to mean "someone who isn't trans and is being wrongfully targeted isn't deserving of that violence" and not "nobody is deserving of that violence, and the fact it can be used against even those who aren't the intended group should radicalise you and wake you up to how completely illogical this rhetoric is" then um. like, don't? I guess? I don't know.
my next point is on a post I saw about comphet. first post was a screenshot of someone on tiktok drawing a MLM ship to chappell roan's (love her my lord) good luck babe, and someone correctly saying hey, this isn't cool, don't change the lyrics to "when your wake up in the night, you're nothing more than her husband" and some people responding to that in very lesbiphobic and misogynistic ways. then someone quote retweeted this and said (and I have the tweet this time! yay) "oooh, gay comphet isn't the same as lesbian comphet, which is strongly driven by misogyny. ooooh the lyric "you're nothing more than his (her) wife (husband)" will never apply to your little yaoi boys ooooh" and this is great and funny and I totally agree.
but then in the comments, people start discussing if the term "comphet" can even apply to men, which OP said it can't, actually, so let's talk about that!
compulsory heterosexuality, which you will learn with even just a quick scroll through the wikipedia page, is a term that was originally coined in reference to lesbians and their relationship to patriarchal heteronormativity and how that influences the way we navigate the world, especially in relationships. BUT: it is not exclusive to lesbians at all.
when you analyse the framework of patriarchal society as a whole, you'll find that the experiences that highlight it most obviously as those of lesbians: women whose identities are absent of men, who are the center of patriarchal society. you can learn a lot about the patriarchy specifically through the lens of lesbianism simply because it's devoid of said men, but it doesn't mean that what you learn here doesn't apply to everyone else, ever, who are likewise participating in and experiencing the patriarchy.
compulsory heterosexuality is the expectation and pressure to be in a heterosexual relationship. it is the expectation and pressure for men to be husbands and women to be wives, and for them to fulfill their given roles as husband and wife. compulsory heterosexuality is an institution under which we are all, uh. instituted. so while its affect is most obvious on lesbians, a group who exist without and beyond the concept of men, it affects all queer people and, in fact, it can even affect cisheterosexual people in my opinion, because there are relationships that happen to be heterosexual and between two heterosexual people, and then there are "heterosexual relationships", in which the couple are not simply two people in a relationship, but are playing two very specific roles, and honestly? dehumanised in the process.
while compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity obviously affect queer people the most, and will have more of an obvious effect the further away you get from the cisheteronormative ideal (i.e., lesbians are most obviously affected, because women are defined by their usefulness to men as wives and caretakers, so when you do not want men, you will see the effects of this most; then you have say, gay men, who are obviously counter to the "hetero" part of all of this, but ultimately still somewhat benefit from the patriarchy, and then bi men and women, who can very easily and do often very easily conform to compulsory heterosexuality because it's safer, easier, and what's expected of them) it'll still ultimately affect pretty much everyone.
there was a post circulating a few months ago, I know nerve read it to keons on call because we found it like... both very insightful and incredibly funny. it was about a cis man going through his "gay awakening", and sounding completely insane the way he went about it. it's on reddit, something about him seeing an Asian twink's penis at a bathhouse and then deciding to go on a queer adventure. he's nuts. but that post I think really well highlighted how comphet/heteronormativity literally affects straight people?
for context, the emphasis this guy had wasn't on the fact he was realising he always liked men. it was him (albeit tooootally unaware that was what was happening) realising that the institution of heterosexuality had been stifling him. he didn't view women as women, he viewed them as a role, as an object, as a role that he was playing his own role alongside, and as a result, he didn't like women. when he began exploring queerness, he began exploring self-expression more than anything. freedom. and while he was ultimately just conforming to a new set of roles and stereotypes instead of doing the actually self-actualising, healing thing of throwing them away altogether, it felt pretty clear to me that honestly... this man doesn't even like men. the "gay" experiences he talked about were all with trans women. I think it's pretty likely he's actually just cis, but due to the institution of heterosexuality, he views any woman he dates as a role he's playing alongside and not a person, which prevents him from forming actual human attachment and bonds, and isolates him.
but a trans woman? well, that's already so far out of the bounds of the institution of heterosexuality to a straight man that he can set aside and forget about those roles, can actually connect with her, and can be a human, as opposed to the role that is a straight man.
my point is, intersectionality isn't about working out who's the most oppressed. it's about identifying what the standard is, what the powers that be want to make the boxes we must all conform to are, and then identifying the ways in which our divergence from these boxes hurt us (while likewise being mindful of the fact that the boxes themselves are harmful and need to be disestablished. it's about realising that misogyny obviously hurts women the most, and obviously hurts women who do not meet the standard of womanhood mostest, but that likewise, cis men being harassed, hurt or otherwise prevented from doing something like cross-dressing or otherwise expressing themselves, is a form of misogyny, and shows how these things suck and are bad for everyone. privilege is the opportunity and ability to conform to these boxes — but you are still in a box. the only truly privileged people are those who well and truly belong in these boxes, and as long as society is telling you that these the acceptable boxes to be in, how many people are ever truly going to realise they don't belong there, and the boxes are what's making them miserable?
so like basically if we can destroy the institutions of compulsory heterosexuality and heteronormativity, all the andrew tates and incels of the world will disappear. (/lhj but not actually a joke like this is true)
reminds me too of how "white" as a culture (box) is ultimately likewise damaging to even the people who benefit from it because it annihilates culture and removes people from their ethnic ancestry systematically for the sake of upholding and maintaining power over groups those in power wish to suppress and oppress. maybe I will talk about that another time.
(to be clear since that's a super quick throwaway comment I am not saying whiteness is not a privilege, holy shit is it, I'm simply saying that whiteness destroys absolutely EVERYTHING in the name of power, even the culture of said white people. it's why both say, a white european person living in a european country, and a white american, are white, but have different experiences and relationships to culture. and it's why white americans who's great grandmother was italian will call themselves italian, because they ultimately have no cultural identity. it was destroyed in the name of whiteness.)
closing thoughts: diversity good, intersectionality good, fuck the patriarchy, fuck white supremacy, fuck these boxes.
and oh my god fuck trans in-fighting yeeeeeeesh.
