biology is not destiny, genitalia is not prophesy, & we are far more expansive than a body.
part of the way liberal transmisogyny operates is the insistence on foregrounding and stabilizing our “biological sex,” even while acknowledging gender variance.
examples of this include people telling me: “you look fabulous, man!” “you are such a well dressed gentleman!” “nice dress, sir!” by liberal transmisogyny what i mean is the acknowledgement of our femininity, but the subsequent devaluing of it as:
1) always less legitimate/real than cis womanhood
2) merely an aesthetic and not a fundamental dimension of our personhood
3) a transgression of gender that is necessarily distinct from “biological sex.” the idea becomes: “I accept that you are feminine, but you are just a feminine man!” Or “You are a gender non-conforming man!” in other words: gender can only be subverted insomuch as it re-inscribes binary/biological sex.
this is why often compliments toward trans feminine people like me aren’t actually experienced as affirming...because they are still invested in the idea that we are “men” who just happen to be “feminine.” liberal transmisogyny has shifted its rhetoric but not its practice: boundaries of “womanhood” are policed in a way that continues to harm transfeminine people, especially those of us who are gender non-conforming. liberal transmisogyny creates a barren ideological landscape — one that cannot (or rather refuses to) accept that there are many, varied ways of existing in the world detached from a binary gender and binary sex (colonial lol) paradigm (erasing intersex people altogether). liberal transmisogyny might accept that “hypothetically” violence against trans women and femmes is happening, but it plays no part in it! this is enabled by understanding trans critique as simply one of not being included, not also one of being actively oppressed. but remember: the problem isn’t just anti-trans violence, it is cis supremacy.
which goes to say: i am not a man. and it is so silly and ridiculous that we have to spend so much time convincing you what we are not.
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