Friday, April 28, 2023

On transmisogyny

One important manifestation of transmisogyny:

It’s clear that the tactic of pitting cis women and trans people against each other in a manufactured moral panic has been incredibly successful in terms of manipulating and setting the tone of public debate.

Asserting a false dichotomy of ‘trans rights vs women’s rights’ has served as an excellent cover for transphobes: anti-trans groups have very successfully argued that they aren’t anti-trans — they’re pro-woman.

It’s an emotive claim which frames the debate around transgender equality as an issue of who’s rights are more important — trans people’s or cisgender women’s?

It forces people to take sides.

The success of this tactic has had a particularly harmful impact on public discourse, since many people invoking this seemingly ‘reasonable concern’ have no idea that they’re repeating (and thus reinforcing) a transphobic dog-whistle.

— Kaylin Hamilton, PhD, "'Trans Rights Harm Women' is a Transphobic Dog-Whistle," Substack, April 28, 2023

And here's one manifestation of the idea that trans rights conflict with women's rights. Exactly one year earlier, the anti-trans Women's Voices @WomenReadWomen had tweeted this: "Transgenderism is not a human rights movement; it's a men's rights movement, bolstered by the medical industry. The belief that women can be reduced to purchasable parts — breast implants, hormones — is fundamentally a belief that women, and humans in general, are commodities." (Aug 28, 2022) See, this comment posits that "transgenderism" may not be an individual's fact or the state of being transgender, but is a "movement" based on a "belief" in the commodification of women. And this comment is of course focused on trans women, ignoring the existence of trans men. Which isn't a casual omission. The lopsidedness of the treatment is a way in which their sexism and transmisogyny works. The anti-trans movement considers trans men to be women, yet avoids examining our (trans men's) experiences to see how sexism might show up in our lives, and thus the anti-trans movement ends up reproducing that sexism toward us (intentionally or not).

Putting those two illustrations together, you can see a narrative begin to form: Trans women commodify gender and bodies in a sexist way, whereas non-trans women want to end sexism. Trans women are (only) perpetrators of sexism, whereas non-trans women are (only) the victims of sexism. This is transmisogyny.

Consider, for example, the complaint of "womanface" (my article on Medium). If we live in the non-sexist future that many so-called "gender criticals" (i.e., anti-transgender people) claim to believe in or want to see, we don't assign genders to makeup or clothing, meaning that anyone can wear anything and no one should be judged as putting on the appearance of another gender when they get dressed in the morning. If you tell someone they're too male to be looking so feminine, it's just invalid sexist namecalling. That's what the word "womanface" is and does, according to the so-called GC's own "standards."

People, not objects

Max Strassfeld challenges the treatment of "trans women as abused philosophical objects" (Trans Talmud, Chapter 2).

More specific remarks seen on Twitter


Natalie Washington tweets: This is exactly the muddled, incoherent, contradictory language we use when we lampoon GCs and she...she just tweeted it out
'the definition of mother is strictly limited to those who carry a baby or give birth but people who don't do those can also be mothers if I say so'
I'm also really intrigued as to what comes under 'etc' here in her mind
I guess 'etc' can mean foster parents? Female partners of someone who has already been given Duffield's permission to be a mother?
person sitting in meadow

Daily Wire host goes on strange sexist rant: “Women cannot take care of themselves”: Andrew Klavan: “The central purpose of every society is to figure out the distribution of women because women are valuable”. Media Matters, July 29, 2024

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