The thing about the transmisogynist argument that “women’s oppression is about biology” is that it does two things. One is that it prompts us to fight it by denying sexism has to do with biology at all.

The second is erasing that sexism against transfems is based on biology too

It makes transphobes look smarter and more realistic for trans people to be boxed into a corner or arguing that biology has nothing to do with sexism when that just isn’t true.

But the biological foundation of transmisogyny has had significantly less effort poured into explaining and investigating it than sexism in general.

My theory for a long time has been this:

Transmisogyny relies on two things—transfems prove fundamentally unable to be men; and transfems are categorically unable to fulfill one of the major defining features of womanhood, which is bearing a child for a man.

Cis women being valued above trans women isn’t incidental. It is very much a situation of biology, because the value assigned to women in patriarchal society is a value trans women can never provide.

If it seems grim for me to describe this in this way, that’s because patriarchy is grim.

It is the way patriarchy organizes power *by biology* that puts trans women BELOW cis women. Not above, the way transmisogynists claim

Biology is a a big part of why cis men find us both a forbidden pleasure and disgusting. Why cis women are set up as innocent and harmless next to the villainous, violent image forced on trans women.

It is biology that is used to attribute an air of danger, power, and lack of sensitivity to trans women. It is biology that’s used to justify both cis female and cis male fear of us.

This is also why biology cannot be removed from the understanding of transmisogyny and why transmisogyny is a valuable distinction.

This is why concepts like “CAMAB,” while not time-tested well, are important and can’t simply be pushed under the rug.

It’s true that biology matters, but it doesn’t mean transmisogyny doesn’t exist—it means the opposite of that

It may feel like claiming sexism has nothing to do with the body is pushing back against TERFs, but it’s more like taking bait.

Patriarchy essentially defines trans women as another sex altogether—Woman Type Two, which can’t even give you children! The nerve!

And since probably someone will say “but can’t trans women have children of their own?”

But not in a way that carries on the genes of a cis man

The value of reproduction for cis men is that the children get to be treated as theirs, and a reflection of them.

This is why people with uteruses are objectified and also why not being able to bear a child for a cis man condemns trans women to being The Monster Sex

(Well, it’s one reason for these things, at least)

This means the oppression of AFAB trans people, intersex people, cis women, and AMAB trans people are all bound up together—and that transmisogyny is one of the important distinctions within that grouping

This is also why it makes no sense to say “trans women are oppressed on the basis of gender, not sex”

Even if I agreed that sex=the body and gender=presentation/inner identity, trans women would STILL be oppressed on the basis of sex and gender both.

In a sense we have imposed on us a unique sex, a unique kind of femaleness