It bothers me that so many people were so quick to assign to Kai Cheng Thom positions she didn’t voice, like “queers should be more sexual in public!” She didn’t make a prescriptive claim at all, and didn’t stigmatize aspec people. But that’s what the conversation became.

It’s also terrifying how easily an energy of sexual aggression was imputed onto her, almost without thought or transition. More people need to have a deeper understanding of how central to transmisogyny it is to make out transfems, especially of color, as sexually threatening

What many people often seem unaware of (or, in cases where maybe we should less charitable, uncaring of) is how nigh universal it is for trans women to be accused of sexual aggression and predation upon literally no evidence

I’ve literally had strangers spread rumors about me “stalking children” based on the observation that I was in an aisle of a department store where some random children were shopping. Like just literally in the same public space, doing my own thing

I WORKED at this department store, it was my JOB to do things like stock shelves. I didn’t have a choice! But because I happened to pass by someone’s kids while *at work,* hours later I heard a complaint from management that someone said I was “following kids around”

This is also not a particularly weird or rare thing to happen!

I’ve had dudes hit on me and not back off when I expressed discomfort with it, and then I STILL later got made out to be sexually aggressive (while he did not)

Cw slight TMI

I’ve spent years facing and unpacking a bone-deep terror of ever expressing a sexual desire or feeling because I have it so engrained in me that it will be made out as creepy, aggressive, and villainous

Cw slight TMI

I’ve had panic attacks many times during/anticipating physical affection or intimacy *with my partner in private,* because there’s so much subterranean guilt and self-disgust and terror about having any sexuality at all

I’ve said this before, but I’ve had full-grown adults spreading rumors that i was a “sex pervert” and that I publicly exposed myself *since I was 7 years old.* For literally no reason.

I’m not trying to make this thread all about me, just share some really minor examples of how this happens on an everyday basis and how pervasive it is, not just online and not just against “passing” transfems

Many transfems also identify as aspec (including myself, and more to the point, including Kai Cheng!) and yet tend to be subliminally hyper sexualized in a way that suggests we CAN’T be aspec! This is the double whammy on the accusation of aphobia against her