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To add to my recent points about tma/tme terminology I saw some idiot man write "hating wh*r*s is not the same as hating women" in defense of a guy ruining the lives of sex workers. Notice the distinction made betw (slurs) & women, & think back to my definition of tma & "unwoman"
Considering that trans women are disproportionately pushed into the trade & that those in it are overwhelming colonized & imperialized women regardless of asab, & that these are the groups to whom the slur denoting "unwoman" is most often applied, understanding tma/tme to be firm
statuses based on one's identities, i.e. you are "affected" only if you're a trans woman or "femme enby (afab is what's usually meant)" and "exempt" otherwise, is not only obscurant but inaccurate bc it fails to address how transmisogyny is at its core racist & colonial
While I've never done any form of "sex work" I don't take for granted that I may some day be forced into it to some extent. Hopefully not, but if it happens, I'll double down on what I'd said about being unable to think of many (if any) ways that I am "affected" by transmisogyny
as a white trans woman that a colonized woman regardless of asab is "exempt" from, if anything, I face less horrific transmisogyny going by my definition of "unwoman," seeing as I have more paths to "exemption" via the productive workforce (albeit not as many as cis white women)
Getting back to this point from yesterday's thread, how can a colonized cis woman "affect" me to "exempt" herself? Say some stupid bioessentialist shit? While it definitely does affect me, I really don't see how I'm going to bear the brunt of it. https://twitter.com/daniellesb_/status/1260636598854541313
In other words whiteness is the primary "exemption" to the horrors of capitalism & everything existing in its superstructure, patriarchy & more specifically transmisogyny included, an "exemption" seized through settlerism, opportunistically participating in the "affect" on others
I'm not namedropping bc those involved have already been confronted & know of their errors & hopefully are learning quietly, but I think that as white trans women we really need to remember who we're talking to when our colonized cis women friends mess up.
And this isn't to say that we have to put up with anyone who intensifies the affect of transmisogyny on us. What I'm saying is I think we must recognize the difference betw someone who affects us but also themselves more greatly, & those who affect us far greatly than themselves
i.e. we must consider the racialization of the person making transmisogynistic errors, and not treat all transmisogyny the way we would if it came from a white cis woman. I think men/women can be visualized through class, but it doesn't seem to me that cis/trans can be.
And for us as white trans women to attempt to visualize cis/trans through class I think becomes a form of white nationalism that tokenizes colonized trans women to deflect from this fact. Again: https://twitter.com/daniellesb_/status/1260219252776157189
As for the affected comrade, I feel as though this is possibly an explanation as to why she was disposed of in such an unfair and anti-Black manner. It's understandable to be angry at any instance of being exposed to transmisogyny, but homogenizing "cis" is fucking dangerous.
Cis/trans is a relationship betw your gender & bioessentialist assumptions made at birth that follows you throughout your life. I've yet to see any use of tma/tme that breaks completely free from visualizing cis/trans via class, nor from defining tma/tme by asab to some degree
Again, I address this question to my fellow white trans women: https://twitter.com/daniellesb_/status/1260219257972879360
*note: I go back-and-forth on whether men/women can be visualized through class. During that whole matfem debacle on here a couple of years ago, I agreed w/ most of what was being said, but I heard the concerns of colonized men about homogenizing "men"
And perhaps that can become a form of white nationalism itself in the way that mainstream feminism has been, all while tokenizing "women of color." I struggle with this, and if I can't answer what makes "women as a class" different from tma/tme, perhaps I ought not think this way
As far as colonized women using tma/tme and "women as a class," I don't see the harm. The main thing here is spotting trends in how we (white women) describe truths about our experiences yet frame it in ways that are ultimately re-packaged white nationalism, misplacing our anger.
Regarding my point about tma/tme terminology failing to break free from visualizing trans and cis as classes and overstating the significance of asab in the process, even TERFs have taken notice. https://twitter.com/babyyodadriver/status/1257834713533865985
This diagram's stated/intended purpose is to clarify what transmisogyny is by distinguishing who is "affected" from who is "exempt," leaving behind the "ambiguity" of asab. Does it achieve this? https://twitter.com/a_messiessie/status/1125095487659335682
If having been amab is supposedly definitional to whether one can be "affected" by transmisogyny, yet on its own asab isn't enough to determine whether one is actually "affected" in the first place, just how clarifying is this distinction between "affected" and "exempt?"
If having been amab isn't enough to determine "affected" or "exempt," nor is being a woman enough either, seeing as trans women and "amab non-binary" are "affected" while "afab" ("cis women" & "tme non-binary") is "exempt," we're left with a combo of trans women are amabs + twaw
At this point what's being said other than "trans women were assigned male at birth?" It defines "affected" and "exempt" in such ways that having been amab and being a woman are both inconsequential, while distinguishing us from cis women and people who'd been afab.
How am I supposed to read this in any other way than the empty gesture of "trans women are women" from people who clearly do not see us as such? I think any trans woman who theorizes similarly is suffering from the imposter syndrome brought upon us by bioessentialist gaslighting.
Truthfully, I'm not even all that invested in being seen as a woman by other people. I want people to be self-aware of their participation in the structures I am harmed by and make changes (or die if they refuse to). You "affect" whether some shitty diagram says so or not.
Focusing on who is "affected" or "exempt" and applying a self-contradicting definition involving asab only encourages one to live in denial of their participation, trans women included.
Am I wrong in thinking that this diagram, merely one of many examples of the supposed tma vs. tme distinction, falls into the exact trap that I criticized here? "Privilege" discourse is particularly hostile to trans women. Why haven't we abandoned it? https://twitter.com/daniellesb_/status/1260219251513651202
For more analysis of tma/tme and how it visualizes trans and cis via class (uses asab to "class" people; "sex class" as the terf from earlier calls it) and ignores such factors as racialization (universalizing whiteness), I highly recommend you read this: https://twitter.com/yabalchoath/status/1142524509607649282
From an essay that @tom4tmr linked me to:
I excerpted what I found most applicable to this thread but here's the full link if you're interested: https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article/4/2/226/84749/Is-Transmisogyny-Killing-Trans-Women-of-Color
I excerpted what I found most applicable to this thread but here's the full link if you're interested: https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article/4/2/226/84749/Is-Transmisogyny-Killing-Trans-Women-of-Color
