The way transmisogyny gets characterized in trans circles as a thing that sucks up attention, a shallow manipulation tool of trans women, is amazing because it’s crystal clear how much history of transmisogyny is eroded every year. It needs to be talked about more, not less.

There’s stuff I lived through and saw directly that is talked about today as if it didn’t happen. Lots of people claim that in the 2000-2005 era, various groups were allies or victims of trans women when if anything they were mostly joining right in with vilifying trans women

Most people I come across have absolutely no idea how common and accepted it was back in the day for trans men to agree with TERF points as a matter of course, for it to be thought “duh, obviously trans women are privileged over trans men”

Cis gays who are now claiming various trans female public figures for their own were back then spitting on people just like them, often in the open and everywhere they went.

It wasn’t unusual for me growing up for cis gay men to say crossdresser should die

I don’t think even today most people, including most trans people, really grasp how viscerally and intensely TERFs despise trans women in particular. One of my first exposures to TERFs was a group of cis women who compared me to a rapist because I wrote a long forum post.

I used to be part of a popular online community (this was before social media, really) where transmisogyny was so normalized that the mere existence of trans women in that community was a controversy that spawned harassment campaigns across years + multiple websites

Some of the first trans women I knew had lost their kids, homes, families, etc, because of being attributed with pedophilia or sexual threat, and then got driven out of every other community they were a part of

I remember being on this student trans panel and one older trans woman talked about how she was fired from every job she’d and would have homeless if her cis ex-wife hadn’t taken her in. I remember the room rolling their eyes at her and acting like she was derailing

Imagine my shock as my baby trans ass started learning that it was actually somewhat normal for trans women talking about housing and security to be booed out of trans support groups and queer communities for “making everything about them,” especially at the time

Anyone who is mostly basing their observations of trans demographics or transphobia dynamics off Twitter or today’s social media is not getting anything like the full picture. Not even close. There’s a lot of shit not even covered in any books

I shouldn’t have been surprised when I found out trans women as a group are subaltern in romance publishing (really all publishing), but by then I’d soaked up so much of the ongoing “trans women DOMINATE SPACES” rhetoric that I had trouble believing my own memories + perceptions

I’ve never ever been in a community or scene or group etc where trans women and transfeminine people weren’t a controversial minority. Never ever. No, not even trans groups.

Man, it feels both like forever ago and only yesterday that I was seeing my first gender therapist who told me I was lucky I wasn’t more mannish or else I should forget about transitioning. And this was normal and something I took in stride

One of the first articles I ever read about TERFs was by a trans man radical feminist, arguing “obviously being an MTF is nothing compared to the hardship of being an FTM or a woman, but that doesn’t mean MTFs are the enemy, fellow radfems”

Like don’t strain yourself my dude

This felt very normal and not at all beyond the pale or “discoursey” at the time, btw

I don’t think most people realize that even the worst TERFs of today are using walked back rhetoric. “I don’t have a problem with real transsexuals, just men pretending to be transsexual” is so mild in contrast to how it used to be

There’s so much fatigue with transmisogyny theory, as if it’s an old drum people won’t stop beating, but I don’t think many people today understand quite how game-changing, socially risky, and necessary that theory is and was

Or, for that matter, how RECENT