This is a really bad take. It's not okay. Cis women co-opting a trans experience - like being a woman with a dick - doesn't validate the wholeness of my womanhood. It's a disavowal of the fact that we face violence for being women with dicks. https://twitter.com/caraesten/status/1317982880765681664

This also completely ignores the grotesqueness with which we're received and the spectacle being made of our bodies for and by cis people, which is inherently transmisogynist.

The *point* of the cosplay is that she's being transgressive for cis eyes, and for cis entertainment.

But my body is transgressive in a permanent way, and in a way that is radical and defiant and Queer. not for entertainment. not for cis people to consume nor to put on.

And honestly trans women justifying or excusing this oughta be ashamed. I expect this from the cis. Not from Queer family.

I mean, come on y'all. This is EGREGIOUS. https://twitter.com/YugoroForge/status/1316368027315843073?s=09

Extremely good thread with elaboration. https://twitter.com/CeresClouds/status/1317790221182902274?s=19

Imagine if I cosplayed with my dick showing? Or even tucked but with a codpiece or packer? I'd be immediately received as some sort of pervert or sexual predator in any and all contexts.

I'd be vilified for expressing sexuality or sexualizing my own body in any way as a trans woman. Especially at a convention where video game cosplays were welcome. Have y'all never met gamers???

I've had my dick death glared at in public by men who probably want to fuck me as much as they want to kill me. This woman takes the costume off and resumes a life where this doesn't happen to her, because cis women are (obviously) exempt from transmisogyny.

Like, the trans panic defense is an acceptable legal defense in, what, 39 states? I can be murdered for my body in a way the legal system sees as justified, but cis people get to flippantly imitate us? Absolutely not.

Don't get me wrong. I love being a trans woman. I love having a dick. I wouldn't trade it for anything. But this is my experience. An experience that brings me both great Queer joy and makes me the target of violence. An experience that cannot be reduced to a costume.

This is along the same lines as "trap isn't a slur because traps aren't trans women" or "futanari isn't fetishizing of trans women because futas aren't trans women"

Give me a break. Trans women exist with dicks in the real world. https://twitter.com/caraesten/status/1318020693108224000

Also, exoticized womanhood *is* fetishization. When the ""exotic"" aspect of the woman is her dick, this is *inherently* fetishizing trans women.

Not to mention the orientalism implicit in the concept