The thing about arguments over “can someone be an AFAB trans woman” is that it frames it as about trans women telling people what they ARE ALLOWED TO DO, when what’s actually being argued about is WHAT A TERM MEANS

So when you see responses in this fight like “we need to stop telling people how they can identify,” it’s a dishonest take on the issue because AFAB people who want to redefine “trans woman” are necessarily not identifying as the same thing we are

They cannot be and that is the entire point. They are instead arguing that the definition of a term that is really the only term we are known by should be stretched to no longer clearly refer to us

Framing this as gatekeeping is a horrendously transmisogynistic act of oppression displacement, especially since “gatekeeping” referring to gender identities is largely a concept that comes from discussion of trans women being denied medical care

No one is telling anyone what they’re “allowed” to identify as, we are making a legitimate political argument about the effects of definition. Every term trans women come up with to talk about ourselves gets stripped away or stigmatized.

Even “genderqueer” originated largely in trans female groups and used to have a meaning that included trans women and talked about the queerness of hetero trans women and relationships between transfems and the gender binary, yet this term has lost these meanings

I don’t care that AFAB demigirls don’t feel able to call themselves trans women. There are already a bunch of other language constructions they can use, and we actually don’t.

“Trans woman” is pretty much the only construct that nearly everyone agrees on, because trans femme, transfem, transfeminine, AMAB, and TMA all are surrounded by controversy of unclear meanings.

We absolutely do not need to annihilate any clear cultural identity trans women have in the name of some rigidly absolutist devotion to linguistic libertarianism.

To call this gatekeeping is not only absurdly ahistorical but represents a commitment to stripping gender terms from their cultural and oppression-based contexts. It’s the verbal analog to ripping all the natural flora from soil and replacing it with uniform grass.

“It’s always gatekeeping to tell someone they’re wrong to use a term” is blunt absolutism that helps no one. Guess cis TERFs who claim to be “AFAB transwomen” are all correct then?