It's international women's day or, as we call it in my neck of the woods, feminist struggle day. So in light of a recent discussion that was apparently very unpleasant for everybody involved, i will take the effort and vindicate something that a lot of you apparently have yet to understand correctly: TMA / TME discourse. In the following, i will adress the most common questions about, misconceptions of and attacks on these ideas.
What does TMA / TME mean?
It's a set of two terms that allow an intersectional analysis of the particularly precarious place trans women and transfeminine nonbinary people have in patriarchal gender relations.
TMA stands for transmisogny affected. It describes anybody who is marginalized on the grounds of being both trans and a woman or a femme-aligned nonbinary person. This is a particularly potent intersection of different forms of oppression because a lot of transphobic discourse has focussed on demonizing, ridiculing, stereotyping and otherwise targeting trans women. Furthermore, transphobia has strong roots in misogyny and trans women are particularly threatening to the patriarchal order, as the very existence of people who abandon their male privilege to live as women full time threatens the assumptions of make supremacy underlying that system. Therefore it is hardly surprising that transmisogyny is generally the most violent and virulent form of transphobia. If you do not believe me, go ahead and check the data for the trans murder monitoring and see how many transfems are killed compared to other trans identities. Check how many Hollywood movies have drummed it into people's heads that vomitting is the correct reaction to our presence. Take a look at who gets targeted by sports bans. Take a look who gets cited as a security concern for cis women when trans people are barred from public life.
By contrast, TME stands for transmisogyny exempt and refers to literally anybody who doesn't have to put up with being stripped off their rights like this.
Isn't this just recreating the gender binary?
No. This is a common accusation, but very obviously untrue. TME isn't synonymous with "trans men and transmasculine nonbinary people" and it is not supposed to be used that way unless we are focussing exclusively on dynamics within trans communities that roughly 99% of TME people just can't be part of.
You see, the label in itself mostly includes people who are not affected by any form of transphobia, namely cis women and cis men. It's hardly a recreation of the gender binary when it includes all binary genders besides trans women.
So you're saying trans men aren't opressed?
No, far from it. Trans men and other TME trans people still suffer from transphobia, and that is a pretty serious form of discrimination. Any of them who has an at least theoretically working uterus also faces additional strain about their reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, especially if their plan is to just get rid of that thing. On top of all that, transmasc nonbinary people are also affected by exorsexism (the mistaken belief that there are only two genders) and when TME people share another axis of intersectional opression like racialization, disability, class etc. that can obviously affect them severely as well (and if you do look at trans men that become victims of hate crimes, intersection especially with racialization is extremely common, as we also see among murdered trans women who are BIPOC in about 70% of all cases). Not being affected by transmisogyny doesn't change any of that. Intersectionality matters. That's the entire point of this discourse, that you cannot look at one axis of opression in a vacuum.
Being exempt from transmisogyny does, however, mean that TME people are spared from a very powerful intersection of different oppressive mechanisms, as none of their vulnerabilities are potentiated by transmisogyny. And it means that within trans communities, trans men generally have a privileged status over trans women. Patriarchal methods of silencing and controlling women have been internalized by anybody living in our culture and they can and do show up in trans spaces, both on- and offline. Even outside of these communities, trans men enjoy - albeit conditional - male privilege in any situation where they pass, just as i, for example, enjoy conditional privileges of white womanhood as long as i am perceived as a cis woman. Yes, that privilege is always precarious, as our genders are always under attack in this world, but it is nevertheless there.
In fact, a lot of the problems that are described by the TMA / TME discourse directly mirror the struggles of black women, who are also routinely opressed by men both without and within their own communities, men that are themselves extremely and brutally marginalized outside of black communities. Terms like misogynoir have been coined for a reason, and it is telling that anti-TMA discourse so frequently denies that misogynoir is even a thing.
*But my transmasc friend gets called the t slur every time he wears a dress!
Yes, gendernonconforming men are discriminated against in our society. They may even be mistaken for trans women at times. The difference between a GNC trans man and me is that the GNC trans man can post about getting told that he will never be a woman on r/accidentalallies or any of the other spaces for the entire genre of "lol that dumb biggot was transmisogynist to me even though i am not even a woman" whereas i get another microtrauma from that kind of interaction.
Isn't this just opression olympics?
I am not trying to opressionmaxx, i am pointing out mechanisms that affect me even in supposed safer spaces. Of which i do not have many. When there are mechanics at play that allow trans men to whip up a targeted harassment campaign when they deem that me standing up for my friends is "hysterical" or "unhinged" or is making them uncomfortable in other ways, regardless of the fact that the exact same behavior from me was viewed as "determined" and "fiercely loyal" and even "diplomatic and fair", i have a problem. I have lost access to orgs and spaces because of this shit. I have trauma from these encounters. And i am not alone in this.
You are splitting queer communities!"
No, i am trying to make the tiny number of spaces i can inhabit in the first place not hostile for me. That's hard to do when you constantly have to watch out that you do not hurt a man's fragile ego by speaking up.
How would you prefer to describe the intersection of misogyny and transphobia? Not asking rhetorically, I'm genuinely curious for your perspective. I don't think analysing that intersection diminishes trans masculine struggles, but obviously there are other perspectives on how to approach this.
discussion of specific violences
I think its best described with the term transmisogyny. People in positions of power are aware of what they're doing when the transmisogyny is misdirected, affecting all sorts of groups. Cis women are being made to pay for gene testing to compete in sports (framed as being about stopping trans women), trans men are having reproductive rights attacked by having systems tell them that their role is childbirth cause thats what women are for (coming from a similar place of trans women being denied recognition for not being able to give birth). And then in all of this intersex people are erased aggressively. Cis men are forced to adhere to a shrinking definition of a truly cis man, leading to all sorts of choices that hurt them. Within a space its important for people to be comfortable talking about less common experiences with this kind of oppression, which is why its good to be shining a light on the harassment that AcidSmiley. Also, its an example of how thinking masculinity protects you from misogyny leads people (the harassers mentioned) to doing these kinds of things from a position of perceived but tenuous privilege, because it will be taken away by other groups when convienient.I guess to summarize I think understanding how these axii of oppression can potentially affect anyone when society needs an angle of attack, and more angles is more effective, is the better way to avoid splitting queer communities and prevent transmisogyny from those who think they're safe from it. Also, an attempt to rigidly define TME will lead to GNC trans women being told their not really affected by transmisogyny which is absurd.
And yeah I got good faith vibes from this discussion, im engaging with it like that, even if I feel strongly about the harm of the rhetoric used. Analyzing that intersection is a good thing.
Your approach leads to individualist reductionism. It refuses to engage with the systemic factors at play and instead vaguely gestures at a hollowed-out, meaningless definition of "transmisogyny for everybody" that obfuscates the root causes of transmisogynist opression and eradicates those most affected by it from the discourse by equating us with a cis guy who has decided to wear a skirt today. Sorry for being so direct, but i have no patience to mince words about my erasure.
Firstly, yes, cis women, GNC men and transmasc nonbinary people can also be targeted by "misdirected" transmisogyny (a problematic term in my opinion, as it implies that transmisogyny hitting me is aimed at the correct target). However, attacking a cis woman or other TME person by insinuating they are transfeminine only works because trans women exist as a hypermarginalized group that is ok to bully, harass and attack in any way people please. Claiming that a person is secretly a trans woman is marking her as a target for transmisogynists. It would not work if trans women in themselves were not subject to a particularly vile and unique form of discrimination.
Secondly, TME people as a group are frequently better protected than TMA people. This frequently gives them better legal recourse in a structurally transphobic justice system, it will make a lot of people wave away the attacks against them as ridiculous, it also usually means they have a more robust support network and a better material position. No, not every TME person has better ressources than any trans woman, but the disproportionate economic marginalization of trans women is a sad statistical fact, the gender pay gap affects us even more than cis women, we are much more likely to be homeless, are more likely to be isolated from our families, to have lost friends and so on and so forth.
The latter point is were your "we have to judge this on a purely indicidual basis" approach betrays its liberalism: You refuse to recognize transfeminized people as a class. In your approach, nothing means anything and the only thing you gain from it is not making trans men and transmasc nonbinary people uncomfortable when they lack the ability to reckon their relative privilege. I have written several paragraphs about the relativity of that privilege and it is somehow still not enough for you.
Edit: Also yes, telling GNC trans women they are TME would indeed be absurd, which is why literally nobody is doing that.
Your points are not what I was trying to say, but im not sure a better way of wording my stance, idk if it helps for me to repeat. We are pretty in alignment but defining people as being exempt or not cant be a helpful way of approaching these systemic factors that will shift the goalposts to maintain these hypermarginized groups. Maybe less so in as an analysis and instead as a form of rhetoric, which does matter in spaces like this where impressions are unfortunately important (theres no opportunity to know people personally due to the anonymous nature). Im emphasizing how people are not safe from these shifting axii of oppression because it would make trans men trying to take advantage of the patriarchy uncomfortable or maybe a better word is selfaware.