Why Are We Silencing Each Other?
This new wave of anti-trans legislature in the US is largely aimed at young transmascs: we need to stop “confused girls” from mutilating their Perfect Girl Bodies, and we need to preserve the purity and sanctity of their womanhood.
“Protecting women” is and always had been a compelling call to action; we’re damsels in distress, in desperate need of our knights in shining armor. This is something that conservatives and liberals alike can get behind.
But the legislature outlawing puberty blockers, HRT, and gender-affirming surgery doesn’t just apply to “confused little girls”, or even just to AFAB trans people. It applies to all trans people.
In fact, it’s AMAB trans people who detransition at higher rates than AFAB trans people do (11% versus 4%). Most often, it’s due to danger, external pressures, and difficulty transitioning at all (60%). Making this more difficult doesn’t protect transmascs; if anything, it forces more transfems into dangerous hypervisibility.
But “protecting women” is a more compelling reason, isn’t it?
What if we’d been talking about the “poor little girls” for as long as we’d been talking about “dangerous predators in women’s restrooms”?
Conservatives gave up the bathroom fight years ago when trans activists stood against this lie. The shift to “saving confused little girls” is intentional and calculated: both arguments are about Protecting Women, but one of them starts with a historically invisible, and actively silenced demographic.
When people speak up about transmasc struggles, they are silenced quickly and effectively. We need to start asking why.
Who is served when “poor little girls” rhetoric is allowed to fester in the shadows, when trans activists turn a blind eye to it and the ways it hurts trans people now?
Who is served when transfems are told that transmascs oppress them, that we can’t be trusted, that we’re not their allies- but cis women are?
Who is served when transmascs are made to feel as if the mere act of speaking about our lived experiences is hurting other trans people? As if any mention of our struggles is an act of violence?
Today, a transfem was chased off Tumblr for talking about transmasc struggles, with accusations of “transmisogyny” and “TERF infiltration” chasing at her heels. Transfem struggles were weaponized against her; “Allies” dogpiling and harassing a transfem in the name of protecting transfems.
Transfems are tokenized, their struggles weaponized to silence other trans people: and in turn, to silence transfems as well. If you step out of line, you’re a traitor. Dare to point this out, and you’ll quickly be reminded that these people are your allies; they can’t possibly be transmisogynistic.
And as trans people are divided, isolated, turned against each other, and trained to silence other trans people, the problems we face go unchecked. They fester in the shadows, until our enemies- our real enemies- pick these up as weapons and wield them against us all.
