i dream of being possible

question

(going to answer this here, since i hate fanmail)

Someone asked:

i followed this from the first post and this makes sense. but can you explain a little more how do you think it is to center transmisogyny as a default for only cis people? i guess what i get caught up in is that i thought transmisogyny is something that a wider group of people than cis support and erases how transmasculine people like myself have a transmisogynistic default too, so i don’t know a word that sound more natural to cis only – like cissexism?

This is a fairly good and important point. But I will say one thing: saying that the default for cis people is transmisogyny =/= only cis people have this default.

Indeed…

the point you are raising only serves to underscore my own: that it is transmisogyny, not transphobia (or even cissexism) that is foundational and the broader concept, which is the umbrella approach to trans politics has so utterly failed to do much to help the people who need it most.

in terms of the latter point… I don’t think there needs to be term that is specific to cis people only, as far as defaults and transmisogyny goes, since it is the same.

(although, do sort of see the problem you are highlighting… i guess my straightforward answer is that because cis people make transmisogyny the default, this is what we all inherit from them. because there isn’t anything inherently transmisogynist about trans masculine people but there is something inherently transmisogynist about ‘being cis’ – by which I mean that the construction of ‘cis’ requires an ‘other’ in order to make sense and that this ‘other’, rather than being being ‘trans’ as normally conceived is actually ‘trans feminine’. in many ways, this basically erases trans masculine people from the equation: much as they’ve been erased from history. I think it is this erasure that forces trans masculine people into the rather awful position of having to co-sign transmisogyny while still being oppressed by cis people. they enter a liminal space, where their proximal relation to cisness is what privileges them over trans feminine people while still experiencing the burden of transphobia and cissexism.)