Hiya tumblr! Let’s have a talk about bioessentialist enbyphobia, transmisogyny, and how to make sure transfeminine people, enby or not, feel completely unsafe and unwelcome at your events. First take a look at this group description, and then lets get into it.
First some context. Those of you who know me know about the kinds of clubs I go to. This screenshot was taken from a local event page, and I’ve blocked out their name because in the months since this event was hosted the group has updated their description to be more inclusive.
Seeing that description, I avoided going to events hosted by that group.
“But Kat, why? You’re a woman and it says women are allowed!”
It also implicitly lumps all nonbinary people who were assigned male at birth with men and calls them males.
So why is this a problem for me? Well, if this group sees all AMAB nonbinary people as “male” then it says a lot of things about the ways the see trans women.
Many, and I would venture to assume most, trans women know well the feeling of our womanhood treated as conditional, subject to immediate revocation without warning.
Spaces that are “Women and AFAB exclusive” are often rife with this, and often lead to a lot of really gross and abusive power dynamics where transfems get treated as second class to anyone who was assigned female at birth.
(Side note: Gretchen Felker-Martin did, I believe, a masterful job of portraying this sort of dynamic in her book Manhunt)
If you are a trans woman in one of these spaces, you quickly learn that you are on the thinnest of ice.
Laugh a little too loud? You’re male.
Sit or stand a little too close? You’re threatening.
Smile at the wrong person? You’re making other people uncomfortable.
Transfems, in these spaces, quickly learn that standing up for ourselves in the face of flagrant abuse is verboten, and will be met with swift and decisive punishment and exile.
I personally don’t like the word “theyfab” and don’t use it. I’m writing this thread to hopefully help people better understand the social dynamics that were being addressed when that term was coined.
It was coined because transfems are forced to navigate a community of things like “afab only” apartment rentals.
It was coined because transfems constantly have to listen to other trans people implicitly describe us as disgusting, hideous freaks.
In short and in closing: consider that the reason why the term “theyfab” exists and “theymab” really doesn’t probably lies somewhere in the fact that the sort of person who would call someone a “theymab” doesn’t need to, because they *already* just call AMAB trans people “male”.
