Trans women are assigned gender out of convenience for those who wish to control or abuse us.
One moment, we’re a woman who can be spoken over, overlooked, and ignored. The next, (often when we have the gall to stand up for ourselves) we’re men who are violent angry and abusive.
We have so little control of our own identities, we’re a third sex to twist and transform to your convenience. No wonder we’re so often scapegoated.
100% agreed, but I also want to bring up a similar concern specific to Black transfemmes: the intersection of gendered *racialization* and transmisogyny (as a subset of transmisogynoir)
By gendered racialization I mean the way that society views and treats us based on their categorization of us as Black Men and Black Women. While with what OP is describing it tends to be an either/or situation, for Black transfemmes, being openly/visibly Black and transfemme makes us subject to both concurrently. We do not get to leave being a “Black Man” behind even temporarily in the eyes of others, especially given society’s view of all Black women as being “masculine” no matter how “femininely” we present or behave.
For us, gendered racialization compounds each other, leaving us to be treated as both Strong and Aggressive Black Women and Virile and Violent Black Men at all times. We are often “positively” reduced to the ways we can support those around us or our sexual prowess/characteristics (real or rumored), while the second a nonblack person has something to gain from our suffering there’s no issue painting all of our actions as intimidating, aggressive, or forward. Of claiming a fear of violence, of harm, of impropriety that will be believed by many nonblacks no matter how we truly act or what we do.
Recently, another Black transfemme I know was accused of being a “homeless attempted coercive rapist” for commenting that she was going to take a nap in her car (before going back to her apartment) because she didn’t feel sober enough to drive responsibly. Later on, a white trans woman who was leaving at the same time used this to try to claim that she was trying to force her to let her come home with, and sleep with her because “she was homeless and sleeping in her car” despite the Black transfemme having an apartment at the time and the white trans woman knowing this.
The white woman’s reasoning? Another white trans woman had a crush on the Black trans woman, and the first white wanted to fuck the second, so she was willing to try and use these facets of gendered racialization to try to eliminate the Black trans woman from the “competition” on a whim.
This isn’t a rare occurrence, and for many Black transfemmes not in majority-Black spaces, this happening is a “when” not an “if” and a constant consideration we have to account for. If there’s not another Black transfemme around (such in small queer communities or isolated friend groups) we may be taken completely unawares by something that’s just.. sickeningly common.
Which is why I feel it’s important to highlight this on the back of OP’s post - because even nonblack transfemmes have no issue using this against us if it benefits them. Even the staunchest transfeminists aren’t immune to the allure of using transmisogynoir to their own benefit. But you have to know to be a hypocrite, and now y’all can’t say you ain’t know.