Thread by @Nymphomachy

Okay. My joints feel looser and I smell like some eccentric perfumer's vision of a star-freckled midnight sky and I'm on my fourth or fifth cup of coffee so I'm going to see if I can put words to this.

Mind you, the words won't make anything BETTER; the subject is a third rail

So.

I talked this week about resentment towards trans women from other groups of MOGAI people. But, in the context of the drama at hand, that obviously wasn't the whole story, because trans women have been some of the most vocal people attacking the "big" trans women

And... that's not at all unusual. This observation is far from incisive, but: the people who attack trans women most fervently _within a discourse_ tend to be other trans women

Anybody who's followed me for very long may have noticed that I've gotten in some really huge fights

And believe me, I'm far from innocent. I've started a few of them. I have a temper. Always have.

Plenty of trans women I fucking _hate_. I've had bad interactions with Kristen Beck and I think she's a fascist. I made fun of something shitty Brianna Wu said and she blocked me

A couple months ago in a heated moment I told Faith Naff to "eat shit", and though I hold no grudge, and we've liked each other's tweets since, I don't really feel like I was wrong at that time?

It was a discussion about Contra, who I do, in fact, genuinely dislike

And most famously—and this will probably cost me followers, it has before, but oh well—I have a personal grudge against Ｃｈｅｌｓｅａ Ｍａｎｎｉｎｇ.

(Yes, I think she should be freed, but I also hold her responsible for trauma I've personally suffered, don't engage me on this)

Oh, and also I hate Blaire White and Caitlyn Jenner, but I mean, that's hardly unique.

So I'm part of the venom too. Much like the person who popped in on my feed a few months ago to tell me that I that I was a threat to MOGAI ppl abroad and should have killed myself years ago

Which, uh, wasn't the first time trans femmes have told me that I should have killed myself. It's happened a few times before.

I've also had someone turn on me for _writing a fucking Star Wars fanfic_. Told me it was "cis-gazey" and that I write like a "white cis woman".

Okay.

I'm not here to apologize for how I've felt—where I feel I was wrong, I've copped to it—and there's no point in excoriating the people I've already gotten rid of, either.

I'm just bringing it up to illustrate that being a trans woman is often just a fucking neverending combat

Which, in and of itself, is not a keen observation for anyone who's been paying attention. Nor is it something I am necessarily very interested in openly decrying, because, y'know, 'physician, heal thyself', etc.

I feel like I've taken worse than I've dished out, but who cares?

I mean, as I've mentioned in the past, it's hard to talk about this because everybody else thinks so poorly of us that it never feels great to be critical.

And the idea that the wrong kind of person may take your words out of context and use them to harm trans women is SCARY.

(You hear people say a lot that many avenues of analysis and criticism of trans women are basically burnt, because 𝒯ER𝐹s and other reactionaries have disingenuously politicized certain issues to such an extent that seriously discussing them in open forums is just impossible.)

But to more comprehensively encapsulate the context of what went on and to some extent is still going on this week with a fairly prominent trans woman, I feel like some examination of the precipitating factors is justified.

(Sorry, my syllable count skyrocketed in this tweet)

In an earlier thread, I stated that a meme about trans girls was turned into a synecdoche for whiteness, thereby framing invocation of the meme as problematic in a thousand different ways.

Ppl retorted that TWoC were making many of these criticisms... Yeah. Never said otherwise.

But an overwhelmingly white mob of trans women does not swarm another trans woman with harassment and accuse them of being a "sex pest" on on behalf of TWoCs making a criticism. That's... not how anything works.

Some women ARE good allies, sure. But you think MOST of them were?

Be real, if white trans women were as ready to go to bat on behalf of TWoC as they are to attack other trans women en masse for supposedly being shitty to TWoC... TWoC wouldn't have such a massive amount of grievances against white trans women in the first place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And honestly, that rationalization—"TWoC have a problem with her" is in and of itself racist, because ppl are staking the systematic harassment of trans women, often to the point of suicidal ideation, on TWoC, and, uh, p sure TWoC are super uninterested in that being their brand

And that's before you get into the at least somewhat credible allegation that fraction of the most recent swarm are ch@nners.

Super cool, huh, staking the violence of literal fascists on the idea that a TWoC somewhere groused lightly about a white girl being a white girl

So, of strictly the trans women who were in the mob: putting aside the hypothetical ¢hanners, and the equally hypothetical white TWoC allies simply misled into thinking harassment was a form of praxis, what are we left with?

We're unsurprisingly left with crabs in a bucket.

And I want to talk about crabs in a bucket.

But, I'll be brutally honest, this is a challenging tightrope for me to walk because of who I am, particularly.

It requires me acknowledging characteristics that are hard to discuss without sounding boastful and self-absorbed.

But, well, I'll lay it out there.

My Twitter profile picture is, obviously, me. I like for people to see that I'm a real human being and have some understanding of where I'm coming from when I speak.

I pass 100% in public, and my voice, while not mellifluous, is no obstacle.

I look younger than I am.

I got over five hundred likes on a selfie once, and it wasn't a funny selfie, so that means whatever the hell it means. Make your own judgment there, I'm still weirded out by it.

So. Yeah. By the standards of trans women, I'm a one percenter, I guess?

That puts me in a weird position, and never one I feel very comfortable talking about. Even now I keep finding myself holding my breath.

Because I have to type the words "many trans women have been extremely shitty to me because they were jealous of me", and I hate myself for it

I am cringing over the extent to which that comes off to me as a humblebrag. I hate it, I hate it. I feel like I am going to regret tweeting that for the rest of my life.

But that has been my frequent reality for the past five years and it causes me IMMENSE discomfort

And jfc, please do not construe that as me trying to wring pity out of anyone, because in my head some nasty inner voice is just waiting in the wings to scream out "oh, sure, bitch, like you have it SO BAD", and I am not about that shit.

I'm just putting words to my experience.

I've had repeated instances of interactions with other trans women/femmes going pear-shaped EXTREMELY quickly because, bluntly, they resented me to the point that I was not even able to have a conversation with them without them being dismissive of my hardships.

Like I'm rich.

And this resentment from dyadic trans women is particularly galling because the ease I have passing—which in their eyes evidently means I never have any real problems ever—is largely a consequence of an intersex condition I have no control over.

Having to deal with that condition for my entire life was a unique hell I frankly do not think dyadic ppl are equipped to understand, and put me in a position that left me much less adequately prepared to interact w/ others than many dyadic trans women I have been acquainted with

But all trans women see is me as I am NOW, so I've dealt with a refusal to take my trauma seriously. Because it's "over".

ppl envy you for looking like a stereotypical cis girl but they never consider how much looking like one _when you're supposed to be a male_ kind of sucks?

So, basically, I get a lot of crap.

I get told to stop whining about my problems because I have it "great".

Trans women often feel jealous and inferior around me, and some rationalize that my privilege—both in scare quotes, and out—gives them cause to be openly abusive to me.

The rationalization becomes that they are lower and more unloved and more powerless than me (at least somewhat debatable whatever), therefore they can, ethically, be as much of a motherfucker to me as they would like to be.

Crabs in a bucket. Down she goes.

So, from my perspective?

I do not like Wynn. My Twitter is a long bibliography of saying ten critical things about her for every one thing I say she got right.

I still find it suspicious af that she only caused such a massive frenzy _after_ she got facial feminization surgery.

ZJ, who is prominent enough to have been targeted by Fucker Carlson, is not in especially different a boat. She's a femme trans woman with a large following who afaik had a decent side hustle making porn.

AKA: "another self-centered bitch who needs to be taken down a notch."

(side note: "trans women are self-centered" is the TＥRFiest of TERＦmemes, but some trans people sure seem to fucking love throwing it around anyway.)

It's dogpiling on a woman for how she looks and how she presents and claiming it's about somehing else, which is, y'know, exactly the shit that GolfGolfers and CharlieGolfers do, but when it's a TRANS woman it's extremely socially conscious praxis I guess???

Certainly it's not entirely that simple. Neither of these women are perfect, but under the circumstances, queer people on the left certainly hadn't been giving either of them a lot of reason to TRY to be.

It really is a no-win proposition because the grudges are fucking endless

But there's another side to it, and really it's just the kind of garden-variety misogyny that many cis women would relate with, but is going to get me shit. So it goes.

Let's circle back around to the "sex pest" thing, and specifically idea that polyamory is predatory.

Or, if not predatory, that it's "privilege".

People said that to ZJ, and we NEED to unpack it. Because WOWZA there is so much happening there.

To talk about being in a polycule is evidently a form of "bragging" about "one's privilege". Holy hell.

We see the bitterness there?

Like, a lot of this got tied up in garden-variety t𝒶nkie sex negativity bullshit about shaming trans women for ever daring to be "horny on main", which I've discussed elsewhere, but in a lot of other ways it's a burying of the lede.

There is something really gross happening

I literally SAW trans women say that they felt it was inconsiderate and triggering to see another trans women talk about having had multiple relationships because, basically, THEY weren't able to get any girlfriends.

I don't... What is that, even? Slut-shaming? I don't know

DING DING DING DING DING

https://twitter.com/HenryWHall/status/1174904653693124608

Or, to put it more elegantly:

https://twitter.com/SadistHailey/status/1174311974076727300

So, talking about the politics of desire vis-à-vis trans women is unbelievably fraught, because TERＦ scaremongering about the "c𝑜tt𝑜n cei𝓁𝒾ng", aka trans women trying to "shame cis lesbians into sleeping with them" is one of those narratives that "burnt" certain discussions

So, more tightrope walking, but whatever. Bluh bluh hero Gotham needs bluh bluh.

To put it as compassionately as possible: the perception that the vast majority of cis people view trans women as affectionally undesirable has resulted in a vast collective psychic trauma

And for all the pearl-clutching about discussions of desirability "being coercive" of cis lesbians, the people who may—in only certain cases— _actually_ feel pressure in the company of trans women as a consequence of this shared trauma are... trans women.

Only a LITTLE! But...

...it is not unusual for trans women to feel caught in a Catch-22 if another trans woman expresses interest in them.

The logic goes: you know how awful it feels to be rejected for something out of your control, so SURELY you won't reject ME for something out of MY control.

And this pressure becomes compounded based on factors like stage of transition, passability, conventional attractiveness, etc

Basically, the more you look like an archetypal conventionally attractive cis girl, the more certain trans women begin to see you as their best prospect

It's never stated outright, and it's not always there. It's a faint implication when it is.

"If you're a sapphic trans woman and you don't want to be with other trans women for any reason, you're worse than the you-know-whats"

There's a sense of being, well, self-hating.

So let me take this back to my own experiences.

A lot of the trans women who told me how good I have it?

They also tried to hit on me at some point.

Resentment and sexual entitlement are, unfortunately, often two sides of the same coin.

Last year, I did a thread detailing a time I helped somebody through their trans awakening and they thought they could just declare me to be their life partner

https://twitter.com/Nymphomachy/status/1058894803163865090

I mean, I'll be honest. Just in my case? Some of the unspoken implications, some of the entitlement, has left me traumatized

I'm constantly second-guessing all of my friendships and I need frequent reassurances sometimes that people aren't hitting on me because I DON'T EVER KNOW

Yeah.

Unfortunately, as in many other communities, it can genuinely feel impossible to call out entitlement without playing into narratives used to oppress us

So we may feel perpetually stuck with all our missing stairs

https://twitter.com/della_morte_/status/1174916614120038401

But to tie a bow on the thread, this affectional entitlement contributes to the antipathy directed against passing trans women

Anger at passing TWs for giving other ppl their attention and not them, bitterness because they can "get laid" and have the audacity to TALK about it

It's... not great. It's not.

I deal with people making a lot of presumptions about me that aren't consistent with my reality, and I don't feel like I can connect with people because there's just so much weirdness.

So the chaos directed at ZJ and Wynn is uncomfortable for me

It is gross and physical and entitled and tainted with outsider transphobia and the axes a million other groups have to grind and we're being frightened away from talking about elephants in the room and SO VERY, VERY PRECIOUS FUCKING LITTLE OF IT IS UNMITIGATEDLY VALID

It's just loads and loads of disingenuousness all around, presented in ways it is often not responsible to put words to. It's lots of repulsive behavior we mustn't describe.

Hell, I don't even know if it was responsible of me to write this fucking thread.

Oh fucking well.

Anyway I hope people come away from this and all the threads I've written this week with two takeaways:

1) The people out there starting this shit are, for a fascinatingly eclectic number of reasons, mostly garbage, and

2) I am immensely fucking tired.

~FIN~