Thread by @MariBrighe

Heteropatriachy says the two worst things a woman can be are:

1. Unfuckable
2. Fuckable but unavailable

This is so much the case that heteropatriachy tries to define womanhood essentially by whether a woman is fuckable & available to them.

Which is why lesbians, fat women, Black women, trans women, sex workers, disabled women all so easily get shunted to “unwoman” so often.

For trans women, you can see this manifest in Harry Benjamin’s insistence “true transsexual” were attracted to men.

You can see it in Blanchard and Bailey’s “autogynephilia” obsession...insisting womanhood without sexual availability to men must be a paraphilia.

Even our language reinforced this for generations...to “make a woman” of a girl was for a man to have sex with her for the first time.

What makes this extra dangerous is that men are essentially allowed to be wantonly violent to those not sufficiently “womanly”.

Patriarchy-annointed Womanhood, in theory, provides one “protection” by the patriarchal power structure (but very much in the organized crime conception of “protection”), because there are taboos on hurting women.

There aren’t taboos on hurting unwomen. Often, it’s *sanctioned*

The patriarchy-annointed women have a vested interest in maintaining this system, too. It gives them vast power/privilege over the unwomen, and it funnels the violence of men away from them. And there are some who think they can earn anointed status by exposing other unwomen.

This why the “gender-cr*t” movement is utter nonsense. The problem isn’t gender, the problem is heteropatriachy.

Now, let’s talk about the connection to current attack on trans kids. Because this is relevant beyond just the political scare tactics for the GOP.

The vast majority of panic about trans people up to now has been about trans women.

Because, while heteropatriachy largely considers us unwomen, the fact that some of us appear outwardly to meet their fuckability standards for womanhood makes us EXTREMELY DANGEROUS to them.

Adult Trans men are generally ignored because they are almost always in an unwoman category before they transition, so they’re largely irrelevant to the patriarchy.

But the attacks on trans youth are suddenly VERY INTERESTED and VERY UPSET about young AFAB people transitioning.

As much as people aren’t going to want admit this, those panics have a lot to do with heteropatriachy’s obsession with the sexual availability of teenage girls.

In the view of heteropatriachy, a pre-teen AFAB person choosing to take puberty blockers is denying men an opportunity

Essentially, every AFAB person who doesn’t go through their natal puberty is one less body for heteropatriarchy to sexualize, consume, and impregnate (heteropatrichy’s ultimate end goal, of course).

That’s an affront to them, and they cannot have it.

This is also why there’s such an insistence on referring to top surgery for AFAB trans teens as “mutilation.”

Because it’s robbing the patriarchy of teenage breasts to sexualize, and they find that horrific.

To take that analysis a step further...

All unwomen still have the potential of being useful to the heteropatriarchy. When their desires are unmet, men will “lower” themselves to fuck (or r*pe) an unwoman to slake their thirst.

But, when AFAB teens transition, they may move entirely outside the womanhood paradigm.

I’d argue that this particularly the case for those who identify as boys & go on T, and it’s messier for non-binary folks...but nonetheless, it’s a POSSIBILITY. And the idea that a potential object of sexualization could just nope out of the whole thing is DESTABILIZING and SCARY

Teenage trans girls aren’t EXEMPT from panic, obviously, but that’s rooted in something else entirely and in line with existing trans panics.

Trans women are viewed as dangerous bc heteropatriarchy views us as still containing enough “maleness” to undermine their heterosexuality

Largely, that’s a phallic thing, bc maleness, manhood, & the phallus are interchangeable for heteropatriarchy.

So even *ever* having possessed a phallus gives us a modicum of retained “essence” of male that makes even being attracted to us an indictment of one’s heterosexuality

Now, the heteropatriarchy soothes itself by insisting that “you can always tell”, because *insert some garbage about testosterone-driven puberty*, which means any man who finds a trans woman attractive must therefore also have known she was trans, so he must not be straight.

CW: violence

This becomes the source of much anti-trans violence...the man must then reclaim his heterosexuality by hurting (or murdering) the trans woman who caused this.

Now, enter a trans woman who never experienced a testosterone-driven puberty. Uh oh.

Allowing trans girls to skip puberty and testosterone essentially creates a constant fog of doubt and paranoia for straight men under heteropatriarchy.

Especially in a culture that, as we discussed earlier, hypersexualizes and obsesses over the bodies of teenage girls.

Earlier transitioning trans girls are also dangerous to certain classes of “feminists” who insist that “socialization” is why trans women cannot ever truly be women. After all, if someone socially transitioned as a child, skipped testosterone puberty, etc, that argument is moot.

Also...the deeply ironic thing is that heteropatriarchy PROFOUNDLY eroticizes & sexualizes trans women bc we exist at the intersection of a huge social taboo & heteropatriarchy’s central totem (the phallus). So while they’re terrified of us in public, they’re jerking off to us.

One last point to end this meandering thread:

Trans women and sex workers are natural allies because two sides of the same coin that threatens the heteropatriarchy that makes them the target of violence and oppression. One undermines heterosexuality, the other patriarchy’s power

Trans women represent an intrinsic threat to heteropatriachy’s rigid enforcement of its definition of heterosexuality.

Sex workers are an intrinsic threat to patriarchal power, which is ultimately rooted in men’s entitlement to sex and women’s bodies as they please.

There are certainly complications around the nature of capitalism and such that make this somewhat messier overall, but:

Sex workers have sexual agency in a way that disrupts male entitlement bc men must follow *her* directives to access her sexuality (or even some part of it).

Heteropatriachy tells men that sex is conquest, that they deserve simply by virtue of being men and wanting it. (And how dare a woman make them want it and then not want it!)

Sex workers take all the air out of that. There is no conquest, no taking. Only the price.

Anyhow, I think that’s quite enough of my pontificating.

If you like my words, consider throwing some bucks in my tip jar so I can some day not work a full-time abusive healthcare job?

ko-fi.com/maribrighe