As a trans woman, I have a lot of behaviors that i am VERY EXCITED to do that are considered traditionally feminine. And I think the General Societal Narrative of a trans women, say, being excited to bake a cake, is that she’s like, Sightseeing Womanhood, doing something Women Do because it tickles her to Be A Woman. Which is… fucking hogwash. these behaviors aren’t Things Women Do, they’re Things Men Don’tDo.
The urge to bake a cake and coo at babies and welcome houseguests, I think, is just human, but it’s something that men are told basically from birth that they’re not allowed to do. So a huge part of the transfem experience isn’t Discovering New Hobbies That Let You Be A Girl, it’s finally allowing yourself to do things that you’ve spent decades believing you weren’t supposed to.
And in less intersectional feminist spaces, this purveying idea (that a trans woman is taking pleasure from like, Sampling Womanhood) plays to an understanding of “male socialization” that is centered around the effects it has on AFAB people. (”Boys will be boys”, “He’s pulling his hair because he likes you”)
And while I dont blame people for expressing the pain they suffer under patriarch, it’s pretty conceited to assume that this gives you understanding of the totality of the AMAB experience. Cis men and trans women and other AMAB people spend their childhoods being punished, by peers and authorities and media, for “unmanly” behavior- vulnerability, emotionality, caring, sadness. And I think that a lot of feminism (ESPECIALLY radical feminism) doesn’t fully understand that.
TERFs especially are 100% convinced that they know what male socialization is to the point that they will argue with trans women about it, which is the kind of hubris that would be fucking hilarious if it wasn’t so harmful.
the thing about the transphobe effectively complaining that trans women are better than her at skateboarding truly does not bode well for the perception of trans women in other mixed sex sports. like to be clear skateboarding is a sport where “sex” segregation is very often meaningless (this particular transphobe has participated in men’s skating competitions in the past despite being a cisgender woman) and the “biological advantages” in skateboarding include things like being shorter which is a trait not typically associated with trans women (this is at least part of why she has placed behind children in competitions btw aside from that she also sucks at her job and why children are allowed to compete with adults in these events in the first place). if transphobes are starting panics around the supposed “biological advantages” that trans women allegedly have in “sex” segregated sports and applying that to sports that are typically mixed-sex this is an omen of ill fortune for trans women in like equestrian sports and many TMAs just for instance. like i have no doubt this is going to continue, continue to be absolutely absurd, and it’s not going to matter how blatantly absurd it is because the point is to drive trans people out of public spaces, not to even the playing field in sports.
here’s the thing, public policy is not made by experts and is not determined by study. the current panic against transgender women is a moral one, not one based in evidence. a dozen professional skateboarders, taekwondo world champions, professional football players, olympians, scientists who study sports as a specialty, any number of experts could repeat until they’re blue in the face that the “biological advantages” of their sports have little or no correlation with someone’s assigned sex at birth or their levels of testosterone at any point in their lives and the people who make policies about who can and cannot compete in sports will not listen, because their agenda is to make being transgender and being intersex shameful and unnacceptable and to prime intersex and trans people for public scrutiny and persecution.
please block @/gentlegifs and @/rad-moods, they’re terf/radfem blogs who break people’s dnis, make stimboards without crediting gifmakers, and even post gifs without crediting videomakers, and at least one of the two literally has banners that say “dni if trans” while definitely using trans people’s gifs that they stole!!
