— Tathève Simonyan, Colourless Musings

non-transmasc. before you is a transmasc person talking about their experiences with being transmasculine and the oppression that they experience for being transmasculine. the bomb detonates if you tell them to just call it transphobia, if you imply their oppression/experience is incorrect, if you tell them that they signed up for it for being transmasculine. begin.

Everyday I am reminded that people with anime profile pictures should not have opinions.

It's like some people think intersectionality is a math problem?

Trans + man = cancels out so no oppression

Trans + woman = double oppression

And that's just? Not how real life works? Like you can't come to a conclusion via logic math problem and then insist it's reality because it makes sense inside the theory you've crafted.

You have to check it actually aligns with what is happening out in the world - Which is trans men sharing all the ways systemic and institutional transphobia targets us and affects us.

You can't just tell us to shut up because you like your theory better and you're upset our lived experience messes it up.

You can't tell us we don't experience what we live every day?

Something I would add about Michfest : In the 90s, there was a scandal involving a trans man there (Tony Baretto-Neto). He had phallo and simply took a shower there, but then the staff confronted him because people started saying there were multiple "men" / "transsexuals" / male invaders walking around exposing their erect penises in front of women, and blamed him.

It caused a lot of controversy and he literally ended up having to make a public written statement about it to debunk these claims, saying he was just 1 guy taking a shower (he even said that due to the nature of his penis, the thing about him harassing women with his erection was literally not physically possible, people were just making shit up to paint him as predatory). He explained what really happened : he had told the women around that he was gonna shower and explained his situation, they all said they were fine with it, some shower malfunction happened and some women who helped him with it therefore saw him naked. (He also said that he went to the festival as a trans man because he'd been a lesbian activist since the 60s and had fought in these spaces for decades, even having played in a band in similar festivals in the past).

He had explained all that to the staff and, despite them fully knowing he was AFAB, they didn't care. They didn't want it to be a place ~ for AFABs ~, they wanted a place without any people AMAB or penises, and decided their policy also included people AFAB with penises after this "incident". (Also this story has been largely misrepresented and said to be about a trans woman's penis in the showers, but yeah, the real story behind this was actually about a trans man.)

It's not even a rare occurrence, it's actually pretty common for things "for AFABs" or "AFAB-only" to reject/ban trans men who are deemed "too much like cis men" (or mysteriously find a reason that makes them "not a good fit"). I guarantee you that most shit like "AFAB-only housing" or whatever would also reject trans men with penises. Pretty much every space or thing "for AFABs" will have some secret threshold for trans men, where if you have certain features you will be seen as "too much like a cis man" and not allowed to join because it "makes the others uncomfortable". They won't dare to admit it out loud if they market themselves as open to trans people AFAB, and the exact criteria varies from group to group (it can be as little as "vibes" and not even medical transition related). But "having a penis" will pretty much unanimously be seen as crossing that line and get you rejected.

It's just really frustrating to see some people take them at their word when some group says "we are open to anyone AFAB" and then react like "see ? TME privilege once again, they only exclude trans women !!!!" and act like all trans people AFAB are included in that when there's always, and I cannot state this enough, *ALWAYS* a cutoff point for transmascs in these things, over which they're seen as predatory, invading, untrustworthy, violent, dangerous, and are excluded (and its not necessarily for being mistaken for transfem, it's very deliberate) no matter how "welcome for being AFAB" they are on paper. The entire spectrum of transmasculinity is never welcome in these spaces. It's always a lie.

TRFs love taking other radfems at their word except when those radfems say they really do see trans women as men, then it's all "why do you believe TERFs?" and shit.

Thank you for writing this up. <3

Various stars & moon details from my gouache paintings 🌙✨

Eyes of the forest. Aspen trees

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Korean fan living in Korea here) It seems that it’s only the international fandom that see Project Moon’s recent firing of the illustrator as ‘protecting’ their staff from assault.

From all we know here in Korea, the ‘protests’ were largely just standing in front of the headquarters and yelling at the devs, sending threats.

Edit : did more digging and the protestors took some ‘evidences’ and met the devs so they DID get inside the building. but it was mostly talking and they were not actively threatening the devs with physical violence or anything as far as I know according to korean fandom communities ; picture of the perpetrator below.

But even if they WERE physically violent,  informing the police and suing the hell out of the protestors would’ve been the reasonable move, if they truly cared about their staff’s wellbeings. 

(I saw some tweets about how its more ‘dangerous’in East Asia, so Project Moon was reasonably afraid of escalating the situation, but South Korea’s violent crime rates are very low, much lower than the US(https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/South-Korea/United-States/Crime) , so…)

Besides, the ‘loud minority’ of the Incel Korean Fanbase isn’t really a ‘minority’ ; they usually make up a large percentage of income of the gaming industry, especially for a gacha game. And firing female voice actors and illustrators for participating in feminist practices has been done before (it happened in Closers and Girls Frontline.) 

So unfortunately, for the time being it seems that Project Moon simply chose what they believe to be the best path for profit-maximizing. Prioritising the male Korean fanbase while not also losing the majority of the international fanbase.  

Excuse me for the broken english, some misunderstandings (due to language and culture barrier) were getting a bit frustrating.

Please inform me if there was any misinformation. I might delete this according to future developments.

tl; dr )this was likely a corporate decision and not a spur-of-the-moment thing to save themselves from physical threat because 1. Incels are seen as pretty profitable in Korean gaming industry and 2. the police force works mostly ok in here so why not just… call em.

This is a false equivalency.

The term for somebody who is transfem and who is oppressed for being transfem—is transfem. Intersex people are intersex. Transfem people are transfem. Perisex people are not intersex. Non-transfem people are not transfem.

TMA/TME is more closely equivalent to if I said IA/IE (intersexism applicable/intersexism exempt).

The reason TMA/TME is problematic is because it fails to acknowledge that non-transfem people can be impacted my transmisogyny—the same way perisex transfems can be impacted by intersexism. And also because it completely ignores the existence of the oppression transmascs experience, categorising them in with their oppressors. The TMA/TME binary is problematic because it collapses complex interplays of oppression into one binary system.

If you want a word for somebody who is transfem and impacted by transfem oppression in the way somebody who is transfem would be? The term is transfem.

“Transfems really are the only people who can’t have terms for their own oppression” I have a question. How do you feel about the term “transandrophobia?” How would you feel about the terms “TAA” and “TAE” (transandrophobia applicable and transandrophobia exempt)? If you’re okay with those terms, I’ll eat my words (somehwhat, it’s still weird, but at least you’re okay with it across the board). If you’re not—why? Do you think trans men don’t experience specific oppression? Is your issue just with who coined it? How do you feel about the term transemasculinisation? Anti-transmasculinity? Please consider why you think it’s okay to restrict the language transmascs use to describe their oppression.

Further, why not make it TMNA/TMNE (transmisogynoir applicable and transmisogynoir exempt)? Black trans women absolutely face the highest rates of assault (assuming black trans men aren’t being erased in the statistics, which is a big assumption). If you’re talking about systems of oppression… why not consider the most impactful axes? Why only consider the axis of man/woman? Consider what this says about the proximity of your theory to radical feminism.