dave

as a femme adjacent person who most reasonable people would count as "affected by transmisogyny" i promise you: you do not have to prostrate yourself and your brothers before us. honestly, we collectively probably treat you as bad if not worse as you treat us.

i do not speak for everyone, only myself. and i want to make sure you truly, fully love yourself as much as you love us. ripping yourself apart, even if some people act like its necessary, does not help me.

the lesson I wish didn't need teaching (to all of us) is that we are not each other's oppressors. none of us have the power for that. even those who get caught up in Rohm and Quisling patterns are victims struggling to find a way out from under the systems crushing us all.

categorically, trans people of any stripe do not have the power to oppress anyone, just as racialized people don't. yes, many of us have access to a few vectors of privilege; yes, we need to recognize those and work to avoid hurting others with them. but focusing on that as if it's The Primary Issue is like fretting about your personal carbon footprint, and yelling at your neighbors for theirs. we are only ever accidental, unintended benefactors of those systems, they were not made for us and we will never get more out of them than is ground away by the ones that were.

but it sure does benefit euro-patriarchy if we can be convinced that they were made for anyone who benefits even accidentally, that any/every other group is a threat, so we waste our energy squabbling amongst each other instead of uniting against the overarching structures that oppress us all.

so: I appreciate the gesture of apology! but you don't deserve to feel like you owe one.

As someone (who is a transwoman) who saw everything transpire on tumblr and came here as a result: personally, I don't think you have to apologize for things you haven't done. I don't think anyone (decent) really wants that, either.

Literally what I (and what I think many other trans women want) is just for there to be some reflection and consideration that, yes, there are people within the trans community who hold power over us. That you might even belong to that group. That, if you're not careful, you can contribute to our oppression and make things harder for us.

Does being transmasc automatically mean you're guilty of transmisogyny? No, but it does mean you're capable of it. It seems as though you got your heart in the right place, so be kind to yourself, if you can. Transphobia on its own is still tough.

Well, I guess I appreciate the sentiment, but...

I mean feeling guilty about your gender isn't going to help anyone, least of all yourself. Instead of feeling bad about yourself, you'll feel better if you try to do something productive. A lot of trans men end up leaning into toxic masculinity when they transition, and not always on purpose either. What other men should be doing is seeing the toxic mean going down that path and slapping the absolute frick out of them (metaphorically or even literally if you have to). Even a "dude, what's wrong with you that you're treating her that way?!" could affect them a lot when it's coming from another man. And it has to be men that do it, because those types don't listen to women :/

Basically, you have to be shaming them, and not shaming yourself. That's assuming that you personally know any of them, tho. No one listens to strangers