What Transmisogyny Looks Like

This is a topic that has been vital to my understanding of the world over the past few years, but it’s still relatively unknown outside certain circles of activists. When I mention it as an area of my work, I almost invariably have to explain what it is. The short answer is that it is the intersection of transphobia and misogyny that specifically targets trans women. But that dry academic answer never communicates the visceral and intense experience that it is.

Here’s a limited list of examples of what transmisogyny looks like. Every example on this list has a story (or dozens of stories) behind it.

Is ‘Tranny’ Offensive?

In several different LGBTQ blogs I’ve noticed arguments over whether or not the use of the term ‘tranny’ is offensive.  Usually this occurs when a cisgender person using the term gets called out for it.  In each case, they seem to have trans friends who are cool with them using the term and don’t understand why others don’t like it.

It might appear to be a benign act of adding a “y” on the end to make the term more informal and cutesy (notice a similar transformation when changing “cute” to “cutesy”). From this perspective, why would it matter?  No one will tell you “fag” or “faggot” are okay but “faggy” and “fagotry” aren’t.  However, there is a whole historical context to the term that isn’t all that well known, but is a huge part about what makes the term less appealing.

The term itself was first widely used within the porn industry.  And while I’ll be the last one to denigrate sexuality and pornography, the fact is that “tranny porn” is about as representative of trans people’s sexuality as “girl-on-girl porn” is representative of lesbian sexuality.  The usual context that it has been used in porn is to highlight how trans women are not really women, while also painting us as more exotic and sexually available.

So when the industry popularized the term “tranny”, it became a useful way to get a sense of someone’s background with the community.  If a cisgender person used the term “tranny” it probably meant that they got most of their knowledge of (or at least intro to) the trans community from the porn and sex industries, and perhaps didn’t have your best interests at heart.  This is also probably related to the creation of the term “tranny-chaser” as a way for the trans community to identify people who might take advantage of a trans person’s relative vulnerability or see trans people only as a sexual commodity.

This use of language has stuck.  For example, 6 out of the top 10 google results for the term “tranny” are porn sites.  And five years ago it was probably 9 or 10.  Compare that to a google search for “transgender” which gives you 10 out of 10 resource and support sites.  Also, searching for terms like “tranny activist” and “tranny politics” results in only a few hits — 194 and 157 respectively.  Yet searching for the term “tranny sex” provides 1,470,000 hits — that’s a 10,000 fold increase.  Even now, after many people are reclaiming the term, the vast majority of it’s use is about sexualizing and objectifying trans people.  It’s true the term is being reclaimed, but instead of comparing it to how terms like “queer,” “dyke,” and “fag” are used today, I think it’s more appropriate to compare it to the use of the term “faggot” about a decade ago, or “queer” almost two decades ago.

The issue of reclaiming the term is further complicated, though.  You see, while I have been discussing the impact the term has had on trans people, the reality is that it is trans women who have most directly targeted by it.  Trans men have been comparably invisible in the sex and porn industries, and the trans men porn that exists today is almost exclusively produced by trans men.  Yet a significant portion, arguably a majority, of the effort to reclaim the term has been made by trans men.  Usually by trans men who are not familiar with the negative history of the term, let alone having been subjected to it’s sting themselves.

It is difficult to know what to think about that gender breakdown.  When I run into a group of trans men who frequently use the term, I am not sure whether to thank them for creating community use of a new and positive meaning behind the term, or to criticize them for their insensitivity and lack of awareness of how the term might hold a lot of trauma for those of us who have been the direct targets of its use.

Regardless, it is true that I also try to reclaim the term myself.  But as with all reclaimed terms, context is the key.  I recently had to educate a colleague of mine as to how his saying “I met a really hot tranny last weekend” was not a very appropriate place to use the term, even if it was a positive attribute he was commenting on (for the record, I would have been a lot more comfortable with “I met a trans woman last weekend, she was really hot”).

Personally, I’m not comfortable using the term to refer to anyone but myself or friends who have similarly used it.  And if I wasn’t trans, I wouldn’t want to use it at all.  I might use it to draw upon it’s history, such as if I were to call myself “Another tranny rebelling against patriarchy,” or to underscore someone else’s transphobia as in “You just don’t care what the dirty tranny thinks, do you?”  And I suppose I might use it to refer to trans people in general, such as “Trannies unite!” or “I wish there were more trannies here.”  I generally appreciate use of the term that links it to trans women’s sexual autonomy and trans-positivity — the exact opposite of it’s derogatory use.

I’m not going to lay down any rules for how you might use it though, especially if you’ve been the target of it’s derogatory use yourself.  All I ask is that you think about how you use it.  And be able to explain yourself if someone wants to question you about it.

Margaret Cho is a chaser? Tranny chasers in dyke communities

Tranny chasers seem to be getting some attention these days. Well, as someone in the trans community, I hear about them all the time, but it seems that the conversation is getting wider. I encountered a post on feministe today (which was linked to from several trans communities I’m on), which is about a San Fransisco Chronical article by Violet Blue interviewing Margaret Cho. In it, Blue writes:

I also discovered her new fetish, what she thinks is “the newest hottest thing to happen sexually”: transmen and trannyboys. Giddily, Cho gushed that she’s a born-again tranny-chaser — of the FtM (female-to-male) variety. “For me, it’s transmen. I’m doing a few things, like working with Ian Harvey. It’s not even FtM — it’s FtX. There’s a band from Toronto called The Clicks that’s all transmen, and it’s like a hot boy band. The girls just go crazy and scream for them — it’s like Beatlemania, but for queers! And packing, and the politics of packing, that’s, like, so hot.”

I find this exotification odd and frustrating because Violet Blue and Margaret Cho are both people I really appreciate. I’m almost expecting some excuse or mistake to be revealed, but it’s probably more likely that they’re simply picking up on and repeating a sentiment that exists throughout queer women’s communities without taking time to think about what they’re saying. If you want to know the details of why that kind of exotification is bad, check out the post at Feministe. What I want to talk about is a little more specific and has less to do with Cho and Blue. I want to focus on the way that this dynamic get’s gendered.

First of all, I can’t touch this subject without going over the differences between chasers who typically go after transwomen and chasers who typically go after transmen. Transwomen communities have a long and difficult history with chasers. With a few exceptions, chasers are generally straight men who are recognized as exploitative if not dangerous. The queer women who are transmen-chasers seems to be a slightly newer phenomenon, and is often seen as forward thinking or radical – even if the same exploitative dynamics exist. There appears to be a coming from an assumption that women are not capabably of such exploitation. Then there are a few who are consciously aware of these dynamics and take on the label of tranny-chaser themselves. While generally viewed with skepticism from the trans community, I think it’s more important to look at their behavior than their label. And if they want to reclaim “chaser” go ahead. Just keep being very careful to explain to people what it is you’re doing.

That said, the big issue I see coming out of this article (besides exotification of course) is that it isn’t discussing an attraction to transpeople, but an attraction to transmen, in a community that is often openly transwoman-hostile. Cho is quoted above refering to this as a phenomenon in the terms of “a hot boy band” or “Beatlemania, but for queers!”. And in many ways that seems, unfortunately, to be the case. There are a lot of queer women who are willing to proclaim an attraction to ciswomen and transmen, and explicitly not to transwomen. Many such people will call themselves trans-sensual. And while attraction to transpeople is generally great, there’s something really wrong about defining trans-sensual in a way that specifically identifies transwomen as a group of people that you refuse to date. Not to mention that that kind of catagorization is coming awfully close to saying that transmen are really women and transwomen are really men.

Historically, transwomen have been excluded from queer women’s spaces while transmasculine folk have been celebrated. The sexism and misogyny inherent in this is somewhat baffling considering the communities longstanding connection to feminism. I think this is often informed by some rather innacurate stereotypes of transwomen, in addition to the community’s valuing of butchness and masculinity and the community’s devaluing of femmeness and femininity. Queer women are often exposed to transmasculine people in the community, but how often are transfeminine folks present to counter these stereotypes. If you think that transwomen are all handbag toting high femmes from the 1950’s housewife era, well, those characteristics aren’t exactly valued in queer women’s communities. But those are just stereotypes. And often it’s these stereotypes that are used to justify why someone is defining their sexuality as not attracted to transwomen — because they’re just attracted to masculinity and butch-ness (which apparently is a quality that cismen don’t have).

There are transwomen out there who are butch. There are plenty of transwomen out there who have the same “dyke” sensibilities that often gets read as masculine. It’s just that many of these women don’t get read as transwomen. Because transwomen are suppoesd to be all feminine, those of us who aren’t become invisible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard queer women complain about “all the butches turning into men” and I’ve wanted to yell out “what about all the transwomen taking their place?” So you’re only interested in short-haired, tatooed, stocky, dyke-daddies? Don’t assume that there isn’t a transwoman who will fit the bill.  And if everyone in your community is only interested in the same, maybe you should start a femme-phobia discussion group.