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in my replies, someone asked the question (paraphrasing): "why is it always certain specific people and their followers who end up on these personal social-media crusades against transfem person after transfem person?"

after I started noticing that phenomenon, I asked myself a variant of that question plenty of times. after all, abled cishet white guys are the most prevalent perpetrators by far of the type of shit that transfem people get accused of all the time. so why, then, do transfem people find ourselves the subject of these witch hunts while abled cishet white guys get off scot-free?

frankly, I'm tempted to just leave a one-word reply of "transmisogyny" here and call it a day, but I think the problem is a bit more complex than that (though transmisogyny is, of course, still at the root of it).

the truth is that abled cishet white guys generally have two things that transfem people don't: solid support networks, and the benefit of the doubt.

go after an abled cishet white guy for something, and at best nobody will give a fuck, because if you're a marginalized person accusing an abled cishet white guy of something, then ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the abled cishet white guy will come out on top. and at worst, you'll find yourself dogpiled by a bunch of *other* abled cishet white guys trying to logicbro you, and the abled cishet white guy's band of sycophants is probably greater in number and more persistent than yours.

so what do you do if you're a clout chaser with one or more marginalized identities who wants to build a brand around righteous anger and shaming?

well, you find a group of people who don't have those pesky little hangups to direct your righteous anger, and your followers, toward. and all too often, that group tends to be transfem people. onlookers - even many other transfem people - are already primed to disbelieve transfem people thanks to the persistent, longstanding transmisogynist idea that we're inherently dishonest, so the clout-chaser doesn't need to worry about not coming out on top. and very few transfem people - yep, not even those of us with large followings - have the sort of support network that your average abled cishet white guy has at his beck and call.

oh, and - again, thanks to unexamined, rampant transmisogyny - those same onlookers are *also* primed to see us *as "men,"* and therefore privileged. so instead of seeing, say, a TME queer serial clout-chaser punching down at a transfem person, they instead see the power dynamic in reverse; i.e., they see a big, bad, manipulative, deceptive "man in a dress" bullying a poor little, often AFAB, accuser who just wants to engage in earnest anti-ableism/anti-transphobia/antiracism/anti-antisemitism/etc.

so, yeah. in the end, it all comes down to transmisogyny. and it'll keep happening until we all, collectively, recognize it for what it is.

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