Artemis
Transphobia and especially transmisogyny probably are currently the greatest threat to women's rights.
Transphobes wish to create a world where women have to constantly prove that they are "really" women and show sufficient femininity before being allowed to participate in public life.
Artemis
I wish more cis women would understand that the way society treats trans people is inextricably related to our rights as women to individuality and self-determination and to our ability to freely exist in society.
The idea that trans men are "lost" women should tell you that they believe that your feminine body and your existence as a feminine person is something you *owe* to the world. If you cease to perform femininity, you have taken something away from others that was rightfully owed them.
Artemis
As a genderqueer cis-ish woman (it's complicated), anything that hurts trans women hurts me. Any right people want to deny to trans women is a right that now can be refused to me also.
If there is a standard for who is and isn't a woman in the "right" way that determines how you are allowed to interact with the world, then women don't have rights. We have obligations. We have to earn our participation in the world. We have to prove we are deserving of it by the degree of our femininity.
Artemis
Trans men are men. Trans women are women. Non-binary people are...well, whatever they say they are... that's a mixed bag of individual identities, to say the least.
People who want to restrict trans rights want to restrict human rights. They want to set the boundaries of what it means to be human and force everyone to obey.
Transphobia is a form of proto-fascism.
Artemis
Meanwhile to these people, trans men don't exist.
Persons perceived as feminine are not granted the right of self-determination, are not granted their own identities. When persons designated "feminine" by society cease to perform femininity as demanded, it is tantamount to ceasing to exist.
For these people, to be a trans woman is to be a pariah. To be a trans man is to be a ghost. There is only one way for female-designated persons to exist.
That is not freedom. That is a denial of humanity.
Artemis
Trans women are an easily vilified group of women, whose "otherness" can be used an excuse to police all women.
Trans rights are human rights, and trans women's rights are women's rights.
Women have a right not to be scrutinized for how we choose to participate (or not) in femininity. We have a right to live our lives without proving anything to anyone. We should not need to ask for permission to exist in public.
Artemis
They want to make it impossible to participate in women's sports without invasive and humiliating investigation. They want women to be uncertain whether someone will accost them for entering a woman's restroom while appearing insufficiently feminine.
They want the ability to critique and control women's participation in the public sphere. It's fucking horribly regressive, and it *will* get out of hand quickly. It already is.
Artemis
When someone "grieves the loss" of "girls" who are actually trans men, they are saying that those men's bodies never belonged to themselves but to others. Especially when they talk about things like top-surgery or sterilization.
Bodies perceived as "feminine" are not to be altered because somehow it is important to others that we have breasts and functioning wombs.
Cis women, this should concern you. Deeply.
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