Astrid
The transfeminine subject and transfeminine labour
Transfeminine people navigate a unique positionality in life and activism, one that is informed by a positionality as a perpetual outsider. The positionality of an outsider is constructed by a dynamic that degenders and masculinizes transfeminine people as well as denigrates them as an othered gender under our hetero-patriachal society. In positioning transfeminine people as an outsider from both hegemonic masculinity and women’s oppression an inherent conflict forms, one where the realities of a transfeminine person come into focus.
Understanding this conflict and the ways it highlights transfeminine realities allows us a rudimentary starting point to understand transfeminine people as an othered gender much aligned with other subtypes of women. In understanding this conflict we will also gain a glimpse into some of the specific manners and methods used to engender gendered power over transfeminine people.
Within this essay I wish to delve into specific examples of the mechanisms that separate trans women from cis feminism, as well as how that separation is linked to transmisogynistic dynamics. I will also be exploring how that separation and underlying dynamics can be integral to the feminisms and transfeminisms of trans women. To achieve this goal in exploring how trans women exist, specifically within feminist spaces, I will be analysing the manners in which feminism’s relationship to transfeminine people manifest, as well as how transfeminine people navigate relationships with feminism.
I have structured this paper in the form of four sub-essays that all feed into a wider analytical framework, with each essay examining a separate element of transfeminine people’s relationship to feminism. This is primarily to emphasise the complex and multi-faceted dialectical positionality that trans women exist within.
When discussing trans identities and transfeminism it is important to work from a shared framework of understanding, maybe even more so than when one discusses other aspects of feminism. Queer and trans groups complicate this further as the language develops quite rapidly and in varying directions. The word transgender replacing transsexual almost unilaterally is one such recent example. This section aims to clarify the terminology used within the essay to avoid any issues with understanding.
The terms transgender and transsexual are often seen as interchangeable within the common lexicon, both are used to describe the phenomenon of people whose gender and birth sex do not align. Whilst this conflation on the surface seems rational I find it lacking in clarity in an important aspect, that being the sex of individuals who have chosen to take cross-sex hormone replacement therapy (HRT). As Julia Serano outlines in her 2007 book Whipping Girl there is a separation between the two.
Serano outlines that whilst transgender is a broad category that includes within its definition the experiences and lives of transsexual individuals, there is a distinction between the experiences of those who are transgender but not transsexual and those who are both. Within this paper I aim to discuss the positionality of transsexual women within feminism. That is to say I aim to discuss how individuals whose sex was coercively assigned male at their birth, whose gender contradicts that, and who are taking cross-sex hormones to align their sexual characteristics to that of their gender. It is for these reasons I will predominantly be using the term transsexual within this essay. This is because the broader understanding of transgender includes individuals who are themselves not transfeminine and are also not marked by the act of medical transition.
As I will be discussing a specific angle of female oppression I find it necessary to delineate between transsexuals. This differentiation will be through the terms transfeminine and transmasculine. It is important to note that transfeminine and transmasculine includes both transgender and transsexual individuals, but since my analysis is centred around the transsexual experience that is the framework I will be operating from.
I will be using the term transfeminine as a form of umbrella term that describes all transsexuals whose gender is in the broad range of genders that can be described as feminine, whose assigned sex is male, and who are either on feminising cross-sex hormones or who plan to start feminising cross-sex hormones. Whereas transmasculine conversely describes individuals whose gender, sex, and hormones almost completely mirror those of the transfeminine.
The term transmisogyny is an intersectional analytical term that describes the overlap between transphobia and misogyny that specifically affects transfeminine individuals. Originally coined by Serano in the book Whipping Girl (2007) as a position that derives from a collision of traditional sexism and oppositional sexism. Serano outlines that traditional sexism describes what we commonly understand as the oppression and devaluation of women and that oppositional sexism describes the idea that men and women are binary opposites that cannot be reconciled.
Whilst Serano’s work on defining transmisogyny is tantamount, I have found that the importance of misogyny within transmisogyny as an analytical framework is unintentionally waylaid. This is why I will be working from the understanding outlined by Tahlia Bahtt in her essays on transmisogyny (Baht, 2023-1, 2023-2, 2024). Within her work Bahtt compares transmisogyny to lesbophobia, centering the institutional effect that patriarchal/misogynist structures in societies have over a category of women, much like how an understanding of institutional hegemonic patriarchy, misogyny, and homophobia are needed to effectively analyse lesbophobia.
Many trans women speak about how they feel marked by their assigned sex, as though they are placed into a category separate from that of other women. Sometimes this othering is explicit as we see with the femminiello of Napoli, or the hijra of South Asia, a third gendering of transfeminine individuals. In the contexts of both the explicit third-gendersing and the nebulous concept of being excluded from both womanhood and manhood the effect is the same (Bhat, 2023). An alienation of transfeminine individuals from the social sphere of the woman, whilst never being able to return to the sphere of man as they are no longer men by virtue of their transition. The expulsion from womanhood done to transfeminine people enacts a violence of denial of community and aid, one that is seen in many places, from crisis centres (McLean, 2021) to community building events (McConnell et-al, 2016).
This separation from the rest of womanhood can be described in many ways, I choose to describe it as the transfeminine being marked by the phallus and a perceived proximity to masculinity and masculinism, this marking potentially has its roots in the body-centric focus of second wave feminist works such as that of Our Bodies Ourselves. The origins of the separation could also be attributed to what Julia Serano describes in her exploration of transmisogyny as the effect of oppositional sexism, the cultural idea that the realm of man and woman are rigid and contrasting, and that the transgression of that contrast is denigrated. Both origins of this separation describe the lingering effects of a bio-essentialist understanding of womanhood, one that is centred in possession of the womb as the centre of the oppression of the woman.
Transfeminine people do not hold a womb, rather they hold or have held a phallus. This places them in the oppositional category to women in accordance to a bio-essentialist understanding of womanhood. That is to say, that no matter how much transfeminine people are victimised and made into subjects of a masculinist society through mechanisms such as hyper-sexualisation, forced feminised labour, as well as an othering from manhood and masculinity, the transfeminine person cannot share the same experiences as a “true woman” because they do not hold the womanising genitalia of the womb; rather the transfeminine subject is masculinised through her possession of a penis. (Bhat, 2024)
Within bio-essentialist feminist and woman-centred spaces this marking of the transfeminine subject as a bepenised individual, no matter if she has had vaginoplasty or not, marks her as something even further “other”. This marking as an other in some ways marks transfeminine people as an almost monstrous being. Through being placed into this monstrous category the transfeminine individual is made into a being that exists to harm women and as an affront to femininity/feminism. This othering and the monstering thereof is observed within McConnel et-al’s ethnophenomenology of the attendees of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (Michfest).
Within the study the writers interview individuals from two groups to understand the segregation that occurs within Michfest. The study found that the segregational attitude was the prevailing idea within those studied, and that it stemmed from a desire to keep Michfest woman centred.
Participants saw the value of trans inclusion in other spaces, but at Michfest saw it as a threat to space that “places women and their experiences at the center.” … one woman said, “I don’t want women to have to stand aside and give up Michigan’s women’s space just because the politics and social change have shifted. The need for separate women’s space is no less needed now—in fact it is needed more than ever.” (McConnel et-al, 2016)
Here we see the tension that is brought about by viewing transfeminine people as marked by the phallus. There is an assumption that transfeminine people are fundamentally different from cis women, assuming that the interests of cis women and transfeminine women are diametrically opposed, and that the inclusion of the latter would disrupt the feminist space.
These assumptions were further justified by michfest attendees through a broader explication of the bio-essentialist understanding of womanhood. Such as a large focus being placed on the body with a participant goin on to say; “Biological aspects of cis womanhood were viewed by participants as sacred and connected to ceremony and ritual…” An argument is also made that the inclusion of transfeminine individuals could be triggering trauma in the cis women, and even going so far as to paint transfeminine people as a danger to young girls.
“This was frequently connected with a fear of having “overt bio-markers of masculinity,” like penises and male voices, on the land, as they may trigger cis women who are survivors of rape and/or child sexual abuse… Participants also expressed fear that including trans women would threaten the safety of girls at the festival,” (McConnel et-al, 2016)
Once again the hard opposites of male and female that cannot be transgressed, with the womb and the penis being placed into a stark contrast. The womb and the experiences that relate to having a womb being made sacred whilst the penis being a form of corrupting/destructive/dangerous force, these essentialist understandings of gender lead to the marking of transfeminine people through their supposed approach to masculinity.
Susan Striker describes her personal experiences with this marking in her 2015 Essay My Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix, describing the internal turmoil a seeming all-encompassing bio-essentialist understanding of gender inflicted on her psyche. In the essay she writes;
I came as close today as I’ll ever come to giving birth—literally. My body can’t do that; I can’t even bleed without a wound, and yet I claim to be a woman. How? Why have I always felt that way? I’m such a goddamned freak. I can never be a woman like other women, but I could never be a man. (Stryker, 2011)
Here Striker describes how this essentialist understanding of womanhood has ingrained itself into her understanding of her own womanhood. She describes a separation between her and that of other women, namely other women who have a womb and can birth, and how that separation monsters her in her own mind, permanently marked by her proximity to masculinity by her phallus, despite the fact that she is not a man.
It is this marking of the transfeminine subject as masculine, and therefore inherently a danger, that gives precedence to the practice of segregation of cis and trans female spaces and organisations. Excluding them from spaces like michfest, but also from places such as crisis centres ““I just remember there being far more comments like ‘Yeah we only support real women’,””(Mclean, 2021). In short, transfeminine people are seen as wholly separate from other women.
It is also important to note that the transmasculine subject is marked in the inverse, as his possession of a womb marks him as sufficiently feminised and therefore “safer” despite his explicit proximity to masculinity, with one participant in the study stating;
“…trans men are seemingly allowed on the land without any hassle, whose masculine energy I imagine could be just as triggering for some as the presence of bio-male genitalia on an otherwise feminine-presenting woman. (McConnel et-al, 2016)
This mirrors the masculinisation that the transfeminine individuals are placed under due to the bio-essentialist understanding of the female existence, as the presentation and identity of the individual is ignored in favour of their genitalia.
Analysing transfeminine people as though they are not truly a form of woman, rather as a type of feminised man, devalues the affectations of a misogynist society upon the transfeminine individual and group as womanised and othered subjects (Baht 2024. Rather, if one were to make an analysis of the position that the transfeminine subject exists within societies, one would be able to see the transfeminine individual as a subject that is othered by masculinist society in much the same way a cis woman is othered.
I will be working from the framework laid out by Judith Butler in their writings on gender performance. Butler’s theory on gender performance has its roots in that of Simone DeBeauvoir’s The Second Sex, within their theory butler takes the notion that the individual is feminised by their dialectical relationship to masculinity as an “other” and introduces a framework for analysing the ways society crafts a role for the individual to fit weather they are the othered subject or the “default” observer. It is through observing the ways transfeminine individuals and others perform a transfeminine gender that I hope to outline the transfeminine as an othered subject.
Transfeminine individuals, despite the previously established assumption that they are in proximity to masculinity, engage in performance acts that are typically seen as not-masculine within our current patriarchal society. The transfeminine individual engages with traditionally feminine presentations, taking actions to modify their endocrine system to develop breast and other secondary characteristics that are associated with an oestrogen dominant biology. They enact these changes alongside changes in fashion and voice to not be seen as male/masculine by wider society, these acts can be read as a performance act to fit into a gender performance that is not that which is expected by the transfeminine individual.
If one were to observe the material realities of transfeminine individuals one would gain a further insight into the way society engenders them as a category that is not that of masculinity. Labour type and labour compensation is one method of analysing the material realities of transfeminine people. The transfeminine worker, adjusted for race, earns drastically lower than all other individuals, mirroring the gendered pay disparity of cisgender men and women (Schlit \& Wisall 2008). The wage disparities are an issue, but they only become relevant if the transfeminine individual manages to find gainful employment, this is because transfeminine individuals experience a discrimination in accessing the workforce, often turned away at the door. (Movement Advanced Project et.al 2013) To compensate for this lack of access to the labour market and fair compensation within the labour market many transfeminine individuals turn to sex work to compensate their income.
Transfeminine individuals are also expected by society to perform labour that is typically seen as feminised, a pertinent example is the heightened rates of sex work, specifically survival sex work, found within transfeminine communities (Lee et.al 2018). Here the transfeminine individual is made into a sexual object that is not given full agency over their own sexuality and playing the gendered act of a sexual object to be used by those who play the gendered act of a sexual user all as a part of her societal interactions that are needed to survive. One can also look to the act known as “V-coding”, a deliberate and forced sexual labour where transfeminine people are deliberately placed in male prisons, jails, and other incarceration facilities as a tool to placate the prisoners through sexual gratification. (Operah, 2012) V-coding is a much more extreme and dangerous example of how transfeminine people are pushed into objectifying sex work by societal function and gendered performance acts from outsiders, in the case of V-coding the transfeminine literally becomes an object to be used by society as a tool to sexually gratify prisoners because of their femininity.
Transfeminine people are used by societies in such a manner due to their infertility, as they are unable to participate in the primary function of the woman under a patriarchal society (Bhatt, 2023). This inability to perform the ultimate feminine labour of childbirth means that the transfeminine individual is societally forced into a position of performing the secondary function of women under patriarchy, sexual gratification of man. Trans women are pushed out of the standard labour force and into that of a feminised labour that they can participate in.
Furthermore transfeminine labour is performed under coercive forces; for the transfeminine this coercion is one where the material consequences are incredibly dire, often leading to her losing entire support networks and much of the material gain that comes from being in community. In her 2015 essay for The New Enquiry Hot Allostatic Load, game developer and trans woman Porpentine describes the methods that this exclusion from progressive spaces from affects the transfeminine subject. This essay deconstructs how as a trans woman Porpentine had to walk a narrow tightrope of acceptability within progressive (and therefore feminist) spaces. Within the essay Porpentine describes the imbalance between the expectations of labour expected of the transfeminine subject and the coercive forces that plague the transfeminine subject.
For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.
I was one of these people.”
(Porpentine, 2015)
The coercive forces that Porpentine describes directly correlate to the disproportionate material reality that transfeminine people live under. A transfeminine individual is drastically more likely to be murdered (Lee et.al, 2018). Transfeminine individuals are also more likely to be paid less for their labour (Schlit \& Wisall 2008), experience homelessness (Lee et.al, 2018), and as previously mentioned sex work (Lee et.al, 2018). It is these depressed material conditions that inform the ways in which the transfeminine subject is forced into a situation where her labour is exploited by others.
By observing the cases of transfeminine gendered performance acts, transfeminine labour, as well as the material realities of the transfeminine subject. we can see that they are not gendered as “man”, rather they are gendered and enact the gendered role of an othered gender, one that aligns itself with other genders that make themselves unavailable to the heteropatriarchal regime. The transfeminine is transformed into a dialectical subject, one that is subservient and othered for its own participation in femininity and in that dialectical othering the transfeminine subject is subject to feminised violence.
This othering I described is an othering much like the othering of women, though it does not turn the subject of the transfeminine into a woman, rather it turns them into a transfeminine subject, a subtype of woman who is further denigrated for their rejection of the heterosexual regime and inability to bear children. An analogous othering is that of the lesbian as outlined by Monique Wittig, lesbians are constructed outside of the typical relations between heterosexual man and heterosexual woman, that is to say that lesbian is a type of third gender within a heteropatriarchal society, yet still definitively an “other” following the dialectic that DeBeauvoir observed in The Second Sex.
Self actualisation through the body has been a part of feminism for a while, and despite the bio-essentialist centering of the womb the writing of the body can be a liberatory action that identifies the self without the master (man) in a masculinist society. This tradition has existed for decades, with works like that of Our Bodies Ourselves; a feminist writing on existing as a woman, the relationships women have with their bodies, and the ways individual women have been othered. Transfeminine writings on the body follow in this tradition, writing about a type of women’s body that is often sidelined and excluded from the idea of a female liberation, often because these bodies differ from those of the women who began their writings from their bodies.
A major work of transfeminine self actualisation through body writing is the zine Fucking Trans Women by Mira Bellwether. The zine aims to write about the factual reality of transfeminine individuals’ bodies, and how those physiological realities come into play when having sex. Bellwether wrote this zine with the hopes that it would inspire a sexual revolution amongst trans women, one that placed their needs as women in focus with their unique bodies being a centrepiece. Through describing the changes that happen to transfeminine people and the changes from cissexual sex Bellwether liberates transfeminine people from the sexual role of man that comes with the possession of a phallus. Bellwether describes in great detail sex acts like muffing, a fingering of the lingual canals for sexual pleasure, or how one treats a flaccid penis in a sexual manner, rather than treating it as a failure.
Fucking Trans Women is however not just about sex acts, in the zine Bellwether writes about her experiences as a trans woman, she writes about the reality of her transfeminine body, the shape of her hips and breasts, a feeling of love through acceptance, and the fact that she doesn’t hate her penis. Bellwether also discusses consent, and how important it is for the transfeminine subject to speak up for herself, to give herself a voice in situations where she often feels powerless. The zine empowers transfeminine people to give themselves a voice, and to love themselves for their transfeminine bodies.
“We should make a practice of enjoying both the hard and soft parts, and the fact that they frequently alternate. Muscles work in groups and some are always at rest, unflexed, soft. Our flesh is soft. It is beautiful soft. It is sexy soft. It is soft enough already and never not hard enough*.*
Soft is pretty, Soft is sect. Soft is beautiful.” (Bellwether, 2010)
As I touched on earlier in this essay the transfeminine is marred by her position as an individual who has been marked by a phallus, both in her internal understanding of her gender and that of the society around her. Fucking Trans Women counters the idea that the phallus marks her as intrinsically male by going into depth on the ways estrogen changes the physiological reality of the transfeminine body, and the internal euphoria that derives from those changes. Bellwether draws a clear distinction between the male phallus and the transfeminine phallus, the way they function separately, the differences in construction, and the difference in how one interacts with them.
Sex and sex acts are an important sphere to consider when understanding gendered relations, especially within transfeminine gendered relations. This is due to sex being an incredibly gendered sphere within patriarchal society. Sex is intrinsically linked to the gender performances we engage with in society, either through reification or subversion of these roles (Butler, 2006). Within sex there is an expectation that the “man” or rather the “phallused” penetrates and has power over the penetrated, whether or not the penetrated is phallused themselves. This power relation between penetration and masculinity has existed in societies for millennia with it being present in ancient Greece under the name of pederasty. Fucking Trans Women elevates the transfeminine phallus away from this patriarchal power structure into a state that is neither male nor female. In essence it places the transfeminine body into a borderland that sits between male and female.
When I refer to a borderland I do so in the way Gloria Anzaldúa does when describing her positionality as a chicana. Trans people inherently sit between two realms, that of the societal ideal of the woman and the societal ideal of the man, these two realms are enshrined by a regime that constructs an exclusive and non transversable binary, what Serano calls oppositional sexism. In existing within this realm trans people break down the borders between them, Fucking Trans Women is a work that exemplifies this bordered existence. The trans borderland experience is not a direct mirror to other borderland existences, but structurally it overlaps with many others. And much like how other borderland experiences Transfeminine existences being celebrated through a true celebration of their bodies; by following in the traditions of body feminists, allows transfeminine people embrace their positionality as an individual worthy of love on her own terms and within their own bodies.
Building a transfeminine self actualisation through embracing their existence as one outside that of the mainstream, including mainstream cis-centric feminism, the transfeminine subject moves herself forward as a synthesis of identity, one born within the borderlands, and one that can transgress and progress society. In much the same way the Combahee river collective hoped to introduce wider feminism to the thoughts and ideas of black feminism, a feminism that would uplift many more women that just those less melanated, the writings of transfeminists and transfeminine people aim to build a wider feminism that uplifts more folks that a cis-centric feminism. The construction of a self actualised transfeminine individual, one rooted in their own unique form of femininity/womanhood, is a liberatory act that constructs a personhood that isn’t built on oppression, but rather the commonality between all transfeminine people.
So far in this essay I have focused primarily on the experiences of transfeminine individuals over transmasculine individuals. This is unfortunately due to a lack of space needed to fully explore the ways in which transfeminine and transmasculine societal degendering and exclusion operate differently, as well as how misogyny and transmisogyny come to play within trans spaces between transmasculine and transfeminine individuals. However, despite these differences I can with confidence say that the experience of all trans people is one of an othering. The writings of Paul B. Preciado speaks to this othering; in the preface Can the Monster Speak Preciado writes about his experience with trans exclusion from academic spaces.
“…half the audience laughed and the other half shouted or demanded I leave the premises. One woman said, loudly enough that I could hear her from the rostrum: ‘We shouldn’t allow him to speak, he’s Hitler.”’ (Preciado, 2021)
Here we see a rejection of a trans individual, one who merely wants his voice to be heard amongst his peers. This is an experience that speaks to a universal rejection of the trans individual’s enumeration of their lives, especially when it comes to the transfeminine individual.
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For the transfeminine this rejection particularly affects her when they engage with feminist politics. She is rejected from theorising on the feminine experience and the transfeminine experience, excluded and ejected from women-only spaces on account of the marking of the penis i discussed earlier in this essay, this marking is one that is as discussed informed by a rigid construction of a binary sexism and the belief that crossing over the boundaries between the sexes is impossible (oppositional sexism). To this end the transfeminine is not seen as woman-enough to talk on her oppression as a woman; this exclusion and the following self identity generation that happens via the theorisation on the transfeminine subject by the transfeminine leads to the creation of an analytical framework that centres the feminism of the transfeminine subject, this theory is the fundamental framework of transfeminism.
Transfeminism comes into conflict with traditional feminism through the very function of its origins. This conflict is important to understand if one wants to observe and understand the schisms that exist between the two fields. As alluded to in the writings of this essay, I believe that this conflict is rooted in the reification of traditional sexism through oppositional sexism as outlined in Julia Serano’s writings. We see this in how the transfeminine subject is written about by the non-transfeminine. Janice Raymond is a central figure in understanding the ways transmisogyny and oppositional sexism is used to mark the transfeminine as an outsider through her proximity to the phallus, with her writings being a major influence in the writings of other academics on transfeminine people, such as anthropologist Serena Nanda who wrote on the transfeminine people of South Asia.
In framing this conflict between the transfeminist and feminist one can observe the writings of Nanda on the Hijra. Hijra are a community of individuals who are coercively assigned male at their birth, who then go on to engage with and be perceived through gendered performance acts associated with femininity. To many hijra there is no difference between them and transfeminine people of the west (Pucciariello 2021).To Nanda the hijra are an exoticised third gender, with her work on them being titled “Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India”. Nanda in her monograph constructs a differentiation between the transfeminine people and that of other women, whilst also recognising them as something other than man. This degendering and removal of womanhood from the hijra aligns itself with the marking of the transfeminine as permanently bephallused. In removing the proximity the hijra have to womanhood their oppression as a type of woman is denied.
Nanda draws heavily from the works of Janice Raymond, with her citing Raymond in her analysis of the hijra of South Asia. This Academic inspiration was noted by Julia Serano in Whipping girl, with her commenting on the influence that Raymond and by extension structural transmisogyny empowers the exclusion of transfeminine individuals. Many of the same mechanisms that we see at play in Nanda’s work on the hijra and non-western third genders are mirrored in the writings of Raymond on transgender people.
The central thesis of Janice Raymond’s writing within The Transsexual Empire is that the transfeminine transsexual is a destructive force that works to counter feminism and women’s rights. Raymond writes from a perspective that the transfeminine is not a woman, and must therefore be man. This perspective makes use of the structural view of the transfeminine that I brought forth by the attendees of Michfest as I had outlined earlier in this essay. To Raymond the transfeminine is irreversibly marked by their possession of a penis, and this marking makes them a danger to women as a whole.
This thesis is the core for how transfeminine individuals are ejected from feminism and feminist spaces, their own experiences with gendered existence as a type of woman is ignored. The transfeminine subject is instead masculinised, her female body denied, and she is monstered as a violent force that appropriates womanhood. As a monstered other the transfeminine subject is seen as a male interloper, one to be ejected from feminist and women’s spaces, despite the gendered violence she faces for being a type of woman. Raymond’s thesis on the transfeminine subject is persuasive throughout feminist and academic writings, affecting how they are discussed in spaces as can be seen in Nanda’s work..
This notion within feminist theory and feminist spaces that trans feminine people are in some way a different class than women, ones who are not affected by women’s issues such as misogyny, or even that trans feminine people are a danger to cis women places transfeminine people into a position where they must constantly be deferring their positionality as oppressed to gain access to feminism. This is part of what Serano describes at transfeminised debt within Whipping Girl, it is the act of placing transfeminine people in a state of perpetual “debt” for the “crime” of being marked by the phallus, the consequences of which are a situation where the transfeminine subject must perform an asymmetrical amount of labour and defer their experiences in favour of others who are not transfeminine. It is this mechanism that is central to the essay Hot Allostatic Load that I brought up in my characterization of the transfeminine subject and transfeminised labour. As outlined in Hot Allostatic Load the failure for the transfeminine subject to sufficiently defer leads to ejection from feminisms, this happens through a reification of the phallused marking and a reification of the supposed separation that separates the transfeminine from feminism.
The aforementioned separation removes the transfeminine subject from systems that are designed to support the feminised other in a patriarchal society, this includes feminist organising. Here is where we see the first stratifications of the conflicts between transfeminism and feminism, with the transfeminist having to defer her theories of her oppression in favour of analytical methodologies that lump her together with the masculine oppressor, lest she be excluded from feminism. The theories and writings of transfeminist thinkers and activists therefore follow in the footsteps of other subordinated women under feminism. Transfeminists therefore write their own feminism, one that critiques the structures inherent to cis feminism. In writing their own feminisms, transfeminine people follow in the footsteps of other marginalised women under feminism, carving out a space where one moves forward with a radical shift in mindset from that of cis feminism.
This mindset shares its roots with that of both black and lesbian feminisms, two branches that have critiques on the hegemonic power relations present within mainstream feminisms. Writing on the transfeminine experience develops a transfeminist understanding of the world, one where the transfeminine subject can find an identity within herself. Through this separation from mainstream feminism and hegemonic gender the transfeminine subject re-genders herself as an othered gender by developing her own transfeminine identity and theory. This re-gendering as an othered gender is not a re-gendering as a woman under patriarchy, rather it is a re-gendering as a transfeminine person under patriarchy, mirroring the gendering that lesbians experience as described by Monique Wittig in The Lesbian Body.
Wittig describes the lesbian as someone who is not a woman, rather she places the lesbian in their own gendered category as the lesbian experiences a gender dynamic that is, according to Wittig, materially different from that of the heterosexual woman under a patriarchy that enforces a heterosexual regime. Wittig Describes the lesbian as a gender that exists in rejection of the heterosexual regime as lesbianism de-centers male supremacy and masculinism, and in doing so separates itself from the commonly understood structure that is imparted upon womanhood (subservience to and consumption by man). Wittig takes care to not state that the lesbian is unaffected by misogyny and patriarchal power, rather her analysis of lesbian as a separate yet still othered gender aims to describe how lesbians have a separate relationship to the patriarchal and heterosexual society. In doing this Wittig positions the lesbian as an inhabitant of a borderland, one who is on neither shore of the society that engenders the separation between man and woman. The transfeminine’s position is one that mirrors the position of the lesbian. She is neither man nor woman under the construction of woman, rather she is her own gender, the transfeminine, and the transfeminine, and much like the lesbian she is also affected by the structures that are inherent to a patriarchal society.
For the feminist the considerations of the transfeminine as an othered gender is not an alien one, however as demonstrated by the routine separations and walls that get built between the experiences of the transfeminist and the experiences of the feminist through a further alienation from these inherent schisms within feminism. It is through the enshrinement that the transfeminine has a separate relationship to the wider power structures of patriarchy, that she is materially oppressed at a disproportionate rate, and that she is also routinely and systematically ejected from feminism as a structure the transfeminine subject is left needing to construct a theory that encompasses her relationship to power in society and aims to liberate herself. This happens through participating in the transfeminine self actualisation and theorisation. Through this theorisation the transfeminine constructs an analytical framework that is separated from the core feminisms that beget her relationships to wider power dynamics in societies.
This new theorisation encompasses a radical shift in the perception of the transfeminine self. Her writing on the self becomes a liberatory act, not just for herself but in cooperation with that of other genders than that of the woman under patriarchy. In writing on how the transfeminine is oppressed the transfeminine finds a perspective that is one step further along the line to liberation of all othered genders. In short the schism between feminism and transfeminism allows for a new avenue of examining the world.
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