18-3-2026
Musings
Transmisogyny as a specific force of oppression puts trans women under the microscope even as trans women also experience erasure. The particular focus on trans women "invading" women's sports while other groups are shuffled around as to whether they're supposed to compete in the women's category or the men's category is a clear example of how transmisogyny is distinct from "general" transphobia, and is the product of the intersection of transhood and womanhood. While others can be pulled into and out of the category of woman at will (intersex women, trans men, AFAB nonbinary folk), trans women are marked as eternal outsiders, forever alienated from womanhood, even as they are treated to violence and ridicule for failing to be men.
The inclusion of trans men on testosterone - specifically testosterone - into the World Rugby Association's category for men does not spell out acceptance of trans men; the website calls cisgender men "men," no prefix "cisgender" indicating who they really think of as a man. This is just a rationalization of the patriarchy at work, the same way that USA fencing throwing trans men into the men's category along with nonbinary and intersex folk is a rationalization by the patriarchy. Woman as a patriarchal constructed category demands that she be immutably weaker than man, that her sex/gender be extremely limited in definition, that she exist to perform feminized labor (including, especially, producing children). Degendering an intersex woman by placing her in the men's category acts to reject her as a failed woman. Requiring a trans man to be on testosterone specifically "for his own safety" so that he may compete in the men's category is a reifying of testosterone as the divine hormone that, in part, gives men their alleged divine-like unstoppable physical advantages over women.
Meanwhile, we see transmisogyny at play when the World Rugby Association decries that even 12 months suppression of testosterone does not "remove" the effects of male puberty from trans women -- this doesn't even begin to account for how many years someone may have been on estrogen (and how their health risks become similar to that of cis women), or how there are some girls who never went through this male puberty at all, or how human bodies are so diverse that there are cis women who are taller, bigger, and stronger than cis men -- but those are a product of reducing the trans woman to a singular experience, a specific image. The heart of the matter is the belief that nothing can erase the mark of testosterone from one's body, and that having been assigned to be a man one will always carry the mark of unilateral physical advantage. One is not allowed to "give up" or "leave" manhood, even as one is ousted for daring to gravitate towards womanhood.
An example of the erasure of trans women may be found in treating historical groups of trans women as "third genders," with the idea that "someone who was born male but dresses, acts, and asserts herself as female" must have this "maleness" as a core part of herself/her gender, when in reality she is just some woman.
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People oversimplify the realities of detransition. If someone detransitions and now asserts themself as a woman, for example, how a conservative society treats them will depend entirely on how well that person is able to alter themself into the shape of a cishet woman. All people who take on the label "woman" are pushed towards contorting themselves to fit a certain image - just think of all the effort put into "natural-looking" makeup, or how women are expected to be hairless, when all humans produce body hair. Women are expected to be an idea, not a person. For someone who is detrans and is now attempting to fit back into this role of "(cishet) woman" -- their ability to perform this is entirely dependent on their ability to "correct" their "deformities." If someone has been on HRT for years, if someone has gotten top surgery or bottom surgery, or a hysterectomy -- all of these factors impact whether or not someone is going to be able to perfectly fit back into this role. Many cishet women are left by their cishet male partners when they become ill; when cishet women undergo masectomies due to cancer, a procedure done to prevent them from literally dying, their cishet male partners may leave them. "Save the boobs" was the slogan of one of the biggest breast cancer foundations back in the day; not "save lives," but "save the boobs," as if the woman's worth is tied to her breast tissue. The idea of desiring a double masectomy to prevent developing a cancer you know you are at risk at is seen as absurd, and is seen as one choosing to become undesirable, and thus the implication that to be undesirable is a worse fate than death. So what would happen to someone with top surgery scars? What would happen to someone with a hysterectomy, who cannot bear a cishet man children to continue his bloodline?
The fact of the matter is, is that one who has medically transitioned, and has now detransitioned (for whatever reason) to womanhood, will likely not be a tradwife in the conservative society. Any woman can be "put on the market," as in, seen as a piece of flesh who contributes labor and sex, even if said woman cannot be made into a wife and mother. A "utilitarian" society might ensure that all remaining "wombs" are used, but this is not a utilitarian society. This is a patriarchy, dependent on the desires of men, and men want their women to look a certain way -- with all effort being the woman's own. Whether or not you are wife material depends not solely on your womb, but whether you fit the picture of desire.
You will not be helped to reconstruct this ideal, if you are to live as a detrans woman. You will be expected to "correct" these "mistakes" yourself -- raise your own money for your own breast reconstruction. Though not all "mistakes" can be "corrected" -- there is no uterus transplant currently. As many people who have lived as trans are usually severely economically disadvantaged, and as detransitioning does not immediately award you wealth, it is likely than anyone who has detransitioned will not have the funds to pay out of pocket for any medical care they may need to alter their body, whether that be to 'pass' or for personal comfort or both. Furthermore, once again taking the example of the detrans woman, I imagine that she would have to live a sort of "stealth" life if she wants to, say, marry a man; in a conservative society, I do not think many men would react well to learning their bride-to-be was an "ex-transsexual," as men tend to judge people they view as women for an awful lot of things.
In the case of someone who detransitions to live as a man -- I think most of the right wing detrans representation is detrans women, not men, and I think that is because of how a "man" labelled as "effeminate" is perceived in the patriarchy. To acknowledge these detrans men, who for a time, committed the "ultimate shame" by crossing over into womanhood, living as women, and then coming back -- I think the only case I have seen of this in the broader media was a tiktoker who claimed he was doing a "social experiment," and he was afforded some amount of respect by conservative outlets as he was interviewed by them, presumably because he was able to shift the "embarrassment" of it all onto the left, and portray his actions as making a mockery of the left. But in someone's personal life -- I imagine that the experience overlaps with that of the person who lives as a detrans woman, with the added anxiety of being targeted as the "lesser man" amongst other men, and having to deal with violence-as-punishment for this.
Obviously, there is a difference between someone who detransitions because they are cis and someone who detransitions while trans -- as in, the cis person typically identifies as their assigned gender, and the trans person is once again having to go into the closet, obviously a deeply painful experience motivated more by external factors such as societal/familial pressure or need to secure financial stability, rather than for the sake of one's own identity. But in both cases, living as detrans will be navigating an experience that is not entirely like that of being a cisgender person who has never transitioned/who has never been presumed to be trans/gender-deviant at any point.
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As the abuser will use every possible form of rhetoric and logic available to them and twist it in order to further subjugate the abused, so will the transphobic society against the trans person. Medical gatekeeping creates infighting; it breeds the idea that there are some people who are truly trans, while all others are 'fakers,' and that the threat to the "true transgender" is the faker, instead of the gatekeeping system -- that if one "proves" they are trans enough, they will be granted access to the care they need to exist as human beings. At the same time seems to rise a seemingly contradicting undercurrent -- the idea that you can still be "valid" without seeking medical care at all...and that perhaps you should just learn to be content with this, even if you may desire otherwise.
Trans people come in many forms. Some people do not require any medical transition. All people are "valid," in the sense that the identity that they assert is real, because they have the final say on who they are. But one should neither be pressured into conforming to the standards of a medical gatekeeper, nor pressured into believing that if they could just try hard enough and expand their brain "wide enough," then they can logic themself out of desiring medical transition. Both the hyper-medicalized standard and the "expand your mind lest you be some sort of moral failure" mindset keep trans people down; because to convince someone that they should not transition is to keep a trans person down.
Today I Read
Detrans Women v. Trans Men, Or: The Sanity Of Sex Change