this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Huh. I didn't know trans-men were also on the list. (Not objecting, just news to me.)
Trans men are men and I believe the trans-affirming position is to exclude them, but if you've read Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues you already know it can be quite complicated - so we let trans men decide whether they belong in a womens-only community.
Some trans men have a butch lesbian identity before they transition that they continue to have a connection to, and it can be hard for some trans men to lose their connection to a community of women. Some trans men are not passing and continue to move through the world perceived as a woman despite having a gender identity that makes them a man.
Either way, I have understood the trans rule as allowing any trans individuals decide whether they feel they belong here or not. My understanding might be wrong, or we might need to revise the rule or my understanding of it.
Oh, I'm all for including them. I was just surprised, no worries!
And yes, if you're a trans man who doesn't (yet?) pass, it would be cruel to be forced out of connections without commensurate connections being formed on the other side of the transition.
Wanting to be included in spaces that align with one's gender identity doesn't have anything to do with passing though.
And while I can't speak for all of us, being accepted in opposite-gender spaces because we don't pass is no consolation prize. To the contrary, telling a trans woman, "You should find men's spaces to be accepted in until you pass," or vice versa, is what's actually cruel.
I … think that's what I actually said?
Yes. Yes it is. I'm saying that if you're in transition to manhood, being told "you can't hang with us anymore because you're of the icky gender" from previous friends and allies is cruel.
I had another comment but I deleted it. It just sounds like you don't want anyone to feel alone during the difficult process of transition, from a harm reduction standpoint, and that's admirable.
I think I was just thrown by your wording about passing and then misinterpreted you, but I see what you mean. I'm a person who would rather be alone than be in men-only social spaces, but that's not everyone, and I'm glad that this womens' community can be a place of belonging for transmascs on their journies who choose to participate here.
yea, admittedly I don't see transfems wanting to hang around mens-only spaces the same way some trans men have trouble moving on from a butch lesbian identity, for example.
The closest I could think of is the way some transfems end up stuck in femboy or sissy cultures and they have trouble moving on from that even when they're dysphoric and suffering for it, but I still think that's a different experience.
That said, I don't know if you've seen Will & Harper (incidentally I hated this film and thought it did a terrible job at both trans representation and modeling cis allyship), but the film is about Harper, a woman who transitioned in her 60s, and she goes on a roadtrip with her friend Will Ferrell.
Part of the film is about Harper attempting to recreate the experiences she had as a man traveling freely through small towns and going to sketchy bars, and that felt a bit like the analogous experience to the trans man who feels connection to women community. Harper longed for a kind of belonging to a particular space that was largely male-coded ... not unlike the way Sylvia Plath, a cis woman, yearned for that nomadic adventurous freedom, "to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night", which was not accessible to her as a woman.