It's often people that genuinely went through some horrible shit but now believe their suffering needs some kind of special protection
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
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There is a real psychology to when political alliance / umbrella terms like "trans" get applied to disparate groups ... cis women don't like when trans women are included as women because some trans women didn't grow up as women and thus didn't experience the same sexism, misogyny, and socialization that victimized them.
Some binary trans men and women who have medically transitioned don't like when enbies, esp. those who are able to largely live and conform with the cis gender norms, are lumped together with them as "trans" because they feel that label implies a particular lived experience, of having marked incongruence and dysphoria, yes, but also of going through a medical transition that makes them "freaks" in the eyes of others, targets of violence, and other such experiences that some enbies don't go through.
While I understand the psychology, it's obviously unfair and just wrong morally and factually. If anything I think enbies are liable to experience more discrimination and hate than binary trans people, esp. once the medical transition reaches a point where the trans person is able to conform to the expected gender norms. Enbies in both social and medical transition are often aiming to permanently occupy that in-between space that makes early transition so difficult for so many trans people (and for some people, extends many years if the fails to result in sufficient conformity to cis gender standards). Someone like Jacob Tobia is an enby signing up to live their entire life in the same way I looked and lived in the first 3 - 6 months of transition, a time when society saw me as a "man in a dress".
So the trans woman who feels upset you are "appropriating" her oppression is probably just hurting and jealous of the extent to which you can pass and live in conformity with your assigned gender, while ignorant all the actual incongruence you experience and the situation that puts you in as you take steps away from your assigned gender (socially and personally).
I'm really sorry - there can be a lot of rough edges to alliances between different groups.
The trans alliance only works when we recognize the shared struggle we have against the common enemy, rather than picking apart differences in how we are oppressed and targeting and attacking one another over those differences ... but the enemy is sometimes much harder to strike than our friends and allies, and in-fighting is unfortunately common.
You clearly don't deserve to be treated that way. 🫂
cis women don’t like when trans women are included as women because some trans women didn’t grow up as women and thus didn’t experience the same sexism, misogyny, and socialization that victimized them.
I've discussed this exact topic with my (cis woman) partner who struggles with this quite a bit, it's wild because she's very accepting and supportive of trans people, but struggles with feeling like the unique horrors of the Cis Woman Experience™ are sort-of being appropriated by trans women? it's a really weird thing to address, because I see where she's coming from, but I just feel that telling like 1% of women that they can't call themselves "women" without a qualifier is needlessly derisive.
I think enbies are liable to experience more discrimination and hate than binary trans people, esp. once the medical transition reaches a point where the trans person is able to conform to the expected gender norms. Enbies in both social and medical transition are often aiming to permanently occupy that in-between space that makes early transition so difficult for so many trans people
hey, it me! what's extra weird is that I feel almost pressured to fit into feminine gender norms to try to avoid being in the "please discriminate against me" class of people, but at the same time, I just... don't want to be there all the time? like wearing a dress and makeup while cleanshaven is a wonderful time when it's the gender vibe, but other times I just want to wear jeans and a tee and not bother shaving without being seen as a fruity man by 90% of people. honestly, thinking about it, the sheer effort I have to put in to not be read as a man while also not quite being read as a woman is, frankly, exhausting.
The big fallacy with 'can just conform to cis gender norm' is that it doesn't separate us from binary trans ppl at all. Everyone could technically deny their transness and go with cis normativism. But that's emotionally and psychologically damaging or even impossible. At the very least it's preferable to live as your true gender. I don't get why that should be different for binary and non binary trans people.
yes, this is a very important point - many non-binary people experience dysphoria, and even worse they don't even have the same options to treat or deal with that dysphoria that a binary trans person might have like medically transitioning. If you're a transfem enby who experiences dysphoria from female breasts but also feel dysphoria from a male body ... your options are much more limited than a binary trans woman who feels entirely at home in a female body.
Furthermore, there isn't the same social space or recognition of genders besides men and women, making it harder for enbies to be recognized as anything but their assigned gender even when they engage in gender queer expression. This is incredibly alienating in its own right, an outright denial of that person's gender.
While a binary trans person might just feel anyone who is not transitioning is categorically in a better situation (i.e. not oppressed and so on), I think it's obvious that this isn't the case for a lot of enbies, even if it's true that the ways oppression might work are different (e.g. by conforming and not transitioning, some enbies might be de facto safer), but like you said - this is true of binary trans people (both who remain closeted and don't transition, and those who transition and are able to pass as cis on the other side of their transition - both remain shielded by cis-passing privilege).
EDIT: I sorta failed to answer your question:
Everyone could technically deny their transness and go with cis normativism. ... I don’t get why that should be different for binary and non binary trans people.
I think in the mindset of the people who are having these strong feelings is that transitioning involves huge risk and cost that people who don't transition aren't experiencing.
You are right that trans people who stay in the closet are just like enbies who are cis-conforming in that both of them avoid the risks involved in transition. I don't think this view is necessarily wrong (i.e. transition does have risks that not transitioning doesn't have, and transitioning does lead to losing cis-conformity privilege).
The way this view gets applied is often wrong, I think because there is a psychology of feeling your risk and suffering as someone who transitioned makes you categorically different, and that the political categories are based on oppression reinforces this sense of difference.
It's also usually emotionally charged, it's not like we're talking about the distinction being used in a neutral fashion - OP was told they were told they weren't "really trans" as if the umbrella term only designates people who medically transition, and their entire experience as a trans person was called into question because they didn't conform to a particular way of being trans (of being binary, medically transitioning, etc.).
So you're right, they're not different, both binary and non-binary trans people can experience cis-conforming privileges by remaining closeted. The differences don't really seem to be about binary vs non-binary, since both can involve cis-conformity, both can involve dysphoria, and both can involve medical transition.
Maybe the hostile trans woman from OP's interaction was operating with generalizations like non-binary people not commonly experiencing dysphoria or not commonly medically transitioning, but these just are just generalizations, and they don't hold true for OP and plenty of other enbies.
I wish people would just describe the specific groups they're talking about (e.g. binary trans) rather than try to redefine and gatekeep a broader term (e.g. trans). And also be able to have even a crumb of empathy for others whose experience doesn't map 100% cleanly to their own.
yeah, realistically I think there is a bit of mainstream culture thinking terms like "trans" and "transgender" mostly means people who medically transition that influences this. I think that's where the hurt can sometimes come in when people who are perceived as not taking the same risks are using the same label.
It's sorta silly, really - the literal terms were created and perpetuated precisely to avoid this problem. And the people who were so insistent on gatekeeping made terms like "transsexual" so toxic that we no longer even feel we can use language to accurately describe "trans people who medically transition" as different than "trans people who don't medically transition". Now it's like "transgender" has just come to mean the same thing as "transsexual" for most people, and now non-binary people don't feel welcome with the term (despite the existence of the term literally being about inclusion of other gender non-conforming groups like drag queens, crossdressers, non-binary folks, etc.).
Are you my boyfriend? jk jk but as a non-binary transfem who gets misgendered every day and has a lot of male-coded attributes I can sorta relate. I think if you're medically transitioning that probably means your dysphoria is worse. If one of your male-coded qualities is stoicism, I recommend letting your sadness show more visibly and communicating more openly about how you feel and what you're thinking. That way, people are less likely to call your judgment into question.
Sadly people of all types/shapes/colors/upbringings/etc. have the capability to be shitty. I could guess at why that person decided to lash out in your general direction, but I don't know what they have gone through and honestly wouldn't want to take pot shots at them. I hope it was just a random one off and you don't need to interact with them on any kind of basis.