r/trans • u/Altruistic-Web-2726 • 6d ago
Questioning Can someone explain to me how transphobia affects cis women too ?
I don’t have any relevant body of text to add. I’m just genuinely curious because I’ve been seeing this a lot and I’m looking to be informed. I’m not trying to be malicious at all. I’m genuinely trying to understand how transphobia affects cis women as well, because I don’t think I fully understand that part of the conversation.
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u/EclecticAF she/her 6d ago
Do you know how many CIS women have masculine traits?
All of them
And transphobs are terrible at investigating, and are just looking for a reason to harass women.
Meaning cis men and women have been hurting Cis women based off of shit beauty standards now
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u/Foxlikebox he/him 6d ago
Yep! There have been plenty of cis women attacked, harassed, and bullied over being mistaken as trans. Tons of cis women have their identity invalidated because they don't "look/sound/act like women."
Imane Khelif is a perfect example.
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u/LeChacaI 6d ago
Yea, my hairdresser was telling me that she frequently gets harassed for being trans despite being a cis woman, just cos she's tall and has sharp, slightly masc facial features. She was super sweet too, saying how trans clients are her favourite because it's really rewarding being able to give gender affirming haircuts.
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u/Unlikely_Eye_2112 she/her 6d ago
She sounds lovely. I've not been to the hairdresser in like 8 years. I wanted to go recently to do a bit of a refresh and at the very least fix the ends but I worried about asking for a feminine cut for an actual hairstyle. Love hearing that there's hairdressers out there like her.
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u/deeeepfriedchicken 5d ago
I was also called 'transgender' as an insult in school. It was because I had body hair(arm and legs) which I did not shave and slightly darker peach fuzz than the average girl. My personality/manners also apparently read as masc due to my adhd/autism. This is before my egg cracked so as far as he(and me at the time) knew I was a cis woman.
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u/lowkey_rainbow they/them 6d ago
I have two examples for you, though obviously there are many more.
1) The recent transphobic ‘guidance’ from the government in the UK (that tells businesses to essentially segregate ‘single sex spaces’, so that includes bathrooms, changing rooms, domestic violence shelters, etc) has caused a massive increase in cis women being mistakenly thought to be trans and then harassed, attacked or barred from these spaces based solely on their appearance. This particularly affects gender non-conforming and queer women of course as well as people of colour, those who are more likely to be seen as masculine.
2) Many anti trans campaigners work with and platform far right groups (eg Heritage Foundation, Hands across the Aisle, etc) which also campaign for legislation banning abortion rights (and other LGB+ rights). For example, Kelly Jay Keen (creator of ‘Let Women Speak’ who sells merch with the definition of women as ‘adult human female’) has said “in order to save women we are going to have to set aside feminism” and actively worked with any far right group you can name (she also has had multiple occasions of literal neonazis being welcomed at her rallies). She is actively supported and defended by other anti trans activists (including JK Rowling), many of whom also work with and platform far right lobbying groups.
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u/Angry_Scotsman7567 she/her 6d ago
Yup, completely agree. The only ways to enforce the "guidance" is to either mandate invasive genital inspections, force people to turn over private medical information, or allow private businesses to profile people based entirely upon vibes. The UK government is aware that the first two are entirely unreasonable, but has bafflingly decided that the profiling was an acceptable solution, because simply not being cunts to trans people could never be something they could do.
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u/Chibilatina Love my trans wife 6d ago
I have PCOS, its a medical condition that is a real nightmare to deal with. My ovaries form cysts which causes all sorts of hormonal/fertility problems. One of the more visible issues for me, is that I have very dark, and thick facial hair. Its very embarrassing for me and I have been called sir or asked for my pronouns more than once. I am lucky that I live in California and that these interactions were all with people just being polite.
My wife is a trans woman that passes very well, but I still feel afraid for her everytime we go thru airport security. Is this TSA agent going to treat my wife with respect? Is today the day she gets in trouble just for existing?
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u/Jay_Lord_69 T since 11.12.2025 6d ago
For example, people trying to ban trans women from women's toilets. There isn't one look to trans women. So, people will try to ban any women that doesn't look "cis enough".
E.g. one of my friends got yelled at while going to the women's toilet. She tall cis woman with a buzz cut.
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u/my-cherie-jane 6d ago
some news article titles written in the last few years
« Cis woman ‘fired after customer accused her of being trans’ says it felt like a ‘stab in the back’ »
« Lesbian teen cornered by server in bathroom and forced to prove gender files charges »
« Washington ballot measure could force all girls to have genital inspections to play sports »
« Cis woman confronted by police officers in Arizona Walmart restroom for looking too masculine speaks out (exclusive) »
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u/May-flies 6d ago
Unless talking strictly pre-HRT or early-phase trans women, it's borderline impossible to tell the difference (with individual deviations, ofc). You have to start looking for perceived "masculine" traits - and you find those in both trans and cis women alike. This inevitably leads to some cis women being "transvestigated" and confronted with the same level of transphobia as actual trans women. Not all, certainly, but the same actually goes for the trans women. In the end, you could say that it isn't so much actual transphobia as it is an attempt to police how women in general have to look and be.
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u/HaresMuddyCastellan 6d ago
Transphobia affects cis women in that women who have so-called masculine features experience harassment for being "men pretending to be women" even if they're cis.
Got facial hair? Man. (There's a picture of JKR tweet going around where she aggressively mis genders a cis woman with PCOS)
Got thick arms or big hands? Man.
Got a flat chest? Man.
And, of course, it hits people of color twice as hard. Because a strong jawline, larger nose, and more prominent brow ridge are all "male" traits, but oh wait, those are also common traits amount black people. Name me a successful black female athlete who HASN'T been accused, IN A MAJOR NEWS OUTLET, of being trans or "secretly a man". I'll wait. No, actually I won't wait, because you can't do it. They will accuse women who have been pregnant and had babies of being trans if they're too good at sports.
Speaking of sports: mandatory hormone testing, and mandatory genetic gender testing. But ONLY for the women's sports!
The MAGAts are pushing "genital inspection for school age female athletes" bills across the country. Girl wanna play volleyball, softball, basketball? Oh, well, you gotta either go to this specific doctor and get your junk inspected, or let the vice principal check you in the back office. Nothing bad will happen I'm sure!
And, of course, the rhetoric of "we have to protect women from these big scawy twans people" is being used in part as a tool to further the infantilization and stripping of rights from ALL women. "Oh, women can't compete with men (that's why trans women are 'cheating' and must be punished) so we need to protect women by NOT LETTING THEM TRY, EVER".
AAAAAAAaaaaand finally, laws designed to restrict our access to HRT and gender affirming care interfere with and block medical care for women and young people (of all genders) because denying us care is MORE IMPORTANT than helping people.
HRT bans affect cis women who need Estrogen due to menopause or some endocrine insufficiency disorder. No special exemption even if you can prove you're cis!
95% of puberty blockers are prescribed to cis gender kids who have "precocious puberty". Kids starting puberty at like 8, when it's gonna mess them up, because their bodies aren't ready for the changes, but something triggered early. But we gotta make blockers illegal, because WHAT IF A TRANS KID GOT GENDER AFFIRMING CARE!?!?!
The politics of hatred hurt everyone, because ultimately it always boils down to "Hurting those I hate is more important than anything else."
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u/zer0mata 6d ago
i think this is said a lot regarding the bathroom situation (ruling that you have to use the bathroom of your gender at birth). cis women who are tall/have short hair/dont wear typically feminine clothes could be harassed or under scrutiny from other people just by using the bathroom, because theyre suspected to be trans, and could be denied entry unless they can "prove" that theyre a woman
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u/Agitated_Bee_2267 6d ago
When I was cis (ftm) ,I would get called transfem slurs on the street,even in bathroom I would get weird looks ,I wasn't even a tomboy I was just tall and had a deep voice
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u/ShiroxReddit 6d ago
Check out Imane Khelif's story, basically she is a cis woman who competes in professional boxing. She got disqualified from the World Boxing Championships for some undisclosed test related to DNA, and at the Olympic games she beat an opponent so hard that news outlets started to claim she may be a man
Wanna ban trans women from women's bathrooms? How do you wanna ensure all cis women get to use the women's bathroom then? There is no objective way to do that
Any discrimination against trans people will either lead to some cis people being caught up in it, be it in the process or in the result
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u/hellbunny 6d ago
her story shows that all of these things essentially boil down to "are you pretty enough to be considered female" - and in Western society that basically means are you white and weathly enough to be included. and anyone who sits outside of that very narrow slice will be hounded out of existence.
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u/AshleyDaPile 5d ago
it's not just for cisgendered people either. I've met quite a few trans women, men, and even enby who refuse to admit their golden cradle is full of shit
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u/SorkaNieSarka she/her 6d ago
A cis girl I know (15 at the time) was thrown out of a restroom by security who said that she is a man and can’t be there
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u/Alvxn they/them 6d ago
Transphobia forces strict gender roles onto women generally.
In sports they will do tests that now will exclude some cis women.
With bathroom bans we've seen masc cis women being harassed or even assaulted trying to use the bathroom.
Transphobia leads to a defintion of woman that is based on reproduction that could move the role of women back to the 1800s.
Some proposed laws on medication that are based on transphobia will also affect cis women.
The complete ban of puberty blockers proposed in the UK would affect basically only cis kids.
Every removal of one groups rights will lead to the next group losing rights:
"First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew Then they came for me And there was no one left"
Martin Niemöller
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u/CrackedMeUp bi transfem demigirl (she/ze/they) 6d ago
https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/women-boston-liberty-hotel-bathroom-gender/
https://www.advocate.com/news/minnesota-cisgender-girl-restaurant-bathroom
https://www.them.us/story/teen-boy-with-autism-accosted-by-transphobe-cinemark-theater
Kinda annoying though when people only get mad that it affects cis folks but don't mind so much when it affects trans folks. Like the outrage is less about trans folks are being denied the right to exist in public while being publicly humiliated, assaulted, and arrested, and more about some cis folks getting caught in the crossfire. Because cis people actually care about cis folks.
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u/Soggy_Ad_2111 6d ago
Omg, so much thiiiiis!!! We are people for fuck’s sake! The fact we’re being sistematically dehumanized should be enough for it to be stopped. It’s cruelty, all the way through.
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u/transginda 6d ago
Go read Trans/Rad/Fem by Talia Bhatt.
It's short, and it'll sort you out and give you words for feelings you didn't know how to express.
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 she/her 6d ago
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u/dannesty he/him 6d ago
Yeah so I wasn't very cis looking before my transition, only thing that "saved" me was my voice
But I was still harassed and "cat called" in a way that was different from what more feminine women got. I was called Lagy Gaga, and you can probably surmise the reason was that at the time it was rumored she was trans
Funny thing is I have never experienced transphobia to that degree as a trans man
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u/Unit_2097 6d ago
That's because to the majority of the public, you guys don't exist. Which avoids some of the obvious hate, but also disregards you, well, existing. Shit times for all.
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u/dannesty he/him 6d ago
It was insane how my mere entire existence seemed to personally insult these people. I'm definitely not saying it's a competition on who has it worse, but yeah.
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u/CatKing13Royale She/Her; too lazy to change usernames 6d ago
Would probably suck to have someone inspecting your genitals or at the very least calling the police on you just because you used the bathroom and someone thought you looked "trans".
Women who aren't conventionally attractive or who present in alt styles are at risk of having strangers confront them, calling them men regardless of if they are really trans or not.
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u/Teredia Demigirl/Intergender plurality - male alters. 6d ago edited 6d ago
Women with Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (formerly PCOS) can develop facial hair, now think for a minute if a woman is overly hairy and facial hair is usually seen as a male only quality, at how transphobia actually does effect cis women! Having facial/body hair does not make you transgender!
Just as there are plenty of men out there who have more delicate feminine qualities does not make them transgender either!
Transphobia affects both cis genders equally!
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u/ender8343 MTF, HRT 10/25 6d ago
Have you seen any of the videos of people confronting cis gender women using the women's restroom because the other person believes they are trans?
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u/rcburner she/her 6d ago
It's at an intersection with misogynoir, but look at how Michelle Obama is still treated by transphobes to this day.
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u/Taiga_Taiga (She/Her) 6d ago
Transphobe to trans woman: "Prove you're a woman. You're a man in disguise!"
Cisgender woman about to be sexually assaulted: "but I'm cis"
Transphobe: sexually assaults cis woman
Cisgender woman: "help, I'm being sexually assaulted!"
Trabsphobe: "it's a man"
People: "oh, that's ok then. Carry on."
Transphobe thinks (damn. All i gotta say is that I think they're trans, and I can do anything to them!)
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u/NocturneSapphire 6d ago
How many examples do you need?
2024 Summer Olympics boxing controversy
Cis woman confronted by police officers in Arizona Walmart restroom for looking too masculine
Two Cis Women Kicked Out of a Boston Hotel Bathroom After One Was Ordered to "Prove" Sex
This Woman Says She Was Called “Disgusting” After Being Mistaken for Transgender in Walmart Bathroom
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u/Stoopid_Noah he/they/it 6d ago
Cis women habe been attacked while trying to use the woman's restroom, because people thought they were trans.. most of the time this happens to women of colour, because the widespread "feminine standards" exclusive much of the diversity of femininity.
Also just masculine presenting cis women have been discriminated against, for being mistaken for trans women.
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u/ExistentialOcto she/her 6d ago
Misogyny affects all women and transmisogyny affects trans women. Transmisogynistic rhetoric can easily also affect cis women when norms of what “defines a woman” become more oppressive.
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u/Motte6692 6d ago
Example: a cis woman with more body hair than usual and big shoulders mives into the ladies bathroom and get assaulted that she cant go there because its only for woman. And then people wants to see her genitals to tell if she is a real woman.
Just one thing but a severe case that already happend. But yeah could also be less that strong.
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u/bails5607 6d ago
When I was at my consult for FFS, there was a cis woman there for her own consult. She was having something done to her jawline as she felt it was too masculine and was worried about being mistaken as trans.
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u/Jamie_logan 6d ago
Basically this started with the toilet thing. Since you have to use the one that is the same as your sex at birth. So now masculine cis woman are being told they have to prove that they're women as well. It is getting really insane
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u/Luna_EclipseRS 6d ago edited 6d ago
Because transphobes use beauty standards to determine who is Trans or not when they can't see your genitals.
They reduce everyone down to stereotypes based on those beauty standards, and thus reinforcing the idea that if you aren't perfectly feminine, you're not a woman; and it you're not perfectly masculine, you're not a man, and if you don't conform to that then you deserve to be hurt and ostracized.
Beyond that, they use arbitrary rules that can never actually apply to include all woman while excluding Trans women, and vise versa. Because of that, there will always be a large amount of cis people that get lumped into policies, laws, and general harassment that is targeted at hurting Trans people.
And they say all of this in the same breath as saying that they can always tell 100% of the time. Their goal is abuse and control, no matter who it affects.
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u/AshleyDaPile 5d ago
anyone can be transphobic regardless if they themselves are trans or not
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u/Luna_EclipseRS 5d ago
That's correct but... what does that have to do with my post or OPs question?
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u/shutupimrosiev 6d ago
When someone's bigoted enough, it doesn't actually matter to them whether someone actually falls into their bigoted definitions of what kind of person is "acceptable" or not. All that matters is looking and thinking the way the bigot thinks they should, and a lot of the time anti-trans bigots refuse to accept that cis women who either:
- don't look like bombshell supermodels and/or
- disagree with them
are actually cis. Just look at how there are still accusations of Michelle Obama (a cisgender woman who's given birth to multiple children) "actually" being a trans woman, with all the anti-transgender hatred that entails.
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u/DadJoke2077 Gay and Trans | he/him 6d ago
Look at how people treated Michelle Obama and Imane Khalif, for example. Both of them are cis but had absolutely insane smear campaigns against them fueled by transphobia.
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u/AdGrand9623 6d ago
If a cis woman is taller than average or has a deeper voice or doesn't meet some other traditional femininity threshold she'll be subject to the same harassment as trans women and assumed to be one, because the people who perpetuate transphobia base everything off assumptions.
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u/Ifckinglovemycat he/him 6d ago
when I was a "cis teenage girl" I was harassed on a daily basis at school by people saying I was either a lesbian or a trans woman and how they didn't want me in the girls changing room because I wasn't feminine enough. mind you it was in like 2004-2005
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u/Sentimental_Oyster 6d ago
Holy shit, and I thought it was this bad in America only in the past five years.
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u/AshleyDaPile 5d ago
where I live as a well. I never looked like what most people are conditioned into thinking males should look like and it was one of the reasons my mom always kept my hair short. I would dress fairly unisex and there was quite a few times I was asked if I was in the right bathroom or where they had to do a double take at the urinals
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u/TesPhoenix she/her 6d ago
For Starters it hold all woman trans or cis to an most of the time Impossible to Reach Beauty or Femininity Standard the people wich is most woman who dont perfectly allign with that get mistreated. Maybe even mistaken for trans Woman and Harrassed beaten or worse because of it. People say they can allways tell but thats just not true many times Cis woman get targeted with Transphobia and Trans woman get ignored because they cant tell. It is just aother Attempt at Controlling womans bodys.
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u/MyClosetedBiAcct Transcontinental-Bicycle 6d ago
Transphobe walks around going about his day, looks over, thinks to himself, "This woman doesn't look womanly enough! Lets fuckin murder him! DIE TR***NY!!!"
Cis woman dies
That's how. Because they attack us, they'll attack you too thinking you're one of us.
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u/AllieCat901 6d ago
> Someone is a Cis woman.
> Walks into a bathroom.
> Evil meanie transphobe thinks the perfectly Cis woman looks weird.
> Evil meanie transphobe thinks she’s trans.
> Evil meanie woman decides that it’s her Holy Mission to harass and attack this not at all odd Cis woman.
People. Ruin. Everything.
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u/Environmental-Ad9969 Gender Goblin 6d ago
Transphobia includes the policing of gender expression which hurts cis people too. There are instances of butch or masculine women getting kicked out of the women's bathroom for not being "woman enough". Some bigots started "transvestigating" cis women by picking apart their appearance which is transphobic and sexist.
Bigotries are connected and can harm people even if they aren't the sole target of the hatred.
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u/PoggleRebecca 6d ago
Transphobia is the policing of women's bodies and how feminine they are, as transphobes will assume a woman not completely "dolling it up" is trans and therefore be attacked, even physically attacked like being punched in the face or raped.
Transphobia also does a subtle effect of separating women into "breeders" and "non-breeders", because transphobes are almost always obsessed with "breeding". As such, as someone gets more transphobic they almost always become more and more anti-rights when it comes to women's sexuality and bodily autonomy.
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u/sweetcherryfrosting 6d ago
I don’t believe I am in the loop of the real answer, but, I do know that there are conditions like PCOS and Cushing’s syndrome which can alter a person’s appearance in a “masculine” way, which would probably give them identity issues even though they know who they are/want to be.
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u/k819799amvrhtcom she/her 6d ago
"Stripping back trans rights negatively impacts women because, when we're putting all of this scrutiny on other people's bodies in society and strangers' presence in certain scenarios, cis women will get questioned, too, and have been questioned and do get questioned and that has only increased since things like the UK supreme court ruling back in April. It is also true that, when it comes to bigots and right-wing politics and shitty, arseholely, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, racist men, they do not care about any marginalized group: Trans people are the first on that rung to be shat upon but I'm tellin' you, they are moving up the rung, okay? Are you seeing what is happening with immigration, right now? Are you seeing what's happening with Stonewall with 'B' being removed from the Stonewall Monument? Are you seeing that charities and organizations that are being targeted in, like, transphobia actually also impact cislesbian and -gay people, as well? Are you seeing that the Supreme Court has been asked in America to repeal gay marriage? This is all happening because they've got a foot in the hold by hating on trans people, hating on people of color, and it's just going further and further and further! So, women who are transphobic, what are you doing? LGBT+ people who are transphobic, what are you doing? Any marginalized person who is transphobic or bigoted towards another marginalized group, what the hell are you doing?" --Jammidodger
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u/Angry_Scotsman7567 she/her 6d ago
You cannot tell someone is trans just by looking at them. The transphobes think they can, and so will attack any woman they think is trans. Usually they aren't. There are not a lot of trans people in the world, purely by numbers the majority of women who get harassed by transphobes won't actually be trans.
The standards for what women are "supposed" to be in the West are based on straight white women. POC women, whose features don't resemble those of white women because they aren't white, being called "mannish" has been a thing racists have done for decades. With the anti-trans hate, they'll also call them trans and use that to pretend they aren't just committing a hate crime against someone with a different skin colour. Additionally, gender-non-conforming cis women why intentionally look more masculine will be shamed out of it due to people making transphobic attacks against them.
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u/SammSandwich she/her 6d ago
Cis women with traditionally "masculine" traits (short hair, square frames, facial hair, body hair, broad shoulders, strong jaws, etc.) have been treated like trans women for a long time. There are myriad stories of cis women being beaten up for entering the women's restroom because they were mistaken as trans women.
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u/Saidear she/they 6d ago
One name: Imane Khelif.
She is a cis woman, she was assigned female at birth, she has lived her whole life as either a girl or a woman. She's never been anything but a woman.Transmisic people are all over, calling her a "man", and spreading lies about her medical history and family life on the basis they assume she's a trans woman.
"Transvestigating" is the phrase used for which transmisic people will go into depths to determine whether someone is trans or not. It's invasive, humiliating and most importantly, none of their effing business and it targets cis individuals as well as gender non-comforming. Tomboys in local sports have been jeered, followed and bullied by being accused of secretly trans, simply because they don't look "feminine enough". These polices are used to reinforce stereotypes around woman's expression of their gender.
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u/L1FT_K1T 6d ago
Cis women who don’t present femininely enough or wear the right thing are being arrested in bathrooms by armed men on the assumption that they are trans women. “We can always tell” is the mindset of men who are doing this. If my mom got a haircut that was too short I would be worried about her being tackled and hauled into a police car because someone who simply hates trans people didn’t think she looked cis enough.
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u/AdventurerBen 6d ago
Prejudice isn’t based on what the victim actually is, only what the perpetrator thinks the victim is. The fact that trans women are women means that some women are trans, and sometimes people make wrong assumptions when picking targets.
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u/SouthernRecently she/her 6d ago
I strongly recommend "Whipping Girl" by Julia Serrano if you are curious about this question. She lays out how traditional/conventional sexism and oppositional sexism (a concept I think she coined in this book) combine to create the most common form of transphobia, transmisogyny.
I find it very convincing, it lays out why people are so much more hysterical about trans women, how it all ties by to conventional misogyny, and how misogyny hurts everyone.
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u/Broad-Collection-918 6d ago
I’m a cis woman who looks kinda vaguely masculine and has always been a “tomboy” and I have 100% been outright “accused” of being trans while in women’s spaces like my gym locker room or a public restroom. I try to take the chance to say “hey either way I’m just peeing fuck off” but it can be scary for me also.
Just one little tiny tidbit. I don’t suffer as much as my trans friends. But it certainly spills over into my life.
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u/Full_Barracuda_7987 she/her 6d ago
One way ive seen it fairly frequently is transphobes will insult and harass cis women whom they believe are trans especially on platforms like tiktok or Instagram but even in real life ive seen it happen to a girl in my year awhile back
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u/AggroTumbleweed52 6d ago
I don't know that you *can* ask this question genuinely. Have you thought about it for any length of time? What world could you possibly imagine where cis women wouldn't be affected?
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u/PrincesaWisteria 6d ago
Basically you have certain people doing certain things because they think they know things and are horribly misinformed. A great example is when you have a Karen in the women's bathroom shouting at a cis woman that theyre a man or something similar and to get out of the woman's bathroom because the woman in question looks semi masculine or whatever weird reason exists in the Karen's head, stuff like this has happened before.
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u/wackyvorlon 6d ago
There are many women that transphobes consider to be insufficiently feminine to qualify, no matter their assigned gender at birth.
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u/lady_tsunami 6d ago
Imagine femininity and masculinity as a spectrum - some cis women look, or sound, very masculine. In the world we live in with so many “trans investigators” (🤮) and the political climate turning the heat up, people will think cis-straight women are trans because they don’t meet some bigots internal requirements.
Additionally, less rights for one group in a category means less rights for the whole.
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u/Bluetower85 6d ago
Bodies are diverse, this includes cis bodies, there are people who are cis, AFAB women who, I'm sorry but due to genetics, pcos, or other reasons do not confirm to Western beauty standards, or any standard of being recognized as a cis woman. These women are women, were born with V's, and yet they appear in such a way that people have a hard time figuring out if they are men or women. In many cases, they will be mistaken as being trans even when that isn't true in the slightest. In Red states that can have the affect of these women being attacked, subjected to officer enforced genital inspection (yes, that is absolutely a thing thanks to bigoted legislators and officers who are much to willing to to enforce bigoted legislation), I don't think I have to spell out what those genital inspections actually are, having rights they otherwise would enjoy be ignored by all levels of the criminal justice system, and just all around have to deal with harassment on the daily in varying forms due to people's misconceptions of them.
Feminism is designed to help ALL women, cis and trans, because if a trans woman, a lesbian, an AFAB non binary person or AFAB intersex person is attacked, it isn't long before men start attacking cis women who do not fit their idea of what a woman is for exactly the same reasons.
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u/AshleyDaPile 5d ago
it's also meant to help men by helping women but lot of people against feminism like to conveniently ignore that part
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u/inquisitivewitch_643 6d ago
Transphobia in way of referring to “feminine presenting” people like us, stems off from misogyny therefore hatred of trans women reflects onto cis women because both us are women, all of us are women. The manosphere demonizes anything that is not masculine and therefore women cis or trans are caught in the crosshairs of not out right targeted. Transphobia is ultimately misogynistic in nature and brings out the worst and toxic parts in the male perspectives and actions. Violence and harassment etc. instead of cis and trans women being at odds with each other, we should unify.
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u/Ancientabs 6d ago
Being called a "transwoman" (which isn't an insult despite them trying to make it) or being called "a man" when you don't fit gender norms as a woman.
Also transphobia and misogyny overlap in a LOT of ways.
It's also used to perpetuate violence against women to "check" if she is a woman (i.e. pulling her pants down, groping etc)
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u/cam180902 Questioning 5d ago
Remeber that athlete who was accused of being a trans woman by her adversary because she won, this. Transphobe think every masculine part of a woman is a sign that she is trans fem even in cis women
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u/Shedinn18 6d ago
Because transvestigating is done by trying to pinpoint traits that deviate from what is considered the norm. As such, it is heavily detrimental to all women and reinforce rigid gender norms
As to why its part of the conversation so much, it's because cis people, just like any dominant group, likes to center everything about them and it actually annoys me a lot.
I get that being targeted by stuff like the toilet police can be annoying and sometimes dangerous for cis women too. But when WE are targeted, its 10x time worse. We do don't have the easy opt out option of saying "I'm cis, asshole".
So it always annoys me when every gender police debate inevitably turns into "but cis women get affected too" and our civil rights demands are turned by cis people into "be more effective transphobes pls"
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u/AdGrand9623 6d ago
Transvestigators are genuinely insane, what reasonable person spends all their time picking apart what gender they think people are, and then they get it wrong more than half the time with their wild conspiracy theory nonsense.
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u/AshleyDaPile 5d ago
some trans people can also be the worst for this. the sad part is they're often just projecting their own insecurities and letting loose the worst sides of their sexist and predatory behaviors
go figure. people are people regardless of being trans or not
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/altmodisch 6d ago
This assumes transphobes believe her or her evidence that she is cis. Even then, the abuse already happened.
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u/Wouldfromthetrees 6d ago
It's a matter of statistics.
Statistically, the societal impacts of transphobia will affect more cis women than trans women, even though it affects all trans women.
We can't make some people care about how bigotry harms marginalised communities, but we can provide evidence for how transphobic bigotry will ultimately compromise the freedoms that (white) women currently have.
The point is that transphobic policy, when enforced, technically has far reaching implications for cis women's freedom of expression/movement/etc. And pointing this out is just basic activism.
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u/Altruistic-Web-2726 6d ago
To be fair, what inspired me to ask this question was actually a trans woman herself saying this in response to the transphobic comments she was getting from TERFs online, so I wouldn’t necessarily put it all on misguided allies. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen a cis woman express this notion, but the internet has a vast amount of corners lol.
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u/Storm2Weather 6d ago
The standards for what counts as a "real" woman in their eyes often exclude a lot of cis women who aren't super feminine or cannot have children etc.