Stop Stealing Our Plight: The Mislabeling of Misogynoir as "Transphobia"

WHAT IS MISOGYNOIR? 

Misogynoir is the hatred of Black females, our bodies, and what our female bodies can do. One must be female and of African descent to experience misogynoir. There are no exceptions. Black trans women do not and cannot experience misogynoir because they are genetically male. In my opinion, a big factor in the misogynoir enacted against Black women is due to the fact that we biologically produce Black males, and other races of men do not like how Black men make them feel in terms of sexuality. Sexual power is a huge part of the male identity, and this yearning for sexual power also applies to trans women who trans activists insist on force-teaming with Black women. NonBlack men will take their anger out on Black women because of the jealousy they feel about Black men’s perceived sexual power. They do not behave this way towards Black men because 1. Men respect other males, and 2. Due to stereotypes about Black men’s physical strength. They do not behave this way towards Black women because they secretly think we are men. Once again, if that were the case, we would see them attacking actual Black men as well. They are acting this way towards us because taking anger out on women, the physically weaker sex, has been a common pastime for men of all demographcis. This type of behavior is no different than soldiers sexually assaulting women from the opposing side in times of war.  

A man calling a woman “manly” because he does not find her attractive, or in Michelle Obama’s case, to “get back” at her husband is not transphobia. American conservatives who say such things do not actually believe Michelle Obama is a man. Like I said earlier, I need Black women to comprehend that many nonBlack men, but specifically American white men, hate us due to stereotypes about Black men’s sexuality, and because Black men make them feel insecure in that specific department, they take their anger out on us because they know we are female and therefore biologically weaker than them. That is how the intersection of racism and misogyny functions. That is what we are witnessing with Michelle Obama. That is how misogynoir presents itself. It is a very complex thing. There is an entire conspiracy theory online about how Jewish people secretly put Obama in place as president to “cuck” the “superior” American white man. To make Michelle Obama’s ordeal about transphobia and not recognizing it as the misogynoir that it is shows that many trans activists online subconsciously view Black women as more masculine than other groups of women. They believe that us having melanin somehow means we went through a testosterone-fueled puberty and that we secretly are not a part of the female sex class. To mislabel Michelle Obama’s experience as transphobia is an insult to Black womanhood. Black trans women cannot have this experience. If anything, their maleness prevents them from experiencing such a thing. 

 

Furthermore, I want to emphasize that Black women face both misogyny and misogynoir. Calling every instance of misogyny a Black woman faces ‘misogynoir’ is not helpful. Misogynoir is when a Black woman’s race is specifically weaponized to enact misogynistic violence onto her. We see this come into play when Black women are called derogatory terms for behaving in ways that nonBlack women are uplifted or socially rewarded for. Labeling every instance of misogyny thrown at Black women as ‘misogynoir’ makes it seem as though Black women are a separate species of female. As we witnessed with the “Millennials look younger than Gen Z!” trend on TikTok, Black women, just like all races of women, feel the misogynistic pressure to remain looking youthful. We are pressured to shave, wear makeup, have children, get married, and conform to stereotypical feminine beauty standards. If Black women were not seen as women, why do people constantly shame us for aging, not putting effort into our appearance, and constantly remind us of our low marriage rates while completely ignoring that only 29% of Black men are married? Why are we constantly being compared to other races of women if, according to trans activists, we are seen as men by society? Why is nobody racing to compare us to Hispanic males or white males? Why does every government agency group us with other women, especially in scientific studies where recognizing biological sex matters the most? 

WHAT IS TRANSPHOBIA? 

Transphobia, in my opinion, as it relates to trans women, is the hatred of gender-nonconforming males that seek to move through society as women on a superficial level. The male aspect of a trans woman’s genetic makeup is an important factor. When trans activists try and use Black women as a “gotcha” to argue for why trans women should be able to enter female spaces, they are forgetting a key detail. Black women are female. Trans women are not. Black women are not a part of the demographic (males) that commit 98% of sex crimes. Trans women are. Racists calling *some* Black women manly (again, Black women are not the only group of women referred to as manly) does not negate the fact that Black women are women, are seen as such by every society on the planet, and unlike trans women, our womanhood is not up for debate because we are female.  

Many trans women call the hatred they face transmisogyny, but they seem to forget that males cannot be victims of their own ideological creation. The patriarchy was invented to subjugate females, monitor our autonomy, and disrupt the nature of humanity itself. Trans women are judged harshly for their looks, not because they are being held to misogynistic beauty standards, but because they are males and being male comes with masculinized features due to going through male puberty. Trans women are trying to superficially appear as a sex that biologically goes down a different developmental pathway than them, and, as a result, can look quite foolish when trying to mimic certain aesthetics that actual woman naturally have. When trans women try to equate being made fun of for their male features to how Black women are made fun of for our natural African female features, they are being misogynoiristic. Trans women do not look like nor resemble Black women. They look like what they are, biological males. In no African or predominately Black culture would a trans woman be seen as womanly or feminine. Trans women are not being made fun of for having extremely broad shoulders, harsh browbones, or masculine jawlines because they are being held to the same racist beauty standards as Black women. They are being insulted for the reason why they have such features in the first place: because they are biological males that have undergone male puberty and with male puberty comes male secondary sex characteristics. Trans activists may not accept what I am about to say, but most people do not see trans women as actual women. Whether trans activists accept this harsh truth is none of my business. Many people view trans women as effeminate gay men pretending to be women, and for a lot of people, a grown adult male trying to squeeze his masculinized body into clothing made for the biologically smaller female phenotype looks ridiculous at best or reminds them of a pedophile at worst. 

 

I have never once heard about the experiences trans women go through and thought it sounded similar to what I or any Black woman have experienced. Trans women, in my opinion, share a lot of common ground with feminine gay males not Black women. The male-specific experiences gender-nonconforming males go through have absolutely nothing to do with Black women because Black women are female. When trans activists insist that Black women experience transphobia, they are saying the quiet part out loud. They believe that our Blackness somehow makes us manly or masculine. One would only think such a thing if they were a white supremacist that spends their days scrolling 4Chan forums, a porn addict who watches too much “BBC” porn, or does not interact with Black women in real life. If trans activists subconsciously did not believe that Black women are inherently masculine, they would recognize that men judge Black women’s looks because that is what heterosexual men do to all women. Being judged for your beauty or lack thereof by a man is a typical female experience. The fact that they immediately try and equate our typical female experience to that of gender nonconforming males is misogynoir. Black women are not made fun of for wearing women’s clothing, dressing femininely, or putting on makeup because we are female, and that is what all females, regardless of race, are expected to do. The fact that trans women are made fun of for attempting to do these things (while actual women are socially rewarded for doing these things) literally proves that they are not experiencing misogyny and most certainly not misogynoir.  

TRANSPHOBIA IS NOT ROOTED IN MISOGYNOIR 

 

The forced teaming of Black women’s unique sex-based oppression with that of gender nonconforming males is a racist liberal campaign to increase acceptance of trans individuals. This forced teaming riles up liberal Black women and gets them to mule for a demographic that is only using them as a pawn to uplift their place in society. This ideology also deludes people into believing that by opposing trans women in some spaces meant for females such as women's sports, they are somehow being racist or hurting Black women in the process. However, by erasing the language Black women use to describe our unique experiences, we are now left with not being able to discuss our female-specific issues at all without being accused of being bigots.  

 

Another aspect of this forced teaming that trans activists do is that they never try and imply that the misogyny nonBlack women experience is similar to transphobia. White women are the biggest demographic of females on the planet in both the category of height and weight, yet no trans activist is using this fact as proof of how “manly” white women are. The tallest women in the world are from Latvia yet no trans activist is using Latvian women as a “gotcha” for why trans women should be allowed to play in women’s sports. This racist and absurd notion that Black women are this demographic full of uniquely gigantic, hairy, grotesque looking women is quite comical when you consider that these words would better fit women of certain European demographics than any African woman. I also want to highlight the social privileges that white women receive that are usually only reserved for men. Being able to be seen as individuals, not being judged as harshly for their appearance, and being able to get away with behaving in an unpleasant manner are all social privileges that come to mind, and yet, nobody, not a single person on this planet, is jumping to claim that white women are similar to men because they acquire these social privileges. Ironically, these same trans activists pretend these social privileges granted to white women and white women only make them “more womanly”. I am pointing out this hypocrisy because trans activists frequently like to point to the unique misogynistic experiences Black women face as evidence that we are not seen as women by society yet will turn around and label white women’s unique experiences of facing less misogyny than Black women as proof of how “womanly” and “feminine” they are. I wonder why Black women experiencing two forms of misogyny instead of just one makes us “more masculine” instead of “more womanly” or “more feminine” than nonBlack women.  

 

The irrational need to desperately conflate misogynoir with transphobia is why we see trans activists referring to conventionally attractive Black women as eurocentric (a blog post about this is coming soon). Pretty Black women disprove and negate the ridiculous notion that “Everyone sees Black women as men!” or “Black features are inherently masculine!”. Conflating misogynoir with transphobia allows Black males to never address the disproportionate amount of violence they inflict on Black women because we are female. It allows transgenders to guilt trip people into thinking that not accepting trans women into female spaces somehow affects Black women in a negative way as though Black women were somehow just born yesterday and have not been using female spaces since the dawn of time. It allows Black women with low self-esteems to not actually have to contend with the fact that they hate being both Black and female and wish to spread their toxic mindset among impressionable Black girls. Transphobia has nothing to do with misogynoir. Transphobia against trans women only affects gender nonconforming males. Misogynoir only affects Black females. These two forms of discrimination are not similar to each other. They are not even in the same ballpark. Any agenda that seeks to conflate the unique experiences of Black women with that of gender non-conforming males needs to be ignored and shut down. The colonization of Black womanhood should not be permitted.