We've been having this argument for over twenty years. Twenty-four, to be exact. Read it here, and then come on a journey with me.

There have been stirrings in discourse spaces about the term transandrophobia for a while now. There are many young sociological thinkers that are beginning to parse through both their own personal identities and journeys, as well as the wider sociological impacts of gender (and thus, gender based violence) for the first time. You could call this a fresh wave of feminism, a heightened social consciousness, an expansion on gender theory, a post-structuralist mindset, a hot take, or whatever you want to call it. With new generations of thinkers responding to wider social phenomena, there will be new arguments, as well as the rehashing of old discourse.

"We've been having this argument for twenty-four years" is a neutral statement; it has no positive nor negative connotation. It simply means that a new crop of people are naming their personal experiences, and they are trying to find comfort in community whom may have experienced the same things. As human beings, we are all searching for some sort of commonality.

To introduce Emi Koyama to you, she self describes as a "multi-issue social justice activist and writer synthesizing feminist, Asian, survivor, dyke, queer, sex worker, intersex, genderqueer, and crip politics, as these factors, while not a complete descriptor of who she is, all impacted her life." That is one epistemology (remember epistemologies?) or way of knowing, from a sociological standpoint - she has experiences that she has also researched, published, presented, etc. I would like to point out that anyone discoursing and sharing their thoughts and experiences in a public or semi-public is doing the same thing that Emi is, and that is valid.

Emi posits (in 2001, mind you) that there are several tenets of Transfeminism. The gist is that it is not simply feminism that you add trans people to and stir. It does argue that "violence against trans people one of the largest issues we must work on," and that's what I'd like to zero in on here.

Unfortunately, by now, we are all painfully aware and sorrowful of statistics regarding transgender women and sexual and gendered violence. We have a term for it: transmisogyny.

Transmisogyny (n.): dislike, fear, hatred of, or unfair treatment of transgender women.

I would suggest, in the most delicate and good-faith way possible, that we do not have a similar word for violence and hatred of transgender men, transmascs, butches, masculine dykes, or non-binary people (being that that last definition is very hard to pin down, as a sort of umbrella term within the wider umbrella term of "trans"). If we can digest the fact that transmisogyny is something trans women are subjected to, subjugated by; and the fact that trans women are allowed to name exactly the violence that is enacted upon them, I ask... isn't it possible that we can also do that for other people on the spectrum? Are these groups of people not also allowed to name the gender based violence that has been enacted on them - and whether its by people they know or a government official?

I've seen a few arguments that flatten this new term - transandrophobia - to an experience of "misplaced misogyny," but take a look again at the groups of people I mentioned. I don't believe that "misplaced misogyny" is a term that always fits the situation. It can sometimes, there is nuance in the world and with people's experiences, but it's not necessarily a perfect fit.

I think it's as simple as saying that, and I hate saying this, there is a binary. There is a binary that is socially constructed (much like sex and gender itself) that pits the experiences of trans women, trans femmes, anyone who wholly or partially identifies as feminine or a woman, against those of trans men, trans mascs, anyone who wholly or partially identifies as masculine or a man. There are similarities in the ways that all of these people experience gender based violence under the wider umbrella of transphobia, and there are differences. There are some people who's sex and/or gender is hard to define, and they, in a sense "catch it from both fucking sides." I think instead of arguing that one group should have a term and one should not, we need to be able to hold space for both or many categories to exist. I think everyone can do a little less fucking talking and a little more fucking listening, because we are all under the same boot of transphobia. Some of us are under multiple boots.

Emi acknowledges this too, in a way, that she says that both sex and gender are socially constructed concepts. She would likely know that from personal experience, because she is intersex.

Going back to what I said about "multiple boots": Racism is another such boot when it comes to categorizing gender-based violence, and let's not forget that here. There are groups of racialized people out there who society defines as more "violent" or less depending what racial identity their gender intersects with. There are groups of people who are exposed to more or less sexual violence depending upon what racial identity their gender intersects with. There are groups of people who are simply subjected to medical racism depending upon what racial identity their gender intersects with. All of those factors are at play, and we as sociological thinkers can and must hold space for that as well.

Ivan Coyote wrote a story in one of their books about a group of new queer kids protesting the language used in the song Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed because it was too transphobic. I can't find the exact quote, admittedly, but Coyote mentioned first that that particular song had always made them feel seen in their gender, their experiences heard. They also mentioned that language, over time, changes. Things that were once commonplace in terms of description can become offensive when viewed through the lens of modernity.

There are blind spots all of the time in activism, theory, praxis and discourse. There are many ways in which ideas and language change to fit the context of society in a particular time capsule. I think embracing change rather than decrying it, embracing language shifting to acknowledge a blind spot, is what can help us combat the wider oppression, and the erasure of specific named experiences; and what can bring something like a twenty-four year old manifesto into modernity.