From my journal — March 7, 2026
Context
I was sent a link to join a new Discord server. One I’ve known about in the past but felt unsure at that time if I belonged. I decided that I felt comfortable enough in myself now to apply.
When I did, I was prompted with the title question - “In your own words, what is transmisogyny?” I’ll admit, I had to go look it up at first. As I read the description I let my mind wander and reflect and then what I’ve shared below came first as a clear visual, followed by the words just flowing out.
Transmisogyny1 is the tip of the societal spear from which I flinched away. For fear of being hurt and being in pain and being attacked for all of the ways I wanted to be. Flinched away because of the ways in which I saw women being attacked and through that, ideas of femininity belittled and ridiculed and minimized, making it clear that no one should want to be a woman when they could be a man. And asserting none would want to have any feminine behaviors or traits or proclivities when they could pass as strictly masculine.
Whether it’s wanting to be a woman or wanting to blend femininity with masculinity, to live and interact with society in a non-binary androgynous and feminine way, that spear with its sharp edges was ready to cut me. It was always a threat, always a weapon available to society to threaten me without even knowing they are doing so.
So I hid. I was afraid and I let that fear drive me to suppress, repress, and deny swaths of my true self-identity. I let that spear threaten me into cowering in the corner of masculinity. I hid in that corner for so long I came to believe it was the whole world of possibility. I forgot I was cowering in a corner.
And then. I remembered.
And so I say—FUCK. THAT. Fuck that spear threatening me. Fuck letting that threat dictate who I am and who I want to be and how I want to exist in this world. Fuck those expectations and societal norms minimizing anyone who is other.
Transmisogyny is a broken spear I have kicked into the corner. I have chosen to no longer allow it to dictate my own journey of self-acceptance and love. I have chosen to see the spears pointed at others, including ones I’d been unaware of standing behind my whole life. And I now choose to show others it is possible to snap the shaft of that spear and instead dictate our own lives and own our own truths.
Footnotes
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Transmisogyny is a term coined by trans author and activist Julia Serano (in her 2007 book Whipping Girl) that describes the specific intersection of transphobia and misogyny directed at trans women and transfeminine people.
The core idea is that trans women face a compounded form of discrimination — not just transphobia (bias against trans people generally) and not just misogyny (bias against women generally), but a unique fusion of both that reinforces and amplifies each. Because trans women are both trans and feminine, they often face particularly intense hostility, reflecting how femininity itself is devalued in society. ↩