There’s an argument that we shouldn’t apply author identity wrt queer ownvoices to the same standards as other cases of ownvoices because a queer author may not be out.

I respect that, but here’s why I have a problem with that when it comes to transfem ownvoices specifically.

In practice it gives the impression that transfeminine people have collective or individual power to police other peoples’ identities when we really don’t.

I’m not saying “it’s fine if a trans woman outs someone,” I’m saying lets look at the real dynamic here.

We need to understand there’s a long history of others trying to claim membership in our identity while exercising transmisogyny and using ”don’t police my identity” as a defense against being identified as having taken advantage of transfems.

Examples include “circumgender,” “AFAB trans women,” cis women letting themselves be listed or grouped as trans women for groups, etc.

There’s also currently a push to redefine transmisogyny as something oppresses all trans people and even cis people.

This is part of a dynamic I’m beginning to call oppression displacement, in which transfeminine people are basically kicked out of our own problems and oppression and then made out to be the aggressors or oppressors of other people who then claim real ownership of those problems.

Remember that there’s a whole internal hate movement that is essentially predicated on doing this; queer and feminist communities do this, cis men do this.

So my point here is not “we need to doubt every claimed transfem as a potential invader!” Of course not.

Only that we’re joking if we think trans women/transfems have ever had the power to “police” people from dishonestly grouping themselves with us or displacing us.

It’s also important to understand that marginalization in publishing is a collective-level problem and not just an individual one. This doesn’t mean individual action has no effect on it, but the solution needs to occur on a higher level.

In other words, it is completely backwards to focus on whether or not trans women are policing theoretical eggs or stealth trans women while there remains almost nonexistent effort to challenge systemic transmisogyny in publishing and in the world.

It is disingenuous for other queer people to nigh totally ignore the displacement and disproportionate marginalization of trans women and transfem-spectrum people and then say that we shouldn’t be prioritized as ownvoices authors because we don’t want to police identity.

That is actually contributing to the problem that it’s purported to be addressing. It’s dishonest, it’s ahistorical, it is in itself an implied false grouping of all queer people within the oppression of transfem-spectrum people. And it is transmisogynistic.