At some point someone should do a deep dive into the rhetoric that trans men and transmasculine people steal from cus women by just existing.

There is not only the whole lesbians and queer women morning the "lose" of one of their own everytime some who used to identify as a queer woman comes out, particularly if they are a public figure

but the language of trans masculinity "stealing" your daughter away from you is extremely affect in radicalizing straight women against trans people as well

As someone who does trans history particularly transmasculine history I have experienced the huge amount of push back from cis women, including people who identify as trans allies, who see even just saying trans men existed in the past as a direct threat to women's history

In writing about James Barry as a probable trans man I have been accused of stealing women's history, robbing young girls of a possible roll model and been begged keep my interpretation more open so that "we (cis women) can still have this."

I remember when the live action Mulan was announced someone I had considered a friend who had never acted transphobic in my presents before went off on a rant about how trans man!Mulan headcanons were "stealing stories from women."

When I started out in romance a lot of the rhetoric around why trans man heroes didn't belong in the genre had to do with the idea of how trans men existing on the page would hurt cis women. How I would somehow be stealing space for cis women's fantasies by writing about my own

This idea that cis women are somehow robbed by trans men even just existing and that any space trans men want must automatically come at the cost of cis women is so deeply baked into the ways trans men are thought and talked about.

It is one of the most effective anti-trans arguments designed to specifically target trans masculinity people and I wish there was a better understanding of it and how it worked particularly amongst cis women looking to be allies.