r/IntersectionalWomen

Yesterday, a fellow trans women made a post in which she, clearly speaking from trauma, asked this subreddit to exclude trans men from discussions. Lots of other people, trans women included, called her out because her views weren't suitable for this intersectional community. While I agree in the logical sense that trans men are oppressed and need an intersectional space to talk about their issues, I felt called to defend OOP because too often I have witnessed my sisters experience harassment every time they talk about negative experiences with men. To that extent, I said some very much non-intersectional things about trans men and transmasculinity in the comment section, left the community, and later deleted my posts in shame. I later unblocked this sub in a fit of regret. I don't want to be the kind of person who is not intersectional.
The major roadblock I find in this path is, simply, that I am scared of men. I don't want to say I have trauma because I was never physically or emotionally abused by a man or men, but I have always felt uneasy around men even before I realized I was a woman, and have frequently witnessed men engaging in harassment, illogical behavior and cultural machismo, which hasn't helped their case on my end. Furthermore, experiencing testosteronized puberty for six years before beginning my medical transition, which literally felt like a disease, has reduced my positive feelings on anything related to maleness and masculinity. And I'm scared of talking about the tribulations men, be they trans or cis, face because I'm scared that if we give these tribulations an inch, they'll wrest all the rights us women have obtained over the past century right out of our hands and prevent us from talking about our own issues.
I know this feeling is illogical and oppression doesn't work like that, I know that intersectionality means that everyone is included and has their issues talked about in ways that ensure everyone receives sufficient airtime and/or help, but my instincts tell me that oppression is a zero-sum game and that if trans women's tribulations aren't the center of every discussion on oppression, they'll be completely ignored. Which, I'm realizing, is similar to how trans men have been treated in society - ignored both by the oppressive media and the people who are out to help trans people.
To that end, I would like to learn more about intersectionality and how it relates to transness. Are there any resources that would be recommended to train my intuition to be intersectional? To train myself to understand that trans men experience oppression and acknowledging this fact doesn't take away from the oppression trans women face? I wish to learn and better myself, and I understand if you won't forgive me. But thank you for reading this.

Just in case this article hasn't been posted here yet...

One trans woman posted here that she wants to only see women and transfeminine people in this space, because it’s called „Intersectionalwomen”. She claims trans men don’t face oppression, and literally told me to Gtfo. I will not name her here and I do not want to harass her - please don’t do that, she probably had some bad experiences with trans men and is now processing that in this manner.

Anyway, what LITERALLY moved me to tears is the amount of trans women that said trans men do face their own issues, and that transmascs are welcome here. To be honest, since my egg cracked I was paranoid about getting kicked out of every feminist space, because I’m a potential threat or something.

The issues trans community faces are complex and not possible to discuss in one post. I would like you to know that I stand with trans women in every issue, and I am very glad that there are trans women who are willing to stand with me to. As marginalized community we should not be arguing amongst ourselves, but instead support each other in our causes.

I know this space is called „IntersectionalWomen” - feminists are mainly women. But there are also male feminists - even cis ones, I know a few! There are also nonbinary people that are feminists. And all of us need a space. Sadly, you bet that if I start a sub called „IntersectionalMen” the first guys to check it will be MRA’s, moaning about having to pay for dates or being rejected - instead of REAL issues men face, like lack of shelters available for them if they are victims of domestic abuse in certain areas (I don’t think those exist for men at all in my country).

TLDR: I just wanted to thank trans women for their solidarity, you are amazing 🫂 I love you so much 💖

I am afraid too many people do not seem to understand what intersectionality means. It does not mean being tolerant of every opinion, especially when those opinions are based on the exclusion of vulnerable groups. We understand that many people can end up in TERF spaces and rhetoric due to traumatic reasons. However, one's trauma cannot be an excuse to perpetuate that trauma to other groups.

I also think that too much TERF rhetoric is tangled up in hypotheticals rather than the material reality. The reality is that there are already limited resources for women and when we start excluding a category of women who can access them, we only further marginalize them.

We also need to remember that just because we are hurt and we are traumatized, that does not make us immune from hurting and traumatizing others. When we portray ourselves as powerless we abdicate the responsibility for the hurt we cause others. Let's remember our power and let us not form our wounds into weapons to hurt others. We have a lot more to gain from supporting each other.

I think a part of that is also to assume that others are coming from a genuine place and responding accordingly rather than resorting to the worst possible interpretation of their points. If you see people making bad faith arguments please report them rather than engaging with them. The point is not to put down others, but to see how we can build better positions.

All power to all the people.

TERFs cannot exist in feminist spaces. Their existence is incompatible with feminism. As long as TERFs exist the patriarchy will continue to exist.

7 in 10 rate their mental health as “bad” or “very bad.”

Only 7% of women are employed (vs 84% of men).

Afghanistan is the only country on Earth that bans girls from secondary school and women from university.

Over 100 Taliban decrees have systematically erased women’s rights since 2021.

Source: UN Women survey (2025–2026)

There is a conversation in contemporary feminist spaces, even progressive feminist spaces, about a perceived conflict between cisgender and transgender women's rights. This underlines the core thesis of many women who identify as feminists while opposing trans inclusion. There is also a broad sense that trans inclusion ends at civility and tolerance - that respecting a trans woman's pronouns, granting her permission to go about her day-to-day life unharmed and nominally supporting basic discrimination and healthcare protections is the ceiling of reasonable allyship. A large swath of so-called trans allied feminists identify as such while maintaining that trans women are not the same as cis women, are not as authentic as cis women or even women in the way cis women are. The difference between outright transphobia and exclusionary tolerance is not one of substance, but volume.

At the centre of both the outright rejection and quiet alienation of trans women is a series of anxieties - the perceived social and political necessity to police a bounded site of struggle for feminist activism, the notion that womanhood or femininity is defined by a universal cisgender girlhood, and a conception of womanhood as a conscripted, involuntary biological cage. These are often cited as the broad theoretical grounds to justify erasing trans women within the context of women's spaces, rights and  struggles. All three anxieties directly reflect pervasive patriarchal myths. There is no such thing as a feminist who does not authentically recognize trans women as women; to do so is, by definition, to oppose the cause of women's liberation.

These anxieties require the presupposition of foundational pillars of patriarchy. The notion that liberation is a zero-sum game, the notion that biological sex is an inherent essence but gender requires careful performance and patriarchal consent, and the notion that women have no agency over their own oppression have maintained patriarchy since time immemorial. At its core, all three rely on an insidious play upon human nature and the inherent neoliberal meritocracy which underlies contemporary western society. One of the first myths a patriarchal-capitalist society imposes on its subjects is the idea of the just world - that with sufficient effort, perfect performance and adherence to the dominant patriarchal script, you will be loved, spared and protected.

Such a paradigm is uniquely helpful to the perpetuation of patriarchal supremacy, because it prompts the internalization of all systemic suffering. Sexism becomes a matter of personal fault and inadequacy. When confronted with the realization that no amount of compliance exempts one from patriarchal violence, accepting the patriarchal myth entirely and retreating to a defensive bio-essentialism is often easier than the alternative. Acknowledging patriarchy as a structural system of power imposed upon the social relational category of women by men requires solidarity with women with less privilege - it requires genuine humility, the prioritization of the collective over the self and abandoning the relative safety of feeling better than other women. Instead, by opting to see womanhood as an inescapable trap of suffering on the basis of natal misfortune, patriarchy becomes something to optimize for and overcome without worrying for others. This view surrenders the dream of true feminist liberation in favour of perpetual damage mitigation alone - and damage mitigation always requires choosing who to cut from the lifeboat.

Patriarchy's oldest and greatest lie was that womanhood can be revoked. That if you're too loud, or too bossy, or not accommodating enough, if you're not pretty enough, not thin enough, not good enough at makeup or cosmetics, that if you act out of turn, speak out of turn, live out of turn, that if you're not kind enough or caring enough or meek enough or selfless enough, you are not a valid woman. It is the same line that has been levied at Black women, Indigenous women, poor women, queer women, and now trans women. In broad discourse, there is constantly accusation after accusation levied against trans women as a collective for the actions, real or imagined, of individuals, as there always has been when patriarchy wishes women to tear each other apart. A selfish woman, a lazy woman, an entitled woman, a woman with deeply internalized misogyny and a woman who didn't grow up around women - all of these are still women. Asking for accountability is not the same thing as stripping humanity. Just as declaring that a selfish cis woman is less valid as a woman  is sexist, declaring a trans woman is less of a woman for her poor behaviour is identically sexist. Trans women are women, and women are not perfect. Women are people - messy, complicated, and very real people.

True liberation must begin with the abandonment of this defensive crouch which so many women adopt in part or in whole in order to avoid the existential dread of acknowledging that patriarchy is a goliath system of power, coercion and lies that nevertheless can and must be fought. Liberation begins with the acknowledgement that liberation is not a zero-sum game - that no women are free until all women are free. It begins with the acknowledgement that a universal girlhood does not exist; that a girl in suburban New Jersey with progressive parents in a queer-friendly school does not have the same childhood, struggles or socialization as a Brazilian girl in a Catholic-conservative family outside Rio de Janeiro, and yet both are still girls. It begins with the acknowledgement that women are powerful - that we have agency, that our lives are defined by more than just suffering, but by joy and freedom and creativity and care. It begins with the acknowledgement that trans women are, inextricably, irrefutably, unreservedly women.