I want to talk about the different flavors of radical feminist trans people I have personally encountered, because the ways radical feminist / terf / gender critical rhetoric bleeds into trans discourse is fascinating to me. There are very few trans radfems, but they do exist, and how they internalize radical feminism varies.
At the core of radical feminism is bioessentialism: this needs to exist for radfem philosophy to make sense. Males have to be biologically stronger, females have to be biologically inferior, these differences must affect your personality, and they must be immutable differences that carry on even if the person is trans.
Radfem transfemmes believe that men/males are inherently bad, but that most of the badness of males/men is attached to the “man” part and socialization, and that if you are not a man, you’re fine. BUT, they aren’t totally divorced from the bioessentialism of radfems, because they do still believe that a transmasc who starts taking testosterone “becomes” dangerous and predatory. They also believe transmascs are “inherently transmisogynistic” and for some reason more “prone” to transmisogyny than literally anyone else on the planet.
There is a group of radfem transmascs who are the transmasc equivalent of radfem transfemmes. They believe most of what the radfem transfemmes believe, with with some minor tweaks. They believe men, regardless of birth sex, are always two seconds away from turning into monsters and must thus constantly be kept in check. They also believe that as transmascs, they are exempt from misogyny of all forms and have privilege over women of all kinds.
But, there is another flavor of radfem transmasc. This second group of radfem transmascs are basically indistinguishable from cis women radfems. They are full-blown male-haters and transmisogynists. They hate males and transfemmes so much. They believe transfemmes were “socialized male” and are still “male”, that transfemmes are “predatory” and “dominate” trans spaces, etc. Every negative stereotype associated with men/males, these radfem transmascs attach to transfemmes.
Oh and nonbinary trans folks can fit into any of these groups, as well. Being nonbinary doesn’t exclude you from turning into a bigot nor does it exempt you from being targeted by bigots!
Some trans radfems (of all varieties) also believe that trans men didn’t experience misogyny or sexism as children - even if we didn’t know we were trans at the time, even if we fully viewed ourselves as cis girls. And in some cases, these radfem trans people claim that even if transmascs weren’t out and didn’t know we were trans, we still somehow experienced “male socialization”. Apparently all the misogyny and sexism we experienced retroactively disappears when we come out.
