Against βVulgar Trans Feminismβ
Why flattening transfeminine life is political malpractice
Vulgar trans feminism drives me insane because it keeps getting credit for doing absolutely nothing new. It is feminism that wants to feel righteous without changing its instincts. It takes second wave and radical feminist habits, swaps out a few words, adds βtrans inclusiveβ to the mission statement, and then acts like that alone transforms the politics. Same fear of sex. Same fixation on harm. Same obsession with regulation. Same moral superiority. The only thing that changed is that trans women are now inside the blast radius instead of standing outside it.
This framework survives by flattening transfeminine life until it fits inside a single moral narrative. Everyone suffers the same way. Everyone is vulnerable in the same way. Everyone needs the same protections. Everyone should follow the same rules. That flattening is not accidental. It is the condition that allows vulgar trans feminism to operate at all. Once difference enters the picture, power enters with it. Once power enters, class and race show up immediately. Vulgar trans feminism cannot handle that, so it pretends difference is divisive and calls flattening solidarity.
Class gets erased first because class ruins the fantasy.
Material conditions decide everything. Housing. Money. Healthcare. Legal precarity. Employment. Sex work criminalization. Policing. Immigration enforcement. These realities decide whether a transfeminine person is writing hot takes or figuring out how to survive the week. Vulgar trans feminism loves to talk about harm in the abstract while avoiding poverty entirely. It lectures about risk while ignoring the fact that many transfeminine people rely on sexual economies to stay alive. It pathologizes hypersexuality while refusing to talk about rent, food, debt, or the absence of safety nets.
This flattening lets the most materially comfortable trans women universalize their experience and call it politics. It allows people with savings, institutional proximity, and social insulation to moralize survival strategies they have never needed. Desperation gets reframed as bad judgment. Adaptation gets reframed as irresponsibility. Class disappears and discipline takes its place.
Race disappears just as fast, and when it does, the framework becomes openly dangerous.
Vulgar trans feminism borrows heavily from white feminist fear and then pretends that adding trans women corrects the problem. It never asks how race shapes who gets read as threatening, who gets believed, who gets punished, who gets protected. Black and brown transfeminine people do not receive the benefit of innocence. Their sexuality is read as aggressive. Their visibility is treated as danger. Their refusal is punished instead of negotiated. Their survival strategies are criminalized instead of theorized.
Flattening transfeminine struggle allows vulgar trans feminism to talk about safety while staying silent about police, prisons, and surveillance. It talks about harm while refusing to name racialized violence. It talks about care while ignoring whose bodies get crushed when rules tighten. Universal norms feel fair only when you are not the one they are built to catch.
Sex becomes the perfect tool for this discipline because sex already carries moral weight under patriarchy. Vulgar trans feminism inherits second wave suspicion of sexuality and radical feminist anxiety about domination, then repackages both as trauma awareness. Desire gets treated as a liability. Visibility becomes something to manage. Sexuality becomes a problem to be contained. Trans women who do not comply get labeled reckless. Trans women who cannot comply because their survival depends on sex get written off entirely.
Vulgar trans feminism needs transfeminine struggle to be equal because equality makes administration easy. If everyone is equally vulnerable, nobody has to explain why some transfeminine people are far more likely to be homeless, assaulted, incarcerated, or killed. If harm distributes evenly, moral rules feel neutral. If difference disappears, power stays hidden.
Materialist trans feminism refuses this flattening because flattening is how exploitation hides. It tracks who gets punished for desire and who gets forgiven. It tracks who is allowed to be messy and who has to be perfect just to survive. It follows how race and class decide whose sexuality becomes a scandal and whose becomes experimentation. It understands that transfeminine life is shaped by uneven exposure to violence and uneven access to protection.
This is why vulgar trans feminism reacts so aggressively to materialist critique. Power analysis ruins the illusion. Naming class exposes inequality inside trans spaces. Naming race exposes how whiteness still structures credibility and safety. It is easier to accuse critics of being unsafe, divisive, or extreme than to admit the framework collapses under pressure.
feminism that feels calm because it refuses to look at blood. I am not interested in a feminism that expands by disciplining more people. I am not interested in a politics that asks transfeminine people to shrink ourselves so institutions can feel progressive.
Vulgar trans feminism wants transfeminine people manageable. It wants us legible, compliant, desexualized, and grateful. Materialist trans feminism wants us alive, dangerous to power, and impossible to flatten.
If your feminism falls apart the moment class and race enter the room, it was never built for transfeminine life. It was built to regulate it.
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