Transphobia

Transphobia is a range of negative attitudes and irrational feelings towards transsexuality and transsexual or transgender people, based on their gender expression. Transphobic people generally express or feel emotional disgust, fear, anger or discomfort towards people who don't conform to society's gender expectations. Transphobia is a form of gender discrimination or sexism, and is a problem in geek communities.

Why is transphobia a feminist issue?

Trans women are women. Therefore, trans misogyny is a feminist issue. Aside from the fact that prejudice in general is a problem, there are reasons for feminists to be involved in opposing transphobia in a general way.

Some of the reasons why transphobia is a feminist issue are

• Feminism should aim to support and protect the most vulnerable groups of women, which trans women are among.
• Trans women experience gendered harassment, violence, and discrimination far more often than cis women - in fact, cis women often contribute to this.
• Transphobes objectify people and objectification is the foundation of rape culture.
• Transphobes are very likely to oppose non hetero-normative behavior and thus generate armies of repressed people for their war against humanity. 
•  Transmisogyny draws on and contributes to femmephobia: fear, disgust, and hate directed at any trait or activity coded as "feminine".

Terminology

"Transmisogyny" is sometimes used specifically to refer to misogyny that is directed towards trans women. Of course, all transmisogyny is also misogyny.

Examples

• Kiwicon 2014 expulsion
• The public reaction to the Dana McCallum rape arrest
• Many of the responses to Megahbite's article "How Git Shows the Patriarchal Nature of the Software Industry"
• The Gamergate coordinated harassment campaign included major transmisogynistic elements.

Further reading

Binarism

• "Sexism, Transphobia, and Arguments from Biology", Veronica for Skepchick
• "It’s Time For People to Stop Using the Social Construct of “Biological Sex” to Defend Their Transmisogyny", Mey for Autostraddle
• “An Introduction for Biological Women/Warning for Non-Biological Women”, Amy Dentata
• "Bilaterally Gynandromorphic Chickens, and Why I’m Not 'Scientifically' Male", Natalie Reed
• "Trans 101", Annetta Gay
• "Male/Female: Broken Language?", Kinsey Hope
• "Sex is Also a Social Construct", EmilyEmilyEmily

Transmisogyny

• "When am I trans?", Queen Emily for Questioning Transphobia: "Tobi Hill-Meyer has proposed what I think is the only really plausible and useful definition of transness which presumes that trans people are as real and authentic as cis, which is: a trans person is someone whose sex/gender is not universally recognised as valid."
• "Al Heyt for Transgender Day of Remembrance", Rabbi Emily Aviva Kapor
• "It Doesn't Get Better", Parker Marie Molloy
• "The Letter", Dallas Denny
• "seeing only the red you want to see: suzanne moore’s bullheaded trans-misogyny", Savannah / leftytgirl
• "Remembering Us When We’re Gone, Ignoring Us While We’re Here: Trans Women Deserve More", Morgan Collado
• "It's Time to End the Long History of Feminism Failing Transgender Women", Tina Vasquez
• "refusing the call: a trans woman rejects internecine war cry from anti-woman faux feminists", Savannah / leftytgirl