Ts Madison has some good advice for cis women, but they’re not taking it well
She knows what she's talking about, and we all need to listen
Mark
On her podcast Outlaws and elsewhere, Ts Madison stays dropping wisdom and pointing out some difficult community truths.
Last month, Madison gathered NeNe Leakes on the latter’s podcast after Leakes presented Madison with an ignorant take about men who date trans women. The queer internet wasted no time in rallying around Madison and showing support for the trailblazing icon.
But when you have a reputation for speaking truth to power, it’s going to end up ruffling some feathers. Later that month, Madison brought up another important point about transphobia in society, and it’s still the subject of much discourse in straight circles.
How about we take this to the next level?
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“If you’re a dark-skinned Black woman,” Madison explained to TikToker Drew Afualo on her podcast, “you’ve got to chill with the transphobia, cause you’re first in line.”
Madison was talking about how transphobia is a widespread problem that doesn’t just effect trans women. As we’ve seen recently—and most commonly in the sports world—when the culture views trans women as “intruders” in cis women’s spaces, that bigotry ends up applying to anyone who doesn’t match the perceived (Eurocentric, cissexist) idea of a what a cis woman looks like. And since we live in a world that’s allergic to nuance and care, that means that even certain cis women end up as victims of transmisogynist rhetoric. As Madison points out, we’ve seen this play out in the treatment of dark-skinned Black women in our society.
It’s an important point and something more of us should be talking about, but unfortunately, some cis women read Madison’s comments the wrong way.
“A lot of dark-skinned cis women are not happy about this video,” explains TikToker @sophielovexhoe, and the reason, ironically, has its roots in the same transmisogyny that Madison is talking about.
“I’ve been seeing a lot of responses,” Sophie continues, “along the lines of ‘I’ve never been called a man’ or ‘I’ve never had my femininity questioned’ and ‘you’re just projecting how you feel about dark-skinned Black women.’ What I’m getting from this discourse is that a lot of cisgender women don’t understand how trans-based hate crimes work.”
Sophie goes on to explain that even if you’ve never personally encountered gender policing in your life, you could still, as a dark-skinned Black woman, end up the victim of transphobic violence, simply because of the racism and transphobia that exists in our society.
“Getting harassed or attacked or worse because somebody perceives you to be trans … is not something that your vagina is going to save you from,” Sophie states.
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It’s entirely accurate, and we’ve already seen this play out in news stories about cis women being attacked simply for seeming trans. In the comments, people are sharing their own examples of how Black women have often been the brunt of transphobic violence in recent years, even despite being cis.
“Leslie Jones was tortured for years because of this,” one commenter wrote, and yes, we all remember how consistently disgusting people were and continue to be toward Jones, an SNL star who was the victim of racist comments about her appearance for her entire run on the show. Jones was targeted, mocked, and bullied for years, and sadly, it still continues to this day.
Jones is far from the only victim of this treatment. Not long ago, tennis pro Serena Williams was subjected to the same racist rhetoric when she faced off against Naomi Osaka at the 2018 US Open.
“Like are they forgetting how the olympics treated black cis women?” another commenter asked. Not only that, but First Lady Michelle Obama was also put through the ringer because her beauty didn’t meet the Eurocentric standards of racist jerks online. Sadly, this is an issue that continues to affect not only Black trans women, but Black cis women who don’t meet a narrow, bigoted idea of feminine beauty. And sadly, there are endless examples of this to point to.
Choosing to get mad at Ts Madison for pointing this out—rather than directing that anger at a hateful society—is part of the problem.
“Ts Madison was never saying that Black women are masculine,” Sophie explains in the video. “She was explaining that because of the already colorist perception of us—which isn’t up for debate—that transphobia and colorism are actually quite intersectional.”
Like most forms of bigotry and intolerance, transphobia casts a wide net. That’s why, as Madison states, it’s important for cis people not to give into the transphobic rhetoric that can and will, sooner or later, end up hurting people who are already marginalized.
Because one thing about anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric is that it’s not logical, sensible, or even limited to hurting the people in our community. Eventually, it will end up coming for everyone who’s marginalized, and we have to stay on our guard to make sure that doesn’t happen.
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