Perhaps this isn’t a term you’re familiar with, but a lot of hatred gets thrown at those that have claimed the term bæddel. Those that espouse bæddel theory under that label (though less often for those that avoid the label but keep the theory). It seems to be used for transfems in much the same way “feminazi” has been used for women. I’d like to discuss the issues around this term, and the rhetoric associated with it.
Generally such people reduce criticism to *AFAB (assigned female at birth) hate, to hatred of trans men, to creating division within the trans community and being about transfem separatism. I’ve even see people say bæddels are TERFs because they are feminists who exclude transmasc people, which is a pretty gross misunderstanding of what TERFs are and good way to get other transfems to turn on bæddels. It seems people are just determined to demonize theory that centres transmisogyny. So I’d like to talk about bæddelism.
Bæddel is an Olde English term, a slur long since dead that targeted “effeminate men”, transfem and intersex people (given there was little distinction between any of these in mediaeval times, there’s ambiguity there), that has been reclaimed by many transfem people. It seems that since that reclamation it has quickly turned back into a popular derogatory insult. There’s theory and ideas that that go along with the label, though calling it “theory” might be a little generous and ascribe a certain coherency and unity of thought amongst those that use the term that may not truly exist. Yet those that deride the term, that deride the rhetoric, seem to treat it as if it is a cogent whole.
Before I get into this, I’d like to make a note about terminology. Throughout this piece I’ll be using the term “transfem”, an abbreviation of transfeminine, as shorthand for transmisogyny-confined people, that is CAMAB (coercively assigned male at birth) women/woman-adjacent people as well as CAMAB nonbinary people that experience transmisogyny. It is a term not without criticism due to confusion about meaning that can exclude, for example, butch trans women, and as such many bæddels may reject the term in favour of others. Unfortunately there’s no single term that can encompass all those able to claim the term bæddel other than transmisogyny-confined (TMC), or transmisogyny-affected (TMA), which are terms I’d like to avoid as a general label as they center our oppression as a definitive trait, when there is so much more to our identities than our oppression.
Bæddel Culture
As there are different groups that use the term with different dynamics, I can only be very general and subjective here, but I can hopefully offer some relevant insight.
Bæddel culture is about centering transfems. There is a strong trans sapphic and transfem4transfem trend within bæddel circles, though I wouldn’t say that romantic interest in fellow transfems is a requirement of claiming the term. Merely a personal prioritising of transfems in relationships, platonic or otherwise, as well as with one’s politics. Some have gone so far as to claim it as transfem separatism, though this is itself ambiguous and depends on how one defines separatism. It’s about finding safety and comfort with those that share and understand our experiences. It’s about combating translesbophobia, such ideas that say trans sapphics are predatory toward cis women. It’s about combating concepts such as autogynephilia, or what cis women get to call “feeling sexy” and “being attracted to women”. But transfems don’t get to enjoy anything, especially about ourselves, without it being pathologized.
Sometimes this manifests in a culture that reclaims concepts used against us. Reclamation of “trap” imagery, reclamation of the t-slur, reclamation of the pathologised term “transexual” as a way to distance from trans people who are least affected by transphobia, pride in “girldick” as a way to combat internal and external messages that shame us for our genitals. None of these things are exclusive to bæddel culture. Again, it is a broad term adopted by many different transfems, so to draw a line between bæddel culture and transfem culture is not really possible.
Bæddel Theory
The theory ultimately boils down to this:
Transmisogyny exists. That transmisogyny is often sidelined as an issue by both feminist movements and trans movements, as movements have a tendency to prioritise the needs of most privileged within them which leaves transfems last in line. The theory focuses on the fact that all transmisogyny-exempt (TME) people benefit from and are capable of exploiting transmisogyny, not just cis men. But TME people other than cis men often get excluded from discussions about those that uphold and benefit from transmisogyny.
Part of this is due to sharing a single axis of oppression with transfems; CAFAB trans people experience transphobia and cis women experience misogyny, and as people often conceive of transmisogyny simply being misogyny+transphobia, experience of one of those forms of oppression seems to lead people to mistakenly exempt those groups from being able to perpetuate transmisogyny. But transmisogyny is not merely misogyny+transphobia, it is a very specific form of oppression that targets transfems explicitly.
Obviously even those part of an oppressed group can still uphold that oppression, but besides that, this is a gross misunderstanding of what transmisogyny truly is. It is it’s own unique form of oppression. While it may be true that it is tied to misogyny, the same could be said of homophobia, but to say homophobia is merely a “type” of misogyny would be very misleading. The same for saying it is a type of transphobia. Though as it often gets classified as mere transphobia, and the experiences of it get subsumed into transphobia, and that much transphobia is in fact rooted in transmisogyny, this may be harder to see.
One could argue that TME people calling experiences of transmisogyny “transphobia” and statisticians uncritically classifying all these experiences under the label of transphobia, is enabling TME people to co-opt and benefit from our oppression. This may feel especially offensive when those same TME people commit transmisogynistic acts and promote transmisogynistic ideas. Upholding the conditions of our oppression while claiming that oppression as their own.
The watering down and possibly deliberate misunderstanding of the term transmisogyny as “misogyny+transphobia” has even lead to CAFAB woman-aligned enbies claiming to experience transmisogyny, due to being both trans and being women/woman-adjacent. This is a perfect though more extreme example of the co-opting of transfem oppression by those unaffected by transmisogyny. Another such example is when cis women claim to be trans women to repel men’s advances, leveraging and promoting the idea of transfems as undesirable and repellent for their own benefit. Or when transmascs are granted and take advantage of access to women’s spaces based on gynocentric and transfem-exclusionary conceptions of gender oppression. These are some more explicit examples, though more prevalent and less easily recognised behaviours enacted by *AFAB people abound. Though even these more obvious examples get denied, minimised and invisibised.
Anti-Bæddel Rhetoric
There is common rhetoric amongst those that deride bæddelism that it is merely about “hating CAFABs”. This sounds eerily similar to those that claim feminism is just about “hating men”. While it may be true that bæddel rhetoric doesn’t place much focus on cis men as oppressors, this is because there is little question or resistance to the idea that cis men are oppressors. Even TERFs seem to accept that cis men oppress transfems.
Bæddels get criticised for saying trans men have man privilege, get criticised for calling out transmisogyny from TME trans people, get told we’re just hateful, that we’re divisive and that we need to maintain trans unity to fight transphobia by those least affected by it and exempt from it’s most violent forms. If unity means allowing others to maintain oppressive behaviours free of criticism, to remain silent while being dominated (and not in the fun way), then personally I’m not interested. This seems to be similar to how rhetoric of “left unity” is used as well. So unity has been endowed with some very negative baggage. No wonder many recoil at the use of the term.
So why is there so much antagonism, even within trans and activist spaces, toward addressing a form of oppression? While it is certainly true that in a world that teaches us to compete with each other and exploit our privilege over one another, such resistance should come as no surprise, I believe there’s another major factor at play here. Something I’d like to call “CAFAB fragility”. What is CAFAB fragility? It’s the result of experiencing a lifetime of misogyny (in case of cis women and woman-adjacent *AFAB people) and misdirected misogyny (in the case of other CAFABs). It’s the result of gynocentric and binary analysis of gender oppression being dominant within feminism, so that one experiencing (misdirected) misogyny is taught that they lie at the bottom of the gender hierarchy. The result of this is that, when one such person is told they hold any form of gender privilege, it sounds like denial of their experience of oppression. It is criticising and, to them, trying to take away the tool they used to address their oppression. It’s telling those that have only ever conceived of themselves as a victim of gender oppression that they too are an oppressor. It is no surprise then, as we understand fragility of the privileged in many cases, that such rhetoric is met with such aggressive defensiveness rather than self reflection.
And of course, there is also simply the fact that transmisogynistic tropes are still embedded in everyone’s mind. Those promoted both by TERFs and other transmisogynistic people. That we are violent abusers, that we are hypersexual predators, that we are men invading women’s spaces, etc, etc. There is already a predisposition in everyone’s mind, promoted by depictions of trans women in the media, by TERF theory, by pathologized conceptions of our identities, that transfems are a threat, and this is acted upon and leveraged by TME people in order to silence us and demonise us. And the term “bæddel” has become the manifestation of this dressed up as simply being “toxic discourse”. While it may be true that some wearing the label have done harmful things or have had bad analysis, it seems this gets unilaterally applied to all bæddels in similar ways to the views that claim feminists don’t care about men getting abused or believe that women are incapable of abusing men, for example.
One common theme in anti-bæddel discourse is that of strawmanning and personal attacks. It seems there’s little actual critical engagement with our points when they are sound. Perhaps this is because there’s little that can be refuted? Often simply calling us bæddels is enough to discredit us with all the negative stereotypes that are attached to the term. Even for transfems that don’t identify with the term but simply wish to address transmisogyny.
Conclusion
What can I say here? I’m sure this piece will get a lot of criticism. I’m sure many will claim all the awful stereotypes projected onto bæddels about me. The purpose of this piece wasn’t to discuss bæddel theory in depth, to explore the different ideas that are discussed in bæddel communities, but merely to dispel the stigma around the term. To explain the dynamics of how the term has been weaponised against transfems and reinvigorated as a derogatory term hundreds of years after its disuse as a way to silence transfems talking about their oppression.
I hope that those unfamiliar with the term will now understand it and recognise how it’s being applied when it does come up. And I really hope that those with negative associations with the word are able to realise that perhaps much of those associations are unfounded or at least not worthy of generalisation to any and all that claim the term.
I hope that those who take issue with any bæddel rhetoric, discussion of transmisogyny, or transfem centred discourse actually try to critically engage with such discussion rather than leveraging and promoting the stigma around the word bæddel.
