To start, I believe there’s a fundamental difference between forcefem-the-kink and forcefem-as-a-joke. I’ve written about forcefem as a kink in the past, so if you're interested in my thoughts on the subject, you should go read that post first. Essentially, forcefem as a kink involves transfems reclaiming control over a trope that’s been used to dehumanize us, as well as over the coercive feminization that we endured pre-transition.

Force-feminization jokes, however, being outwardly directed at men, are a different thing entirely. Rather than allowing us to express a fantasy about transition, they instead allow us to fantasize about male emasculation. Force-fem jokes present a fantasy scenario in which transfems are not just permitted, but empowered, to remove from men the social and institutional power that they benefit from under male supremacy.

Allow me to explain. From a very young age, male supremacy conditions all of us - no matter our genders - into internalizing the idea that one of the greatest offenses that a woman can commit under male supremacy is to emasculate a man. Male supremacy allots the ability to emasculate men only to other men, and men routinely emasculate each other as a matter of practice. Men will compete ruthlessly with each other, bully each other, demean each other on the basis of appearance or dress or mannerisms or voice or penis size, and male supremacy not just allows this brutality, but actively encourages it. After all, this constant, pervasive show of dick-waving at each other is how men determine their own gendered pecking order within the social-gendered class of ‘men.’

If a woman were to emasculate a man, however, then such an act would throw into question all of the premises behind male supremacy. Men are The Superior Sex, and therefore women must never be allowed to be better than men. Women who stand up to men, who say rude things to men, who compete against men, are routinely subject to male-supremacist violence, up to and including murder, for the crime of Stepping Out Of Line. This taboo is so pervasive that we’ve built entire institutions around it - for example, gender-segregated competitions exist primarily so that a man will never have to suffer the symbolic emasculation inherent to losing to a woman.

Obviously, transfems - a class of women whom not just men, but cis women, view as legitimate targets for all of the above and more - cannot possibly be permitted to possess the social power to emasculate men. And especially not for the fact that men perceive transfems to have willingly emasculated ourselves. After all, if we've shed our own perceived (not actual) masculinity, then why shouldn't they outright fear our ability to emasculate them in turn? Among other things, this cultural terror is at the root of the Harry Benjamin-style gatekeeping that we used to need to endure in order to obtain transition care. Men wished to ensure that the only trans women who can transition are those willing to fully submit ourselves to men, those of us who could not possibly emasculate them. Thus, the only permitted transitions belonged to trans women who were, in their eyes, submissive, straight, and fuckable.

Or, that is to say, those of us whom they could readily dominate.

Force-fem jokes, however, represent a reversal of this power dynamic. Rather than being about “conversion therapy” or inducing dysphoria in men, force-fem jokes are primarily about claiming the social power to emasculate men in the realm of our own fantasies. If male supremacy insists that we be submissive, straight, and fuckable - well, by the goddess, we’re going to make them submissive, gay, and fuckable.

[cont.]