learn-how-to-love

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This is honestly such a strange thing to say. The general tone of your posts is very similar to most semi-formal conversations on topics of systemic and societal issues so I’m not sure why it’s being singled out. Is it the politeness? The use of (generally) proper punctuation and grammar? Honestly, your posts read to me like someone who thinks through what you say before you say it, and I think that’s great actually and relatable as a fellow autistic person. Honestly it feels like this person is just calling you a nerd which I mean, is pretty in line with the whole “high school bully” undercurrent of this wave of trans discourse.

in some situations a trans man may have privilege over a cis woman because he is a man and she is a woman. in others a cis woman may have privilege over a trans man because she is cis and he is trans. both of these issues can coexist. not sure how you don't get it.

In a reblog of that post I do explain how trans men can sometimes have conditional social privileges when they are mistaken as cis men.

Trans men, however, do not have any systemic privilege for being trans men. This includes no systemic privilege over cis women whatsoever.

There is more nuance to feminism than just "men oppress women" and the existence and experiences of trans people proves this. I suggest reading intersectional and black feminist theory as this will help you delve deeper than just "trans men are men therefore they have male privilege", and I suggest you listen to trans men/mascs when we talk about our experiences instead of coming into our inboxes telling us what you think must be true. Do better.

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As if clockwork, people who fail to understand intersectionality are going to continue to see posts pointing out the problematic nature of lumping together the experiences of an entire demographic of trans people as an attack. It’s incredibly strange to me that folks like these simultaneously claim that transmascs are privileged for their capacity to be seen as men, but also then deny that a transfem could be treated better than other gender minorities prior to coming out, due to being perceived as cis men. Which to be clear isn’t privilege, because there’s no privilege to being in the closet, but it does mean that there will be biases that need to be overcome that don’t magically disappear upon coming out, especially if that trans woman was previously part of conservative, bigoted and reactionary communities. Which, for the record, applies to trans men and mascs as well!

A trans man who spent most of his life identifying as a woman and who is still seen that way despite years of transitioning is likely going to have more valuable insight on misogyny and the patriarchy’s effects than a newly-out trans woman who’s barely a year removed from her 4chan radicalization pipeline. Conversely, a trans woman who has fought for access to care and legal legitimacy, and has been subjected to years of transmisogynistic harassment in and out of queer spaces is likely to have more valuable insight than a perisex white wealthy trans man who got on T immediately as a teen and started passing with no issues. Neither of this is to say that one group is more worthy of being listened to than the other, but instead pointing out that individuals within the same broad demographic of trans identities can have wildly different experiences and therefore shouldn’t be seen as a monolith of “has this experience” and “doesn’t have this experience.”

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I’ve noticed a trend of transandrophobes on this site that seem to extend way more grace, understanding and compassion to cis men on the chance they may actually be trans than they do out and vocal transmascs. Which I can’t even begin to describe how fucked up that is. Like, if you’re more empathetic to “”””TME’s”””” that have the capacity to theoretically be transfeminine than your actual trans brothers and siblings, you’re just transphobic. And now we have literal cis men on this site who think they can speak over an entire demographic of trans people BEING PLATFORMED BY OTHER TRANS PEOPLE. How the fuck have we lost the plot this hard.

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A trans man who spent most of his life identifying as a woman and who is still seen that way despite years of transitioning is likely going to have more valuable insight on misogyny and the patriarchy’s effects than a newly-out trans woman who’s barely a year removed from her 4chan radicalization pipeline. Conversely, a trans woman who has fought for access to care and legal legitimacy, and has been subjected to years of transmisogynistic harassment in and out of queer spaces is likely to have more valuable insight than a perisex white wealthy trans man who got on T immediately as a teen and started passing with no issues. Neither of this is to say that one group is more worthy of being listened to than the other, but instead pointing out that individuals within the same broad demographic of trans identities can have wildly different experiences and therefore shouldn’t be seen as a monolith of “has this experience” and “doesn’t have this experience.”

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AFAIK, PDB is a cis man. He has absolutely 0 business telling transmascs what they do or do not experience at a very basic and fundamental level.

Non passing trans men don't benefit from misogyny whatsoever, besides possibly on the internet. If they are seen as a woman in someone's eyes, especially legally, they do not benefit from it. If you are not seen as a man by society, regardless of if you are or not, you do not benefit from misogyny.

It's that fuckin simple.

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Ew. Shut up fatphobic weirdo

Radfems and gender essentialists in the trans community really don’t like how my experience growing up as a fat, autistic intersex kid AFAB has more in common with the average transfem childhood experience than anything else.

I wasn’t treated like a delicate, innocent being that needed to be protected. I was larger than all the other kids, had poor motor and emotional control and acted in ways that didn’t always make sense. And I was masculine. No amount of dresses (which I hated) or pink sparkly clothes (which I hated even more) I was forced to wear undid what was so plainly obvious. Even when my chest grew in I graduated from “third gender freak” to “gross disgusting weird girl” and it wasn’t until I learned how to mask as well as I do now that anything improved.

So now, when I see certain members of this community saying things like “well, at least you weren’t TRYING to be femme-presenting!” I want to scream. That would’ve made things easier for me, if I tried harder. If I apologized for who I was and tried to force myself to lose weight, pretend and fit inside the box everyone wanted me to be within. My thin, neurotypical classmates got to be “tomboys”, I was a freak. And this experience is actually far more common than many think, especially for those who are intersex, neurodivergent and POC.

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Shout out to AFAB transfems, AMAB transmascs, and all intersex trans people with “contradictory” labels. I love you. I think it’s wonderful that you don’t allow what society says your anatomy should mean to dictate how you identify. I’m sorry about the horrific gatekeeping you face, both from pericis society/healthcare and the trans community that sees your existence as bad faith.

You’re not required to justify your existence to anyone, especially not perisex folks, regardless of their own marginalization. You are allowed to be upset and angry at the people in your communities using you as a scapegoat for issues that on average disproportionately affect you more as an intersex person. You are allowed to be yourself, even if it’s hard for others to understand.

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A fascinating phenomena I’ve noticed is that the people who are transandrophobic tend to have also been, past or present, aphobic, biphobic, exorsexist and/or intersexist, and the people who support those groups but don’t belong to them tend to be in one or more of the other groups. On the one hand I’m glad that these often villainized and erased identities find solidarity in each other and tend to be allies, but on the other I find it deeply disappointing that this scapegoating continues to happen again and again in the queer community. It’s almost like belonging to a marginalized group isn’t a magic button that suddenly prevents you from ever holding bigoted beliefs, and it’s your responsibility to hold space for others and listen to their experiences even if they seem less severe or difficult to understand compared to yours. Funny that.

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The continued ability to talk over intersex people while supposedly being “on our side” is astounding. Accusing someone from a minority you are not a part of being a TERF for identifying with/defending a label you don’t like is disgusting.

Who is watering down the meaning of “TERF” again?

Hey so this is like extremely intersexist. Like mask-off intersexism if you think perisex/intersex is in any way comparable to tme/tma. Anyone reblogging this is not an ally of intersex people and needs to change their heart or shut up forever.

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Hey so this is like extremely intersexist. Like mask-off intersexism if you think perisex/intersex is in any way comparable to tme/tma. Anyone reblogging this is not an ally of intersex people and needs to change their heart or shut up forever.

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These folks are so close to getting it but they just had to throw in hatred of transmascs into their posts so bad it completely undermines what they’re trying to say. I’m so tired

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no guys cmon it makes perfect sense. *i* havent experienced anything worse than mild bullying for being transmasc, therefore everyone else who claims to have experienced worse is lying. god, why are us trans men so whiny and hysterical? we should all just sit down and stop complaining because we have it so good. im protecting trans people by saying this

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The way that some transradfems speak down to transmascs as if they don’t understand what it’s like to experience misogyny is kind of baffling to me. I’m not even saying that there’s a complete zero sum of trans men out there that have never faced significant misogyny- I’ve seen some that say as much (while also usually being incredibly privileged in other ways, but I digress)- but to talk to the average transmasc as if they have no idea what it’s like to navigate the world under the social class of “woman” is just nonsensical. Even more insulting are those who try to frame it as “affirming”, as if telling us that our experiences aren’t real and we don’t know what we’re talking about is suddenly okay as long as we’re being correctly gendered.

Hell, I’d go as far to say that just like there are forms of misogyny non-transfems usually don’t face (due to that specific intersection, usually called transmisogyny) there’s also forms that are unique to transmascs (which we call transandrophobia). Things like reproductive healthcare being so difficult to obtain in many parts of the world and medical gatekeeping specifically oriented around the potential children one’s body could theoretically support are big ones, which while already a part of cis women’s experiences with misogyny only become more extreme with the intersection of trans identities. At the end of the day, I do not think it is hyperbole to say that transmascs will never be “free” of misogyny until misogyny itself disappears from society, and until then, it seldom actually lessens upon transitioning so much as it transforms into new and often worse forms.

tl;dr, “transitioning into privilege” is always a falsehood (and a TERF calling card) and those who talk to transmasculine people, regardless of their gender, as if they have no deeper understanding of the function and impact of misogyny on their lives is just blatantly incorrect and trans(andro)phobic.

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Radfems and gender essentialists in the trans community really don’t like how my experience growing up as a fat, autistic intersex kid AFAB has more in common with the average transfem childhood experience than anything else.

I wasn’t treated like a delicate, innocent being that needed to be protected. I was larger than all the other kids, had poor motor and emotional control and acted in ways that didn’t always make sense. And I was masculine. No amount of dresses (which I hated) or pink sparkly clothes (which I hated even more) I was forced to wear undid what was so plainly obvious. Even when my chest grew in I graduated from “third gender freak” to “gross disgusting weird girl” and it wasn’t until I learned how to mask as well as I do now that anything improved.

So now, when I see certain members of this community saying things like “well, at least you weren’t TRYING to be femme-presenting!” I want to scream. That would’ve made things easier for me, if I tried harder. If I apologized for who I was and tried to force myself to lose weight, pretend and fit inside the box everyone wanted me to be within. My thin, neurotypical classmates got to be “tomboys”, I was a freak. And this experience is actually far more common than many think, especially for those who are intersex, neurodivergent and POC.

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terms that have cropped up to discuss transandrophobic discrimination:

trans broken arm syndrome

similar to fat broken arm syndrome; the way that doctors blame a trans mans/mascs problems on testosterone and ignore everything else

tomboy breaking

an umbrella term for tropes that force gender nonconforming female characters back towards femininity or womanhood, usually to "bring out the true woman underneath all that masculinity" in order to sexualize them

reproductive detransition or corrective-rca / detrans-rca

similar to reproductive coercive abuse; a method of forcibly detransitioning a trans man/masc person by having them carry a child, reproductive detransition and corrective-rca would be if a trans man/masc person does not want to be a seahorse dad and detrans-rca is if the trans man/masc person does want to be a seahorse dad

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The common refrain in response to folks giving examples of transandrophobia/transandromisia/etc that it is “just transphobia” or “a universal trans experience” really loses a lot of its credibility when you know that if such a thing was said in discussions of transmisogyny these folks would absolutely have a problem with that. In fact, we see that happening literally all the time here on this website every time a transmasculine person dares to push back against the idea of an experience being purely a transfeminine one. The simplest explanation for this, of course, is that the people saying this just hate transmascs and don’t think we should be able to speak on our oppression with our own terminology.

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On a transmasc* specific issue.

* And some intersex transfems

I think the trans community’s reticence on discussing the disproportionate affect reproductive rights has on one group over the other, while understandable due to its usage as a bludgeon by transphobes, is ultimately unproductive. It is not, despite what some might say, transmisogynistic or “weaponizing one’s AGAB” to point out that pregnancy, contraception and abortion are issues that perisex transfems are not nearly as affected by as transmasc and intersex individuals are.

The reason I point this out is because I have noticed a very disturbing trend of backlash to people pointing out anti-transmasculine behavior where the forced impregnation and detransition of transmascs is dismissed as not as severe as other forms of violence against trans people. I do not think it is appropriate for someone who does not have the societal expectation of childbirth placed on them due to their anatomy to comment on the issue. The “breeder/culled” dichotomy I’ve seen discussed as evidence of transmascs not having it as “bad” as transfems do is problematic on many levels, but at its core it makes a lot of assumptions about the severity of the horrific dehumanization transmascs face whenever conversations of pregnancy comes up that I just don’t think is appropriate for a non-transmasc to make.

Of course, this conversation always toes the line of bioessentialism, which is why it’s important to actually listen to and understand the experiences of trans people that don’t fall under your own demographic. If any transfems disagree with anything I’ve said here and want to have a respectful conversation on the topic I’m open to it, but I also have a fairly low tolerance level for arguments I perceive to be in bad faith.