#anti-transmasculinity

[a-polite-melody]

“Focusing on fixing sexism instead of worrying about transandrophobia is going to benefit trans men more. Also, worrying about transandrophobia instead of sexism is like discarding women and instead trying to put trans men into male privilege to fix the problem instead of fixing sexism.”

I mean.

First of all, sure, fighting sexism will help many people. Absolutely. Cis women. Trans women. Trans men.

But would you tell a trans woman to stop fighting transmisogyny because it’s only helping her and other trans women? Would you tell her that fighting for transmisogyny is counterproductive and just putting trans women in a better position instead of fixing sexism? I sure hope not! Typically people who think that way are radfems. But it’s what you’re doing to trans men in conversations about transandrophobia right now, so I’ve gotta point this out.

And also, fixing sexism doesn’t magically fix transmisogyny or transandrophobia. Discarding either conversation to “just focus on sexism” will not be beneficial overall. Just a couple quick examples: even in places where abortion is fully legal trans men will still struggle to access it, even in places where cis women have full access to a space trans women will still struggle to access it.

We don’t need to have only one conversation. Conversations about sexism, transmisogyny, and transandrophobia have to exist in tandem with one another.

And I’m definitely bringing this back around to the fact that discarding other conversations to focus on “the only actual real problem” when that “only actual real problem” is sexism also rings a lot of radfem alarm bells in my head.

[gay-otlc]

casually omitting the fact that the men and straight people you are being asked to care about are trans because you know it will make you sound like an asshole if you outright say "i don't care about trans men or straight trans people"

[aronarchy]

[genderkoolaid]

Hi! I wrote a medium article!

If you've been at all interested in what I've been posting about historical sex work and FTM crossdressing, that's what this is about. I go over three examples of this in ancient Greece, Renaissance Venice, and 19th-20th-century San Francisco, and talk a bit about my thoughts on how these stories tie in to transmasculine erasure (& specifically the erasure of gay transmasculinity).

[bugbuoyx]

One manifestation of anti-transmasculinity I see again and again, primarily in discussions about the existence/denial of anti-transmasculinity is the treatment of transmascs in the same way cis men treat feminists as hysterical women and rad/feminists treat men as ignorant beasts. Of course these really just echo each other in that the other is deemed lesser but it's really in the wording.

You do not, can not ever understand misogyny, you are just ignorant sluts vieing for attention, what happened to you wasn't that bad, you're exaggerating, it was just a joke, it doesn't matter, you deserved it, you're being dramatic, who cares, who cares, who cares. Just shut up already.

[in-depth-transsexualism]

Everytime someone uses the phrase “men” to mean “cis men” I feel as though I am not really a man. That the label of man is only for those with the utmost privilege.

Trans men do not have systemic power over cis women, at large trans people of all types are more at risk of violence if gender is the only different factor.

[spitblaze]

I will say this once because I'm tired of seeing stupid discourse: anti-transmasculinity is not about being treated bad because we clock as men, it's about being treated as stupid little girls because transphobes think we've been tricked into this.

It's kind of the opposite of transmisogyny- instead of fear and revulsion, it's constant condescension, the implications that we've been whisked away from femininity by scary bad guys, that we're going to cause 'irreparable damage' because we don't know what's best for ourselves, somehow. People fearmonger a lot about the "ugliness" of transfem people, but for transmasc people that 'ugliness' is used as a warning- you'll look like THIS! You'll go BALD! Your top surgery scars will leave you MUTILATED! A lot of aesthetic concerns. Worry about our 'beauty'. Because it comes from that same stupid reactionary 'we gotta SAVE the WOMEN' shit, but this time they have to save them from getting 'stolen away', as if we're being seduced or pressured into this. As if we can't make our own decisions.

For TERFS specifically, they're losing one of their own. We're 'gender traitors', willingly aligning ourselves with the half of the population they consider unilaterally dangerous and evil.

We aren't REALLY trans, we just want the benefits that men get. You don't actually want to transition, you're just trying to avoid misogyny.

You aren't actually a man, you're just a self-loathing lesbian.

Why can't you just be a butch girl? Why can't you just be a tomboy?

Why can't you just be something that I don't think is icky?

Anyway. Like all things, it boils down to misogyny. Women stupid and gentle, dont know what best for them, evil men trick into taking man juice, must save because lady stupid and dont know what best for them (having babies and being Feminine).

Theres like. Obviously more to this but I'm just a Transmasc Rando explaining this from my perspective, and I'm not the best with words. Anyone is free to hop in and add on to this

[vaguefiend]

The "lost lesbian" narrative matters and is anti-transmasculine because it necessarily argues that lesbians are inherently more valuable than transmascs.

It also argues that the living, breathing human beings who are exercising their bodily autonomy by transitioning are "lost".

The "betraying womanhood" narrative necessarily argues that transmascs are inferior to cis women, period.

These are proofs that 1) transmascs experience more gender based discrimination than cis women and 2) transmascs experience gender discrimination specifically directed towards their masculinity.

[tacticaltrilobite]

being a tomboy is only marginally accepted in very young children, and then you are expected to grow out of it by the time you reach puberty. which is also why adult trans men are told they just don't want to grow up. all the stories i read as a child with masculine girls, they always became feminine at the end as they matured and it filled me with shame and dread because i knew that is what everyone expected of me too, and it only gets worse as you get older. come on, when are you going to have a glow up and put effort into being presentable? you looked so pretty with long hair, why did you have to cut it? i know this is just a phase, you will grow out of it eventually, i don't care that you're in your 20s you are immature and your brain isn't fully developed so you can't really know you are trans!

[hadeantaiga]

So here's the thing:

Transmacs do not need fucking permission from non-transmascs to coin a word.

This is not a committee decision with the people who hate us.

It doesn't actually matter what word we use because the people who hate us don't believe we're oppressed in the first place and therefore don't "deserve" a word in the first place.

Fuck you.

I'm sticking with transandrophobia. But if I see someone using transmisandry, that's ok too. So is anti-transmasculism. And transmascphobia. THEY'RE ALL FINE. They've been fine the whole time.

Don't let people who hate you decide the language you use, because they'd prefer you use NO words.

[a-polite-melody]

Considering that there’s another post going around that lands on this conclusion, I think it deserves its own succinct post:

When transmascs share instances of positivity to remind each other that the way we are treated isn’t all bad, it’s then used as proof of the whole of transmasc experiences being this way, and that transmascs are not oppressed as a whole.

When transmascs share instances of harm done to transmascs to raise awareness that transmascs are harmed directly within our societies, it’s used as proof that we are taking up too much room in conversations because the harm we face “isn’t bad enough”.

When transmascs share instances of outright murder of members of our community to show that no, transmasc issues are not somehow “lesser” because “we aren’t dying” because we are dying, it’s used as proof that we are trauma dumping and trying to make other people feel sorry for us—look at these AFABs being whiny and hysterical and trying to portray themselves as victims. Or that it isn’t specific enough to us so we should shut up and let other people speak for us.

Transmascs cannot speak about our experiences without being touted as an example of why transmascs as a whole should shut up.

This is erasure.

[gay-otlc]

Actually I think we should talk about how incredibly fucked up it is for sapphic women to say shit like "I'm no better than a straight man 😔" when attracted to a woman in a way that isn't 100% pure and wholesome, or act like men's attraction to women is inherently dirty, predatory, or objectifying.

[queerthoughtsandfeelings]

Love this new wave of transandrophobia denying that instead of outright hostility, it’s people telling us how we’re incapable of analyzing our own oppression correctly and we need to step aside so they can do it for us.

[genderkoolaid]

there's a rich analytical spring to tap in the way trans men have to negotiate life experiences typically seen as "women's experiences" while also needing to differentiate themselves from (cis) women & identify as men.

so often the way people try to fix the contradiction between identification with manhood & experiences with misogyny by either insisting trans men are women (& erasing how their manhood shapes the misogyny they experience) OR insisting that they are men who have essentially borrowed women's experiences, which are fundamentally foreign to them as men. the former generally assumes that all trans men exist in a post-transition state of (white) cis-passing never-outed gender conforming heterosexuality, where you almost frame their experiences with misogyny as having happened to an entirely different person; or by framing the trans man as essentially a cis man who ended up within the body of a completely separate woman, who was the true victim of the misogyny he experienced. in general trying to soothe the discomfort that transmasculinity causes by dissociating trans men from themselves & their bodies & what they have experienced, keeping the typical cis man/cis woman binary of gender experiences that cisfeminism is built on intact.

which is why the conversation around anti-transmasculinity is so important because it's trans men rejecting either being indistinguishable from cis women, or having to dissociate their manhood from the misogyny we experience. choosing instead to say that trans men are not being targeted by misogyny on accident, we are not somehow appropriating women's struggles for ourselves, and in fact being men is a fundamental part of why we are oppressed by misogyny.

[gamblegun]

I think part of the backlash on the transandrophobia discussion, and also just transmascs existing in the queer community, is even if, "it's a TE/RF belief to conceptualize trans men as gender traitors" is generally understood as a TE/RF thing, so of course EYE don't believe it- People still really just consider us gender traitors to cis women on a deep deep level, and have done no work to combat that internal belief. Like, we're either just basically cis women (friends), and when we're too man-like or they don't like us then we're basically just cis men (men 🤮 and traitors, I should have known all along, they're MEN after all). This is honestly one of the many ways I feel that people who genuinely hate men, but consider themselves trans allies, tend to have contradicting beliefs. Beliefs that are going to spill into transphobia no matter what.

[nervoustragedyluminary]

Reductress is just spreading terf rhetoric now

The "joke" is that nonbinary people are somehow escaping from violence by being trans that we can opt out of fearing violence and don't fear violence when walking at night....

Like just yuck as a transmasc nonbinary survivor whose actually aware of the stats of violence against nonbinary people this just disgusts me...

Also I'm betting they have talked to zero Black trans enbies or men or women of colour about how being seen as "scary" puts them in danger from racist white people & or they're just assuming all enbies are white idk it's disgusting... There's just so many layers to the bigotry and white fauxminism of this "joke"

They've previously made posts like this so idk if they've got terfs on staff who keep trying to slip this in to pipeline people or people who think certain trans people they dislike facing violence including sexual violence is funny and that those trans survivors are lying and shouldn't be beleived.

They're priming their audience to disbelieve and mock nonbinary trans survivors. They're literally pushing the "people transition to escape/opt out of patriarchal violence like a fun game" terf talking point which isn't reflected in the stats of violence against trans people who face higher rates of physical sexual and domestic violence than cis people

Just "it's a coin toss!"

As a survivor fuck you

Like the comments section is full of transphobia and people going "har har they think they're in danger they're delusional " or spouting transphobic BS and a trans man whose talking about how he fears violence walking at night being called 'female' and misgendered like well done you've curated a comment section full of transphobes and people who think trans people aren't who we say we are fucking yikes

None of the transphobic comments have been deleted reductress seems happy to leave up comments calling trans men "female" and saying that trans people are a danger to children