#trans misandry

[satanicspinosaurus]

Being a millennial trans-masculine person is wild.

Like, I have spent the majority of my life being perceived as a girl or young woman. I have been affected by systematic misogyny. I cut my teeth on it and grew to oppose it. I leaned into everything that brought me joy society told me was “wrong” for me to like - being covered in mud, math, rough housing, being loud, being assertive.

I wore the word “bitch” like it was a crown, because every fucker who hurled it at me was basically saying “I cannot break you and I hate it”.

So imagine my shock when I finally found words and help to make my body into a home (not some place I was forced to reside, to try and decorate the hostile walls best I could) AND now it’s the queer community slinging mud at me for being masculine.

I have been told my medication is “poison” by cis and trans people. I have been told to sit down, shut up and let the unprivileged speak. (You know a whole 3 months on hormones when I was beating my head against the wall because my legal name was still my deadname and I was tired from trying to get the majority of society to use my actual name and pronouns.) I have now been told my struggle with bottom dysphoria sounds like a prank from a trans support space volunteer. 

It’s funny to me that now, in trans spaces, my body is the measuring stick. The one you can make jokes about. The one you can compare, insult, belittle, treat like a curiosity. Once again, my pronouns (he/him) don’t always need to be respected. Once again, my emotions are not valid.

Geeeee why does this all feel so familiar???? 

Fuck that. My gender is rebellion. The way I express it has changed, because the way society perceives me has (thankfully) changed. Masculine people being kind, patient, soft and affectionate is often seen as “less than” and GUESS WHAT I am all those things too.

Part of being kind is calling people on their shit. You cannot do this to people and not expect some of them to break. I openly weep for the cis men I know because at least I had a childhood of being told my emotions were valid before having to deal with this. I cannot imagine how hard it must have been to weather this without that. No wonder so many of you came to me crying one night. You told me people say they care and then turn around and hurt you for having emotions. Honestly, how are so many of you still here???

Like I am having a day trying to cope with this, and I am good at surviving shit. Right now, the kindest thing I can think of doing is giving myself space to process this and figure out how to talk about it without screaming.

I don’t have the privilege of yelling when people hurt me anymore. I might be scary.

[transunity]

The Three Tools of Transphobia II- Misandry

This is the second post in this series exploring the three main tools of transphobia. The first post I will link after posting this one.

Misandry usually describes the experiences of men affected by a disdain for, or hatred of men. In cis society, misandry isn't systemic. But it is common nonetheless. Misandry becomes more damaging if someone is marginalised alongside being a man. Examples may include implying that maleness or masculinity is inherently harmful, or denying men access to comfort and safety on the basis of them being men (e.g. the defecit in mental health support or DV shelters for men).

But in a trans context, misandry takes on a different meaning to how it is used in cis society. If you have the cis definition in your head right now, throw it away. It does not apply here.

For trans people, misandry is a tool used against all kinds of trans people as a punishment for proximity to masculinity. Misogyny and misandrogyny are also tools used to control trans expression and existence. Specifically, misandry fuels a lot of terf hatred of trans people- but for each kind of trans person the reason for this differs. For trans women, terfs may apply misandry in a way which misgenders them and uses trans women's agab against them. Their fear mongering about 'male violence' usually revolves around misgendeing trans women in horrible ways and suggesting trans women's agab is enough reason to blame them for the wrongdoings of cis men.

For trans men, their transitions towards manhood instead of away from it causes an altogether different tactic of misandry from terfs. If a trans man is transitioning, terfs may fear monger that trans men are going to become vile abusers by taking T and that they betray women.

For nonbinary people it is varied. Terfs may either target amab nonbinary people the same way they target trans women, or they may target afab nonbinary people the same way they target trans men. But- this is not fixed. They may switch it up and apply blanket misandric rhetoric to all nonbinary people.

As with misogyny and misandrogyny, midandry is based on how the transphobes perceive trans people. Not how the trans people actually identify.

Of course, I can't list every example of how misandry gets applied to trans people as this post is general.

Remember - when misandry is mentioned on this blog it has a strong trans context attached to it. Applying this to cis dynamics doesn't work, just as applying cis dynamics to trans people doesn't work.

Thoughts welcome

[thebadchoicemachine]

from what I've observed trans men don't experience misandry so much as they experience misogyny via thinly veiled transphobia.

[shaftking]

It’s telling as fuck that so many people (from all political bents!!!) will see trans men talk about how being a man is isolating and people see you as inherently criminal and predatory and will respond with some flavor of “should have thought about that before you decided to be a man” instead of recognizing that being a man in our society is isolating and demonized to the point that trans men have emotional breakdowns because living in the body that makes them happiest also means that people will see you as a monster because they assumed you had a dick and trans men haven’t been conditioned to accept it when it’s finally angled at them when they start HRT and start to pass.

[missmisandrytabletalk]

I hate it that soft porn and female nudity has become a norm on every social media platform. there's not been a single time I haven't had to see that bizarre promiscuous content surrounding teenage girls having their nips and bosoms out & don't even get me started with those comment sections which is full of those porn addicts constantly thirsting over them. though the most abominable thing is seeing those young women feel empowered in their own objectification and feeding those incels with exactly what they seek from women. what they fail to understand is that the liberal feminism itself is a hoax and reeks of internalised misogyny. i mean now look where are these young girls and women really heading to? plus these female celebs in the west infuriates me even more for promoting and glorifying the use of OF. and guys.. have you seen the trending shows on netflix recently? i mean more than half of the content is about male sexual fantasies and 365 days-ish eroticas. ofc the male audience is flourishing on such platforms. so appalling and a really high time for us to actually do something about this obnoxious filth taking over the internet.

[afusionoffandoms]

Thinking about how queerness in media is, with extremely few exceptions, portrayed as someone leaning towards femininity, and how much that trope hurts every single queer person who doesn't lean fem.

[thorne1435]

Listen, time for wisdom:

There will never be a trans-inclusive "All-Girl" space.

Fundamentally, to define a space as "All-Female" or even "All-Women" is to define the term female or woman. Both of those things are nebulous at best, and that means they will, usually, resort to the usual take: "Woman means adult human female." And "Female means a fertile, vagina-having, motherly, She/Her cisfem." TERF shit.

The only people who would make a rule with such a premise are TERFs themselves or traumatized cis women who really do believe that the mere presence of a man is a threat to their safety. Neither of which--as you're probably already aware--are going to be very trans-inclusive.

We can talk about why people think this way another time. For now the important part is, if you want to feel safer or more socially integrated, seek out all-queer or all-trans spaces, not all-woman spaces. Queer people will understand you more than cis people ever could.

(And yes theoretically this applies to trans men as well if you replace every feminine thing with a masculine one. Gender restrictions are antithetical to trans people as a whole.)

[thisismisogynoir]

I love it when women hate men. I love it when women are allowed to vent to each other about how horrible and creepy men are. I love it when women form friendships with and prioritize each other over relationships with men(whether they're attracted to them or not). I love it when women put men dni in their bios and on their nude photos and on posts on their blogs. I love it when women refuse to mollycoddle and accommodate entitled male feelings with "but this doesn't mean I hate all men, I know a few men who are great, I love my father/sons/brothers/uncles/male cousins/guy friends" I love it when women complain about men WITHOUT "not all men" being a disclaimer. I love it when women avoid socializing with/refuse to be around/befriend/get close to men because they know men can't be trusted. I love it when women make "kill all men" jokes. I love it when women offer absolutely no concern or care for men's feelings and if their misandry offends men whatsoever because why should we, men are the oppressor class who have raped and killed and abused us and kept us as subjugated as second-class citizens for millennia, they regularly mistreat us and the women in their own marginalized communities still every single day and make this world so much harder and more awful for us to be in, and if we choose to hate them and not spare them any sympathy then so be it, and I don't just mean "men as a class" either, you can be a woman who doesn't want to have anything to do with any man on an individual basis and completely cuts off men from her personal life too and ykw I will love and fucking support you in that because men deserve absolutely NOTHING from us. If they're so tough and strong then they can handle it just like they can handle being lonely. If you are a woman who hates men, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE A LESBIAN AND/OR A TRANS WOMAN, then just know that I love you. I love you, I support you, and you are safe here.

[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

[katrafiy]

It's simple, if someone says "die men!" 200 times and each time they say it they hit a trans woman instead of a cis man, then they clearly don't actually hate men. Clearly something else is happening here; "hating men" is a false pretense, not their actual motive.

I've seen people from the transunity blog talking about how people shouldn't believe terf rhetoric regarding trans men/transmasculine people, but they apparently are totally willing to believe them when they lie about the reasons they hate trans women.

People who hate trans women aren't doing it because they "hate men". If they did, they would treat cis men the way they treat trans women, but they clearly don't do that. Instead they buddy up with fascists like MW and put out calls for cis men to go into women's bathrooms with guns to protect them from the evil r*pist tr**nies.

"Transmisogyny relies on anti-masculism/misandry" is a statement that is completely out of touch with the realities of trans women's oppression, and this should be obvious to anyone who knows better than to take our oppressors at their word, and think they are being honest about their motives.

"Hating men" is a pretense, their actual motive is trans women being an underclass of "girls they can hit".

So why does transunity continue to believe what fascists say about trans women instead of the trans women who are telling them that they are lying? Until transunity can reconcile with that, I simply cannot trust that this 'movement' is willing to or capable of seriously representing me or my sisters best interests.

[thedevilandhisbride]

i love being a man

i love being man adjacent

i love being a man who is connected to girlhood

i love being seen as a man

i love the idea of having a full beard

i love the idea of having a flat chest

i love the idea of having a deep voice

i love the idea of being a father

i love the idea of being a husband

i love the idea of going on testosterone

i love the fact that one day i will get all those things

i love the fact that even though i am not where i want to be in my transition, i am still a man

i am a man

and i love being one

i love loving men and i love being a man who loves men

there is nothing wrong with loving being a man or loving loving men

im hopelessly full of joy and pride and love for men and for my own male identity everytime i go online and see myself addressed as such, or every time my sister calls me her brother, or everytime my mom mentions im going to be an uncle, or whenever my brother brings me into doing inherently men related tasks in my household

and nothing will stop me from spreading that joy

manhood and masculinity are experiences that can be, should be, and are full of joy and love and positivity

i love being a man, and i love loving men

dont derail this post or reblog it changing what i said. this post is about men. nothing you say or do will change the fact that this post is about being a man and loving men!

[brokensenseofhumor]

Everytime you reblog this a terf has a bad day

[smashing-dicks-with-a-rock]

this is literally predatory but ok

[missmisandrytabletalk]

God has been testing me real bad these days.

[hellyeahsickaf]

This is not a joke but men, if you need to see a doctor see a fucking doctor. There is nothing emasculating or shameful about it and you are never less of a man for doing it. Your pride is not worth your health or life. You aren't weak because you didn't tough something out you're strong for tending to the needs of your body. The mindset that it's weak to seek medical care can have deadly consequences

Yes this includes "embarrassing" issues. An object stuck in your ass because you girlbossed too close to the sun trying to have a good time, not only will any person in the ER tell you they've seen it (and probably worse) but people have died from sepsis because they didn't want a doctor to examine them that way or to have to explain their predicament. Not worth dying over

Another person touching you in a medical setting is not sexual in any way shape or form. It implies nothing about your sexuality. Even if your body reacts in a way you don't want it to (it happens, likely won't but if so they don't think you're a perv or some shit). Malpractice of course exists and often a witness will accompany the doctor for such examinations to keep you safe and ensure you are treated professionally.

Strict laws exist to protect your right to privacy. Anything you say to your doctor stays confidential.

If you are trans your doctor should know this as it can be vital to you receiving proper care. And you are again, no less of a man. Dysphoria can be unbearable and acknowledging your anatomy can be awful for some but sometimes it's just something you need to get through for the sake of your physical health. Also trans or cis or in between there's no such thing as a "girl illness/disability". Get checked for whatever's going on

STIs and UTIs and the likes are not shameful. If Planned Parenthood is an available resource in your area you'll probably find that more comfortable and safe than you expected. And if you're a minor they will allow anyone confidential and typically free care (tell them you have no insurance). It's not just a lady clinic that only does abortions, they do everything from trans care to routine exams and birth control (many also provide free condoms). However many doctors specialize in/treat this shit, see it every day, and sometimes the treatment is so simple and can prevent something so much worse.

[autogyne-redacted]

Ok, so let's talk about "misandry."

(Heads up that I use terrible US foreign policy as an example of underlying gender ideology, Death to America of course)

1) if we're working within a social justice, privilege-oppression type framework, there is no systemic oppression of men as men, or trans men as trans men (beyond transphobia). Within these privilege oppression frameworks treating misandry or transandrophobia as a real thing is gonna have disastrous consequences.

2) But we need to be abandoning the identity politics social justice orthodoxy as fast as we can. Occupying a position of privilege within the discourse is dehumanizing and hellish, it has a terrible track record with transmisogyny (not a coincidence), and trying to map gendered power just by looking at identity groups means you miss a ton of what's happening within the groups, and in less straight forward ways.

3) a huge part of the gender binary is between camab ppl as (instrumental) subjects and cafab ppl as (responsive, feeling) objects. And this is fucked all around.

To pick one of the more egregious examples, US military directives make heavy use of the category of "military aged males." People outside this category are (theoretically) assumed to be non combatants while "military aged males" in ~warzones~ are basically valid targets by default. https://tinyurl.com/4skt53tx

This category also faces extra exclusion from refugee and asylum status: https://tinyurl.com/4txsmepy

We could explain this as a symptom of misogyny. That women should also be recognized as being capable of enacting violence and treated equally. This is the most straight forward application of orthodox gender theory and likely the worst.

Or we could say that there's something about the intersection of being Arab/Muslim/young/read as male that leads to a unique oppression.

But it's not like it's just this intersection. If we look at prison populations, or who gets hit by police violence, or weaponized accusations of Sexual Assault the logic is actually fairly consistent here, if a little messy to talk about.

Ppl seen as men are seen as capable of wielding power and this leads to benefits if they're seen as basically good. If they're seen as crazy, dangerous, evil, hostile, or at risk of being any of these, being seen as capable of violence makes shit way worse. Lots of intersections push you further towards being viewed as a threat.

(A pretty good bite sized model of transmisogyny is that it misgenders us as men + we get negative respect since we rejected masculinity + it frames us as crazy/dangerous).

Ppl seen as women are going to be seen as less competent, in need of guidance, control and protection by default. But it comes with certain (conditional) protections. Violence against women certainly happens, but the fact that it's a special protected category says a lot. (There's a lot to say about how much these protections are worth, who they really apply to and when they disappear and what happens then, but it's very clear that they exist and that they mean something).

4) so am I arguing for the existence of misandry? Absolutely not*. Gender is just a fucked up system of division and control all around. Privilege frameworks suggest that women are going to experience the same shit as men they share identities with + misogyny + possible extra intersectional oppression. And while this approach is sometimes helpful, I think a better default framework is that gender is just a way to create more social categories for a more complicated system of control with common threads like the subject-object binary that can play to different ways in different contexts.

The whole thing needs to be dismantled and we need to see ppl across gender categories as whole human beings with a meaningful interiority, the capacity for violence, etc. And if we recognize that gender is a complicated system of control, it follows naturally that our gender discourse shouldn't all ask men to sit down / shut up / listen.

5) the issue with transandrophobia BS is that it really wants to exceptionalize the trans masc experience. "It's fucked up that I'm being seen as suspect and capable of violence like terrible cis men, I'm obviously one of the good ones." And as they fight for the best of both worlds ("I should be respected like a man but still seen as incapable of chauvinism") it pushed naturally for trans fems to get the worst of both worlds.

6) returning to feminist "man-hating" there's a lot i oppose for being essentialist or doubling down on subject-object binary. Beyond that, a lot of it is just mean. And like, ppl can be jaded and mean sometimes. But a lot of social justice feminist dogma was ppl developing a bristly defensiveness from constant harassment and trolling. Ppl defending this as an understandable response, and then that shifting into codifying and valorizing it. And I just think it's a miserable way to live and it's miserable to be on the receiving end of it.

I think some grace and understanding for ppl being jaded and bristly is rly helpful but I'm done with valorizing it.

7) all of this said, basic feminist takes about men having lots of pressure and motivations to be chauvinist still apply. And they certainly apply to trans men. But there's a difference between having social expectations that you be a chauvinist and bowing to that pressure. And lots of men are chill and nice! Yes even cishet men!

It's easy to want to draw a hard line where you're "one of the good ones" and are categorically separated from the possibility of being sexist (ontologically incapable of violence, even?) and that goes really poorly.

(most of my beef with transandrophobia is that it's doing this + exceptionalizing trans masc experience in a way that fucks over trans fems).

But I'm not gonna ask ppl to constantly self flagellate or be hyper vigilant to make sure they don't slip up. Sin frameworks are miserable and it's not like being interpersonally shitty in a way that lines up with oppressive systems actually has consequences that much worse than just being an asshole.

So much of the more aggressive side of social justice just feels like ways to treat enemies, not your friends or ppl you want to be in community with.

I'm glad we've been moving on from it.

*editing a footnote since this has already come up a couples times / this post seems to be leaving my immediate circles: by saying misandry isn't real I mean: there isn't a systemic oppression of men as men that parallels misogyny. Gendered oppression isn't a "both sides" situation. When "egalitarian" or mra types brought "misandry" into the discourse this is what they were pushing for.

While I object to the idea that all men evenly oppress all women, patriarchy absolutely has men at the top. It's a complex and multi-directional system of power but there is an overall gendered slant to it. My framework here is still a feminist framework.