So I recently saw this post about a video where a woman is saying "trans men are men because this one trans man yapped at me for ages about a history topic I didn't ask about" and while that post does bring up really good points ("is it mansplaining or is it just a man talking about a topic you aren't interested in"), I'd like to point out how this is actually one of the functions of transandrophobia.
It takes a very neutral behaviour - talking at length about a topic of interest - and, because of our gender identity as men or masculine, it takes that behaviour and turns it into something seen as "annoying" or "cringe" and demonises it as a specifically male behaviour.
It's malgendering as well, "trans men really are men because they're doing this thing I perceive as negatively associated with cis men".
There is something to say about how, within the context of the video, it didn't seem like the actual dude was "mansplaining" - which is a real misogynistic behaviour. But the post linked talks about that in depth so I'll only briefly touch on it here.
There is a difference between talking down to someone you perceive as less knowledgeable (in the case of mansplaining, men talking down to women because they see them as unintelligent due to misogyny, especially about a subject the woman does have an understanding of), and just talking at length about a topic that someone isn't interested in.
The latter of course gets twisted into misogynistic and annoying/cringe behaviour literally due to the person's gender identity.
And of course all that is to say, actually maybe you should let trans men speak because we are more erased and invisible than even cis women. Why are you (person in the video), as a cis person, putting negative gender stereotypes onto a trans person?
i want people to get it into their heads that you can still be transphobic if you're a trans person. literally the most vile transphobia i've ever been faced with has been at the hands of other trans people. i have had trans women in my life tell me that i'm not a man because i don't have a penis. being trans does not absolve you from all potential transphobic beliefs you held before you realized you were trans. we all have to unlearn transphobia. you can get off your high horse and acknowledge that you have the capability to be transphobic towards other trans people.
It doesn't mean anything btw if you say "terfs dni" but still say all of the same things they do. Just so you know.
What really ticks me off is how often prominent trans women activists try to silence trans men or dismiss their lived experiences as not as important bc they ‘trans misogyny exempt’. Then when transmen try to create their own terms to describe their experiences they claim they’re just attention seeking. Another phenomena that could be behind this is the weird alt right/misogynist to trans woman pipeline for public figures. A lot of self professed ‘former’ nazis dictating the discourse…
I blame Whipping Girl for some of this. It was basically everyone's trans Bible in the 2010s and it massively, massively shit on transmascs and nonbinary people. I don't think we've ever completely recovered from that.
This incident in particular always haunts the back of my mind.
(Obligatory mention that it isn't always trans women that do this. Cis people, nonbinaries, and even trans men themselves will happily trash trans men.)
Calling me a transandrobro who believes in some kind of ideology is like calling the kid who pointed at the emperor and said "he's not wearing any clothes" a "clothes truther" who "clings to his dogmatic ideology." I do not care about ideology. I am just pointing out that you're fucking lying.
it's amazing how some TERFs will just admit that their primary grievance is being sex pests entitled to pussy and they don't like there being less people to have drunk hookups with.
whole lotta talk about transfems being transandrophobic and not enough talk about transmascs being transandrophobic. its just as bad and definitely something that happens in irl spaces
can I say something mean. I think the obsession some guys have with """transandrophobia""" is just like, they thought transitioning would magically make gender not a prison. and then they continue to experience gender (which is a prison) and get confused because they stopped being a woman shouldn't it all be better now??? and it's not (because gender is a prison, even if conforming with it gives you privilege over others) but they lack the introspection and awareness to make that connection. so instead they go "no it must be the trans women who are oppressing me"
With this latest round of discourse being "trans men shouldn't complain about being kicked out of women's spaces", I felt the urge to write up a relatively long post regarding the topic, as I feel it is a long tangled mess and involves a significant amount of people simply talking past each other.
To begin, what is a woman's space? I ask this, because "women's spaces" often fall under one of three categories: medical services, social services, and social gatherings. Of the three, trans men need access to nearly everything if not everything included within "medical services" and "social services". These things often need to be considered co-ed anyway, but are still considered "for women" and often are labeled things like "women's health" or "women's defense". Social gatherings- things such as book clubs, concerts, festivals, and other similar outings- can have a nuanced and complicated history when it comes to the inclusion, or exclusion, of trans men.
As an example- I am a binary, gay trans man who has not yet been sterilized. If I become pregnant and need to seek out social services, I must do so via my provider's "Women and Babies" department. I am neither of those things, and yet regardless of whether I am completing or terminating the pregnancy, I must label myself a woman in order to receive care. If I wish to have a pap smear, receive birth control, or investigate my chances of ovarian and cervical cancer, I must do so via the "Women's Health Clinic". I am not a woman, but I must label myself as one in order to discuss sterilization options. Many trans men who have had their gender markers changed prior to sterilization have reported difficulty even booking an appointment, as well as difficulty convincing their insurance to pay for this appointment due to a discrepancy with gender markers vs gendered care. Many have discussed the realities of being a pregnant man, whether they remained pregnant until their child was born, or whether they terminated said pregnancy with an abortion.
It should come as no surprise that the statistics for trans men receiving quality gynecological care are abysmal. It should be equally unsurprising to hear how many trans men have died from botched abortions, untreated miscarriages, infections and cancers of the uterus and cervix and ovaries, and complications during pregnancy or birth. We belong in this space, despite it being labeled "for women", and the only thing pushing us out has done is quite literally what's been killing us.
This is, of course, not even taking into account the numbers of trans men who have been forced to become pregnant via their husbands or families as a means to detransition them, and those who have become pregnant as a result of corrective rape. There is a saying among trans men of my age- it isn't "we all know a guy this has happened to", it's "which of us haven't experienced this? who among us doesn't fear this? who will it happen to next?"
Which brings me to my next point: women's social services. As with women's medical care, nearly everything labeled "for women" as a social service must be inclusive to trans men. Shelters for domestic violence survivors, rape crisis centers, self defense classes, family planning, these are all things that honestly should already be co-ed. But, many times, they are exclusively targeted towards women. I understand why, I do. But with trans men being statistically more likely than cis women to experience the need for these services, it seems a cruelty to close their doors to a vulnerable demographic reaching out for help.
Where should trans men in crisis go? Shutting the door to us without addressing the reason we need to access these resources gives us a single ultimatum: detransition, or die. Go back to being a woman, or die knowing the likelihood that a woman's name will adorn your headstone, and "daughter, wife, mother" will be said in your obituary. Much like the medical services, this incomplete answer has lead many trans men to their deaths. Whether by their own hands, or by their attackers'.
But there are other social services out there that perhaps are not as dire. Women's scholarships, colleges, all girls schools. Girl Scouts, women's sport leagues, gym memberships. Trans men don't need access to these, right?
Well... is the trans man in question out? Has he been living as a man, or is he still closeted? Is it safe for him to come out? Does he pass, or has he just bought his first binder and given himself his first buzz cut? Is he living under the control of his parents, or is he able to freely decide for himself the type of person he'd like to be and the type of life he'd like to live?
You see, I was a Girl Scout once. And, if we are to believe to our core that trans men are men even before they know the words "transgender", this means I was a boy in a girl's space. I didn't know that being transgender was an option for me at the point where my troop disbanded, and another leader to replace the first within my local area was not found until after I had aged out.
But also... I was in 7th grade when my troop disbanded. Two years later, I would learn the word "transgender", and suddenly everything would make sense. Two years later, I would come out to my parents and my sisters. To put this into perspective, I graduated high school in 2010. The Boy Scouts officially allowed cisgender girls and transgender people of all genders to join all programs in 2019.
I was not expelled from my Girl Scout troop. My leader simply stopped showing up to meetings, and my troop disbanded to go our separate ways when leadership could not find someone quickly enough to replace her. But... if this had not happened, I would have been a recently out transgender boy in a girl's social service, still wearing push up bras and frilly shirts because that's all my parents would buy me until I became an adult and moved out and had a job with my own money to re-purchase myself a wardrobe. Indistinguishable from any of the others, outside of what went on inside my own mind.
I would not have been accepted into the Boy Scouts, if Girl Scouts had been taken from me as abruptly as it was from a different transgender boy in the same state I was born and raised. Which would have left me with... nothing. Neither. And the only reason I even joined the Girl Scouts was because I had wanted to join the Boy Scouts and the local troop had refused to allow me, because they had labeled me a girl.
I don't believe I'm the one that coined Schrodinger's Gender, but I do reference it often. In this situation, one is both a boy when it hurts, and a girl when it hurts. Even if that gender label changes by the second, the point is to use your gender and your assigned sex to hurt you.
But then, why do these services even have to be gendered to begin with? After all, Boy Scouts just updated to be The Scouts, and has removed (on paper) the insistence on gendering.
Well... I certainly agree that the majority of gendering these services is at this point a concept that needs to be reformed, but I'm unconvinced that we will be able to completely integrate without addressing the reason they were segregated by gender in the first place.
Women's gym memberships are gender segregated for two reasons. Women and girls- and anyone labeled as women and girls, regardless of true identity- are frequently not afforded the same access to resources as cisgender men and boys. Women and girls- and anyone labeled such- are frequently at high risk of predatory sexual behavior and physical violence. Both of these problems are symptoms of a larger system of misogyny at play, and both of these problems directly affect trans men especially those who have not transitioned in a way that makes them pass for cis men.
Regardless of the truth of my identity, the reality is that I was seen as and treated as a girl when it came to physical fitness, and thus barred from the same activities freely offered to the boys. Regardless of the truth of my identity, I have experienced predatory sexual behavior from cis men as young as 8 or 9 years old, continuing past when I came out and began to transition socially.
If the problem is not addressed, cis women cannot re-integrate with cis men. But, additionally, if the problem is not addressed, the choice still remains clear for trans men. Detransition, stay closeted, or go without.
A common complaint of trans men is the invisibility and erasure our demographic faces. It should be easy to see why this happens. The problem of a misogynistic society is one that continues to this day, and without addressing the problem we cannot hope for success in creating a more inclusive space. At the same time, trans men are being pushed out and isolated as they realize they must make a choice.
As for social gatherings, such as a woman's retreat or a woman's music festival? Of course, it may sound odd to say that a trans man should feel welcome there. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the trans men asking for the ability to stay are trans men who have been within that space for years already, prior to coming out, prior to realizing some things about their genders, prior to taking their first steps as men.
I'm pretty good friends with an older butch who told me that I am the first person they ever told that they were a nonbinary man. This person is in their 50s. They're married. But the wife doesn't like it, and they love their wife too much to cause friction in the relationship, so they keep it to themselves, and they keep quiet, and they don't say anything about being transgender, but in their head they aren't a woman. This person is not a woman, by their own insistence. Should this person be forcibly ejected from their local lesbian community, which they and the wife helped form decades ago? Should they divorce their wife, since that would make her not a lesbian anymore?
What harm is it, truly, to allow this person to stay? Social isolation kills people. The trans man suicide statistics are just as abysmal as any of the others I've mentioned here. Forcing someone to burn 20, 30, 40 years of their lives and their friends and their achievements because they are finally living as themselves is a deeply hurtful and isolating experience.
The majority of trans men asking to be included in these spaces are not trans men like me- who never really jived with the idea of womanhood and distanced ourselves as much as possible the moment we saw the opportunity. They are men like my friend, often existing outside of the binary, often with a deep love and appreciation for womanhood despite realizing that perhaps the label does not fit them as well as they once thought. They often have many years of connection, entire lives spent intwined in these spaces.
What good does it do to chase them out? What harm does it to do let them stay?
The collection of based individuals in your doxxing blog grows larger by the day.
I don't think you know what doxxing is.
Anything that insiuates that trans men are uniquly capable of misogyny
Anything that claims trans men/mascs transition to gain something, things like male privilege, or to "escape" misogyny
Claiming that trans men/mascs transition for a fetish, anything that says they're fetishizing gay men and are only transitioning to sleep with said men.
Claiming trans men are trying to get into "women's spaces" to rape lesnians(I've seen this a few times from cis lesbians)
Vilifying and fear mongering against testosterone
Anything that claims they are "protecting women" "protecting little girls"
"rapid onset gender dysphoria"
Anything that's claims trans men don't understand their own oppression
Calling trans men and mascs"emotional, hysterical,"
This is also exorsexism, but slurs like "theyfab" and "zippertits"
Claiming that trans men/mascs don't experience misogyny
Claiming that trans men don't actually want to be men, they just "don't want to be women" this was used in the book "irreversible damage" and I've seen it a few times outside of that
Anything from the book "irreversible damage"
Add more if you can think of it
Discourse side of @blunt-force-therapy. Pronouns: it/its
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