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me defending trans men online: we’re actually oppressed for being women

#the giveaway is always that these guys act like radfem terf beliefs are super common and mainstream #but they're just ex-terfs. #thats why they use “terf” as a baseless insult instead of a label of a particular ideology. that's all it is to them

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i’ve just been deleting all the anons i get telling me to get a hobby but i think i’m gonna start responding with links to my online store. put your money where your mouth is an support my hobbies by buying my shit

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Hello! I asked thyrell this but do you have any receipts of tyler being transmisogynistic?

on his old blog, neotrances, he routinely used guilt by association and outright lies about people to pad his callouts and blocklists, and the victims of this behavior have routinely been transfems; most often this was painting trans women as sexually deviant, dangerous, or pedophilic for holding differing (some would say principled and sex positive, even) views on kink and sexuality, the crime of being a trans woman accidentally reblogging a post from "one of the bad ones", or as became the case more and more before he moved blogs, baseless accusations of raceplay when other nonsense didnt stick. he has deeply reactionary views of sexuality and many kinks, such as seeing pregnancy kink as pedophilic, cnc kinks as evil, and furries as zoophilic, that he almost exclusively uses to paint trans women in sexually menacing light.

in recent history, he attempted to piggyback off the toonimal callout situation by accusing txttletale and maia nyancrimew, two outspoken transfem users, of "running in the same circles" and defending him for reblogging a post of his before the callout even dropped. like he always did during these routine transmisogyny episodes, he then doubled down, exaggerating and lying about the situation with new and equally baseless accusations of them defending "loli [...] shit". he accuses random people of being pedos or raceplayers or whatever, and then adds you to the list for asking why or where the evidence is, accusing you of defending whatever the charge today is. this was two recent examples, but i cannot stress enough that this was a many-times-repeated pattern of behavior that he consistently engaged in with no remorse or apology for years, just shitting on and slandering transfems over and over while palling around with open transmisogynists.

and this isnt even touching on how they tokenize black trans women when they constantly accuse genuine criticism of their transmisogyny as being antiblack, which is one part of this bullshit that always gets ignored, because nobody gives a shit about trans women of color and nobody listens. we say "its an unjust and shitty reach to call a trans woman a pedo for unknowingly interacting with a bad person", and he says "white trans women are evil and harassing me because they're racist". how many times will it happen...?

#for those unaware

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WHITE QUEERS GET THE FUCKING HINT THAT YOUR QUEERNESS DOES NOT ELIMINATE YOUR WHITENESS AND YOU ARE STILL NOT ONLY CAPABLE OF AND IN MANY CASES ACTIVELY DOING RACIST SHIT!!!

like oh my god can you guys stop making shit up to have an excuse to harass people of color on this website you fucking thin-skinned eggshell motherfuckers. a nonwhite user calling out your fucking racism is not queerphobic you're just being a racist shitbag

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trans girl: so the patriarchy still benefits under-privileged groups relative to their social positions, for example whilst obviously oppressed, working class men obviously still have privilege over working class women, gay men still have privilege over gay women etc.

tumblr: right, that makes sense

trans girl: so naturally, trans men still have privilege over trans women, even if they are still relatively under-privileged in comparison to cis men

tumblr: shut the fuck up transphobe

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the reason we wont budge on "TMA/TME" is because it doesnt matter if the language is imperfect: any terminology tgirls et al (<- this is my new favorite btw) create to describe our experiences will be inevitably dismantled and expanded into a general-use term by the wider trans community as, of course, all previous examples have been too.

like yes of course in the most literal sense everybody is "affected" by transmisogyny in the same way that everybody is "affected" by all misogyny, or for that matter, everybody is "affected" by racism; the whole point is to describe what relationship specific groups have to institutional transmisogyny. nobody is saying people never (incorrectly) clock you as a trans woman and be mean about it, we're saying that there is nothing we can do to "exempt" ourselves from that type of violence; no ID, no birth certificate, no karyotype that will exempt us from institutional transmisogyny. it is literally fucking insane that people will understand this about any other type of institutional oppression & its relationship to gender -- seemingly, only in the trans community are we expected to believe men and women are on an equal footing.

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every "transandrophobia is real but it DOESNT imply androphobia is" post is full of people in the notes going "yeah! except misandry IS real actually"

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i mean the fact that trans men being expected to care about transmisogyny is being painted as a "hate campaign" is proof enough of a delusional victim complex, but i lose a year off my life every time i see a transandrophobia truther claim that anyone against these terms is a fed psyop. get over yourselves lmfao.

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Could we say that rejecting afab transfemininity is a form of bioessentialism because this rejection is based the sex assigned at birth of this category ? Isn't this like rejecting amab people from womanhood for the same reason ?

this only makes sense if you believe that "transfemininity" was a freely-made, vibes-based gender category with no prior anchor in the world. bioessentialism requires prescription by the accused bioessentialist; it requires that your imagined bioessentialist (me) decide post-hoc that certain biological claims about a person determine whether they can be transfeminine or not. if transfemininity was just a set of expressions, forms of behaviour and labelling, a particular aura or whatever, it would be indefensible to gatekeep people from it based on assignment. but that's not what transfemininity is.

transfemininity as a term developed to describe a category of gendered subjectivity in response to transmisogyny. the transfeminine isn't just a particular appearance or set of labels—transfemininity is anchored to the way transmisogyny shapes the subject-formation of those people who are subjected to it. like being a trans woman, being transfeminine is a politicized positionality determined thru cisnormativity and its reflex, transmisogyny. and the logic of transmisogyny operates precisely thru birth assignment.

here is a second clarification: birth assignment is not a biological fact about someone. birth assignment itself is a bioessentialist social action done to someone in the maintenance of hegemonic sexgender. the corrective machinery of gender then sets its normative expectations in accordance with ASAB, and metes out its punishment likewise. and transmisogyny is the specific genre of punishment reserved for those who have betrayed the expectations of being coercively assigned male at birth: the class of failed men who become an underclass of failed women because they cannot even perform the kinds of reproductive labour expected of women "proper". the transfeminine is a subject formed in response to this experience: a gendered category that coagulated against the stream of transmisogyny. it was not an invention ex nihilo, but political development.

so when I reject "afab transfemininity", I am not engaging in prescription. I am just describing transmisogyny, and deducing what must therefore be true of transfemininity. to call this bioessentialist would be a category mistake. take it up with the instruments of transmisogyny. the bioessentialism sits much deeper than a trans lesbian saying no—and your comparison to transmisogyny itself rejecting trans womanhood is, to be honest, absurd.

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maaaaaybe it’s not really counter culture or nonconformist at all to create a plethora of entirely new identities based on every minute aspect of your personality which can be easily marketed and pandered to, furthering this egotistical american obsession with hyperindividuality but hey man, that’s just me.

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hey, radfem transphobic misandrist bitch, kill yourself :)

hey skrungblyshifter completely normal reaction to someone disagreeing with you

#ur art sucks and ur an idiot for thinking misandry is real

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I used to read a fair amount of fan fiction and a pretty well known ace author in the fandom wrote a fic where a lesbian sucked off one of her male friends and they tagged it with the & (platonic) indicator, and I was like “hey dude can you use the “/“ indicator so people know that there’s sexual stuff going on” and the author was like “hmm no, I don’t think I will - it’s a PLATONIC” blowjob” and like wft dude?? I don’t know who else I can tell that to without sounding insane but totally wft dude???

y'know i have heard second-hand accounts of people who, when underage, were groomed/pressured into doing (or talking about) sexual things by adults who identified as asexual. but whenever i say that to anyone as an example of toxic inclusion in the ace community, they either don't believe me or claim that pedophiles are in every community and therefore doesn't count. but "queerplatonic" relationships between adults and minors was defo something that happened

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same anon from before :3

yeah, and it’s weird to me as a young(-ish? Idk how to refer to myself skfjdkjsf, I’m 17) lesbian. Like, I’ve been called a dyke and faced both internal + external homophobia due to my identity. For lack of a better word, why are that person and I both considered LGBT, you know?

at the risk of sounding rude as hell, it’s because they want to feel special, lol. i think some young cishets see lgbt kids get praised for being “strong” and “brave” (as if we have a choice…) and having pride in their identities, and i guess some kids feel left out of that… but you can’t celebrate overcoming adversity when you haven’t had any adversity to overcome. we just have to hope that these people get a little more aware when they’re older and/or learn from the actually lgbt people in this group

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Ranting on anon bc I don’t feel comfortable sharing my username :> don’t worry, this isn’t hate towards you or anything :)

(pardon the use of cringe text faces)

I’m on this website that advertises itself as a site specifically for LGBT teens, and I just saw this person say that they’re “demihet” (demisexual + heteromantic, I assume). It gets on my nerves a bit, bc like - you’re (the person) essentially a straight person. Why are you on an LGBT website??? There’s tonnsssss of other websites similar to it, there’s no need to go to this specific site :<

Thoughts? :>

(Have a good day! :D)

never apologize for text faces my guy they are the sugar sprinkles of the internet. and good fucking question lol. i doubt THEY even know the answer to that question. on the one hand i can sympathize with a teen who feels alone in their experiences who wants to connect with teens people who feel similarly... but on the other hand i can't understand how that person would feel alone in their experiences. "you date someone of the opposite gender and then get married and then have sex" was the societal norm where i grew up, it was what was expected of everyone. hell, casual sex still gets presented as some sort of problem or moral failing. it just makes you wonder where that person is getting the idea that "being straight and only wanting t have sex after emotional connection" is a marginalized/minority perspective. i just hope that person doesn't make other LGBT teens feel weird or judged for talking about queer PDA or whatever :^\

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Transandrophobia isn’t real because misandry isn’t real. This is the basic truth of the matter.

The very structure of the word implies some kind of intersection of transphobia and misandry, which is impossible, because again misandry doesn’t exist. The phrase “transandrophobia” exists as a transmasc counterpart to transmisogyny, and it doesn’t work, because while misogyny is real, misandry/androphobia is not. The things that are described as “transandrophobia” which are actual instances of oppression are better explained as plain transphobia.

The antifeminism of transandrophobia theory

“Transandrophobia” theory often launders antifeminist concepts of misandry. Of course this is openly often denied. The defense is that transandrophobia doesn’t imply that misandry exists, but only describes transphobia directed at transmascs.

And it’s often disingenuous. I’ve come across numerous transandrophobia blogs that clearly believe in misandry. The very coiner of the word, says it’s caused by “the effects of irrational fears of masculinity and manhood“ (taking “androphobia” quite literally) which implies both the existence of misandry and also misogynistically dismissing women’s fears of men’s violence as irrational.

Of course they change the language around, using euphemisms for misandry. In fact transandrophobia is a clear evolution of the term “transmisandry.” Genderkoolaid and ey’s idea of “anti-masculism” that I criticized here is maybe the most obvious example of that on tumblr today.. The belief in some kind of systemic force that “negatively impacts men and masculine people on the basis of their manhood and/or masculinity.“ to quote genderkoolaid is as succinct a definition of misandry theory as any. And ey even outright admits that “antimasculism” is just another word for misandry. Other transandrophobia bloggers like the transunity blog outright use the word “misandry.”So for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to use “misandry” for whatever euphemisms transandrophobia people use, like “antimasculism”, “androphobia” or claims that “society hates men” or “there is a widespread irrational fear of men and masculinity.”

The use of feminist language like “patriarchy” common among transandrophobia people is either severely confused or outright dishonest. It’s a symptom of the terrible understanding of feminism on this site, as I lamented before. Patriarchy as a term that inherently implies male privilege, men are privileged for being men, not disadvantaged. Claiming the patriarchy oppresses men on the basis of their gender is a contradiction in terms. And belief in misandry is inherently misogynistic and anti-feminist.

How terms for systemic oppression actually work

Let’s however assume that the word “transandrophobia” just means “transphobia aimed at transmascs.” Then I don’t see why this word needs to exist. It contradicts most academic work on systemic oppression. New terms are generally not made just to describe “specific experiences of an oppression”. Instead they are created to describe meaningful intersections of different forms of oppression. Often these are intersections with misogyny, because that particular oppression affects about half the population. So misogynynoir describes an intersection of anti-blackness/racism and misogyny that black women experience, and lesbophobia describes an intersection of homophobia and misogyny that lesbians experience. And transmisogyny describes an intersection of misogyny and transphobia that trans women and transfems experience.

The lesbophobia example is especially pertinent to this discussion. The homophobia that gay men experience is often distinct from that lesbians experience, and homophobia against gay men is no minor prejudice, gay men have literally been murdered for being gay. Yet there is no “homoandrophobia” (to borrow an argument from this post by catgirlforeskin) and that’s because misandry/androphobia isn’t real. Men experience systemic oppression differently from women experiencing the same oppression, but that’s because of the absence of misogyny, not the existence of any misandry.

So a word like transandrophobia does imply an intersection between “androphobia/misandry”and transphobia. Otherwise it doesn’t have much reason to exist.

Misandry must affect all men in order to exist

I have seen claims that while “cis misandry” doesn’t exist, trans men and transmasc people are in fact oppressed for being men or masculine. And that’s how transandrophobia works

.

But that’s just transphobia. Misandry can only be real if it affects all men. Misogyny is a viable term because all women are oppressed for being women, even if they can also be privileged because of things like being cis, wealthy or white which balances out their oppression for being women (intersectionality is complex). I wouldn’t claim misogyny was real if it only affected a subset of women.

You can’t claim that men are oppressed for being men or being masculine, that it is some stigmatized gender or gender expression, when being a man and specifically a masculine man is what is expected of about half the population, and in fact men gain privilege for the successful performance of masculinity.

It’s true that trans men and other transmascs are systemically oppressed, and do indeed experience severe pushback if they express their manhood or try to transition in a transmasculine direction. But that’s because they are trans. Transfems experience a similar oppression for expressing their womanhood or trying to transition in transfeminine direction. That’s why the word transphobia exists.

Let’s make an example of a common bit of rhetoric among transandrophobia people, and see how it is all explained entirely by transphobia. Transandrophobia people talk about some general “hatred of testosterone” as part of transandrophobia, often dishonestly conflating transfems expressing their dysphoria with transphobic rhetoric about how testosterone ruins transmasc bodies.

But any idea about society hating testosterone fail to account for why the testosterone flowing through bodies deemed naturally male is seen as okay. In fact being “high-t” is seen as a positive in a man. It’s not even a prejudice against medical testosterone, being “low-t” is a fad disorder that cis men can easily get testosterone prescriptions for. And trying to lower your “natural testosterone” levels is something that’s actively hindered and gatekept, something I’ve experienced. I waited three years to get on t-blockers due to medical gatekeeping. In my country Sweden getting your balls removed legally and thus permanently lower your t-levels is something you have to petition the government for, something I’m trying to do.

Any kind of theorizing about a misandristic hatred of testosterone can’t explain this. It’s only so-called “cross-sex hormones” that are seen as bad, not testosterone in itself. And this is entirely explained by transphobia, not misandry.

It’s of course true that men are oppressed, but it’s never on the basis of being men. People who try to argue for misandry often use (often appropriatively) the struggles of oppressed men and try to argue they are oppressed because they are men. And transandrophobia theory is no different.

“Deserving a word”

The attitude among the transmascs who support transandrophobia theory seems to be “transfems have transmisogyny to describe their oppression, we deserve a word too.” Except again, transfems don’t have the term transmisogyny because we are very special girls who need a special word for our oppression, it exists because it describes the intersection of misogyny and transphobia we experience. It exists for the same reason as lesbophobia does, to describe an intersection between misogyny and another oppression. Gay men are not disadvantaged compared to lesbians because they “only” have the more general term “homophobia” while lesbians have the more specific word “lesbophobia.” And I don’t think transmascs would be disadvantaged if nobody accepted transandrophobia as a tern for their experiences.

You don’t need a specific word to talk about your experiences with transphobia, just as gay men don’t need a world like lesbophobia to talk about their experiences with homophobia. You can just talk about them, and use the word “transphobia” as a label for it.

And sometimes acknowledging that our experiences of oppression can be similar is useful for solidarity and community building. All trans people are negatively affected by transphobia, and that is the real “transunity.” theory.

Don’t end up like nothorses who once unironically listed “Misgendering over the phone,“ as an example of transandrophobia/transphobia only affecting transmascs.

Words exist in a context

Transandrophobia clearly exists as some transmasc counterpart to the transfem transmisogyny. It was even more obvious when the word was “transmisandry.” Words always exist in a context, and is often built by binaries. How someone who believes it defines transandrophobia does say a lot about how they define transmisogyny.

I’ve already described how if transandrophobia merely means “transmascs specific experiences with transphobia” it doesn’t have much reason to exist. But it also by implication diminishes and reduces transmisogyny. If transandrophobia only means “the transphobia experienced by transmasculine people”, transmisogyny is reduced by implication to only meaning “transphobia experienced by transfeminine people.” It’s another symptom of how tumblr discourse is uninterested in acknowledging misogyny, and in this case that misogyny is intersecting with transphobia in transmisogyny.

And well, if transmisogyny means “an intersection between transphobia and misogyny experienced by transfems” it does imply that transandrophobia also should describe an intersection, for why else does it exist. And we are back to it describing an imaginary intersection between transphobia and misandry, a misogynistic and antifeminist idea.

Who gets to define their own oppression?

Of course I am a trans woman, and I will of course get accused of hating transmascs, and robbing them of their ability to define their own oppression.

I would be more sympathetic to this argument, if transandrophobia theorists didn’t keep on constantly defining transmisogyny as the result of misandry. It is common in these circles for transmascs to reject any tme/tma distinction too. Literally going “I got mistaken for a trans woman once, that means I’m affected by transmisogyny.” There is absolutely zero respecting transfems rights to define their own oppression in transandrophobia circles, so why should I respect theirs?

Seriously, the “transmisogyny is actually misandry” claim just keeps happening. Genderkoolaid did it, the transunity blog too, and this dude who I literally found by browsing the “transmisogyny” tag spewing his misandry nonsense.

The problem with “transmisogyny is misandry, actually” is that misandry isn’t real, men are privileged for being men. Transfems experience oppression because we reject being men and performing masculinity. Men are in fact our oppressor class. When transmisogynists talk derisively about “men who wear dresses and say they are women”, they aren’t saying that being a man is bad (in fact they are often men themselves), it’s that “being amab and rejecting masculinity and manhood and claiming to be a woman is bad.” Its an intersection of transphobia and misogyny.

“Transandrophobia” is seldom just talking about the difficulties of being transmasc, it wants to redefine how transfems think about their oppression as well. And it does so in misgendering and transmisogynistic ways.

The transandrophobia theorists generally ignore the existence of transmisogyny, especially in queer communities. In fact it often implies or outright states that transfems are privileged in the trans/queer communities for being women or feminine, which is bizarre. In reality, Transmisogyny is rife in queer spaces, with “crazy trans woman syndrome” being common.

And it’s not like transandrophobia discourse is immune to that particular syndrome. Transmisogyny-exempt privilege dynamics remain very much in play. Transfems tend to get accused of being transandrophobic. The accusations are framed as “lateral aggression” not oppression, although the tone of these posts suggests “lateral aggression” is another polite euphemism word swap game like misandry for “androphobia.”

It feels like the antifeminist, and specifically anti-transfeminist roots of the whole transandrophobia idea coming to the forefront.

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When women get chromosome tested to participate in sports and discover they're intersex and are wrongly excluded, trans women were the ones in the reticle.

When butch women get yelled out of bathrooms for being mistaken as men, trans women were the ones in the reticle.

When gay men in drag reading books to children are threatened by armed fascists, trans women are the ones in the reticle.

When broad shouldered, square jawed cis women are jeered at in public transport for looking 'mannish', trans women are the ones in the reticle.

When a trans man is called slurs in public because he looks like a trans woman, trans women are the ones in the reticle.

Why do trans women have to point out the suffering of others caught in the crossfire of our oppression to get people to care. I have had most of these things personally happen to me, trans women have all of these happen to us all the time, but I hear the loudest protests of this injustice when it happens to other people. I'm venting here but like, just consider every time this happens to someone who isn't a trans women, multiple trans women have had to deal with it directed at them not mistakenly.

Transmisogyny isn't having one of these things happen to you every now and then, it's constantly being the target of this pressure, this boot every day of your life, and feeling that in the back of your head when your boss laughs at you joking about needing to get paid more, when some coworker says your voice sounds deep, its knowing that you've got all these reticles pointed at you just for existing.

And I see those peoppe who say they're transmisogyny affected because something like one of the examples has happened to them once or twice. You have no idea what its like to live under this pressure constantly, you just happened to get hit by a stray shot and you're saying you're the target. Shameful behavior.

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I wanna rant a little bit about that last post coz like I have feelings about it.

Reproductive rights are a huge part of feminism, but it's really important that it ISNT "sex-based oppression" bc tying birthing ability to the universal experience of womanhood is actually REALLY FUCKING MISOGYNIST. Like you're rly gonna say that women incapable of having children experience less oppression than those who can?

The bioessentialist idea of "sex-based" oppression is heavily weighed on the idea of a cis woman capable of giving birth to children as the definition of woman as a sex & gender. It is a damaging social construct that harms all who are socially classed as women in some way, regardless of actual gender or actual sex.

Like you realise already that definition of womanhood excludes a huge amount of women? And that it is so untrue to these women's actual experiences of misogyny?

It misses how misogyny treats infertile women regardless of sex as being "broken" because they are unable to fit the social role of womanhood.

It's also just like incorrect to the wider experience of misogyny of women who can have children at certain points in their lives, bc girls & women aren't capable throughout their entire life of having children. But young girls still experience misogyny up until puberty & past that, & misogyny doesn't go away after menopause, in fact menopausal women are treated as undesirable or used goods because they aren't typically capable of having children anymore.

The bottom line to all this is that, there is no one single universal experience of womanhood as a social role beyond just being a woman & you cannot exclude trans women from the experience of misogyny. Misogyny isn't "sex-based", bc sex is socially constructed in a way that does exclude a lot of women.

I rly beg fellow transmasc's & trans men to go out & spend time with trans women, talk to them about misogyny & their experiences with misogyny.

You wouldn't have these weird ass ideas about misogyny if you branched out more & tried to relate to trans women & their experiences with misogyny. It would fix a lot of the misconceptions folks have about radfems, TERFs & transmisogyny. Ppl get too caught up on this idea that TERFs hate trans women for their supposed relation to men & maleness, which is actually deeply untrue because really the crux of TERF ideology & most transmisogyny IS misogyny. It's rooted deeply in trans women not neatly fitting into the box of cis perisex white abled womanhood, it's about trans women being the wrong kind of woman, which IS the universal experience of misogyny & womanhood that all women & those socially classed as women face.

The sooner you stop treating transmisogyny & TERFism as a symptom of hating men & actually about hating women, the better your understanding of these ideologies & the better your understanding of where trans women fit in social roles of womanhood AND of your own place as a trans man.

You should rly be open to relating to & talking with ppl about any experience of misogyny that is outside your own, be that from trans women, women of colour, disabled women, intersex women, ect, because there are facets of misogyny you haven't experienced that are important to talk about & recognize.