i think words like transandrophobia and transmisogyny are useful in theory, but in practice they drive division and end up harmful to the wider trans struggle. (explanation in simple words at the bottom)
i think it can be useful to have words to describe different flavors of discrimination we face depending on how we are percieved by society. the problem occurs when these words stop being treated as descriptors, and instead get used as labels.
i'm sure you've seen the TMA/TME discourse. TMA = transmisogyny affected, TME = transmisogyny exempt. in practice, these terms are used as "trans women and fems" (TMA) and "everyone else who is trans" (TME). there's a few problems i have with this.
first, as a transneutral person, i would be labeled TME. but the group of drunk dudes who chased me down screaming that i'll never be a real woman, they don't care about that. they see me, a trans person, they assign their own interpretation to my gender presentation, and decide to intimidate me based on their interpretation. i have faced transmisogyny many times, despite some tumblr users insisting i am exempt from it.
second, it puts people back into a rigid binary. as a nonbinary person, i'm well aware of how restrictive and oppressive binaries are, and this one is not any different. even if it's repackaged as trans-friendly, it still denies many people the entirety of their experience and only allows a little, specific part of it.
and third, i simply do not think that any of us in this community are exempt from transmisogyny. in my experience the difference between experiencing transmisogyny or transandrophobia is what the other person percieves me as. if you really wanted to call someone exempt, make it cis people - but also keep in mind that not all of them are. think GNC people, butches, drag queens, the list goes on. i find it difficult to call these people exempt, even if they aren't trans. and i acknowledge that if you're read most of the time as your binary gender (as in you pass, but i strongly dislike that word), you will face much more of one flavor of opression than the other. but taking the experience of only binary trans people who are read as their gender and calling it universal is incredibly exorsexist. most of us will have experienced both.
all these flavors of discrimination, transmisogyny, transandrophobia, even exorsexism and intersexism, it all stems from the same narrow bioessentialist understanding of sex and gender as strictly binary.
in conclusion, i think words like transmisogyny and transandrophobia can be useful to describe experiences with different flavors of anti-trans bigotry. however some people have started treating them as a strict binary of affected-exempt, and that is not rooted in reality or helpful. i'm inclined to say at this point, these terms create infighting instead of being helpful, and make us forget that the root cause of all the discrimination we face is the same.
explanation in simple words: transandrophobia (discrimination against masculine transness) and transmisogyny (discrimination against feminine transness) can be useful words to describe own experiences. but some people use these words to divide trans community into boxes. i think that is not good. it makes us forget we all want to fight transphobia. makes us fight each other instead, and that is not helpful.
Due to the mass reports on her public suibait and bigotry, she has moved to another blog, so make sure to block theonewhobeganitall as well!
yikes.
Genuinely, there is nothing wrong with a trans guy headcanoning a female character as a trans man. We’re allowed to have our headcanons and see ourselves in our favourite characters. It is not misogynistic and it is not erasing women. That is the exact argument that TERFs use about real life trans men taking away real life women or lesbians or whatever it is they’ve been fearmongering about, so don’t start spreading that shit around fandom spaces like it’s progressive.
This doesn’t just happen in fandoms either, we literally never get to claim anyone as a trans man. Every time there’s historical evidence of trans men existing, we have to always assume that maybe they were actually a woman who was just “escaping” the patriarchy because god forbid we ever point out that they were most likely a trans man. If we do, then we get pushback over “erasing their womanhood” but what about their transness? Why are you allowed to erase their transness in the name of feminism? I agree that female historical figures deserve more recognition, but not at the expense of taking historical figures away from us. We can have both. We should have both, because both are marginalised people who deserve representation. We’re not taking anything away from you, so why the fuck should you be able to take representation away from us.
Trans male headcanons are not anti-feminist. They’re not erasing a woman to make way for a man. They’re representation that a marginalised group of people deserve to have, because we already have so little in the first place. Why are you physically incapable of viewing trans men as different to cis men when it comes to our experiences with oppression.
So much pointless LGBT+ discourse could be avoided if people just stopped assuming they knew everything about the oppression OTHER identities face.
For example, if you’re nonbinary, you can absolutely talk about the struggles you’ve dealt with as a nonbinary person, and speak of the issues your community is dealing with. But if you’re not transfem, it’s not your place to comment on how transfem issues compare to your own.
And if you’re a trans woman, you should absolutely not be talking about how trans men “have it easier” or what transitioning is like for them, because you fundamentally don’t know! You’re not a trans man!
And it goes both ways- trans men shouldn’t speak on trans women’s issues! Binary trans people shouldn’t claim to know what it’s like to be nonbinary!
It even hearkens back to older varieties of discourse, like ace discourse. You saw non-ace people talking about what THEY thought being ace was like, because they believed that being LGBT+ themselves made them the arbiters of oppression.
Or hell, gay men claiming that lesbians had it sooo easy compared to what they went through! Like, man, how the hell would you know, you're not a lesbian!
Just. Stop! Stop talking about the assumed experiences of other people! Being one flavor of queer doesn’t mean you’re the expert on ALL queer oppression! LISTEN to other people, stop talking over them!
I think if people accepted this, 90% of stupid online identity discourse would vanish overnight.
I want to be politically informed and educated but I also wanna have a good day and be in a good mood. Do you see my problem?
"Trans men don't suffer as much because they're always forgotten and erased. So they don't have it as bad" I mean can you really argue that we are forgotten when you actively push us out of conversations and tell us we don't matter? Do we really not have it as bad, or do you just turn the other way when we are raped, beaten, brutalized, and murdered? Why is it always framed in a passive way, that we are just erased as if by accident, when we are scrubbed from history? Buried entirely or otherwise portrayed as women?
Why is our erasure discussed like there's nothing to be done about it, when all it takes to change that is to start listening to us?
“oh it’s so misogynistic to headcanon female characters are transmasc”
wrong! more trans men and mascs in fiction, and every time you complain i forcemasc another fictional girl. i’m taking Sakura from Naruto next.
Aside from the compulsion to claim historical trans men as women for feminist history, I've also noticed attempts to neutralize trans men into non binary figures.
Of course, language surrounding non binary identities in the western world is relatively new, so someone from the 1800s might have had some long winded way of saying they were non binary.
But take the case of Megillus from Lucien's writings in Ancient Greece, who will say "I am entirely a man" and still have people being like, oh they're just a confused little girl product of restricted language. There is no way they really mean it when they say explicitly they are 100% a man. Obvious example of non-binary identity.
Obviously non binary people deserve to see themselves in history, but like...c'mon...
Just something I've noticed in my research into trans men of the past
Me: *sees a good anti-jkr post pointing out that its still fucked up to interact with the fandom*
Me: yeah I agree it's not great and it signals to--
Post: Also I noticed it's mostly transmascs ://// I don't think there's even a single trans woman in the fandom :///// that says a lot ://////
Me:
Me: ah, you're not actually here for the discussion about jkr's hate and how it harms the community. You're just here to shit on trans guys. Damnit.
"theyfab" "pooner" "trutherina" bestie i think you might just be a misogynist
No guys you don't get it I was joking when I said all men especially trans mascs should die I wasn't actually targeting a minority with hate, it was satire when I said specifically what awful things should happen to them for being men I was doing it for the theatrics when I used transphobic talking points and called them future terfs and Nazis it was literally just for the bit guys cmon nobody can take a joke any more how is it not the same as this joke about hurting an oppressor when I come up with funny statements suggesting I want to violently hurt and/or kill an entire minority for being trans masc?
Discoursing quarantine sideblog to save my followers on main from seeing it quite so frequently.
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