nan-zi-han

[nan-zi-han]

sex and gender are different in that gender is an elaborate series of superstitions that arises around the reproductive process in the context of class society, while sex is a form of pop science that arose to legitimise those superstitions

[nan-zi-han]

saw a stupid post on my dash and now i feel like swinging a bat at a hornets nest

when people say transandrophobia doesn't exist they aren't saying trans men don't face specific experiences of transphobia, they're saying that there is not a form of combined oppression that occurs at the intersection of being trans and being a man, because being a man is not a trait people are oppressed for. there is no systemic androphobia or misandry in the first place, so it cannot be compounded upon with the addition of being trans. all bigotry trans men are subjected to because of their gender is the result of transphobia.

in contrast, transmisogyny is more than just "transphobia aimed at trans women". the term exists to describe the way that in addition to transphobia (which affects all trans people) and misogyny (which affects all women), trans women are subjected to a unique oppression that is greater than the sum of its parts where those two forms of bigotry meet. to use the term transandrophobia when you ARE talking about "transphobia aimed at trans men", you're just displaying your lack of understanding about why the phrase transmisogyny exists at all.

yes, the transphobia aimed at trans men often looks different from transphobia aimed at trans women. yes, transmascs deserve to be able to discuss the specific ways they experience transphobia. but it's still important to be cognizant of the implications behind the words you use to describe it. "transandrophobia" inherently implies the existence of unadulterated androphobia affecting all men. to dismiss that fact by saying it's Just Semantics is to say you don't actually care about the term that transandrophobia came from and it displays a willful apathy towards the true meaning of transmisogyny.

[nan-zi-han]

[nan-zi-han]

hold the fuck up why did no one tell me former idol chae ryujin came out as a trans woman last week

[nan-zi-han]

i'm just saying man

"there's nothing wrong with being effeminate." of course. and do you feel happy with how you look?

"i worry people would feel unsafe around me." do you feel safe around you?

"it would be hard for other people to adjust." and you think it'd be easier to suffer quietly?

"he/they is fine. i really prefer he/him, but i have to make it easier on other people." so you want to let other people decide your gender? again?

"if i'm going to be a man, i owe it to other people to be as soft, friendly, and nonthreatening as possible."

No. You don't.

[nan-zi-han]

on a simpler level it’s just kind of nightmarishly disgusting to me that we all reblog like 20 posts a day about the variety and depth of nonbinary identities and potential within questioning but everyone so obviously exclusively brings this acceptance to nonbinary people who were afab, to the point that a lot of people don’t even blink at the “oh yeah he has pronouns but it’s just performative so people think he’s progressive” shtick and just nod along unquestioningly. like this shit is soooo fucking common with so many people suffering from it it’s an absolutely maddening double standard that everyone just pretends doesn’t happen

[nan-zi-han]

there should be more faces behind me but i didn't have room to draw literally basically everyone i know LOL

but just know my blade is swift and can avenge all of you.

[nan-zi-han]

i think we should talk about degendering more as a very real form of transphobia. you should not be calling a trans woman "they" when she's explained her pronouns to you. you should not be calling her a "person" instead of a woman. she's not too gnc, she's not too androgynous, you're not "confused" about her identity, you're degendering her. I fear we've gotten to a point we've forgotten the very basics of this movement is "trans women are women" and "trans men are men", and not just "trans people are someone who's pronouns you have to memorize so you don't offend them." you see her as a man in a dress and it pisses me off

[nan-zi-han]

This is a point that has already been raised years ago, but it bears repeating: Accusing transfeminized people who use "TMA"/"TME" terminology of "wanting to know what's in people's pants" is (on top of very obviously not being true) an attempt to portray them as sexual predators intent on violating others' boundaries - It is actively, maliciously using transmisogynistic biases against transfeminized people in service of denying that those biases affect transfeminized people qualitatively differently from non-transfeminized people.

It's one of the most sickening rhetorical strategies that those segments of the trans community who wish to preserve and extend their own ability to benefit from transmisogyny have devised.

"Transfeminized people wanting others to acknowledge the power they hold over them makes them sexual deviants" is a near perfect crystallization of anti-transfeminist politics in the trans community.

[nan-zi-han]

i don't talk too much about how trans women get treated in original posts because im not a trans woman and plenty of trans women on this site are sharing insights that i can just reblog but also sometimes i see other trans dudes talk about trans women in ways that make me want to step in 1 on 1 like "hey man, do you remember what it feels like to be a girl getting treated like a piece of meat by some guy you don't know then dismissed for standing up for yourself. because you're that guy now"

[nan-zi-han]

Genuine question that I hope will not be taken in ill faith—I do earnestly believe transfems about their experiences and in structural transmisogyny—but do you have any data that supports that trans women are at higher risk of violence than trans men in society at large? Most studies I have seen have reported significantly higher percentages of violence against trans men.

human rights campaign: 83% of trans and gender-expansive victims of fatal violence between 2013 and 2024 were trans women (this report also breaks down the extremely disproportionate levels of violence against tpoc and especially black trans women)

trans pulse: trans men are less likely to be depressed when experiencing less transphobia, having greater sexual satisfaction, and not in the “planning but not yet begun” stage of transition, while trans women are less likely to be depressed when having little involvement with any community organizations

nsvrc: trans women are nearly 2.5x more likely than the greater trans population to receive unequal treatment at rape crisis centers (which i hope will help shed some light on the factors that lead to certain studies saying that trans men have higher rates of being sexually assaulted)

transequality: trans women are more than twice as likely as trans men to engage in sex work, and transfem sex workers are significantly more likely than transmasc sex workers to be hiv+ (also another good report to look at for stats on these factors for tpoc)

2016 gender inequality survey (via the williams institute): 19% of trans men/37% of trans women have lost a job, 17% of trans men/30% of trans women have been denied a promotion, 13% of trans men/26% of trans women have been removed from contact with customers or clients due to their gender identity

transequality: 10% of trans men report having been to jail "for any reason," compared to 21% of trans women

also, just some notes on reports that seem to say the opposite, not that this is going to just completely negate all of those studies, but it is important to consider: most reports that i looked at that say trans men face more violence (mostly ipv and sexual assault) than trans women are self-reported.

i point this out bc (as demonstrated by the rape crisis center discrimination statistics) it cant be ignored that trans women are constantly inundated with the idea that they cant possibly be victims, that they are inherently violent perpetrators, and even that their specific incidents of being assaulted were actually incidents of them assaulting others.

this necessarily instills the idea (which is proven true over and over again) that they wont be listened to when they share these things, and that reporting it (officially or otherwise) may in fact lead to additional consequences on their heads, rather than any kind of justice or even support.

hope this helps! (genuine)

[nan-zi-han]

above all else a trans woman is a person. above all else a trans women is a woman who goes to the same grocery store as you and buys fruits in the same grocery cart as you and goes home and eats her dinner the same as you. above all else a trans woman is a woman who dresses like you do and talks the same way you do. above all else a trans woman is a woman who wants to be cared about the same way you want to be cared about and a trans woman is a woman who makes friends the same way you make friends. above all else you should care about trans women because they are people. treat her as such.

[nan-zi-han]

I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter was one of the best works of sci-fi of our generation and one of the best works of transgender fiction ever written, and there are world renowned authors who still have successful careers after they publicly assassinated the nascent woman who wrote it. I don't think they should ever know peace.

[nan-zi-han]

when it comes to my like lesbianism i think i have a lot of i guess internalized transphobia about it cause, when i feel good i'm a women making relationship with other women cause they're like the best people i've ever met, i know some dudes who are ok but i don't really like them like i do the women in my life, but when I'm i guess in the dumps i feel like or at least feel the specter of the misogynistic men i've met through my life and that it'll end up like them and hurt all the girls i know and they deserve better than that.

i understand where you're coming from. this is something that many, many trans women struggle with, especially when they're younger or have recently come out.

now, i need you to pay very close attention to what I'm about to say, because it's essential knowledge if you want to be happy as a transgender woman. ready?

THAT SHIT IS POISON!!!!!! IT WILL KILL YOU!!!!!!

you are not a man. you are not responsible for anything any man in your life — in all of history! — has ever done. anyone who tries to make you think or feel otherwise is not someone who has your best interests at heart. they are greatly misguided at best, and actively dangerous at worst.

everyone is capable of harm. the problem with men is not that they have an inherently greater capacity for harm. the problem is that society is structured so that they can get away with the harm they do.

you are a trans woman. society is not structured so that you can get away with anything. you do not move through society as a man. not even if you are closeted. your subjectivity is a woman's subjectivity, and the mechanisms that regulate your movement through society are those of misogyny. the doubt and self-hatred you feel, the idea that you're somehow unclean, undeserving, that your existence needs to be justified, that you are inherently dangerous: that's internalized transmisogyny.

does this mean that you can do no wrong? no. as i said, everyone has the capacity for harm. what it does mean is that if you ever hurt someone, you will be a woman who has hurt someone. not a man.

which brings us to my final point. why is it so dangerous for you to believe that you are more capable of harm than other women, that you must somehow "prove" your innocence?

because it makes you easy to manipulate.

if other people (particularly cis women and transmascs) realize that you are eager to demonstrate your status as a "true", "safe" woman, they will walk all over you — because if you push back, they can simply accuse you of acting like a man. after all, women are supposed to be gentle and demure, right? and if that doesn't put you in your place, they will start talking behind your back, saying you're scary, entitled, clearly not a real woman after all. and people will turn their backs on you. it happened to me, it happened to a million other girls.

i don't mean to scare you. there's plenty of good people out there, but you gotta know the rules of the game. also, check out the concept of transfeminized debt, and read whipping girl by julia serano if you want. I love you!

[nan-zi-han]

"I think if we are going to be able to move forward in this fight, trans men must abandon the notion that other men are fundamentally the “bad” gender — and that we don’t belong to that category because of our transness. We must embrace manhood as a state of both strength and profound lostness, an immense liability as much as it is a source of gender euphoric joy, and see the frustrated wanderings of other marginalized masculine people as of a piece with our own."

Trans men need to accept that they are men.

That means not viewing themselves as superior or separate from other men. Like all other men they have the capacity for great tenderness as well as great violence, they are privileged and that privilege is precarious, and all men are their brothers and comrades in the fight against restrictive masculine norms.

They should also accept that lots of women and other gender minorities are gonna hate them for being men, and have reason to mistrust men.

I'm getting very sick of this elaborative performative confusion when the uniting principle for everything I say is simply that trans men actually are men.

[nan-zi-han]

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

[nan-zi-han]

FACT: trans women experience greater rates of violence, homelessness and unemployment than trans men. mentioning that transmascs do in fact experience a privilege in comparison to their transfeminine sisters isn't "transandrophobic" nor is it "dividing the community" or "infighting", and the only reasons to suggest that are because you want to dismiss transfeminine attempts to describe & analyse their own oppression.

it would be nice if "we were all oppressed equally" or if the state truly did see us all as faggots, but Trump's executive order specifically highlights trans women, and many of the anti-trans bills specifically focus on "boys in girls' sports" and make no attempt to stop trans boys from competing alongside cis boys. so when you say shit like "we're all oppressed equally" or "they don't care what flavour of trans you are" just know that you are denying institutinal transmisogyny and are fundamentally no different to any other conservative antifeminist.