#as marginalized cis men do experience oppression and queerness

[transmascpetewentz]

One thing that doesn't get brought up enough in discussions of how the man-hating variety of radical feminism is based in homophobia. Like does no one remember when lesbian separatist radfems tried to claim that all gay men are predators? I think that a lot of people on tumblr who haven't really unlearned that rhetoric spread it unknowingly and will say shit like "well I'm not like those other misandrists, I don't hate gay men because they're gay I hate them because they're men!"

Ok but the effect is the same. Patriarchal structures of manhood and masculinity oppress queer men and men of color with their manhood/masculinity as a modifier. I do not like the word misandry for many reasons but the patriarchal role of a man is more than just the absence of womanhood or the position of power over others.

Butches, trans men, and some nonbinary people are all groups that do not generally have access to male privilege, but we still have the modifier of "male" factor into our oppression. All marginalized men have this modifier to an extent. Gay men are not simply oppressed for being gay, they are oppressed for being gay men specifically and occupying that position in society. While most cis gay men have access to cis and male privilege, they are still oppressed for how their gender and agab intersects with their gay identity.

What I mean when I talk about marginalized manhood is the common threads between different oppressions of minority male identities. It doesn't imply that misandry is real or that misogyny isn't. I don't know if there's a particular name for this type of theory/thought, but it perfectly explains how trans men are oppressed as a type of marginalized man while still experiencing misogyny.

Binary, radfem thinking makes people believe that marginalized manhood is characterized by the absence of misogyny when this could not be further from the truth. Woman—man is not only a bad way of looking at gender identity, but is also not how social positionality works. There are ways to explain how trans and intersex men are able to experience misogyny and marginalized manhood at the same time, but that requires us to quit thinking that the two social positional genders are "male" and "non-man".

[velvetvexations]

So wild to see someone claim that transfems are the only marginalized people who are not taken seriously when they talk about the problems they face. Like have you ever talked to another marginalized person before? All marginalized people deal with not being taken seriously, that's kinda one of the biggest components of systemic oppression. Society not taking your suffering seriously or believing it doesn't exist in the first place is the reason laws are so hard to change, if the people in power don't think your suffering is real or they think it's not that bad/how you should be treated why would they lift a finger to help? A significant portion of de-radicalizing bigots is helping them see that marginalized people are treated unfairly and that we should do something about it, because the system is designed to deny that things like transphobia and racism exist so thoroughly that the average person can end up doubting that it happens.

Disabled, fat people, intersex people, and yes even cis women, die all the time because society does not take us seriously when we talk about our problems, and fuck "do bi+/ace/aro/enby people actually face bigotry" discourse is happening everywhere all the time. That's gotta be one of the most out of touch things I've ever seen someone say, how could you possibly believe that transfems are the ONLY group not taken seriously when they talk about their problems?? The walking on eggshells thing around cis men part is wild too like hello have you ever tried to combat bigotry small scale? Because it's a lot of walking on eggshells around people who have power over you in the hopes you can convince them to treat you like a person, partially because that person often holds the kind of power over you that could get you killed or worse. Suggesting that this is somehow unique to trans women is one step away from arguing that transfems are the only people that experience bigotry at all.

None of us are taken seriously because it's hard to accept that you are not the only person being hurt. Even if you aren't oppressed at all you are always going to believe your suffering is the worst and most important because your body is trying to prioritize your survival to keep you alive, which then colors everything about how you see the world, including other people's suffering. Most of us learn at some point that everyone's suffering matters and other people getting a slice of cake doesn't mean there's less for us, but unfortunately some people have become so entrenched in their own suffering the idea that anyone else could also be suffering and have a right to talk about it feels like an attack. So often we see people saying bigoted things insist acknowledging the suffering of others means you are denying that they suffer even though it isn't true. White people do this shit all the time with racism, pulling the "how dare you say black people suffer don't you know that I have problems too??" card like their life depends on it the second someone suggests that parts of the game might be rigged in their favor, or when cis women insist that talking about trans issues is hurting them by somehow denying that they have problems, or when TRFs insist talking about the issues transmascs, nonbinary, and intersex people is unacceptable and transmisogynistic because somehow suggesting that any other queer folks suffer is the exact same as saying transfems don't suffer at all.

If some trans women/fems truly think that they are the only people who do not have their suffering taken seriously, I just don't know. I don't know how anyone could think that unless they've either never actually listened when another marginalized person brings up their problems, or they think everyone not paying attention to their suffering and their suffering only 24/7 and still centering them even if the conversation is about something that has nothing to do with them at all surely must mean no one cares about them and they are the most hated and marginalized people on earth, or both!

It's "I am uncomfortable when we are not about me" all the way down, and it's exhausting in it's immaturity. You can talk about how people don't listen to trans women/fems without suggesting or even stating that they are the only people this is happening to when that is so provably incorrect it's contradicting the very basis of what oppression is. If that's your take on social justice you need to go back to class. Accepting that one of the biggest parts systemic oppression and bigotry is people in positions of power not taking the suffering of the oppressed seriously/denying that it happens at all or that when it does it's a bad thing should not need to be explained to you.

very well said anon <3

[doberbutts]

One of the things that really confuses me (I'm a cis woman of color) is this doubling down on the idea that Black men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're Black, gay men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're gay, trans men aren't oppressed because they're men, they're oppressed because they're trans, etc. It feels like people are being intentionally obtuse. You can't separate my identity as a POC from my identity as a woman. I am treated the way I'm treated because I'm a woman of color, those two things work together. That's where discussions of intersectionality originated. So to say you can separate a privileged identity from an oppressed one is just.... not how anything works?

I constantly see "masculinity isn't criminalized/demonized, Blackness, queerness, transness are" and it's like.... no, that's not how this happens. Marginalized men face specific oppression based on the intersection of their identities. It seems like lately people are willing to understand that for women but not willing to for men and I just don't know how we make any progress if radfem rhetoric has become so pervasive that people are refusing to see lived realities rather than some abstract hypothetical they've come up with.

Personally I think this is due to (white) people seeing and liking black theory that they personally agree with or that makes sense to be applied to their own lives, and then cut out all the parts that are inconvenient for them to have to reconcile. Much like how many, many, many black feminists who are cis women have said "hey, white feminists, stop it with the all men are rapists thing, it actively contributes to black men getting lynched for crimes they didn't commit because it gets weaponized unfairly against our brothers" and white feminists collectively forgot how to read and abandoned their listening skills while still praising other parts of black feminism that talk about domestic violence and sexual assault and oversexualization and reproductive rights and rightly taking black men to task for their continued complacency in this.

The phrase "intersectionality" originated in black feminist theory. I do not trust any white person to fully understand black feminism when they use it as a bludgeon to make the inconvenient bits be quiet. Much of what is on this blog is black feminism. It is inconvenient for white people to have to consider how their words and actions may harm people of color while still lifting themselves up.

As you have said, you cannot separate the "of color" from the "woman" parts of your identity. You are a woman of color. That changes how both sexism and racism works against you in a system that is both sexist and racist. I, in the same manner, cannot separate the "trans" from the "man"- if I were not a man, I would be a woman. I am AFAB, if I am a woman, I am not trans. There is no "you experience this because you are transgender, not because you are a man". In order to be a man, in my body, I have to be transgender*. Just like there is no "you experience this because you are black, not because you are a man". I am a black man. The black experience is inherently, often forcibly, gendered. I can tell you exactly how people treating me changed in a "before" and "after". I can tell you that yes, some of it absolutely stems from the "man" part, they treat me this way because I am a black man.

But people often misunderstand intersectionality to be, exclusively, axis of oppression. And so they say, well learn intersectionality, men aren't oppressed and thus it's not an axis of oppression to combine. But that ignores that some men are oppressed, marginalized men are oppressed and often with a very gendered slant. And it ignores that, like how you cannot separate the "woman" from the "of color", neither can you do that with men.

Men are not the default. They are slightly less than half the population, same as women.

*re: in order to be a man in my body I must be transgender; yes, I am intersex. However I have been out as transgender for 17 years, and discovered I am intersex 6 months ago. So for me, that is very much the case. For other intersex people who were assigned female at birth, that may not be the case. This is something that works on an individual level but cannot be broadbrushed as there are many different opinions among intersex people regarding our cisgender vs transgender status.

[genderkoolaid]

i'm probably gonna add this in the revamped pin post im planning but i think an issue we have when discussing "misandry" is that people tend to interpret it as "the man version of misogyny." because we are under the false belief that if x is true for one gender, the inverse must be true for its "opposite"

i think its use comes from having a word to put to Genderism Based On Male Gender Roles. gender is a thing that impacts everyone and changes everyone's experiences. i want to be able to say "this person is using stereotypes about how men and people associated with manliness should or do think/behave to be hurtful" in a single word/phrase. ^ that does not require there to be an overarching system, controlled by another group, that oppresses all men. i came up with the term "antimasculism" to have a word that accomplishes this but doesn't have the baggage of "misandry" (maybe "anti-" isnt the best prefix, maybe "mal-masculism" wouldve been more accurate)

& its especially important because there is a pattern of behavior centering masculinity that is used constantly to hurt marginalized people. "men are aggressive and strong" becomes either a way to demonize men, people seen as men, or people seen as masculine, or a way to mock any of the above groups for failing that requirement. this hurts cis men, trans men, queer men of all kinds, masculine-presenting people, butches, trans women- not because they have some innate masculine quality but because people see them as masculine in some way, shape, or form, and attach certain expectations to them and read into their choices in certain ways. masculinity or association with manliness being punished in some people/situations does not mean that all manliness is punished. why would it? misogyny is about controlling women & others grouped in as resources to be controlled. men's gender roles are about constant competition with each other. under the patriarchy women are always objects while men are sometimes allies and sometimes enemies that need to be crushed or failures that need to be held up as an example of what will happen if you aren't good enough at the competition.

& even more: you can have antimasculist misogyny! you can have misogynistic antimasculism! if a woman (cis or trans) is alienated from her womanhood and treated like a threat for being seen as too masculine, is she being mistreated for being masc or being a woman? the answer is both. her failure to be appropriately feminine means her masculinity is a crime she needs to be punished for. same with a man & being seen as too masculine: he fails to be a man in the right way and his femininity needs to be punished. especially when it comes to queer people & anyone whose gender performance is seen as queer, there is very rarely only 1 form of genderism going on because queerness is fundamentally about blurring the lines of which genders can do what.

tl;dr there doesn't have to be an overarching systemic hatred for all masculinity/manhood for it to be useful to have a word to describe the way that genderism around male gender roles is used to hurt people, marginalized people most of all.

[cardentist]

As a nonbinary/genderfluid biromantic, demiromantic asexual, literally every part of my gender identity and sexuality has been subject to the same "you could EASILY pass as cishet, so can you REALLY say you experience oppression when you could simply CHOOSE not to" and "you're not REALLY oppressed for being XYZ, you're only oppressed when people mistake you as cis fem/trans fem/gay/lesbian/any other identity we think is ACTUALLY important." My existence in online queer spaces has been hounded constantly by people trying to tell me what my lived experiences are and what they mean, shouting me down about how I can't speak about Insert Issue/Topic Here because sure maybe I'm queer (and to some, I don't even have the right to call myself that) but I'm at the bottom of the Who Is Oppressed More Hierarchy, I am only Oppressed in the way that sometimes I experience what they deem to be a different group's oppression. Not even my oppression is my own! I am too much of an "aberration" to find community and a place to speak amongst the general populace, and I'm too privileged to have a voice in the queer community, even about things that affect me.

And now, I'm watching that same rhetoric being used against transmen and transmascs. I remember when people on this site started really exploring queer headcanons for characters, everyone cheering "let's make X character gay! Y character is trans! Z character is a lesbian!" but if you dared to suggest "can Q character be ace?" you'd be met with "... that's boring." I remember how quickly ace exclusion devolved from "aces are boring" to "god, aces are annoying" to "when you think about it, aces aren't even really oppressed, so they aren't queer, so they should just shut up." And then it wasn't just aces, it was bi folks. And then it was enbies too. And now. Here we are.

This is the only site where people will blog about how "Gender is a sandbox! It's fucky! Men can be women, and women can be men! I'm a boygirl kind of girlboy! There are genders and sexualities in all sorts of shrimp colors you can dream of!" but in the same breath, they'll still act weird about he/him lesbians. They'll still claim that ALL masculinity is toxic. They'll still say that men are boring and annoying and-- Oh? You think that's kind of hurtful? You want to use this as an opportunity to talk about your own lived experiences and vent your frustrations courteously and privately on your own blog? Why do you have to make everything about you?! You're lower down the Who Is More Oppressed ladder because, wHeN yOu tHinK aBouT iT, no man can be oppressed for being a man! Even trans men! So you and anybody even vaguely masc aligned should just shut up and stay out of the conversation and let the queers who experience REAL bigotry talk!

... They could at least say something new instead of reusing the same rhetoric they've used for aces and aros and bi/pan folk and enbies and masc/butch lesbians and countless other queer identities.

All that to say, as someone who has been subject to all this for every part of my identity, I stand with you. Trans Unity! Queer Unity!

Context: [Link 1, Link 2]

I know Exactly what you're talking about !

I was around in inclusionist spaces 10 years ago at this point, before I'd fully crystalized what I Had Going On.

I Remember it being pointed out that ace exclusionists were stealing talking points from radfems directly, up to and including ripping off entire posts and just swapping out "trans women" with "asexuals."

I Remember people warning each other that normalizing these kinds of talking points, convincing people that that Mindset is a valid one, would then make it easy to swap out the Target of said mindset.

and it Has happened, over and over and over again. people are Always looking for the marginalized people that nobody wants to stand up for. that people don't understand, that people don't see as Needing support, that people already have negative feelings about even if they don't recognize Why.

it'll only ever stop when people examine the talking points Themselves and throw them out. when people are willing to stand in solidarity with people Regardless of whether they understand them or not.

if someone is trying to convince you that class of people As A Whole are undeserving of support, are lesser than, shouldn't have their voices heard or considered, Question It ! when they hold people up in Comparison to say that their pain is Lesser and therefore doesn't Matter, Question It !!

[drdemonprince]

trans men do face similar rates of violence to trans women and therefore should not be exclulded from places like abuse shelters and do need more protections than cis men do imo.

I think policy should be applied with this in mind as well when doing things about gendered spaces.

I think a lot of queer or trans women have reservations about this due to terf rhetoric telling them that the only real axis of oppression is whether you were born a female or not. but i do not think the solution to this is holding trans men and cis men in a 1:1 (i also think the same thing w trans women and transmisogyny. trans ppl can havr diff experiences to their cis counterparts and thats ok yk?)

Cis men are statistically more vulnerable to violent crime at the hands of strangers than cis women are by a wide, wide margin, and men's shelters are already pretty dangerous places -- often due to numerous institutional failures and outright abuse from staff. I say this not as undermining whataboutism, but to point out that while I understand why trans men might feel unsafe in men's shelters, our fears and sense of safety are not apolitical and are often skewed by which groups we are taught are dangerous and which groups we're taught are weak.

now! all that said! I think trans people absolutely are vulnerable within gendered shelters and I wouldnt call any trans man irrational for not wanting to be in one, just as I wouldnt question a trans woman who didn't feel safe in a women's shelter. they literally cant win! they will be mistreated in either space.

But the thing is, I can't claim these spaces are safe or respectful to anyone! They are oppressive institutions! They often control clients' movement, remove their possessions, force them into religious programming, force their beliefs on clients and impose restrictions on their lives, what they put in their body, and how they make their money, threaten them with incarceration, and subject them to assault and abuse.

Gender segregation is no assurance of safety, and doing gender segregation right is impossible because the binary is inherently oppressive.

when nearly every shelter abuses and denies agency to all its clients, figuring out the exact right gender breakdown for ensuring safety feels like a distraction from the root issue. the whole system needs to be redone to be client directed.

it's a bit like trying to decide which gendered prison a trans person ought to be sent to. we shouldnt be treating anyone like an inmate. but virtually all shelters do.

[tboy-trash]

As a trans woman, I tell trans men they can use whatever words they want for their oppression. You don't have to. That's fine.

listen i get the impulse to say that people can use whatever words, but when we're talking about oppression words matter, and genuinely this thing with "transandrophobia" *constantly* leads trans guys to

-thinking transandrophobia is the equivalent of transmisogyny (in fact this is why the term was coined, we already had "transphobia" to describe our oppression), and thus when a trans woman is speaking about transmisogyny, especially when she mentions the transmisogyny of a queer space trans men frequent, they speak over her and bring up transandrophobia to pull, essentially, a "but what about men" argument

-misunderstanding terf ideology (thinking terfs "hate men" as if they hated all men and not specifically trans and gnc men. and as if the primary target for their hate weren't actually women)

-a "let men be masculine"-like mentality where, because they think they're oppressed for *being men*, they dismiss those of us who actually aren't masculine and experience more misogyny than they do, including misogyny in trans male spaces

i'm always talking about examples with other marginalized men, because i just think it's the most helpful way so people get what we mean, so, let's say: disabled men. they're clearly oppressed, and their experiences of oppression differ from those of disabled women, but it's not because of "androableism". it's bc disabled women are at the intersection of disability and gendered oppression, and they aren't. if disabled men started talking about "androableism" we also wouldn't be "well they can use whatever words to talk about their experiences!" because that word misunderstands systemic oppression and is conductive to misogyny.

the situation with trans men is a bit more complex, i guess, and that's why i think this discourse started -whereas i've never seen another group of marginalized men try to invent a word for why they're hated for being men- because all of us at least at some point do experience *a lot* of misogyny, which for some reason, maybe dysphoria, some confuse with "man hatred". but it's just. not. and if we pulled our head out of our asses and talked to a trans woman every once in a while (or sometimes even a cis woman tbh) we'd see that it's not.

[pokegyns]

trans people are cool, I have no problem with trans people or transness, i even loosely ID as trans myself. My only problem is the erasure of sex and sex based oppression, as well as the heavy ~everyone is valid uwu~ rhetoric

It shouldn’t be considered anti-trans to acknowledge sex, or acknowledge that trans women and fems have male privilege, or acknowledge that trans men and mascs are generally less privileged than trans fems bc sex systemically matters more than gender identity. I still consider trans women to be women, but they should have to acknowledge their own male privilege and power over female people

I will always care more about sexism than any form of gender identity based oppression, sex faces inescapable systemic oppression on the same level as systemic racism (im blk&w multiracial before u get on me), gender doesnt.

however its also true that passing privilege is a thing. A trans women who passes as female does face more of the social brutality than a trans man who passes as male. I think for that reason passing trans women should have recognition in feminism.

Passing trans men should be aware of their own privilege over both cis women, non passing trans men, and passing trans women

it is gross and shitty to mock trans women for their appearance in every circumstance 🙅🏽‍♀️

I think there is a problem with OSA trans identifying people who aren’t actually transgender, I’m not a trans medicalist, the term has been used to be transphobic especially to female trans people and nonbinary people of all sexes but especially female. In my experience OSA trans people have freq been sexist and homophobic because they’re not actually queer and just want to try on an identity for laughs. Not all but most. but i think radfems exaggerate the problem a bit.

trans people deserve protections and rights, at the same time, access to places specifically for other marginalized groups isn’t a human right.

this is all so well said!! i believe osa trans people do deserve a space in the lgbt, but a lot of them do genuinely just put on a label to feel more special.

– mod zoroark

[ciswomenofficial]

(i didn’t want this to be on your post because it seemed inappropriate so i’m sending an ask)

do you think that trans women can behave or act oppressively towards trans men? if it’s alright could you give some examples of oppressive behavior you’ve seen from trans men? you’re absolutely not required to answer and this ask comes in good health, ive been under the impression that trans men / trans women as entire groups can’t be oppressive towards either respective group but i’m not either so i don’t have much experience with the topic and would love to hear from someone firsthand ! /srs q

I mean, some individual trans women might be oppressive towards trans men, but not on account of their gender. In those instances, there’s usually another factor involved, in the USA, my context, most often class or race. This isn’t to say there’s no chauvinistic behavior among trans women, but for an action to be oppressive in particular there needs to be a structural element to it.

On the other hand, while they aren’t at the reigns of the American regime, there are structural forces that enable trans men and other tme trans people to gain relative amounts of influence compared to trans women and tma trans people. Passing trans men (who are more common as a result of the less scrutiny placed on mens bodies) are given access to jobs that women are not, are taken seriously when women are doubted, and those “women”include post-transitional tma people. This allows passing trans men the ability to use these systems to whip up misogynistic vitriol, to get away with abusive behaviors, etc.

On the other hand, trans men who aren’t passing have other systems, that don’t necessarily benefit them over all women, but that do allow them power over trans women. These systems are most open to whites, but I have seen them leveraged by members of the USA’s internalized neocolonies as well depending on context. These are the same institutions by which women can leverage femininity to oppressive ends (compare: the concept of white women tears, the concept of the tenderqueer). Trans mens access to these institutions is definitely more shaky than cis women’s access, but does exist, whereas trans women are rarely allowed access to these institutions, very occasionally one may be if she’s passing and presents femininity in a rigidly conventional way, but even that may require the right time and place of her.

Essentially, these institutions of femininity allow an individual to present themself as vulnerable for an amount of social capital. If they want to shut someone else up, or remove or ostracize someone from a space or community, all they have to do is act vulnerable. Whether this behavior is conscious or unconscious, it is certainly oppressive insofar as it uses systemic power to marginalize those with less power than them.

I have had both of these sorts of oppressiveness used against me. I have had trans men talk over me and bring my ideas within my own area of expertise into doubt on account of the fact that I was not as much of a masculine authority on the matter as they were, and I have also had trans men and cis women present themselves as vulnerable and treat me as a threatening presence and ruin my reputation based on misinformation in queer spaces. My experiences are also influenced by the fact that I am unashamedly a lesbian, mad, and a political radical, but I don’t doubt for a moment that the fact that I am a transsexual woman played a role, especially because me speaking up about transmisogyny often made me a target.

This kind of inter-community oppressiveness is not unprecedented. Gay men being oppressive to gay women was a factor in the shift of many lesbians away from the gay liberation movement and towards the feminist movement. Gay men do not run our heterosexual society, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t part of it, a part who gets certain benefits that gay women do not.

From being present in the trans community, I know plenty of trans women who are assholes, who have a lot wrong with them as human beings, but they still didn’t have access to this kind of systemic oppression to use against white tme people. Mostly they’re unpleasant at an individual scale and don’t have anyone to back them up. On the other hand, an otherwise good individual may act oppressive if you put them into the right context. Oppression isn’t about whether someone is nice to be around, or fundamentally good/bad it is about systemic oppression.

[pretty-girl-boy]

I just think its so funny when t*rfs say being trans is a mental illness but….. the person saying it is queer. babe. do you know what they said about gay people in the 50s?

“____ people are predators! keep them away from children!”

“____ are perverted, their lifestyle is a fetish, they’re deranged.”

“being ____ is a mental illness, we need to get these people ‘therapy’ and ‘treatment’ to convert them to a normal, cisheterosexual lifestyle, because any variation from a ‘normal’ expression is obviously a sign of a defective childhood, abuse, or trauma.”

“being ____ is a choice. if you just tried hard enough you could be normal.”

you could literally swap “gay” for “trans” and you’d have an identical set of morals. and it’s embarrassing to not recognize that.

“we need to protect women because they’re a marginalized identity!!!” ? and what do you think being trans is? most trans people I know are very vocal about wanting rights for all women, cis and trans. we want the same thing, which is for people of marginalized gender identities to not face discrimination, violence, or harassment, and to have a life full of joy. you’re so close.

if you just left your corner of the internet to read from trans queer perspectives (Leslie Feinberg, Kate Bornstein, etc), you would see that trans people have always been here, and we have always been loved by members of the queer community.

to say otherwise is to impose colonialism and patriarchy on the beautiful and varied human experience that is gender, that is both universal and particular, that is nuanced and (for some) can be reduced to simple terms. how can you say trans women are men appropriating women, or that trans men are self-hating women, when indigenous people from tribes all over the world, for centuries and centuries and millennia and millennia, have created trans identities outside of capitalism and patriarchy? where is the motivation to appropriate another gender for power struggles or a fetish when you live in a culture that already has gender equality?

instead of believing that trans people are inherently bad, wrong, perverted, why not believe that all people should be given the choice to express gender freely and without judgment? wouldn’t that benefit cis women as well?

why not listen to someone talk about their experience in good faith, and see their humanity before you see the things you hate about them? would you not wish the same thing for yourself, from your oppressor? how can we achieve equality when we actively oppress one another and will not hear each other? what is feminism without intersectionality? it cannot exist. it is an oxymoron. you either fight for the liberation of all people (yes, including cis men), or you fight for inequality.

you will never achieve the freedom you are looking for without trans people. you can never nicely and cleanly separate us from a movement without shooting your own foot in the process. liberating us will liberate yourself.

[the1975attheirverybest]

Banned books is a trending topic on tumblr atm.As a student of literature what's your take on it ?

That’s a great question! Thanks for asking it and giving me a chance to share my diatribe.

Yeah, it’s trending cuz the American library association just released their list of banned books for the year.

I think that banning books is VERY dangerous and a sign of socio-political oppression. Cuz, like, if you look at the list that ALA just put out, what’re you seeing?

“genderqueer” “All Boys Aren’t Blue,” “The Bluest Eye” etc. do you know what all these books have in common? They are solid, complex representations of marginalized voices that, at least in the US, are currently under threat. Women’s rights to their own bodily autonomy, trans rights to gender affirming healthcare, and queer expressions. Like, these books are not getting banned because they’re “hate speech” or some other reason. They just threaten the status quo, center voices other than cis, het, white men, and expose readers to realities beyond their own.

WHICH IS ONE OF THE MAJOR FUNCTIONS OF LITERATURE AS AN ART FORM!!!!

Second to being out in the world and interacting with their surroundings, kids will learn about otherness and get exposed to cultures, genders, social circumstances that differ from theirs through the art that they consume. Reading is EXTREMELY formative to young minds (and I would argue, even adult minds). So, by banning books like this, we are not only oppressing marginalized communities even more, by preventing them from being able to claim space and tell their own stories, we are creating the next generation of bigots by closing the minds of young people away from stories that can be different from their own.

You know what else? It doesn’t WORK! the way you raise thoughtful kids isn’t by putting them in a bubble away from any experiences that they’re not ready for. It’s by instilling the right values in them so that when they do encounter new, ‘weird,’ unfamiliar, or different ideas, they have the skills and the ability to react positively. You can’t just lock their minds up and throw away the key. That’s not gonna work. Anyone who has ever been a young kid and tried to do something behind their parents back will tell you this. It’s dumb and futile.

And don’t even get me started on a young queer, black, trans, etc kid who’s confused and lost and doesn’t have the words and feelings for what they’re experiencing who is now going to miss out on finding strength, community, compassion, or understanding that they WOULD have found had they been able to access and read these books and discover that 1. They are not alone and 2. There’s nothing wrong with them.

So, all in all, this is a ROYALLY FUCKED UP IDEA to censor literally. Not only that, but it’s a symptom of the larger white-supremacist mindset of our current society.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk

[makmalaon]

Dawdle: 5 years wasted on exploring my queer and non-binary identities

By exploring my queerness and non-binary identity, I meant experimenting with different gender expressions and sexualities. Queer and trans people make inclusivity one of their main selling points but it’s often a facade. BIPOC queers have terrible experiences regarding racism from white queer people. There’s animosity between different communities that’s often implicit like with bisexuals and homosexuals or binary trans individuals and Enbys. The overwhelming majority of the queer community in the west leans towards the far left in terms of politics which is notorious for infighting over minor grievances and disagreements which carry over to these lgbtqia+ spaces. 

Queer and trans spaces almost fetishize poverty. Marginalization is seen as a badge of honor or a way to gain social status but only if you’re white. When you’re non-white, the more marginalized you are then the more tokenized or ostracized you get. Instead of centering their notions of power on wealth and materialism like the average person, they focus on power and status games through social identities. These people use social issues or their oppression as a way to curry favors or climb up the ranks while pretending to be against hierarchies or claiming to be against them. These games are often nothing but pure mental masturbation meant to satiate the egos of the social climbers, energy vampires, and mentally ill people with personality disorders. 

There’s no right or wrong way to be queer or trans which is the cliche that people in these circles parrot and yet they all think, behave and dress in similar ways. They also mostly believe in more or less the same things but will get into feuds with one another because somebody only agrees with them on 98% of things. 

These stupid status games mainly benefit white queers and femmes. If they did a good job leading then I wouldn’t care as much but they often replicate the prejudices of their hetero and cis counterparts but in more insidious ways while doing just as bad of a job leading if not worse than they do. 

The world these people are building is no different to the current one we live in beyond having more polycules, hookups and people with unnatural colored hair. They might be slightly more compassionate towards the average marginalized person but the fact is that if they ran the world then hierarchies and inequality would still exist. It would more than likely exist on a similar scale. 

Being an AMAB non-binary person is a special type of hell because people assume the worst things about you and you’re at the bottom of the totem pole. You’re stereotyped as a predator or sex pest. If I was either of those things I would simply identify as a man because sex crimes wouldn’t have any meaningful consequences to my life. The president of the free world is a rapist. Many predatory and sexually deviant men go on to live normal lives, have successful entertainment careers, get in long term relationships or build profitable businesses. The world rewards these men. I don’t even gain any social brownie points from woke people because those are reserved for the whites. Being non-binary has brought me nothing but more suffering, ostracization and lost opportunities. Nobody would willingly choose to identify this way. 

All identities are hollow. Queerness, gender and sexual orientation are things we do or perform. A lot of the queer and trans groups I’ve participated in usually have a few regulars while most people join for a few meetings then never return because it’s exhausting to constantly talk about your identity. If the only things you have in common with a group of people are your gender, sexual orientation, politics,disability or any marginalized identities then it becomes a shallow and boring community where people harp on about the same topics over and over again. They’ll gravitate towards recreating hierarchies and have more convoluted rules for acceptable behavior. At some point, people want to live their lives and be free without being shackled to communities where social climbers are constantly fighting for what is and isn’t acceptable behavior. 

I’m not a materialistic person and I’ve come to this conclusion through life experiences, spirituality and my political views on consumption. That doesn’t change the fact that money is one of the most important things a person can have which is taboo to say in these woke circles but as someone who’s currently homeless while writing this post, 90% of my problems would be fixed if I had the money. 

Money is power and it buys us freedom, time and access to things poor or working and middle class people don’t have. I grew up in a slum in a third world country and despite the extreme poverty, a lot of the people I grew up with were relatively happy with very little resources because it’s the only way of life they knew and they gave up on trying to get a better life. I returned to that place as a teenager nearly 2 decades ago and the people were in awe of my working class life in Canada. I told them how much I made while working at McDonalds during the summer. They didn’t understand how conversion rates worked even when I explained it to them. 

My parents grew up thinking money wasn’t everything due to their Catholic upbringing but they lived relatively regular lives which I wouldn’t want to replicate. They looked down on people of lower socioeconomic status like most people and despised poor people due to the fact that many of the people I grew up with fit every negative stereotype people had about people in poverty. Poor people do have a crab in the bucket mentality and they’re not proactive when it counts. Most of the people who make my life hell are poor, homeless, working class, or middle class despite rich people passing laws that harm me on a systemic level because those are the people I’m forced to interact with.

Once you reach a certain age, everything becomes about money. Friendships don’t matter as much and they’re put to the side in favor of your romantic partner or building a family in which money is vital for a chance at success. You wonder if you’ll ever have enough to retire on or even afford a house. Millennials, Gen Z and younger generations effectively have no future due to the constant economic crises they’ve had to endure but you can’t think that way or you’ll fall into the trap of being a snarky, cynical, pessimistic, mean and nihilistic asshole like so many in those generations. 

Queer and trans people live in hell. No matter if we choose to participate in this world like our cis and hetero counterparts, we’re punished for it. Work a 9 to 5, become a sex worker, create an onlyfans, crack cards or do financial fraud. It doesn’t matter. It all leads to the same place. 

I don’t want to sit in a group filled with idealists who talk about gender and queer theory mixed with anti capitalist rhetoric. Whether I believe in socialism, communism or anarchism is irrelevant because I know these systems won’t exist on a large scale in my lifetime and people on the far left are more or less useless at organizing on a macro level and the fact that there’s no strong global leftist movement despite the rise of fascism throughout the world proves this. 

Most of the non-binary people I met have incoherent and convoluted views on gender. Enby’s don’t owe anyone an explanation but most of the ones I’ve met don’t have a good grasp on their own gender identity, they do believe in gender or traditional gender roles in some way and most of them do enforce some sort of standard for gender whether they admit it or not which boils down to androgynous supremacy but only for white people. If androgyny was the most important thing for these people then Asian people would dominate these communities based on their views on gender which many supposedly don’t believe in but these people are too racist to concede that. More often than not, they’re circle jerks for white Amabs who wear dresses, paint their nails and present in a feminine way or white Afabs who wear baggy men’s clothes, have short hair and present in a so-called masculine way. 

I’m glad I took this time to examine my queer, gender and sexual identities. As a teenager I repressed a lot of it because I knew it would be mostly pointless because using thoughts to subvert thought is a fruitless endeavor. There was always a voice in the back of my head telling me “What if” throughout my life and it didn’t go away until I caved in my late twenties. 

This isn’t an endorsement for people with a pick me mentality because I’ve met enough people like that to know that they’re repressed, fearful and miserable. It’s a reminder that no matter what we choose as non-conforming individuals, that people are awful. We’re forced to be exceptional and think of creative ways to earn a living and survive or we literally die. 

There’s no other option other than to save ourselves and if we’re lucky enough to help other people who helped us along the way then we’ll be better off for it. No amount of mentally masturbating over pretty ideas or utopian societies with other left wing, queer and trans people will change the fact that we live in a world where it’s survival of the fittest. We’re forced to work together with other people because that’s how the human species survived throughout its existence but ultimately queer people will never be accepted by most of the world and we have to do whatever we can to fend for ourselves. 

It’s not queer vs hetero, cis vs trans, left wing vs right wing, poor and working class vs the rich. It’s you vs the world and if you’re lucky then you’ll meet some friends along the way who want to help you. Most people are awful and rotten which is apparent by how awful the world is. The collective world could easily fix world hunger and homelessness through basic policies and a cultural shift towards building more empathetic, compassionate and thoughtful communities but that’s not the world most of us live in.

To the people still trying to figure out their place in the world through their gender identity, queerness and political ideology then I’m telling you that it’s largely a waste of time. There was never really anything to figure out. You’re fine as you are and it doesn’t matter what labels you use because they’re often just ways for people online to gain social currency rather than a way to get a better understanding of yourself. 

The self is always changing. Self exploration is often self masturbatory and leads to nowhere meaningful. Regardless of how you choose to identify, the world is awful and cruel when you’re lgbtqia+ and that won’t change anytime soon. Reading queer and far left theory is a fine hobby but it doesn’t benefit you in any material way nor does it necessarily improve your quality of life. The world will be capitalist for the foreseeable future and left wing people are ineffective at organizing or building intentional communities. Cisgender and heterosexual people en masse will always hate those who don’t belong to their identities. 

At least with enough money you have the freedom to unplug from most of this bullshit and live life as you see fit. Queer and leftist communities often devolve into hugboxes. They’re just as power hungry, vindictive, spiteful and prejudiced as the people they claim to be against but they’re more passive aggressive, snarky, cynical and self righteous. 

The non-binary and gender non-coforming crowd are the weird kids of the trans community. The queers are the weirdos of the lgbtqia+ world and the asexuals and aromantics are the weird nerds even among the queer demographic. 

I feel a deep sense of freedom because I don’t have to adhere to the expectations that most people do since I’m homeless, non-binary and queer. Everything I do is eclipsed by that and no matter how meaningful the work that I put out in the world is, it won’t matter because most people can’t look past these things that I happen to be. 

I can simply write and create things for the sake of it. I’m free to start business ventures to make money instead of lathering layers of self-important bullshit about saving the world like Silicon Valley. I no longer want to participate in far left and queer circles because they often feel like politics and activism for the losing side while the narcissistic self-righteous vultures fight over scraps of influence, power and social capital at the behest of actual marginalized people. 

I’m glad I spent this time exploring this side of myself because even if I’m still unsure of who I am or what I want to be, I know who I’m not and I’m better off knowing who I don’t want to be or who I don’t want to surround myself with. I’ve accepted that my views on my gender are too complicated for the vast majority of the world and it’s a complete waste of time trying to make them understand. The communities I mentioned are not productive for people like me to join because they don’t provide me much value. I prefer meeting people on an individual basis and judging them on their actions rather than through their identity and where they fall on the woke caste system. 

[anticanada-liberation-front]

People organize on the basis of a common oppression more than anything else.

The difference between the physically disabled, mentally disabled, queer people and other marginalized groups is more about the specific institutions which oppressed them than anything fundamental about whether something really is or is not a "disability".

Basically, it's more about the type of doctor you see (physical therapist, psychiatrist, conversion therapist and so on) rather than what is and what is not a disability or a "real doctor" or "real impairment or disease".

You're a faggot if you're called a faggot basically.

In this same sort of sense, David Reimer experienced forms of intersex oppression. David Reimer was physically assigned female at birth. Chromosomes and so on aren't the important bit, the important bit is being oppressed.

The oppression of mobility-aid users is different from mentally disabled people who do not use mobility aids.

A lot of feminists don't get that feminization is an experience of common patriarchal oppression not a physical condition. You are feminized when you get called a bitch and sexually dominated. A lot of marginalized men are feminized. There are degrees of feminization that cis women do not experience. Closeted trans women tend to experience a ton of violent feminisation. Trans men are misgendered and feminized a lot.

Same stuff applies to cripplepunk and so on.

Not sure where I'm going with this.

[a-controversial-bean]

The main reason I made this blog is honestly because I am so sick of the lack of nuance I see around the term "transandrophobia"

My stance is that transandrophbia is a real thing we should draw attention to, but also that most people talking about it do so in the most annoying and/or hateful ways.

Just like trans women/fems experience gendered violence and discrimination that is different from cis women, so do trans men/mascs. We're not "woman lite" but much of the world still treats us that way. Although cis men carry a gender with privilege over all others, trans men do not (except in cases where they are cis-passing, and even then, that privilege gets revoked the second you're outed). We experience a flavor of misogyny, but the term transmisogyny describes a specific type of misogyny that trans women experience. Stealing that term would obviously be wrong, hence the creation of the term transandrophbia.

Personally, I think the term itself could use some more workshopping, but it's not like I have any better suggestions at this time either. I just don't think the term clearly expresses how we're talking about a specific gendered discrimination that impacts trans mascs in a way that cis men, cis women, and trans fems don't go through. This isn't saying that we have it any worse than trans fems. God no. That's part of why I'm so annoyed at many folks discussing transandrophbia. Creating a hierarchy of who faces worse oppression is bullshit. Trans women/fems are oppressed in our current constructions of gender and sex. So are trans men/mascs. So are cis women. And nonbinary people. And intersex people of literally any gender. I'm all for the creation of terms to describe these unique experiences! What I hate is trying to pit these terms against each other.

I often see white trans mascs trying to use racial comparisons to explain this, and it pisses me the fuck off. Don't do that. You're making all of us look bad and embarrassing yourself when you show such a lack of understanding towards intersectionaliity. However, I do think there are other comparisons that work better!

Specifically, disability has a GREAT comparison to draw from. It even has a few (false) binaries you can use to make your point!

All disabled people face ableism in some way or another, just like all marginalized genders face their own flavor of misogyny. People like to separate the disabled into categories like low/high support needs, visible/invisible, and physical/mental. Someone labeled as high support needs is often denied agency, while low support needs folks are often denied accommodations. Visible disabilities will have people asking too many uncomfortable and invasive questions, while invisible ones will have people saying you don't "look disabled". But at the end of the day, it's all just ableism. Repackaged to fit the individual, but ableism none the less. It can be convenient though to quickly say which category of ableism you experience, rather than drone on about details.

I would rather say "I experience transandrophbia" than explain how "I experience a kind of misogyny where my transness means people either see me as a failed woman or a creepy man depending on what's more convenient for their narrative. Living as a trans guy, especially in the years where I still had H cups on my chest, led to increased violence and bigotry in my life. In cis circles I'm rejected for being trans, and in queer circles I'm rejected for embracing my masculinity. Unless I surround myself with only trans mascs, my gender almost always makes me an outcast. " Even that statement is a super simplified and condensed version of the gendered violence I faced. Am I not allowed a term to succinctly express that sentiment?

Tldr: If you deny that trans men/mascs experience transandrophbia, then I hate you. If you use transandrophbia to shit on trans women/fems, then I also hate you.

[vtori73]

Another thing I'm going to complain about regarding queer spaces... white trans boys/men/mascs LOVE forcing their viewpoints and such on the rest of us. I'm SPECIFICALLY referring to them always complaining about how people shouldn't specify between cis and trans men when complaining about men or something because "then I don't feel like you see me as a REAL man 😢" bullshit.

Like... AGAIN, white people are the weakest and most dangerous links within queer groups because basically MOST POC actually hate this rebuttal & are the one ADVOCATING for us not to be lumped in with cis men because guess what... WE AREN'T CIS MEN!!! AND, THUS HAVE OUR OWN SPERATE ISSUES AND SUCH THAT SHOULD BE ADDRESSED AND NOT TO MENTION WE DONT HAVE SYSTEMIC POWER LIKE CIS MEN DO SO IT MAKES NO SENSE TO LUMP US IN WITH OUR OPPRESSORS!!!!!!

I don't care if being white makes you feel like you have the same privileges & experiences as a cis man and that you don't mind people lumping y'all in with cis men with no sort of nuance BUT that shit doesn't apply to me and MANY POC and is not just wrong but actively HARMFUL to us!

Again, I don't care if WHITE people want to say and claim shit for themselves and their experiences HOWEVER the problem is that they always, ALWAYS, make these statements broad and thus are making it a general issue for the ENTIRE trans masc/men community and not specifically a WHITE trans masc/men issue or opinion, they NEVER specify with "white." White trans people will always "forget" they are white though and that their experiences AREN'T a universal default and then like to paint us, POC, as transphobes for not agreeing with their shitty, binary thinking and opinions. It's just... annoying.

Also, this isn't limited to white trans men, white trans women are just as bad when it comes to trans women of color speaking up and honestly white queers and any other white people apart of some marginalized group (disabled for example) in general are just like this because that's what happens when you're white and don't actually interrogate that kind of privileged existence.

Actually, now thinking about it... in SOME instances I don't mind the idea of being lumped in with MOC (specifically) only because despite what a lot of white feminists want you to believe, men of color don't have systemic privileges over ANY white people and thus are also oppressed and similar to how people view trans men, we aren't automatically privileged for being men in our white allo, cis, hetero patriarchal supremacist society.

White people just... really refuse to get nuance and intersectionality. I think also a big part of it is that they just HATE the idea that they are the most privileged regardless of their other marginalized identities and in order to continue to lie to themselves about it have to make things about them, and white queerness because otherwise they would be forced to acknowledge that them being white still affords them so much more privilege over ANY POC. They just hate having to acknowledge they still have privilege though because their other marginalized identity/s keep them from having the full access to the privileges that being white, usually, entails.