#as marginalized cis men do experience oppression and queerness

[nonbinarymlm]

You know, the patriarchy exists, so I'm not going to be down on trans folk who have discomfort around cis men. But I'm sometimes uncomfortable with blanket assertions I see from other trans men sometimes that trans men have *nothing* in common with cis men and our experiences, attraction, everything is *entirely* different. Maybe that's your experience, but it's not mine, and many trans men share experiences with cis men. And if you're asserting that an experience related to oppression or gendered alienation can't happen to cis men, then you might be wrong.

I have found a lot of unexpected common ground with other marginalized men. Queer cis men, intersex cis men, and cis men of color can all have complicated relationships with oppression and gender. I've talked to queer men, cis and trans, who've face forms of violence and harassment that would be associated with misogyny. I somewhat often see posts asserting that the attraction trans men have to women is nothing like the attraction cis men do, but I find overlap with other bi and aspec men in general, including bi and aspec cis men. In discussions around trans/cis relationships I sometime feel the implicit assumptions that the trans member of a trans/cis relationship must be the more oppressed party, but I have't found that true in my relationship as a white transmasc dating a mixed race cis man.

Experiences can be diverse within a community and you don't have to find overlap with cis men's experiences yourself. I'm not trying to dictate experiences. Just... especially if you're also a white, perisex trans man... maybe be careful about being so eager to validate your experience of oppression as a trans men that you forget about intersectionality. Transness is not the only way men can be oppressed and oppressed cis men exist and may have experiences that you wouldn't expect. Cis men have privilege for being cis men, but that doesn't mean they never have experiences of oppression or complexity around gender or attraction.

[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".

[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]

Kind of related to the 't makes you a mansplainer' thing I'm always amazed by thr difference in the way people perceive my music now. Pre t people thought it was cool that I played guitar but the second my voice started dropping and my beard started coming in people started getting annoyed by it. I started getting "no one wants to hear wonderwall" (I've never played that song) and "we don't need another man with an acoustic guitar". I don't even pass yet. That shift was instantaneous. And it's from the exact same people who thought it was cool before at a queer drop in center i go to, they used to turn down the music playing in the center because people were listening to me, going through my songbook and making requests. Now I'm lucky if I can play 1 song before someone tells me to stop because "no one wants to hear another man with an acoustic guitar"

It really hurts makes me want to quit playing.

Like I know t ruined my singing voice but damn, I just want to play my guitar I worked hard to teach myself to play.

Its so aggravating to me how cis, binary feminism has people treating trans men like we aren't an oppressed group. Erasing all of our unique experiences and struggles and perspectives to make us seem like Cis Men But Short And Weird. Your experience reminds me of people talking about how they went from being praised for being a woman in a male-dominated field to being ashamed of transitioning because they "failed" to "be a role model". In both cases, there's this assumption that trans men don't need support, that our accomplishments aren't hard-won, that we never struggle to make a place for ourselves in society. I mentioned in the notes of a post how we need a good word to describe being unfairly cast as an oppressor to cover up/ignore oppression (not just for transandrophobia but also antisemitism) because its so fucking concerning!! Its like people are specifically blinding themselves to trans men's transness and doing everything in their power to act like we're cis men. And its because thats basically what cis feminism does- there are only two roles, Woman (oppressed) and Man (oppressor), and by and large it only has two ways of reacting to trans men: either we're oppressed (by misogyny and nothing else) Women, or we're oppressors and Men. There isn't any way for us to place ourselves in this binary without harming ourselves. And so much of the time, this ideology ends up with us being punching bags for other people to take out their anger and trauma from cis men at an target they can have power over, while justifying it by saying that we're privileged men who need to suck it up and stop being so sensitive.

I'm going on a tangent but the point is: I'm mad as fuck that you are getting treated like this. I absolutely do want to hear more trans men playing acoustic guitar, because I never get to see trans men doing fucking anything! Being recognized as men and as equally male as cis men should not have to come at the cost of being recognized and supported like other marginalized genders. I'm so sorry you've had to go through that and I hope you are able to find people & a community that celebrates you and your talents like you deserve.

[genderqueerdykes]

Thank you for all your arguments for the rights of all trans people (including trans mascs) and I enjoy your perspective. I recently discovered I am trans she/her and I’m glad I am able to learn from you. Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share that might help me?

thank you so much, i really appreciate that! i'm glad you decided to reach out, that's very kind! that's exactly the spirit i love to see in the community. first of all, i hope things are going well for you, and that you're able to do whatever you need to to feel like the most authentic version of yourself. if you need help gathering resources or information on transitioning, queer history, trans health, whatever you may need i'll do my best to help!

i would say do your best to be kind to yourself in a way that helps you be kind to others as well. try to not hold grudges against yourself for anything you've done in the past, or any way you've identified in the past. it takes time for people to grow and change and learn. and it's definitely okay to feel alienated and disenfranchised at some points. the world is large and the most rude, stubborn people love to speak the loudest. you don't have to listen to anyone else who tells you what your identity is or is not. i feel like loving or at least being neutral toward one's self, including the past before they realized who they are now, is a good way to help one's self not get carried away

in general, transmascs generally do not have trans womens & fems worst interest in mind. it really is people who are frustrated with patriarchy and jaded about not wanting to be seen as men that hurt others. i understand that it comes from such a deep place of pain. i know how bad it hurts. but taking it out on random men and mascs doesn't fix the problem, especially trans men and mascs, who are fighting to be seen as men by queer peers... let alone being anywhere close to being seen as men by patriarchy. it's so hard for that to happen, transmascs and men do not instantly gain cishet male privilege the second they realize they're trans

we have a lot to share with one another. we have very similar, but unique experiences to share. both groups deal with the same issues, but in distinct ways. both of us deal with transphobia. both of us deal with homelessness. both of us deal with having to go into s3x work. both of us deal with being abandoned by family. both of us deal with domestic violence. both of us deal with assault at the hands of random queerphobes. both of us are targeted by policing who uses gendered bathrooms. both of us can experience homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, intersexism and many other types of hatred on top of transandrophobia and transmisogyny. some trans women experience transandrophobia. some trans men experience transmisogyny. queerphobic society is very harsh on both groups

it's not worth turning anything into the oppression olympics. it's not about who has it worse. it's not about who is the most marginalized. it's about all of us: every marginalized queer. we are all disadvantaged in some manner. just because a lot of people know that cis gay men exist doesn't mean we're safe, quite the contrary. the more exposure, more people become aware of things they hate in gay men and it's just as dangerous. we all experience unique struggles that need room to be discussed.

i think that in time people will learn that hate solves very little. it's not worth the energy. it's really better to put your energy toward making sure your life is actually headed in the way you want it to be. be there for your trans friends. if you see someone else talking about manhating and antimasculism is a good thing, if you have the courage, tell them they're being an asshole. the only way we can end this behavior is if we challenge it. trans mascs and men are not a monolith. we are not evil. we are not the "bad" gender. we are vast and have the capability of being an infinitely broad range of people. profiling people based off of their gender liberates no one

[uncle-fruity]

It's concerning how much I've seen feminists only focus on male privilege as if that's a universal phenomen that automatically means all men are treated well and have no issues. Like I learned that feminism was about how the patriarchy is a system that effects everyone. You just have to look at how many men are imprisoned and how men are believed to be inherently violent and how that results in marginalized men facing extreme forms of violence as a result.

Yeah, I think it's interesting that male privilege seems to be the beginning & end of these discussions of oppression for many people. I think it shows a lack of understanding for the purpose of the terminology and a general failure to apply intersectionality -- perhaps because these terms have strayed a bit from their original functions within feminist theory. It's not about proving who is *more* oppressed, but rather about analyzing how the systems of oppression will affect people differently depending on the intersections of their identity, to gain a fuller picture of the problems we need to tackle. Often, when people try to use male privilege as a reason we don't need to care about men's issues, it is painfully clear to me that they are envisioning one very specific sort of man. For most marginalized men, male privilege is highly conditional. Black men, disabled men, queer men, poor men -- all examples (but certainly not an exhaustive list) of men whose male privilege is conditional on their ability to perform masculinity the "right" way (in line with the white supremacist & patriarchal ideal of a man). Which is to say that no type of privilege is going to look exactly the same, because privilege is highly dependent on where you start in life and how other people see you and treat you. If you are marginalized in several ways, that will impact your ability to access male privilege.

The same people who use male privilege as a way to shut down conversations about men's issues tend to react defensively if you point out any of their own privileges. White privilege and class privilege are major players in the system of oppression, but it would be wild for me to say that rich white women didn't suffer from any oppression just because the system tends to value them over poor black men. It would be wild to say that cis women don't suffer under the patriarchy despite their cis privilege over trans people. It would be wild to say that mentally and physically abled women don't suffer from the patriarchy because they are given more systemic freedoms than disabled people. It is wild to me that people would use privilege as a reason to discard & shut down someone's experiences with oppression & patriarchy, considering most of us experience some kind of privilege over others. Discussions of privilege need to be less about how privilege looks on paper (because it is a lot messier & more complex in practice), but rather about how the privileges you have tend to obscure your understanding of what it's like to not have those privileges. Essentially, when people say, "Check your privilege," in good faith, what they're doing is reminding people that they might not experience the same hardships because of how they move through life. Acknowledging and analyzing your own privileges *is* good practice, but it will look different for everyone. Like, my white privilege as a poor white trans person is going to look a LOT different than the white privilege that's afforded to rich white cis people. It's not that I don't have the privilege at all, but you can't one-size-fits-all privilege.

And, frankly, men's issues ARE vital to feminism for multiple reasons. So many of the problems men face need to be addressed because the feminist movement as a whole would benefit from it. Noted feminist Bell Hooks said, "We cannot have loving men if we don't love men," and she was right. I think there is a tendency among all genders to minimize the pain of men, to shut down men's emotions, to isolate men, to see men as sex machines, to see men as dangerous objects or wild animals, to body shame men, to ridicule men when they cry, to force men into violent societal roles, to insist that men must cut themselves off from their emotions to be seen as worthy men, who then turn around and blame men for being distant and closed up and unable to healthily cope with their emotions. And if you point this out, the immediate response is that you're accusing women of pushing men into radical antifeminism, but that misses the point. The point isn't that women who are victims of gendered violence are pushing men to become abusers by talking about their bad experiences with men -- the point is that men are experiencing sexism & gender essentialism and feeling pressure from *everyone* to be a certain way, and they get backed into a corner and dehumanized along the way. Self-proclaimed feminists, who *should be* their allies, are leaving them to the dogs. There are so precious few spaces where men are allowed to be soft or vulnerable or to seek help or find community and solidarity, and even fewer that are made up of more than just other men. People want them to do the work on their own, and treat men more like potential threats of violence rather than potential community members who will work on themselves and stand up for people they love if given a fair chance. No one can get to that point alone, and yes. When people are in pain and isolated and no one cares about it because "other people have it worse," that is a prime opportunity for radicalizing hate groups to take advantage of them and brainwash them into hating other people, even though, in the case of men, it is not in men's best interest to hate women. It's really not in any of our best interests to hate entire groups of people, especially if we're speaking in terms of systemic reform. But little boys will see the hypocrisy of people who complain about how bad gendered violence can be and yet how those same people still perpetuate it when it comes to men. So selling them the narrative that feminism is bullshit and women don't actually want equality & safety, but rather actually want to have power over men is easy. It's not a true narrative, but it is an easy thing to convince someone blinded by pain and rage who have no other outlet for it, particularly for young boys who have faced abuse & gendered violence from women. When we deny boys & men the opportunity to define their gendered violence from a feminist perspective, when we keep them out of our communities and treat them like the gender roles & expectations used against THEM is so much different and less important than the gender roles & expectations used against US, what message are we sending them? Gender essentialism is bad EXCEPT when we can use it as a tool for our own gain. That's the message that they are getting from people who are claiming to be feminist. And if someone isn't well versed in inclusive feminist theory and the complexity & historical context of the systems of oppression, it's honestly logical that someone might take away the message that they aren't welcome and that there's no place for them in The Good Fight, so they better protect what they have. And everyone suffers from that isolation and perpetuation of sexism.

Even from a fully selfish point of view, taking care of men and helping them understand and work against gender essentialism that they face will ultimately give them a better understanding of gendered violence & oppressive systems as a whole and help them become better allies. It gives them an opportunity to connect with feminism on their own terms and (hopefully) expand beyond their own struggle to learn and fight against the struggles other people face. It ensures safer feminist spaces for so many different trans people who are affected by the hatred & alienation of men or people who are viewed as men. It works against racist narratives in the media, which utilize the fear of (especially non-white) men and the assumption of male violence to push their, again, racist agendas. This is stuff that affects every part of the system of oppression. It affects different people differently. But if we leave our biases unchecked and unscrutinized, we are leaving ourselves open to manipulation. Oppressors WANT men to be separated from & villanized within the gender conversation, because they NEED men to want to protect their status as "patriarch" and uphold the status quo even when they have no power to actually be a patriarch. Oppressors WANT white people to see their struggles as separate from non-white folks because they NEED white people to dehumanize non-white folks so they can keep getting away with subjugating those people. Oppressors WANT rich folks to view themselves as better than everyone & to see their wealth as a sign that God wants them to be rich because they NEED rich people to hoard their wealth, lest that wealth be redistributed and their systems of oppression undercut.

Gendered violence, the Patriarchy, the roles they need us all to uphold and self-police... none of it is separate from the Bigger Picture. Systemic oppression hurts most people, very much including men, and one of the reasons a small few can maintain power & status is because they use all the power & status they already have to spread lies and keep us fighting. If they make people believe that they would have power & status if not for [x] demographic, they keep those people working within the system & maintaining the status quo for a promise that will never be fulfilled. That's why it's so short sighted to reject men and to devalue men as a whole within feminism.

At least... that's my opinion based on my education & experiences. I really think we need to listen and learn from each other more than we currently do. I think working together is the only way out of this, and I think our diversity and difference in experiences make us stronger. I'm here to fight these systems, to change these systems and do my best not fall victim to them along the way.

Thanks for the message! I know I sort of went off there, but what am I if not long winded? But yeah. I think this part of the conversation is sorely needed. I see man hate and dismissal as just another conservative tool of oppression, whether it's intentionally being used that way or not, and we need to be better than that.

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

@[REDACTED] because you heathens can't let someone fucking LEARN. op, I intend this kindly, but I can tell you would not be a friend to terfs and this whole thing is rooted in terf brainrot. I'm choosing community today and going to explain why this is terfy shit fucking over trans mascs.

so the core of the terf belief system is that there is a bioessentialist Quality Of Men that makes them fundamentally an Oppressor who can never face marginalization, right? we disagree with that because we love trans people--both women and men. if men are Fundamentally Oppressors, you can't Change Genders. here's the thing. under the premise of "transmasculine oppression does not occur at any axis so they can't have this word", you have removed the bioessentialist aspect but still accepted that there is a Quality Of Men that innately makes them an Oppressor that can never face marginalization.

now the next logical step that we've taken from "men can never be oppressed or have a -phobia term" is that because the "base model" or cis men aren't oppressed and don't face what would hypothetically be "androphobia," trans men cannot create the term "transandrophobia" to describe their real experiences of pain and oppression. despite this weird semantic caveat, we both fully and entirely agree that trans men/mascs do face real oppression specifically due to being Trans Men/Mascs that is different in nature from the cruelty and oppression that Trans Women/Femmes face. so we fully agree that the phenomenon is real, but you and many others are for some reason saying they cannot have a word to describe it. they can't have a word to describe their real experiences because the "base model" doesn't face oppression and we hate the base model so much they specifically do not and can never have a -phobia word.

what is the point of this? who does this help?

it helps terfs keep trans mascs isolated is who it helps. i just. i think the toxicity of the idea is really represented in action right now. because we are talking about a group of men/masculine people who are actively specifically marginalized. they are telling us they are being targeted for detransition and conversion therapy. they are trying to tell us something and we aren't listening because we're playing semantic games over what words they're allowed to use. because they aren't oppressed enough to "be at an axis." in practice right now, it seems like "be at an axis" has turned into "have a real voice in the community." there needs to be room here, conversations where "trans masc" isn't a performative placeholder for "passing trans men," more fluid boundaries between "Man" and "Woman" and how people identified within those categories face marginalization, less hatred for Men and more love for queer life and liberation. not just to be inclusive of nonbinary people who also exist and face weird mixes of both of these real things--transandrophobia and transmisogyny-- but because right now we are denying solidarity to members of our community and limiting our own discussion and understanding in favor of forcing a Very Harassed Group Of Us to endlessly workshop the term over petty semantic grievances.

and I'm sorry but i really. just need us to collectively take a moment and reflect that the grievance is "this word could be broken down into another word we wouldn't like." and i don't really know what to do with that. there are a lot of good reasons to use the term "transandrophobia" not the least of which is because it's immediately descriptive under the language rules we all know (the marginalization/hate that trans men face) but because it fits in with all of the other queer terms--biphobia, homophobia, lesbophobia, aphobia, queerphobia--we generally went hard in terms of "phobia" terms. trans-andro-phobia seems perfectly reasonable to me to describe the hatred of trans men. i am really really sad that "'andro' can't be in a 'phobia' word because men can never be oppressed" became the dominant discourse on this because it really is just. mean. it's just mean-spiritied. 'misandry' already exists. if whatever you were scared of was gonna happen, it already would have. i really cannot comprehend the preferencing of some nebulous possible harm of "androphobia" over and above our ability to describe real problems facing members of our community.

again i ask you, who does this help? trans mascs are our community and they are being attacked brutally and quietly and we aren't talking about it because?? men can't be oppressed because they're not on an axis? they are asking us for solidarity. and they need it.

trans men are asking us to see that terfs weaponize murderous language against trans women but they are no less genocidal in their aims of targeting trans men and mascs for de-transition, conversion therapy, and corrective rape. "lost lesbians" and "lost daughters" and "irreversible damage" are rallying cries and money makers among the far right--they say "keep your daughters daughters, keep them in the ontological category of victim before they become a predator."

the hostility to the term transandrophobia because "men can't be oppressed" is the internalization of the terf belief that men are fundamentally and innately predators and oppressors instead of people reacting to their position under the system of patriarchy. it's a belief that never allows for the destruction of the patriarchy. it says you can never be a gender-traitor unless you're the right gender--a feminine gender (woman) fighting against the innately violent masculine onslaught (men). there are straight cis men who fight against toxic male gender norms and face violence for it, too. this model cannot articulate that violence beyond "homophobia" and it cannot articulate the violence against our trans brothers beyond "transphobia" and that is a failure. that is not ideological purity-- that is an active failure to real and living members of your community. we need to articulate it.

transandrophobia is a perfectly serviceable term to describe a real problem that needs a term. trans men and mascs face specific violences. your response literally agrees that it's real. we have both stated on multiple occasions that agree that it's real. so we need to be able to talk about it. so we need a word for it.

i would encourage you in general to prioritize people's wellbeing over and above linguistic purity. especially right now when things are getting worse and worse and worse for ALL trans people.

[lowresolutioncryptid]

I’ve been seeing a lot of terfs deny the very clear link between trans exclusionism and nvzism/white supremacy simply because they do not understand the history behind it. ignorance is not a legitimate excuse to perpetuate systems of white supremacy. And it is further testament to the harm that banning critical race theory and queer studies in schools is doing to y’all’s brains. Because if I’m being completely honest, I’m seeing an alarming amount of self-identified terfs and radfems who are legit STILL IN HIGH SCHOOL. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. My blog is 18+, not for children, anyone under 18 gets immediately blocked. Anyway…

Transphobia and anti-blackness are historically linked and continue, to this day, to be overlapping forms of systemic oppression. Black trans women, specifically, have higher murder rates than any other group. Both trans and black people statistically face more medical discrimination than cis and white people, respectively. The combination of both of these marginalized identities forms a particular and very sinister intersection of oppression.

Not only do both of these systems of privilege work to uphold the social and structural power of cis people and white people.. biological essentialism and transphobia also, historically, were used to define the beliefs of white supremacy and race essentialism. Race essentialism is the false belief that it is “natural order” for whites to oppress other races. For centuries, white “philosophers” made up a whole list of pseudoscientific “reasons” WHY they believed racism was “natural”. One of them was the idea that “distinct and separate biological sexes were the mark of a more evolved race-“ meaning the white race.. they compared European patriarchal sex roles and gender roles to the matriarchal cultures and gender variance that they observed in communities of color.

I have seen terfs accuse people who bring up this historical fact of “masculinizing” black women and women of color, which is a very real issue, but in this case and with historical context, that is a misunderstanding and most of the time is being said by people who want to silence trans people and shut down any criticism of terfism.

Acknowledging the thousands of years of acceptance of gender variance and third/fourth gender categories within pre-colonial African, Indigenous, Latin, Asian, & Middle eastern cultures, is not to blame for the masculinization of women of color, and as a matter of fact: the invention and enforcement of Eurocentric gender roles REQUIRES and RELIES on the masculinization of women of color in order to uphold white women’s place within white supremist systems as the “ideal of femininity” that they can then weaponize against women of color when they do not adhere to those Eurocentric standards.

During times of enslavement and segregation, black women were forced, legally and socially, to conform to very strict Eurocentric femininity standards in order to avoid harassment and violence, and if they deviated from these norms and codes they were dehumanized, masculinized, and were “made into examples” of white femininity being “superior”. Gender roles and biological essentialism do not exist in a vacuum outside of the white supremist systems that they were created within and invented to maintain. To imply that all women share the same experiences within these systems is akin to saying “I don’t see color”.. it’s denying the lived experiences of people of color.

Most gays are familiar with the symbol of the pink triangle, the badge worn by LGBT victims of ww2 concentration camps, but the transgender victims are often overlooked..

“Hitler’s Nazi government, however, brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures.” - Museum of Jewish Heritage.

The US holocaust memorial museum that holds remembrance vigils for the victims persecuted by the nazis, under the Obama administration, included both gay men and transgender people in their list of victims. However, under the Trump administration this was changed to only include gay men. When asked about this change one of the museum’s head curators responded that because trans people were viewed by the nazis as indistinguishable from gay men that they are “included” with the definition. This is an obvious cop-out. The other reason that they gave was that the term “transgender” was only officially coined in the 1980’s, despite the thriving population of German trans people and gender-nonconforming subcultures that pre-date the nazi control of Germany.

Ancient Judaism recognizes at least six (6) distinct sex categories and gender roles, our women fulfilling “traditionally masculine” roles and vice versa.. this is a direct threat and opposition to nazism which relies on Eurocentric patriarchal gender roles. White women serve one purpose within nazi ranks: BIOLOGICAL incubators for white babies. If you don’t have 1) European genetic material 2) biological capabilities of reproduction (vagina, womb, mammaries) to be exploited for domestic labor, you are not considered a “true” woman by nazis. “Woman” being defined within nazism by biological, reproductive traits is so eerily similar to terf’s definition of woman that the only explanation for still perpetuating these ideas that I can think of, other than apathy or being full blown nazis, would be ignorance and historical illiteracy. The systemic eradication and erasure of trans and gender-nonconforming people by the nazi party was essential in maintaining these standards at a structural level, as well as the reinforcement of these false beliefs within popular culture. In order to maintain that false image of “dominance” “supremacy”, they had to invent a subclass that was then deemed “inferior” by their own standards.

When trans people of color and trans Jews are explicitly telling y’all that the harmful rhetoric you spread about trans people has DIRECT historical links to white supremacy and nazism, and (whether intentionally or unintentionally) upholds these systems that are killing us, it’s not your place to dig your heels into the ground and come up with excuses. It’s your place to listen and reevaluate your views.

[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 !!

[nonbinarymlm]

Let’s talk about venting and boundaries, especially in the context of social justice.

There’s a place for venting negative feelings about oppression. That venting doesn’t have to be 100% correct. It’s okay to be like “I hate straight/white/cis/male/etc people” on occasion when frustration with oppression is getting you down without specifying “not ALL x majority group”. Venting is going to be messy sometimes. That’s okay.

But if there are no boundaries or limits to your venting, THAT will be harmful to yourself, others, and any social movement you try to represent. Not every single place, time, and context is going to be an appropriate space for venting.

If you are running a social justice or minority focused space of any kind, you need to have clear guidelines around venting and when it is/isn’t appropriate with your space or your space will likely turn toxic and unhealthy. People can use supposed “venting” as a weapon to harm and silence others.

If a trans man is talking about his experience with oppression and someone responds with how he sucks because he’s a man and men suck? That’s not okay. That’s using the excuse of venting to silence a marginalized person discussing their oppression. The same is true for black, Asian, disabled, gay, mixed race, bi, ANY marginalized men. I use this as an example because women are numerically the largest oppressed group globally so it can often come up, but there’s many other examples. Venting about white people can even be used to silence women and LGBTQ+ people depending on the specific context (like complaining about “white girls” or “white gays” doing stereotypically feminine things that are entirely harmless).

Venting about “straight” or “het” people can be used to silence and exclude aro, ace, trans, intersex, and even bisexual people depending on context. It can also be used to dismiss and silence non-white people and discussions around interracial relationships. Venting about “cis” people can be used to silence and exclude intersex people. The diversity of the LBGTQ+ community can make this tactic all too common.

Even if you’re not trying to hurt someone, if you don’t have separate spaces or clear boundaries on your venting, then you will likely hurt someone. If a straight intersex person constantly hears about how straight people suck in LGBTQ+ spaces, they’re going to feel hurt and excluded even if that wasn’t the intent. If you expect queer men to be totally fine with having to randomly, arbitrarily hear how much they suck for being men in queer spaces, then you’re making queer spaces unsafe for queer men.

There can be vent spaces, vent blogs, personal spaces, etc that are there for venting about majority groups. It’s healthy for outlets for anger to exist. But if a social justice space expects some members to always be ready and willing to become an outlet for venting and anger with no boundaries or limits because those members have some kind of privileged identity, then that’s not healthy or reasonable. It’s not okay, and it often ignores intersectionality and the fact that people can embody marginalized and privileged identities at the same time.

TL;DR:

It’s time to get more nuanced about venting in social justice spaces. Yes, oppressed people need and deserve space for venting. No, it is not always reasonable, healthy, or okay to vent in every single context.

I know that there’s a lot of complexity to talk about here, but I think we need to talk about it. Because “venting” has become a tool for dismantling intersectionality, lateral oppression, and even plain old regular oppression in too many progressive spaces.

[aronarchy]

[CW: transphobia]

Transmisogyny is misogyny, transphobia is patriarchy.

The only main difference is that trans people are more oppressed than cis women so while cis women have gotten relative progress from feminism trans people are often left behind by cis feminists, and “progressive” transphobes will even naturalize patriarchal gender roles and definitions and manufactured constrictions, specifically bringing them out or bringing them back when it comes to defending transphobia.

This dynamic is especially exacerbated by racism, colonialism, Orientalism; the cultural imperialist Western gaze targets racialized trans people and even cis women and queers to naturalize or essentialize the patriarchal oppression they experience, treating it as an arbitrary cultural quirk occurring because of happenstance which must and/or can only be preserved, rather than a historically contingent form of oppression with specific material causes and consequences which can and should be overthrown. The relativist authoritarian often chastises consistent anti-authoritarians for supposedly being racist, white-privileged, disseminating “Western” viewpoints, etc. (erasing the non-white/Western intersectionally marginalized people who are the most harmed by such discourse, of course), but don’t be fooled: they’re the ones leveraging structures and ideologies originating in Western imperialism (the notion that The East and The West are ontologically different in grand historical ways, that nothing “Western” can be related to anything “Eastern” and vice versa, that The East is static and unchanging and underdeveloped, that The East’s cultures, values, practices, etc. are mysterious, exotic, inscrutable by The West, and so on), and when we expose this we peel away their façade (an important step that they always struggle to prevent by any means possible). (I don’t just say this in a vague abstract online discourse way; these dynamics also pop up in day-to-day personal political contexts, often the mechanism of violence/abuse; they are behind a great deal of material oppression in the real world today and have left a great deal of trauma upon marginalized people.)

It doesn’t occur to relativist transphobes that if someone doesn’t consider themself a woman / man because they feel they aren’t allowed to identify as or be one because they don’t fit the cissexist standard of having to be able to give birth (and fulfill the hegemonically defined (subordinate) wife role) / impregnate (and fulfill the hegemonically defined husband (patriarch) role), then that might possibly be a result of internalized patriarchy/misogyny/(cis)sexism and not an ideal state, and their mental health and self-image might improve and they might be living lives more closely in alignment with their internal selves if some friend went up and told them it could be an option. This is liberal choice “feminism” but specifically a version targeting trans people and transphobic oppression under patriarchy.

If a (white) infertile cis woman / cis man vented about feeling like they’re a failed Other rather than a real woman or real man because they can’t give birth / impregnate and the society around them says Real Women / Men are people who can give birth / impregnate (respectively), would people like this say as readily that it’s true they really are an ungendered unwomanly / unmanly Other, despite their own desire to be a woman / man and feelings which align with that? Or likewise for other forms of gendered nonconformity among cis people. (Much less likely, I think.)

Would they say, “cis women without children” is a whole separate gender from “cis women with children,” a third gender after “cis women with children” and “cis men with children”? Then “cis men without children” as a fourth gender. What about married with children versus married without? Then split the above into eight. Some trans people do get married, either while closeted, as an attempt at conversion or punishment by family or society, while passing for their correct gender (if they have a gender from the binary), or with updated laws which have assimilated trans people more. Trans people can have children too, even if not in the same patriarchal way which secures intergenerational patrilineal inheritance. More gender-categories for them then? (It’s obvious where this leads: there are in fact as many ways to be women and men as there are women and men, and different gender roles and social gender locations are assigned or designated in a gradient or internally distinguished way for all gender differences or social role differences, but there are some general categories which could be broadly termed different “genders” which group together, and thus it would be irrational/illogical and arbitrary to exclude trans women from womanhood or trans men from manhood under such a linguistic system.)

The transphobic takes above prioritize what “society” says, what other (cis) people surrounding someone says about what gender is, what their gender must be, as if what they say matters so much in defining us (or even at all), and then also equates the viewpoint of oppressive surroundings with the viewpoint of the oppressed individual (as if the oppressed will always just bow down and accept their oppression). That is not how we define gender or determine what anyone’s gender is, because that literally goes against the whole point of transness in the first place, which is that we define our own identities, we say what our genders are, we don’t limit ourselves by a cissexist society which constrains people by setting rigid inaccurate definitions; the subversiveness, the contradiction with surrounding norms, is literally the point; it wouldn’t be transness if there were no preexisting cisness (top-down/nonconsensual gender assignments) to struggle against in the first place.

It’s especially nasty to imply that Western trans people identify as “really” the gender they feel they are because the West’s social definitions of gender uniquely recognize that women don’t have to be wives, childbearers, and mothers (for patriarchs) and men don’t have to be husbands (patriarchs) and property-owning child-investing patrilineage-obsessed reproductive futurists. That erases the fact that there’s rampant institutionalized socially prevalent patriarchy in the West too; many people do believe that still; the point is, no society, no culture is a monolith. But it’s very obvious why sweeping portrayals of white, Western PoVs highlight the “progressive” parts while sweeping portrayals of non-white/non-Western PoVs highlight the “regressive” parts (racism, Enlightenment teleology). (And yes, people oppressed by racism can also be racist themselves.)

That also implies that trans people and our feelings and desires are dependent on cis people and their choices. That none of us will think against the grain until cis people create the conditions which allow for it. This prioritizes cis feminism and cis women’s rights over that of trans people, telling us they’ll always come first, we’ll always need them (though they won’t ever need us), if they’re not class-conscious yet then there’s no scenario where we might be more class-conscious already, which erases how we’re actually pressured to know much more about feminism than them, to understand their issues and ours and to be able to argue perfectly for both our rights and theirs in order to be relatively tolerated. These notions are only legible because of cissexism.

Trans people whose gender includes one (or both) genders from the binary are only treated as not being “allowed” to be “properly” considered as people of that gender because of cissexism. This denial is a form of oppression and social subordination, not something neutral or good or just naturally occurring. It’s cruel and it’s wrong. Notice how such discussions about “difference” never say that, e.g., “cis men are Different(tm) from trans men because they occupy different social niches, and trans men are more manly than cis men, because cis men don't fit into our/the Paradigmatic Image of What A Man Is(tm) and we only begrudgingly acknowledge cis men as probably ‘men’ in some way because of their self-identification but that won’t alter how we fundamentally categorize ‘men’ and we couldn’t possibly put forth a cis man as Paradigmatic, Archetypal, or Representative because smh he’s cis not trans, we couldn’t do that, that doesn’t intuitively make sense, a Man(tm) is a trans man unless otherwise specified?” (or likewise for women). Which makes it clear that this is about a power imbalance, a hierarchy placing cis people above trans people of the same gender and prioritizing cis people, which pushes out trans people from equal recognition and epistemic authority. (And no, the “unless otherwise specified” is not good enough, it’s still implicit misgendering; it’s just a half-assed attempt to cover the problems with your ideology; we want more.)

There is a (very obvious) reason why, despite having very different contexts at times, all patriarchies share certain common characteristics (patrilineage; intergenerational private property/power transfer of some sort; socially-mandated, enforced, or disproportionately incentivized binary heterosexual marriage/the couple-form; child-ownership by the patriarch; rigid definitions of “woman” as childbearer and mother and “man” as the one who possesses/owns the children (and “girls” and “boys,” respectively, as future “women” and “men,” requiring coercive socialization/indoctrination); condemnation of autonomous deviation from the prescriptive binary definitions of gender (in desire, in self-regard, in private or public identification/claiming, in differences or alterations in aesthetics/appearance/biological sex characteristics or role performance); etc.). Of course it’s not just arbitrarily landing on that every single time. These are social structures which arose from a historical process during which children, women, and queers were domesticated or forcibly excluded (as colonialism is imposed through an initial conquest and then ongoing counterinsurgency), relatively stabilizing after the patriarchs won the battle.

There is no reason why “man” or “woman” (or male, female, wife, husband, mother, father, boy, girl, masculine, feminine, gender, sex, “two genders,” “third gender”) would be terms any more transhistorically relevant, self-evident, coherent, or applicable than “transgender,” “nonbinary,” “trans woman/man/girl/boy/female/male,” etc. (And for that matter, “transmasc(uline)” (and “transfem(inine)”) shouldn’t be treated as “safer” terms to slide in third-gendering of binary trans people to avoid using the words “trans man” or “trans woman”; there’s no reason why they would automatically be more accurate either.) The people who would be called “trans” here today have existed and will exist in every society, and there will always be trans people under any patriarchy, and some language that would apply (whether a word or set of words or phrase or set of phrases or way of describing) to denote people rejecting or not aligning with their birth-assigned gender, so long as gender is assigned at birth. There will always be resistance, at least somewhere, sometime, when there is oppression. You will never have 100% internalized acceptance of cissexism. It’s time that relativists recognized this.

[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.

[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.

[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.