#contextually it's doubly important that the more 'liberal area' i moved to to finally be able to transition was PITTSBURGH

[bisexualamy]

i know we have this thread every week but it winds me up in a way that few other things do because, when you think about it, the audacity to tell a stranger "i know you think you experienced misogyny, but since you're a binary transgender man* (and therefore have always been a man, something that applies to every binary transgender man in the world) you actually experienced misdirected misogyny that wasn't meant for you because you're not a woman. hope this helps :)" is so profoundly presumptive and insulting

some of us are older than you and grew up in a much more transphobic world! some of us did not grow up in liberal areas! for some of us, it was impossible to access trans care until we picked up and moved our lives to somewhere more accepting! and *shockingly* some of us have not always ID'd as men, and to retroactively re-frame our sometimes traumatic experiences with misogyny as "misdirected" is just so. i keep coming back to this but it's just plain insulting.

i identified and presented as a woman most of my childhood! i couldn't present as anything BUT a woman even after i stopped IDing as one for my safety! i started transition as an adult seven years ago! my hometown was so conservative that they had their first, sparsely attended pride event four months ago this past june!

i had grown men sexualize me as young as 14. i experienced sexual harassment and unconsentual touching from my peers even younger. men joked about r*ping me to my face! who tf is anyone to tell me that didn't count as "true" misogyny. because it sure as shit was directed towards me. even the current wave of transphobic backlash uses misogynistic language towards all transgender people, including trans men. when transphobes infantilize us, frame us as "confused young women" suckered into an ideology we couldn't possibly understand, that's misogyny! when transphobes discourage us from transitioning because it will devalue our one asset: our beauty, when they discuss top surgery as a mutilation and mourn our breasts over our physical and mental health, that's misogyny!

the fact that i'm now a man does not change that fact and i wish more people allowed room for nuance in these discussions. if it clashes with your understanding of the gender binary, good! it should! it reeks of too much theory and not enough interacting with irl trans people. it's a vast oversimplification of the lived experiences of lots of trans people. there are thousands of ways to be an enemy of patriarchy.

*i am aware that this affects other trans men and transmascs who are not binary men but i'm using binary men here to make the point that even if 'woman' is zero part of your identity this still applies