#isomisogyny

[puppydogdevotion]

"trans men pass easier" ma'am i have f-cup tits and the voice of a female hallmark love interest, what the fuck do you mean "trans men pass easier" because i cannot pass even if i bind my chest to the high heavens, don't say a word irl or wear a baggy hoodie and loose pants??

[cosmic-vanity]

Part of the new Trump bill.

Ah yes, tumblr TRFs, please go ahead! Tell me how transmascs have male privilege. Tell me about how we don’t experience misogyny nor any other kind of oppression at the hands of the patriarchy. Tell me more about my so-called “afab privilege”! Tell me how me talking about my fear of forced pregnancy makes me transmisogynistic and about how I’m “rubbing it your faces”!

Fuck you. Fuck every single one of you transandrophobic dipshits. You’re not real feminists. You’re just bigots.

[genderkoolaid]

i’ve been seeing that “nooo tboy mutual don’t reblog that transandrophobia post, there are so many other non-reactionary frameworks that you can use to understand your experiences” post go around (unfortunately from. a lot of my mutuals.)

and it’s really frustrating to me bc like. i would love to hear them!!! i would love to discuss different lenses of viewing the specific kind of oppression that transmascs face, i would love to learn about different perspectives!!

but so much of what’s out there either 1) doesn’t include us at all or 2) insists that our oppression isn’t anything more than transphobia, or that it’s just misdirected transmisogyny, or that it’s just transphobia and misogyny, but no discussion of how transphobia and misogyny interact to specifically impact transmascs. it just feels so disingenuous and dismissive because whenever we talk about our experiences, no matter what language we use, we’re shut down over and over and over again.

Godddd I saw that post the other day and could not help but roll my eyes. Saying there's "so many other frameworks" to use disregards a fundamental reason why this framework is being created in the first place: transmascs, across different ages and races and other variables, feeling silenced and absent in other models of society, even those claiming to be for trans-feminist. Like if you are trying to convince trans guys to not use the term transandrophobia maybe start by acknowledging the absence of proper frameworks to discuss the unique position of trans men & mascs. & you know damn well none of these people will acknowledge how every other iteration of "transandrophobia" ALSO got shut down for being Problematic™, including "isomisogyny" which was literally just misogyny with a prefix attached to assure cis women that we would never DARE to imply that transmascs might be oppressed by the same social force as them!

But that's the problem with people trying to make the discussion of anti transmasculinity palatable! They want to have a version of this discussion that isn't threatening at all to the deeply ingrained anti (trans)masculinity in queer spaces. Literally any criticism, no matter how lukewarm or carefully handled, is labeled "reactionary." After you get rid of everything that people hate about transandrophobia theory you are left with none of the things that make it valuable to transmascs + everyone else who benefits from this discussion.

[a-polite-melody]

I actually really hate the whole “the problem isn’t trans men speaking on trans men’s issues, it’s just that the word transandrophobia that makes it a problem” bullshit.

Because it IS bullshit.

Because we’ve tried multiple words. And apparently, every time we do, no, that word is bad too.

After isomisogyny, then transmisandry, being dismissed for the exact same reason—your word is bad—this third time it’s become perfectly transparent that the word isn’t the problem. It’s the idea of there being a word that’s the problem. Because it’s easier to talk about harder to ignore or minimize it that way.

We aren’t allowed to have language. That’s the only thing I can conclude.

[ghost-avian]

1. the way you phrased that, it seems you think i think trans men are incapable of being transmisogynistic. to be clear, i dont think trans women or trans men are "structurally incapable" of being transphobic to the other.

2. misogynior is a term for the way intersecting misogyny and (antiblack) racism make black women more vulnerable to oppression including in groups that supposedly champion their rights.

3. a lot of racism at black men is about black men being a threat to white women. i dont think its helpful to ignore that gendered element. black men being men makes them more vulnerable to the "birth of a nation" lynch mob variety of white supremacy, and acknowledging that doesnt mean that black women arent more vulnerable in other ways.

4. "patriarchy punishes trans men for being trans, not for being men!" but the way trans men are trans is by being men. patriarchy oppresses trans men for being men, instead of women as they were assigned.

5. "the patriarchal violence trans men face aside from being trans is because patriarchy considers them women". were in agreement here. trans men face transphobia for being trans, and they face misogyny on the basis of being considered women under patriarchy. (they also face certain intersections of transphobia and misogyny, and them being men doesnt negate that. and acknowledging that doesnt mean ignoring the contempt filled intersection of transphobia and misogyny trans women face.)

6. i dont think even the worst, most transmisogynistic transmisandry truther would say that "this issue is with trans women oppressing trans men". the transmisandry argument is about the way that transphobia directed at trans men is discussed in trans spaces (eg. trans men upset at being labeled "TME" despite experiencing intersections of transphobia and misogyny.) and it looks like you also agree that there should be a term for the specific transphobia transmascs experience.

7. this is the crux of our disagreement i think: i dont think trans women need to have "amab privilege" or "structural power" (or even "more structural power then trans men" necessarily) to be capable of being transphobic to trans men.

8. the term transmisogyny is itself quite recent, coined by Julia Serano in her 2007 book Whipping Girl. both you and Serano note the need for a term describing transphobia against trans men, but you seem to dismiss any attempts at creating that term as "social media microlabels" and "personal feelings". i agree that "transmisandry" is a bad term, and i dont use "transandrophobia" because of associations to transmisogynists, but there doesnt seem to be any other term?

the thing about transmisandry truthers is that they genuinely believe that trans women hold some level of gendered power over them, which is provably false.

[puppydogdevotion]

the amount of trfs who idolize stalin is. Hm. did they conviently forget that stalin re-criminalized gay sex & homosexuality in the ussr?

[sodomit]

1. If you believe that intersectional analysis of oppression only applies to overlaps of two independently marginalized identities, you fundamentally do not understand intersectionality.

2. Accidentally implying cishet men experience gendered oppression on the basis of being cishet men is a discourse oddity with no long term consequences except occasional annoying gotchas (no, queer theory does not lie at the foundation of incel ideology, stop acting like the aforementioned cishet men turn to our spaces for inspiration and validation, a trans person making a bad gender take is not why misogyny happens). Meanwhile, accidentally implying that trans men or nonbinary people don't experience transmisogyny results in new and inexperienced trans people endangering themselves, and safety guides overlooking potential victims. That's worse. That's just significantly worse.

3. We already tried several other terms, including words like "isomisogyny", not containing any references to misandry at all. Y'all still didn't like it. Y'all kept nitpicking and attacking and harassing theorists into silence. Enough is enough.

[puppydogdevotion]

am i allowed to bring up how quickly trfs were to protect a self admitted, self-labeled map/pedo because she's a transfem who hates ""transandrobros"" (aka transmascs who won't let her treat them like shit) without getting accused of being a transmisogynist or no?

[doberbutts]

The basis of anon's suggestion- that "anti-transmasculinity" as a term is older, I don't think is true. From my perspective, I also saw transmisandry and isomisogyny first, then transandrophobia and anti-transmasc, and *then* came things like anti-transmasculinity and transmascphobia and things like that as reactions to the reaction to the coining of transandrophobia.

If I'm wrong, I'd love to see proof of it, because unfortunately when I try googling it I'm mostly getting articles with any variation of the above words instead of just specifically "anti-transmasculinity".

Funny enough I also don't see it getting "little friction" because half of the articles I pull up that DO use the term in question are also saying it's not a real thing and it is a bad dirty gross word for stinky mra trans guys to complain about how much they hate trans women. Sound familiar?

I'm also wondering how TRANSandrophobia is less clear about being about TRANS masculine oppression than anti-TRANSmasculinity.

You've made a lot of really great posts about transmasc experiences and struggles, and they really resonate with me! So I guess I want to in complete earnest ask: why the push for 'transandrophobia' when anti-transmasculinity as a term has been around for longer and faces little friction by comparison? I don't really *dislike* transandrophobia, but its meaning gets muddied everywhere from different directions, while ATM is pretty direct and succinct I feel. It's very clear that it's about TRANSmasculine oppression. I'm not against having a dedicated term at all, but the content of our struggles gets lost in the weeds of attaching kind of understandably divisive terms like misandry and androphobia in an attempt to mirror a phenomenon very specifically about misogyny; it seems more trouble than it's worth considering ATM is right there

I'll be honest, this ask is confusing to me for a few reasons.

When I started talking about transandrophobia around the summer of 2020, the conversations I was encountering were very much, like, a handful of people across Twitter and Tumblr (literally, a handfull!). I picked up "transandrophobia" because it was one of two words I saw in use, and the other- "transmisandry"- felt much less clear and much more contentious. It seemed super obvious to me that people would draw a line from "men's rights activists" trying to push this idea that "misandry", as a systemic oppression of men by women, to "transmisandry", and assume some ill intent where there was none. It's confusing!

"Transandrophobia" was the better of two options being floated at the time, at least in any conversation I saw. "Anti-transmasculinity" was not really a term I'd been made aware of, if anyone at all was talking about it at the time.

I have seen people pick up "anti-transmasculinity" more recently (maybe in the last year?), and this is definitely the first I've seen someone shorten it to "ATM". The people I've seen use that term have been mostly people who seem really new to the conversation, and the vibe I've gotten has been very, like, "we're the Good Transmascs, our word isn't dirty and gross like those other Bad Transmascs everyone hates. you'll listen to us now that our word is Good and Pure, right?"

Which is like... kind of frustrating, and kind of sad, honestly. I think these people honestly believe that if they just choose the right word, all the people who've been dragging me and every other transmasc talking about these issues through the mud for the last 4 years or so will really just stop & listen. If they can just say it right, these people- who have been relentlessly harassing and spreading lies about every single transmasc who came before them for years now- will care what they have to say, and will be willing to engage with them in earnest, compassionate dialogue.

If you just find the right word, all of these people will care about your hurt, your pain, and the suffering of your community.

It kind of breaks my heart. It's an incredibly hopeful, kind, loving way to view the world. It's compassion and patience and forgiveness that these folks are not being given, but that they so badly want to offer to others.

And at the same time, it sucks to be the Bad Transmasc. It sucks to have fought so hard for so long, and for the people I've been fighting for all this time to turn around and say, "you're gross, and dirty, and evil, and everything you've done is a mistake." It sucks to see the people I've been fighting for agree with the people I've been fighting against, and shove me under the bus in an effort to appeal to the people running me over with it. Knowing that the bus is going to aim for them once it's done with me just makes it sadder, yknow?

@saint-speaks wasn't the first person to ever speak the word "transandrophobia", but he is the one who coined and popularized it in its current form. And then he was dragged through the mud so hard and so brutally that some people think I coined it, just because when I defended him (too little and too late, imo) I withstood the mud-dragging better than he did (and gee, I wonder white.)

And now people take for granted that everything everyone said about hymn to justify that frankly fucking evil harassment campaign was true, actually, and we should abandon the word he coined and find one with purer origins.

If you honestly think "anti-transmasculinity" is just a more practical word, that's fine. I don't care what word we use. But they're going to cover it in mud, too. They're going to cover every one of you in mud.

Will you keep fighting for "ATM" once they make it the new dirty, gross, bad, evil word? Will you keep fighting when they drag you and everyone else through the mud for using it? Or will you agree with them, make up a new word, and never look back?

Please don't let us drown in the mud. We've been fighting for you, and we want to fight with you. Please.

[baeddel-txt]

[th4nkyoub3n]

broke: isomisogyny (enforces the oppressor's perspective of the issue, forces issue into a feminist model regardless of whether it's appropriate, etymology groups cis women with trans men, coined by seebs who sucks)

woke: transmisandry (puts emphasis on the identity of the oppressed, recognizes that trans men can internalize feminist misandry, does not imply men's misogyny is directed internally, matches the word transmisogyny without implying that it is as bad, it fucks)

[shitthatshouldntbecontroversial]

People here really be acting like trans women don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t People here really be acting like trans men don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t

People here really be acting like fem-aligned amab enbies experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t People here really be acting like masc-aligned afab enbies don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t

People here really be acting like unaligned amab enbies don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t

People here really be acting like unaligned afab enbies  don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t

People here really be acting like masc aligned amab enbies  don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t

People here really be acting like fem aligned afab enbies  don’t experience any form of transphobia that other people under trans umbrella don’t

No one should be saying that any of these are greater than the risk trans women and fem-aligned, particularly amab fem-aligned enbies face, and as a transmasc genderqueer, I will personally fight someone for implying otherwise.

 However, acknowledging the fact that each and every one of us experiences forms of transphobia that other trans people don’t should not be considered transmisogyny. Because ultimately, no cissexist, exorsexist society is ever going to truly consider us on the same pedestal as our cis and binary counterparts.

 Our assigned sex, our gender identity, its relation to the binary, our presentation, and so on and so forth, are going to change the ways transphobia is directed at us. The above is a gross simplification.

Speaking personally as a transmasc genderqueer who is gender nonconforming and has both passed and not passed, someone who is transmasc who passes and reject gender roles is going to face transphobia differently than one who doesn’t pass and rejects gender roles.

Why is this controversial?

[doberbutts]

Okay. So. Longass post while I eat dinner and wait for my controller to charge and then I’m going back to my game.

The problem is it’s never actually been about the word itself.

We tried transandrophobia. Transmisandry. Isomisogyny. Transmascphobia. Anti-transmasculinity. People fought about literally all of them, saying they don’t exist, that they legitimize incel and terf language, that they’re some power grab, that they’re inherently transmisogynistic.

We tried transmisogyny and were told it was just for trans women and that we couldn’t use it.

We tried “transphobia specific to trans mascs”. We were told there is no such thing. That other demographics experience it and thus it’s actually theirs and not ours to discuss. We brought up trans mascs with genders marked M or X being denied abortions, pap smears, and other reproductive care. Trans mascs correctively raped by their significant others and spouses they were forced by their families to marry. Trans mascs who were targeted specifically because they were trans mascs, often buried as women under their dead names to be forever misgendered by history. We were told we were making it up and that we were weaponizing our womanhood by discussing these lived experiences.

We tried “just” misogyny. We were told that as men, we weren’t allowed to say that we experienced misogyny because trans men are men and men never experience misogyny and thus our very real experiences weren’t really ours and they weren’t that bad.

We tried “just” transphobia. We were told that as trans men, we don’t really experience transphobia because any transphobia we do experience is actually transphobia about trans women and thus our very real experiences weren’t really ours and they weren’t that bad.

You don’t have to take my word for it. You can go into the tags of any of those words and see exactly that being discussed in real time right now in 2023. I’ve even got screenshots from @baeddel-txt if you want to give yourself psychic damage by reading truly the worst takes ever from 2014 onwards.

At some point, one has to admit what it’s actually about is stopping trans mascs from discussing the way they’ve been treated by society, and stopping others from considering that maybe the way they’ve been treating us is a problem.

And make no mistake- while some of it is coming from trans fems and it’s impossible to say it’s not, just as there’s shit-flinging in reverse from trans mascs to trans fems as well, because for some reason we prefer to blame each other rather than working together to solve our problems as a collective- if you take a scroll through these tags a lot of it is coming from cis people and fellow trans mascs. A lot of it is coming from other LGBT or otherwise queer-identified people and a lot of it matches previous attempts at killing the ace, bi, and pansexual communities using the same arguments that the internet likes to cycle through every couple of years and has been doing since online communities began to exist.

So, I ask you, if you got through this and still want to write a witty retort, what have you done to help us fix the staggering amounts of suicide, sexual assault, and beatings we face? What have you done to help us fix the staggering amounts of us being denied necessary healthcare? What is your solution to all this, besides to sit at your computer or scroll through your phone and quibble about whether or not the specific word is allowed to be used this week?

[tandoori-frost]

I just want to make it super clear to everyone that follows me, transandrophobia/isomisogyny/transmisandry (I personally use transandrophobia), is real.

It does real meaningful harm to people, including me, every day. There are people who have made wonderful essays, I am not going to be one of them, but please seek them out and read them.

If you do not thing that trans men deal with our own specific form of oppression, or your think that the words involved matter more than the bigotry being talked about, I would prefer you block me and move on, because if I find out you hold those beliefs I'll be doing the same.

And just to ward of the worst of the bullshit, transandrophobia does not mean trans women oppress trans men, that's called lateral oppression. It doesn't mean trans men are more oppressed than trans women, thats playing oppression Olympics.

Whatever you want to say, I can promise I've heard it, please just be kind the the trans men in your life and online.

Putting my DNI on here cause I anticipate This breaking containment, DNI: terfs, sysmeds, transmeds, queerphobes, people who think transandrophobia isn't real, and people who believe in Narc abuse. I block frequently and at will. Your anon hate will not be posted.

[a-polite-melody]

It kinda sucks that the word "isomisogyny" has been left behind because above even "transandrophobia", I like how it also addresses the way misogyny is used to police ALL men, not just trans men. It really captures that sense of "the worst thing a man can be is a woman" sentiment inherent to misogyny, the way womanhood and femininity are bad and corruptive to the hegemonic ideal of masculinity, the false dichotomy between the two. I really like it as a word.

Yeah. I missed out on those conversations because I was pretty unaware of them taking place at the time.

There are people having those kinds of conversations under a different name—antimasculism/anti-masculism—lately, which has been a good look at the broader sense of patriarchal misogyny outside of just conversations about women and/or transmascs.

[a-polite-melody]

Your tags insinuate both that:

- What trans men and mascs are actually experiencing when we experience the demonization of masculinity within queer spaces is transmisogyny

- TME/TMA are a distinction we should be using within the community

So we experience transmisogyny, but can’t talk about it because we’re exempt from transmisogyny.

This is exactly why different words were being trialed, as far back as isomisogyny all the way through to newer ones like transemasculation.

I don’t think that’s reactionary at all, beyond being “reactive” to the fact that we’re not being allowed to describe our experiences at all without people telling us that they aren’t our experiences.

really wanna have a real read somewhere about concepts like transandrophobia because i wanna believe theres a better way to talk about discrimination against transmascs that isnt just like a reactionary kickback to transfems describing their experiences. but like whenever i look it up its always some shit about how trans women are hating on & silencing trans men & also feminism made men seek comfort in the right which are totally normal things to say & think & feel about women guys. what are we doing