#it's not my biggest concern when it comes to transandrophobia

[menacingpolkamusic]

Yeah I don't really mind saying that transphobia is disproportionately violent against trans women.

[dinoburger]

I guess the current train of thought about trans discourse is just watching how unconstructive it is, how these kinds of discussions that could be useful to potentially informing a broader and more interconnected community only exacerbate problems.

having come to other political issues with an open mind and a clean slate makes me feel differently.

like.

what we need and what's being asked of us is to develop tools that are more effective at dealing with communal concerns and examining the mechanisms which cause these problems to begin with.

I think the most jarring thing about the "transandrophobia" discourse or the ace discourse is that the biggest concern being leveled is "I do not have the visibility to describe my experiences and feel isolated" and the response is always to counter that and question its legitimacy, not to try to build a better understanding of the cause of these problems or develop tools to make speaking on them easier.

as wrong as you think someone is or as badly as they might word that sentiment, the core problem of being unable to express themselves properly doesn't go away when you "win" the argument

this is where acknowledging gender divides as a tool of alienation becomes useful, but instead I really get the impression folks engaged in these arguments are arguing for the onus to be on trans women to be the arbiters of what constitutes legitimate transphobia or to have to argue on the behalf of them to lend any legitimacy to the points being discussed.

purely from a practical point of view, I can't see how this approach does much except make all parties involved feel more isolated, more alienated and more hostile towards each other. everyone's eager to point fingers about who is using "TERF talking points" but nobody is eager to think about where to go from there, or offer any practical guidance - at least not without belittling if not being openly hostile towards the other party.

if I have to opt out of all discussions about the trans identity because I don't have the authority to speak on everyone's behalf, only mine, then I don't engage, I may leave those who don't have a choice to fend for themselves

it seems more logical that the purpose of examining the way gender divides are arbitrarily enacted on trans people and enforced is to undo the damage being caused by them, not to become so reactive that they're enforced even more.

moreover... I don't actually think hunting down and humiliating trans men who might have some uninformed ideas does much to help trans women in the long run. maybe it makes you feel good in the moment to do that, but you're probably not going to change that person's mind if it's still, again, mostly that they're just lacking the tools to talk about what they're going through.

[pojkflata]

Seeing critiques of transandrophobia makes it quite clear to me that most detractors believe this came out of nowhere, as if somebody rightfully called out a trans man on his misogyny once and he instantly snapped and became a reactionary gamer bro. So I'd like to tell you that at least in my case, this has been brewing in me for some time with the rise of a new transphobic movement that specifically targets transmascs, and I gave you not one, not two, but three chances to take my worries seriously. If you don't like seeing me discuss my oppression like this, it's your fault for not being there for me when you had the chance.

April 2019

The Swedish national broadcaster puts out a documentary about trans healthcare. It's bad. It's really bad. It lies about the ease of access to HRT and concern trolls about an "explosive rise in mentally unstable girls identifying as transgender". It cites an at the time obscure study suggesting that being trans, specifically transmasc, is communicable. It's pseudoscience, but nobody cares. A woman goes on national television funded by tax payer money to complain about being silenced. Parents come in to misgender their sons, and shortly thereafter one of these sons talks on social media about how his mother was lying through her teeth the entire time. No trans person is allowed to speak. The documentary is mass reported for its obvious bias, misinformation and invading the privacy of a trans man. In the end, it's only charged for the privacy breach - in the eyes of the public, the bias and misinformation are forgivable. A sequel is released in the fall of the same year when they actually bring in a trans person... a trans woman. As if to say "this is what a real trans looks like, unlike you mentally unstable girls". They then announce that they are detransitioning and calls themselves a "effeminate gay in a woman's body". Now the narrative is more like "if even this real trans wasn't actually trans, what makes you think you could be?"

My mental immune system went into overdrive, I panicked. This was new to me but I knew we would have to deal with this brand of transphobia for a long time going forward. I also knew that these people obviously hated trans men and trans men specifically, this was reactionary pushback against increased visibility. "No, you can't take up space like this, what about the children?" This rhetoric is also literal gaslighting - it teaches you that if you happen to be a trans man, especially if you came out as a teen and/or you're ND, you can't trust what's going on inside your own head, you're delusional, and you certainly don't deserve healthcare. I write a tumblr post describing to the best of my abilities why this is dangerous. It gets a couple of dozen notes, but not much else. I try to rationalize it - the post was written in panicked delirium and I didn't know what to call this rhetoric, I knew calling it "transmisandry" would get me laughed out of the room. Additionally, this isn't happening in the US (yet), so I have to be happy I even got notes at all.

I was pre-T at the time and I was terrified that this would prevent me from transitioning. Knowing that this documentary is now what most people in my country believe about me is a horrifying thought. At least one Swedish trans man attempted suicide following the documentary. As for me, I started crossing streets without looking for cars.

Strike one.

June 2020

An author whose work I never particularily cared about has a twitter meltdown over language designed to include me. She cries about feeling dehumanized by being called a person. Shortly thereafter she writes a full manifesto justifying her TERF sympathies. But this doesn't look like the typical TERF rant. While she goes over some very classic and violent TERF rhetoric like calling trans women predators, she spends even more words on regurgitating the rhetoric I knew from more than a year before. Some people sound the alarm about what this might mean for trans men, but they're shut down - TERFs don't hate trans men! Look, she said she included you! Just don't think too much about the fact that the reason this happened to begin with was that she threw a hissy fit over having to include me.

I try to rationalize this response again - this is many people's first exposure to this rhetoric, they just might not know quite what to make of it.

Strike two.

Summer 2020

A book is published once again rife with the rhetoric I was now very familiar with. The author is invited to the biggest podcast in the world where she says word salad about how people like me are women with unresolved body image issues and that's why we transition - T redistributes fat storage, that must sound awesome to women who hate their bodies. Just don't think too hard about how T actually allocates more fat to the stomach and how a woman with body image issues would realistically react to such a development.

The book itself is also vile. It misgenders trans men whose lives were lost to hate crimes. It fetishizes my reproductive organs, claiming that maintaining my fertility is more important than my wellbeing. I'm reduced to a breeding stock, what a shockingly feminist move.

It openly hates trans men who are out and proud with their experiences, it accuses them of stealing their children in a manner not unlike how autism parents talk about autism. But this might be worse - these are individuals who are being blamed. It makes uncomfortable remarks about their bodies and many of them are harrassed following the publication of this book.

At this point you have to stretch ridiculously far to claim that this isn't about hating trans men. I gave the people who should've been there for me the benefit of the doubt, and they proved me wrong. "Who do you think she believes is doing the seducing? It's trans women" I actually paid attention and she clearly blames trans men, why are you being this willfully ignorant? Does acknowledging the truth force you to reconsider your worldview?

Strike three.

That's when I ran out of patience. I realized the larger trans community was incapable of handling my issues with any tact or grace. We needed new terminology and rhetoric to address this emerging reactionary movement that specifically and obviously hates me and my brothers. And I refuse to back down now.