My Blog Got Deleted So Now I Have A New One Cries

can a trans man experience (cis) male privilege? yes. can a trans woman? yes. and so can a cis woman! hell, a femme perisex cis woman with a gender neutral name could if she's assumed to be a cis man on a resume. male privilege is not an on/off switch. the idea that it is stems from cissexist understandings of male/female as entirely separate and static categories which everyone can and must be understood through. trans people in feminism are expected to constantly defend and deflect accusations of being Privileged Male Oppressors by promising cis perisex women that our experiences are just like theirs! we don't have any scary opinions that don't align with their worldview! we swear we won't ever make them have to reflect on how being cis+perisex has biased them and potentially made their analysis of gender at all inaccurate! trans experiences are only considered valuable to cisfeminism to the extent that they reaffirm what cisfeminists already hold true. thats why they only ever want to talk about a very simplistic narrative around wages pre/post-transition. its extremely unthreatening to cis people because it presents transness in patriarchy as just going from one cis role to another; it doesn't ask cis feminists to expand their paradigm to include the ways in which trans people are treated as a class and their own complicity in transphobic oppression.

which is why trans men have been getting fucked over by trans-affirmng cisfeminism. because by virtue of having our gender acknowledged, we are expected to forfeit our place in the feminist movement and adopt the role of outsider along cis men*. and its also why trans women and MTX people get fucked over the minute they cannot or refuse to describe their experiences through the one or two approved narratives. cisfeminism cannot tolerate transness-as-transness. it has to be compressed and reduced and diluted into something that fits within a cis-centric framework. we aren't allowed to have nuanced and intersectional conversations about trans men & other trans folks relationship with male privilege, the things we have to sacrifice to there, how fleeting it can be, the fact that for some of us being read as "biologically male" is actively more dangerous than being read as female... if it isn't familiar to cis women, then it means you aren't really oppressed.

I saw these screenshots in the notes ~2m after it was decided:

I just took these of the project page:

& looking in the edit history, I see this:



Twice, one in the intro alongside other words used to describe the oppression that trans men face in this way, the other one being a restatement of that fact: “is sometimes referred to as anti-transmasculinity,[1] transandrophobia,[2] or transmisandry” “The discrimination experienced by transgender men has been described using various words, but none have seen widespread use. Terms used include anti-transmasculinity and transandrophobia.”

but then you have something like this. where it is just so painfully obvious they are on the same side of history as aphobes and biphobes. when you have people who 1) are not personally invested in transandrophobia not being a legitimate term, and 2) are actually looking at the academic and statistical sources given for transmasculine oppression, it becomes pretty obvious that this resistance is motivated by personal discomfort with the term.

notably, in my experience, people are super willing to come out swinging against transandrophobia, all confident in their rejection of the concept, until you respond with numerous cited sources on material transmasculine oppression and back it up with widely accepted feminist theory. then suddenly they ghost. so much anti-transmasculinity thrives as a direct result of people's refusal to acknowledge the reality of transmasc oppression, and when you can't do that because its a Wikipedia page with extensive sources, you have to fall back on petty defensive cruelty, because that was what was at the heart of this uproar all along.

you'll notice, if you read the post, if you read the post you 🫵🏻 just reblogged! that it contains the line:

"trans men/transmasc people aren't necessarily excluded from their hateful rhetoric"

"aren't necessarily excluded" so I don't know if you know this, but saying something isn't "necessarily" xyz is effectively implying that while it's not this thing, there's exceptions. Framing the struggles of transmasc people as lesser is dumb. if you think differently, you're more than entitled to.

Also. You realize that not all transfems are lesbians. ergo not adjacent to lesbian spaces. right????? and those people are EQUALLY hated by terfs as transbians. (not saying that was ur point, bc i dont think it was, but wow did u make it sound Like That)

look. i'm not in any way saying transfems are not targeted by terfs. but to imply they are their only target is really dumb. Show me these hordes of people that genuinely don't believe terfs hate transfem people. Because if you can't, then the argument of terf vs twerf has no meaning <3

but "community" implies a degree of interpersonal connection that i don't think exists. there are also people across this site and other platforms who have very different sorts of discussions about anti-transmasculinity, and i don't think it makes any sense to act as though everyone who talks about transandrophobia/ATM is inherently connected in a "community" and uniquely accountable for each other's actions, purely because we all talk about how transmasculinity is systemically targeted by patriarchy. this does not mean, to be clear, that people do not have a moral obligation to call out transmisogyny, racism, intersexism, exorsexism, etc. in spaces where transandrophobia/ATM is being discussed. the trans community is still a thing, as well as general ethical behavior.

the point of talking about transandrophobia/ATM is to talk about it, to theorize, to organize. people may make friends and find community through this discussion, but that is secondary to the discussion and not the point. & that should be clear from the fact that referring to people as "pro-transandrophobia" or part of the "transandrophobia community" is extremely confusing and contradictory, because the term was always meant for social analysis and organization, not community-building or sectarianism.

and once this goes from a discussion to being a "community," it is becomes something more about interpersonal relationships and, inevitably, drama, than it does about the analysis of systemic oppression. it turns "transandrophobia" and "anti-transmasculinity" from widely applicable terms into the Special Words of One Online Community and, if the community collapses, the words will be seen as tainted. i do not want that. i think one of the most dangerous issues the left faces especially in the US is the inability to distinguish between the personal/individual level and the social/collective level of thinking. ironically, i think the idea of a "transandrophobia community" does more to trap us in the mindset of the personal than it does to encourage us to think socially and avoid the ideological mistakes that helped get us to our current fucked up sociopolitical situation.

its a different kind of broadness that seems, to me, better suited as "transunity" covers not just anti-transmasculinity but anti-transfemininity and all forms of exorsexism on equal grounds. there are blogs that only cover transmisogyny/transgynephobia/anti-transfemininity that are still clearly part of the broader sphere of "people who treat transandrophobia as a real thing and a major part of transphobia" but it makes much more sense to describe the connection being about the overall approach to how patriarchy & the community are understood, rather than having to funnel all this through "do they think this one word for trans man oppression is good or bad"

also adding @sirmarsian's tags because they make a great point:

*Book is Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex by Pat Califa by the way

Which is interesting, since the book is over thirty years old.

If Pat Califa were, in fact, actually agitating for an increase to the sexual abuse of endangerment of children, don't we all think perhaps that would have been mentioned in the last 30 years of commentary?

No?

No, we should just assume that a queer man--the group of people MOST LIKELY to be stigmatized as child molesters in the west--is himself a secret child molester and that it took the brave and insightful eye of someone who personally detests him for being a queer man to figure it out?

You really think a book that has had multiple reprints and multiple additions in the last 30 years is secretly calling for mass child rape and no one else ever noticed?

I'll say it again:

That's one HELL of a bold claim.

A claim refuted by Califa in 1992 before the first edition of the cited book was even released:

'I don't agree with NAMBLA, because their position is that age-of-consent laws should be repealed, and there are members of that organization who think it's OK for prepubescent children to have sexual relationships with adults, and I just cannot agree with that. I think it's developmentally inappropriate.'

So, yeah, okay, this is just straight up lying to call a queer man a child rapist so you can feel great about sexually harassing him by mocking his genitals in public.

It's like this.

A lot of the times, the argument transmasc people are trying to make is that indiscussions of transness, people seem to forget that most people don't view us as men / view as just "weird women". And that inherently ends up marginalizing and hurting us.

(this isn't even touching on just how many trans men/transmasc people do not pass, oh don't have the opportunity to pass because of restrictions on transitioning - testosterone is a strictly controlled substance.)

Shut the fuck up man. You very clearly don’t actually understand what patriarchal privilege is, you’re just boiling it down to passing/not passing, which is a reductive and largely useless metric. You are more interested in hurting and ignoring trans women than in actually addressing the material conditions that make up the systems of oppression we are talking about.

Idk what hate campaign you're talking about, but I don't actually message people negative shit like. anywhere. Rebloggin a post without seeing shit someone else did (if that's what you're implying, bc tbh I don't even know) isn't participating in a hate campaign

If you have a different vision of patriarchal privilege, I'd genuinely love to hear about it, or see what resources informed your opinion. You're absolutely right to insist the patriarchy hurts trans women. I never denied that. I simply discussed how transmasc people are involved in these discussions.

What the fuck makes you think that I, as a trans man living in a coutnry where my existence is illegal, didn't have to "understand it as a survival mechanism" and that I have "male privilege"????

This is exactly what I am trying to point out: trans men are hurt by the patriarchy. If one of us benefits from it in one specific circumstance, that is not a sign of systemic benefit. In fact, you realize that basically all transmasc people have the experience of living as women too, right? You know, of having to deal with partiarchy and "understand it as a survival mechanism"??