all this and heaven too

29 + white tme trans guy + he/him

I post about theory I’m reading sometimes, my tag for that is #book club if you’re interested

you can check my #reading list tag for reading recommendations/pdf lists

I’m not really a star wars blog anymore sorry

I don’t have a dni but I do block blank blogs

“the closet” is not a description of the inside of your own head. “the closet” is a position you are forced into by structural bigotry and, if those structures were not in place, would transition. Pro-trans advocacy is about making closeted trans people’s lives possible, and out trans peoples’s lives better.

what is the difference between having a thought in your head and thus just being cis as you said and having a thought in your head you cant act on because of structural transphobia? i am trying to wrap my head around the utility of the distinction

I think texts can be treated as complete products by themselves for the purposes of review, even within the series. That's going to restrict the analysis obviously, but unless the fundamental premise of western civilisation being produced by ancient greek gods to protect the world or whatever is discarded in the subsequent books, the downstream "fixes" of racism/misogyny/islamophobia/fatphobia/etc are going to be pretty limited. The narrative structure is white supremacist. Like, if i read the first Percy Jackson book and encountered that shit, I wouldn't really care that Riordan got slightly less racist and misogynistic and Islamophobic and fatphobic in the next few books. People are allowed to be disgusted by a best selling published novel and be weirded out by people sucking it off as diverse and inclusive.

i have a friend who's a trans man. for a lot of reasons (he relies on his family financially, we live in a very conservative country, and there's a real possibility that being trans could soon become effectively illegal here), he's still closeted and can't transition socially, medically, or legally. i'm the only person who knows he's trans. everyone else sees him as a woman and refers to him with female pronouns and terms.

when he goes to a doctor and his symptoms are dismissed because the doctor perceives him as an "emotional woman," would that be considered transphobia? even though the doctor has no reason to think he's trans? or is that discrimination operating through the logic of misogyny, but without actually experiencing misogyny because he's a man?

or what about someone who was a butch woman and then came to identify as a trans man, without anything else about his presentation or circumstances changing. before realizing or identifying himself as a trans man, would the discrimination he experienced be considered misogyny, and afterward transphobia? even if the only thing that changed was his internal understanding of his own gender?

i hope this doesn't come across as offensive. i'm trying to understand how systemic discrimination interacts with someone's internal identity, especially when other people don't know that identity and treat them based on what they perceive.

I think there's a lot of unhelpful discourse about how bigotry works, both in general and in relation to trans people. The second example you gave is easy enough to explain - you're describing a cis person. Someone who is purely "internally" trans is not trans. Transness is not a thought in your head. Definitionally, being trans is about wanting to transition, and if someone has no intentions of transitioning (legally/socially/medically/administratively/etc), then they're not trans. Just like thought crimes are not real, thought identities are not real. Identities are necessarily social.

In regards to your friend, that is obviously different, because he is being structurally prohibited from transitioning. Unlike the other example, he wants to transition but can't. All the anti-trans policies and laws being enacted across the globe are affecting him structurally as a trans person, because they influence how he is able to live his life. Were those restrictions and bigotries not in place, he would obviously transition. Your friend is experiencing misogyny as a result of being closeted, and he's also experiencing transphobia by being unable to transition. I think it's important not to abandon discussions of misogyny that trans men can face just because transandro guys are using it as a cudgel to be transmisogynistic. In fact, it's an easy way to demonstrate that trans men have male privilege - once you become a man you generally stop experiencing misogyny lol. You can still experience it in instances where your manhood is denied to you as a function of transphobia (misgendering, medical violence, and so on), but I think people are perpetually resistant to the very basic and obvious fact that trans men, in general, live their lives as men and, in general, experience the world as men.

But - and I'm inferring that this is an anxiety expressed in your question - this does not therefore mean that we experience transmisogyny. Transmisogyny is not trans + misogyny = transmisogyny. The word is not a lego block. Transmisogyny also isn't just like, the special word for misogyny that trans women face, it's a description of how trans women are denied their humanity as a result of how their transness intersects with their womanhood. Trans women also face misogyny in general - they are treated as stupid, incompetent, ditzy, good only for domestic labour, etc. To use an example, one of my best friends was yelled at by a man while driving who called her a stupid broad for "being a bad driver." There's no transmisogyny happening in this exchange lol, the guy is just being sexist to her. She also faces lesbophobia every time she holds hands with her girlfriend in public, and those are distinct from instances of transmisogyny that she deals with. If a trans woman is Black, she also deals with misogynoir. These can also become instances of transmisogyny where her humanity is denied on the basis of being a trans woman, but transmisogyny doesn't mean "the weirdo version of misogyny trans women experience." That misunderstanding (innocent or malicious) is one reason why you get "transandrophobia" as the version of... misogyny? misandry? transphobia? that trans men face. The answer depends on who you ask lol. Either way it is nonsensical.