vwoop!

They ignore the fact that not everyone with a fertile uterus and ovaries, regardless of gender, wants to get pregnant and give birth. They ignore the fact that a lot of us live in places where abortion is difficult, if not impossible, to access. They ignore the fact that pregnancy permanently alters a person's body, and that it can be lethal.

I've even seen some try to point out that some trans men/mascs intentionally get pregnant and give birth as some sort of "gotcha," but those guys are just as capable of making their own choices as the rest of us. The existence of men who choose to carry children does not invalidate those of us who are unwilling.

like are you fucking kidding me. jesus christ

it doesn't even matter whether or not you think transandrophobia is "real" at this point, this is just active transphobia. Period. it doesn't matter how you spin it. you can mark people like this as green as you want, that doesn't mean I'm ever going to feel safe.

no excuse is going to convince me that any of these people (or the shinigami eyes extension itself) are "trans-friendly." active intersexism/exorsexism/transphobia (yes, even aimed at those "shitty tme tboys!") is not "trans-friendly." this isn't up for debate. stop pretending like it is. you can't pick and choose which trans people are okay to support and which ones are "acceptable targets." this is fucking nasty

This post got reposted to the r/CuratedTumblr subreddit, as all semi-popular posts from here are, to feed the cyclical ecosystem of social media.

A moderator removed that post, adding a lengthy explanation about why transandrophobia isn't real actually.

Here it is in full, provided by a callout post that I suspect won't last much longer, so have an archive link

this really is just r/trans again. Considering the way reddit moderation is set up, I wouldn't be surprised if the same people are involved.

I think the callout post put it really well, so I’m screenshotting it and putting it here in case of deletion

TERFs don't recruit by right out the gate going "trans women are perverted men who want to gain access to women's spaces to rape women and girls, and trans men are just poor confused lesbians brainwashed by the transgender agenda into mutilating their bodies." If they did that, they would never recruit anyone. No, they start small. First they start with very normal feminist talking points then, as they get you listening, they start turning up the heat a little bit. They build up to it, they get you to agree with them at first and then trick you into continuing to think they're reasonable. Believe me, I have seen this happen. I have seen TERFs literally discussing the efficacy of this method in getting young people to join them- the medium they specified was Pinterest, which is where I've seen this happening the most. They prey on people who don't know what to watch out for, get them agreeing, and then start getting more and more radical until the victim is agreeing with genuinely heinous shit. That's how they do this. I've seen it before, I nearly fell down this rabbit hole before. I know where this starts.

And what I am seeing from transandrophobes mirrors that exactly.

It starts the same, similar talking points and everything- literally I have seen TRFs using TERF rhetoric either word-for-word or nearly so. The talking points used to recruit people into this are almost the same, just trans-inclusive. And then it starts building up. I've seen people falling down this rabbit hole in real time and let me tell you, it almost never starts with "forcefem all transmascs," it's always something that's easily agreeable, trans men not belonging here or there, transandrophobia not being a thing because androphobia isn't a thing, "basic feminism-" it starts small. And then it starts building. And next thing you know you've got someone agreeing with "bomb that kills all trans men." It's exactly the same.

It starts the same. You get someone agreeing with mild stuff, then you build up until they're agreeing with major stuff. It's classic extremist tactic, and seeing something like this in any movement is a massive red flag. I am seeing it in people becoming hateful towards trans men and transmascs. This is how TERFs recruit, it's how cults recruit, it's how extremist groups recruit, and now it's how transandrophobes are recruiting.

Some reasons why they might not, and these examples are all from real people:

Some nonbinary people are fully agender, and don't like or identify with the terms transfem or transmasc because these terms imply they have a gender somewhere on the M-F spectrum, which they do not.

Some nonbinary people have a distinct gender (I,e. They are not agender) but it isn't on the M-F axis (e.g. aporagender, although not everyone for whom this scenario is true identifies with that term)

Some nonbinary people may privately identify as transfem or transmasc, but do not want to reveal which they are, and do not wish to reveal their assigned birth gender, so they publicly do not identify with these terms because they think it's none of your business.

Some nonbinary people's experience of transness involves crossing gender roles "both ways"; for example someone might pursue HRT but then engage in other presentation choices or even medical treatments that push people's perception of them back towards their assigned birth sex. So these people might identify as being both transfem and transmasc in different aspects of their life. Or they may find these labels flawed because they are oversimplified so they want to avoid using them entirely.

Some nonbinary people are genderfluid so they may feel transmasc or transfem some of the time, but not all of the time, and because of this, they may feel uncomfortable labeling themselves with one of those terms on a more permanent basis.

Some nonbinary people are intersex and their experience of transness does not start fully from a binary reference sex, and thus they are not fully comfortable with the terms transfem or transmasc, even if their gender identity would technically satisfy it with respect to their binary sex assigned at birth. They see the terms as misleading, overgeneralizing, and/or erasing key aspects of their intersex experience.

All of these sorts of nonbinary people are valid.

There might be other people I haven't even imagined. These are just ideas I have heard people express.

"but at least if you're a cis man, you're more likely to be believed, as you have a vagina, so long as your rapist is AMAB"

hmmmmmm, most perisex cis men dont have vaginas iirc

"non-binary people afab are cis men" SORRYY??

"hot take but i'm starting to believe trans men don't actually experience transphobia. it seems like the worst they get is sometimes getting called confused women." i dont know what to tell you dude but uhh. that IS transphobia. our identity is being denied!!! that! is! transphobia!

"if you are offended by being called a woman, there is something MAJORLY wrong with you. it is not offensive to be called a woman, and that really just shows how misogynistic you are." literally nothing misogynistic about that....... if you don't identify as something, if you are NOT something, and you continue to be called that, its pretty disheartening. again, our identity is being denied!! that'd offend anyone.

"because society will always reward masculinity." not always! not when it's the so called 'confused women' who identify as male! not when its the 'confused women' who dress and act masculine. it certainly isn't rewarded then.

"and, what, they get called theyfab? birthday boy? oh no, someone said a word i don't like :(" im... afraid thats how literal insults work?? shocker, people get upset when you call them insults based on something harmless they can't control! who would've thought.

"we are getting killed." both trans men and trans women have been victims of murder. full stop. trans men are also victims to corrective rape.

"cis people literally love trans men" no they dont. you think all traces of transphobia leave someones body the moment theres a trans man around?

"if you have chosen to abandon womanhood" yikes. you sound like a transphobe there, anon. you saying we choose to be trans?

"you are what's wrong with the world, trans men." yikes again. try again, anon. trans men aren't actually the cause of all of humanity's problems. sorry to burst your bubble.

"you don't get the right to complain you're being "oppressed" when you're not." but we are. you'll never believe why. take a big guess. it starts with T.

"you want to be a man? act like it." yikes x3. how are men 'supposed' to act, huh anon?

"so, yeah. trans men don't experience transphobia, at least not NEARLY as bad as trans women." we do. maybe the reason you don't see it is because trans men's struggles aren't really SEEN.

-- @billy-argues

Context

someone was talking about how it's weird that their tmasc friend is uncomfortable using the men's restroom when they pass and this is an example of "afab privilege"

like gee i wonder why he would feel uncomfortable

it's almost like transmascs have the highest assault rates

it's almost like the discrimination/misogyny one has faced from not being born a perisex man doesn't go away simply from being trans and transitioning into a man

it's almost like going into spaces that were technically built for cisgender perisex men is subjecting yourself to more situations where abuse can happen due to not being born a perisex man

Do I even need to say anything about how wildly wrong and dangerous this rhetoric is...?

this is the funniest thing ever because every 6 weeks the trans internet circulates a photo of a 15~ year old trans boy wearing any even slightly alt fashion and mocks them relentlessly.

in 2012 the concept of the missing stair was, quite fittingly for the subjects I talk about on here, initially coined. Cliff Jerrison shared on his blog in 2012, speaks of a known rapist who, in spite of knowledge of his abuse, is continually welcomed to continue participating in BDSM & kink circles she frequents, and describes the attitude those around the rapist cultivate to "step around" his presence rather than confronting him entirely, resulting in him remaining active for months after his behaviour was known:

People had gotten so used to working around this guy, to accommodating his 'special requirements,' that they didn't feel like there was an urgent problem in their community.

at the beginning of the blog post, Cliff describes community members' reaction to a previous post discussing, but not naming, this individual:

When I posted about a rapist in a community I belonged to, although I gave almost no details about the guy except "he's a rapist," I immediately got several emails from other members of that community saying "oh, you must mean X." Everyone knew who he was! Tons of people, including several in the leadership, instantly knew who I meant. The reaction wasn't "there's a rapist among us!?!" but "oh hey, I bet you're talking about our local rapist."

everyone knew who this man was. everyone knew what he was doing. but there was a tacit agreement that everyone had come to to not disturb the peace regardless. not one openly discussed or planned, but one enabled by the foundation of community's dynamics: priding itself on being tightly-knit and a safe space; seeing itself as safer more In The Know about sexual violence and abuse than outsiders due to the rules they'd made themselves adhere to; seeing itself as a home for the Freaks and Weirdos who would otherwise be uncomfortably tolerated at best in Normie spaces, but who were welcomed with open arms in this kink space.

these dynamics formed the base of a community that prioritised staying silent and not rocking the boat over confronting issues directly, that enabled a man with a history of sexual violence to go on to enact further sexual violence against more women, and then was reluctant to even do something as basic as excluding a known rapist from their group because, well, he's a nice guy really, and he's been kicked out before, people have been really mean to him, he's fine if he just has someone watching him to make sure he's not raping:

Oh, but, like, she only said he raped her and no one was there to see it and it was really confusing and stuff and anyway what do you want us to do, like, treat the guy like a leper?  He got kicked out of one scene already and that was like a couple years ago and we're trying to help him change and now he's okay as long as someone keeps an eye on him at parties.

does any of this sound familiar to you?

in 2015, Charity Heartscape/porpentine's Hot Allostatic Load is published online. it is a deeply personal essay chronicling porpentine's experience of abuse in queer/trans/feminist circles and the disposability with which porpentine and other transfems are treated by communities like those she was part of, including by other transfems:

I was threatened into not defending myself, gaslit into silence, told that people knew “things” about me that were never explained. When I asked how I could do accountability, when I said I would do whatever they wanted, they said that I was “incapable” of accountability, that my crime was unknown and my sentence was permanent. That is the point where the body starts to die.

on Tumblr and Bluesky, in 2026, enlightened transfems use "being HALed" to refer to anything from "people kicked me out of the discord server because I wouldn't stop talking about pornography" to "other transfems keep talking about all those women I assaulted and the victims won't shut up and it's an attempt to lynch me" (real thing that happened, anonsee/storyweavingspider strangled multiple women to unconsciousness and joked about it after, including referring to one of her victims as "strangulation girl", do not forget that!) while going "well none of you have considered what if someone wants to forgive a rapist 🥺what if we forgave the rapist 🥺 what about nuance for rapists 🥺"

those more embedded in these communities than I have already talked about this inclination to reference this deeply personal essay as a sort of get-out-of-any-form-of-social-consequences-whatsoever-free card:

including multiple posts of people highlighting that serial sexual abusers cite this essay to frame their exclusion from previously friendly groups for their abusive behaviour as "social murder" in a prime example of DARVO:

almost fourteen beautiful years to the day after Cliff Jerrison's blog post shoved the concept of the missing stair in front of us, Tumblr's transfeminists want you to believe, sincerely, that the act of accusation is equal to or even worse than whatever act that an individual may have committed, that by accusing someone you are trying to kill them, murder them, lynch them, that you are hurting women by accusing them of things, how dare you?

we can recognise this as what it is: dissonant wailing and flailing of "cancel culture bad!", rape culture manifest, but Woke. that's all it is. attempting to say that it is anything more is an indication that you have been blinded by the language being used to dress the Rape Culture up all nice for your consumption. you need to stop that and see it for what it is.

things do not have to be this way. this applies to your friend groups online and IRL, to your blood family, to your chosen family, to your hobby group, whatever. you do not have to tolerate those who have harmed people around you, and those who have been harmed - be it you or someone else - should not fear that "rocking the boat" will simply cause trouble and Be Mean. cause the trouble. be mean. speak loudly.

there is no individual or group of people that is entitled to your companionship. there is no individual or group of people that you have to be nice to or be friends with or tolerate. there is no individual or group of people that should make you fear telling the truth of any events that have happened or fear telling the truth of what someone has done to you.

and on a whole, not exclusively applicable to cases of sexual violence: you do not have to keep being anyone's friend for any reason. you do not need to make someone Feel Included for any reason. if they're making you uncomfortable, if they're violating boundaries, if they're acting entitled, if the friendship sucks: it's good of you to try to reason things out and explain things to someone first. but you don't have to. and if you try to and things still aren't good, you're still uncomfortable:

I'll end this on the same note that Cliff ended his blog post on:

This isn't just about individuals, either.  Everyone who says "I don't want to be a victim-blamer, but girls should know frat parties aren't safe places" is treating rape culture like a missing stair.  Everyone who says "it's an ugly fact, but only women who don't make trouble make it in this business" is treating sexual harassment like a missing stair.  Everyone who says "I don't like it either, but that's the way things are," and makes no move to question the way things are, is jumping over a missing stair somewhere. Fixing staircases is a long and difficult and uncertain process.  But let's at least stop blaming each other for not jumping well enough.

I don’t even have any words for this I’m just. So tired of all this. My oppression should never ever be debated. Trans men are men because they’re trans. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be men. Trans people are oppressed. Therefore trans men are oppressed