Local Gender Absurdist

transphobes getting creative now

"Women and femmes" - I'm a trans butch. I am neither a woman nor am I femme.

Using "femme" and "fem" interchangeably is something that annoys me in the same vein. They are not the same thing. I am "transfem" by way of my transition, I am not "femme" by any means.

@modestilly I think it's a clear case of putting theory ahead of people's actual lived reality. If your theory says "masculinity is always rewarded", then it's an easy assumption to make. But it doesn't actually correspond to reality. Many, many women are barely allowed to have short hair without ridiculous backlash. The pressure on women (and all other people forcibly classed as women in our society) to avoid anything that even remotely makes them be perceived as masculine is EXTREMELY strong.

> look inside

You see it a lot with people saying "Masculinity is always rewarded" and people expected to be feminine saying "Well, no, actually, no it's not" and then they get hit with "Well MY theory says otherwise!!"

The thing that slapped me in the face is the word theory. Theory is, essentially, a term that means "This is what I think to be the case, based on the data I have available/observations I have made". Theories are meant to be tested, though. Theories are not infallible truths. Theories are just a step towards looking for either support or contradiction for your theory.

You can absolutely have the theory "Masculinity is always rewarded, regardless of gender", but when more and more data is collected that proves that, actually, masculinity is not always rewarded, and there are several hidden variables you have to keep in mind when collecting your data...

Well, then, in science, you would have to readjust your theory or throw it out entirely. You would have to keep testing it, and changing it, to fit what your findings actually show.

The issue with people saying "My feminist theory states that all masculinity is rewarded, so it is" is that this is just piss poor scientific/academic methodology. You are cherry-picking and purposefully skewing your data to fit your hypothesis, you are ignoring the data that contradicts your theory, you are, essentially, poisoning your data pool or purposefully altering it to affirm your theory in a way where it guarantees you will always be proven right.

In an academic setting, this would get you laughed out of the fucking room. In an academic setting, this type of behavior has gotten countless people laughed out of the room and blacklisted for flagrant tampering of results.

Treatment of STDs isnt seen as a field exclusive to the treatment of one gender*. Gynecological and obstetric healthcare are both heavily gendered spaces that typically operate under the assumption that all people capable of pregnancy are cis perisex women.

I feel like people in these circles often treat pregnancy as a mythical hypothetical state, as something to postulate about, rather than an actual physical reality. Comparing it to an STD, even AIDS, is completely and utterly ridiculous.

& like i DO agree with the op post too. misogyny is a real and current problem and it is no less real and current in leftist spaces than in conservative ones, nor any less in queer spaces than in heteronormative ones. but when you talk like this & when these (third screenshot) are the kinds of people engaging with your post, i'm sorry but it feels like you are, in the grand tradition of enemy feminisms, using the issue of misogyny not primarily as a chance to fight injustice and support victims of this kind of injustice, but rather to construct an identity as a victim of this injustice that legitimizes your voice while also policing that identity in order to delegitimize other's voices, along pre-existing lines of visibility and erasure and power and suppression.

emphasizing how you are a WOMAN and how this is something WOMEN experience and MEN (even men who are known to be profoundly shaped by being classed as women and having bodies perceived as female) need to SHUT UP about it reflects a need for the discussion of misogyny to centered around you and your experiences and getting to have a voice amongst voices like yours. if it makes you uncomfortable that discussions of misogyny aren't only and exclusively about the kind of misogyny you and others like you (however that is being conceived), that in fact other people's experiences with misogyny may reveal layers to misogyny that you are not perfectly affected by - perhaps the problem is located more in internalized cissexism and racism and classism etc. you need to realize that talking about transmisogyny or misogynoir doesn't make your feminism intersectional when you fundamentally do not think intersectionally and act with hostility towards intersectional feminism that causes you discomfort.

When you say "masculinity is always rewarded in patriarchal society" you not only ignore the way malgendering is a tool used to harm transmascs, but you also ignore:

The hypernasculinization of black women in order to justify their brutalization

The hypermasculinization of black men in order to sexualize them and justify their brutalization

The brtualization of tomboys and butch cis lesbians for their gender non conformity

The brutalization of cis feminists throughout history for simply trying to gain rights that were seen as inherently masculine to have.

The brutalization of transfems through misgendering in order to justify their brutalization (i.e. calling them predatory men, weaponizing masculinity against them with or without that being their actual presentation)

The misgendering and erasure Gender non-conforming or masculine transfems, noth binary and non-binary

Intersex people that are coerced/medically altared into being assigned female who are marginalized when they present any sign of masculinity

Cis and intersex and WOC (especially black women) who's testosterone levels are used to justify their exclusion from their careers and passions in sports without an alternative place to go

The way masculinity in mentally disabled men, especially black disabled men and boys, intersects with how a lot of mental disabilities are labelled as agressive and dangerous, further justifying these men's brutalization (see: cops killing young black autistic boys in meltdown)

Masculinity is always rewarded in people that society doesn't want to brutalize. Masculinity is a tool to justify the brutalization of people society wants to keep suppressed. To say otherwise is just factually wrong.

I'm stealing this screenshot from a larger post because I believe it perfectly summarizes the argument I'm about to debunk.

I've seen this argument and variations of it a lot in transfeminist spaces. In fact, for many this is the baseline assumption upon which their theory is constructed.

I can say, with confidence, that this is demonstrably false.

While the emergence of patriarchy is complex, most of the theories about it come around to the desire to control resources and reproduction.

Historical hunter-gatherer societies showed little evidence of sex/gender inequality, and this is reinforced by the precense of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies which have relative equality between men and women.

Some argue that the advent of agriculture led to the need to control resources, as evidenced by greater inequality among societies with food surpluses.

This led to a higher division of labor, in which women were forced to spend more time child-rearing. Resulting in them being forced out of the ability to gather and control their own resources.

More recent research, such as the book The Patriarchs: The Origins of Inequality by Angela Saini, suggests that social elites pressured families to form hierarchal structures to ensure social control and the aggregation of wealth. Controlling women's reproductive capacity meant that the men in positions of power could ensure that their wealth was inherited by their biological children.

The subjugation of women goes as far back as 3100 BCE, in which women's reproductive autonomy was controlled, and they were excluded from, "the process of representing or the construction of history".

Marxists, such as Engels, theorize on the oppression of women in The Origin of The Family, Private Property, and the State.

The crux of Engels’ theory of women’s oppression rests on the relationship between the sexual division of labor and the mode of production...

... unlike hunter-gatherer societies, which sought to limit the number of offspring, agricultural societies sought to maximize women’s reproductive potential, so the family would have more children to help out in the fields. Therefore, at the same time that men were playing an increasingly exclusive role in production, women were required to play a much more central role in reproduction."

Women became trapped within their individual families, as the reproducers of society – cut off from production. These changes took place first among the property-owning families, the first ruling class. But eventually, the nuclear family became an economic unit of society as a whole.”

None of the evidence we have suggests that the construct of womanhood or femininity are the reasons why people with vaginas / uteruses are oppressed. In fact, it is very likely that the reverse is true.

The need to control the reproductive autonomy of those who can become pregnant led to the construction societal gender roles that ensured that those classed as girls and women would continue to be subjugated.

Am I saying that misogyny is exclusively sex-based? No.

Femininity does not predate misogyny--femininity is a misogynistic construction, it is inherently subjugative--and things like FGM don't exist because of the subjugation of the feminine, they exist within physically imposed femininity-as-oppressive force. In societies where FGM exists, it is the ultimate feminine--it keeps vaginas untouched before marriage, it claims sexual agency by the removal of the clitoris, and the breaking of the seal of infibulation is a physical sign of submission and sexual/reproductive ownership.

Many people have pointed out how this idea poses being detransitioned back into being a cis woman as a privilege, or a less cruel fate.

But here's what I think those who believe detrans is better than death are missing, and also what they are implying.

They are missing/ignoring the countless trans men who would fight tooth and nail to remain as trans men. The ones who would refuse to go down without a fight. Who would rather be killed than made into someone's pregnant and barefoot trophy wife. And subsequently the consequences of doing that.

And then the implication is that detransitioning, for trans men, is either "not that bad" or...trans men would just comply. We would be told "You aren't a man, you're a woman, now lay down and get pregnant" and just...accept that? That we are somehow so malleable, so placid, that if enough people told us to stop being men, we just...would?

Like this is just some big game of pretend we're playing, rather than some major part of our identities?

Y'all know what I mean? "Society JUST wants trans men to detransition" as though us trans guys would just huff and sigh begrudgingly as we are institutionalized, forcefully wedded, and so on? That it's some mild inconvenience to be removed of our autonomy, and forced into something we aren't?

That we would just go along with it, while our trans sisters are murdered in the streets??

Like, are you fucking serious?

First, there's the ignorance about what being treated as a "confused girl" means. It means being infantilized, it means being institutionalized, it means having your body autonomy stripped from you, it means being put in your place through rape and abuse, it means being property, it means forced to become a wife and mother. Thats what happens when you're a "confused girl".

Second, the "confused girl" stereotype dwindles the more masculine a trans man/masc becomes. Then he's dangerous. He's a predator; here to steal your daughters away to become hysterical, defective, unfuckable things like himself. He's going to take her fertility, her beauty, her ability to contribute to "proper" society. He's invading women's spaces. He's tricking straight women into being lesbians and gay men into being straight. He is past the point of no return; he can no longer be "fixed"; he must be killed.