Trans men and transmasc people face unique forms of oppression and transphobia. The way our masculinity intersects with our birth sex and our transness means we face unique challenges and unique forms of hate.
We wanted to discuss the challenges we face, so over the past few years we have tried to come up with a word to describe the unique form of transphobia we deal with.
But one of the issues we deal with includes invisibility, so when we say we face issues, no one believes us and thinks we're making it all up. If they can't see the trauma, it doesn't exist. So a lot of people think the only things trans men face are "mean words", when there is in fact systemic violence exacted against us. We are denied housing and employment. We suffer medical neglect. We are assaulted, raped, and murdered. But it doesn't make it into the news as "trans man assaulted" because they frequently misgender us as women.
Another issue many of face is the fact that we are trans men or masculine-aligned, and the patriarchal society we live in doesn't believe men can suffer. The patriarchy itself believes this - "boys don't cry" - but a lot of people who don't necessarily support the patriarchy, including feminists, have very little empathy for men and masc-aligned folks too. There's a lack of understanding how the intersection of identity is involved here. Trans men and transmascs do not have "male privilege". We are not cis men. Many of us are not men at all. Obviously transphobes don't consider us to be men, but even when other queer people do, they erroneously believe we obtain cis male privilege, and therefore think we deserve to be treated like shit.
Then there's the misogyny and bioessentialism. Many of us were assigned female at birth, so misogyny affects us even when we are trans men/masc. All the same stereotypes about women get laid on us in addition to the worst stereotypes about men. We are infantilized as all afab people are infantilized: we are told we are less intelligent, less capable of making our own decisions, and transphobes tell us we need "protection" from the trans "cult". Trans people who hate us call us additionally say we are hysterical, whiny, and manipulative. Constant dehumanization, bioessentialism, identity erasure and degradation is a common trend, as they will refer to us as nothing more than "afabs" (erasing and compressing all our trans identities into nothing more than our birth sex) when really, at the end of the day, they mean "stupid girls". It's misogyny, even if it's coming from a trans person. Their obsession with reducing us to our birth sex and insulting us based on that is misogyny and bioessentialism.
Racism also comes into play. White patriarchy of course wants to preserve the fertility and femininity of little white girls. But trans people who hate trans men can also be racist, in that they deny the existence of trans men/mascs of color in the movement, and try to paint us as all just "whiny white afabs who don't understand real oppression". You'll see this all the time when they claim that "all transandrophobia truthers are white afabs".
These are some of the major categories of problems trans men and transmascs face. There's overlap between the experiences of trans women/femmes, as well as the experiences of other trans folks, and even cis women, but some of these issues are unique to trans men/mascs.
So we developed a word to describe what we're dealing with. But, because of the literal aspects of our oppression described above, we are called "truthers", whiners, "stupid afabs who just want to be oppressed" and "transmisogynists who want to steal from trans women".
