apologies if you're tired of getting questions like this, but i really enjoy reading your explanations, they've helped me understand a lot of things, and I was hoping you might have some insight into this. i promise this is a genuine, good-faith question.
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.
And I think these discussions are also hampered by the idea that privilege is this binary mechanism that is either turned on/off. Society operates on a lot of different myths, structures, and systems that intersect in ways that influence when, where, and how bigotry and privilege operates. I think it's easy to see this in practice with ableism/sanism - acquiring a professional diagnosis for a mental health condition can give you access to a lot of privileges, including medical treatment (intersecting with healthcare), insurance coverage (intersecting with state and corporate provision of goods), and workplace/school disability accommodations (intersecting with human rights regulations). It can also be used to revoke your ability to consent to medical treatments, forcibly institutionalise you (intersecting with policing/state violence), and place you into things like a conservatorship (intersecting with legal doctrines of consent/autonomy/individuality/etc). Is a professional mental health diagnosis a privilege? That question depends on what you're talking about and in what circumstances. Both privileged and oppressive elements of ableism/sanism are at play here simultaneously, and neither one negates the other (and can also highly vary depending on what your diagnosis is, as well as other circumstances like race, gender, etc.). It is possible that your friend is experiencing, on the one hand, misogyny for being a completely closeted trans man and viewed by society as a woman, and on the other hand, experiencing transphobia via structural barriers to transition. Now, if he's in online trans communities as an out trans man, then of course he's going to have male privilege in those spaces. That doesn't negate or contradict the previous statements, because again, privilege is not a thing you either have or don't have at all times. I hope that makes sense.
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