kick me like a stray

Like, in congress (I think that's what y'all call it?) a picture of a person who had gotten double mastectomy top surgery was used to push this legislation. Being transgender was called a "mind virus" which directly ties into that bullshit ROGD study and "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters". They're sending letters to companies that specifically sell chest binders to tell them they can no longer sell them (without medical approval). These are all very explicitly transmasculine targeted attacks.

Obviously I have to say that this doesn't mean I think transfems aren't targeted or aren't affected by this or even targeted less.

I'm saying it's very fucking obvious that they are going after all trans people and using whatever narratives suits them best to enforce this transphobia to erase all of us from existence.

The reason they use transmasc surgery is because it's easier to fearmonger to conservative misogynists about poor confused women mutilating themselves so they can't have children. They'll use this rhetoric to ban gender affirming care for ALL TRANS PEOPLE.

They'll fearmonger about transfems in bathrooms because it's easier to present the "deviant male wanting to assault people" narrative to those same misogynistic conservatives. And they will use this rhetoric to ban ALL TRANS PEOPLE from bathrooms.

The oversimplified version is that transmisogyny is a term for the combined effects of transphobia and misogyny. Extending this to transandrophobia, we get a combination of transphobia and misandry. The problem with this is that misandry, unlike misogyny and transphobia, is simply not a large scale societal issue.

I do believe the issue you’re using the term transandrophobia to describe is a real issue that we as a community need to address, but it is not transandrophobia that you are describing.

If I can throw my two cents in, I don’t believe that what the American government is doing falls under transmisogyny or transandrophobia, as it’s been seen to apply to trans people across the board. I think it’s all just regular transphobia

I understand pronouns =/= gender, so I am going to ask since you have she/her pronouns listed on your blog: Are you a transmasculine person or a transgender man? If the answer to this is no, you need not respond.

What harm are you trying to address in your response to my post?

I'm pointing out the very real harm and erasure trans men and mascs face within their communities when people talk about how transmascs are never targeted and only ever incidental, when that's provably untrue, meaning we are put in greater danger without support or resources because people beleive we are not as affected.

I'm also going to point out the direct harm you're doing by coming onto a transmasculine person's post, ignoring the way I'm trying to point out we are harmed, just to try to speak over me by policing my language and tell me that my understanding of my own experiences and oppression is incorrect and the vocabulary I decide to use for these experiences is incorrect.

This is a form of epistemic injustice, more specifically hermeneutical injustice. For a basic rundown of what that is for those who don't know, here's a quote from the wikipedia article:

"The term hermeneutical means "relating to interpretation", and hermeneutical injustice makes someone less able to interpret their own life. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when someone's experiences are not well understood — by themselves or by others — because these experiences do not fit concepts that can be found in popular language. This is often due to the historic exclusion of some groups of people from activities, such as scholarship and journalism, that shape the language people use to make sense of their experiences." (x)

I hope that's pretty clear, and I hope you can see how that is what you are doing, and that you can understand why that's not a good thing, and is the complete opposite of activism.

Now I'll be addressing what you've actually said more in depth:

Because you're a misogynistic transphobe.

Care to explain:

1. How, despite my multiple sourced definitions here, what I'm misunderstanding, also using quoted sources?

2. How any of this is misogynistic or transphobic? Because I can tell you what is transphobic; going out of your way to harass trans people who talk about their issues because you don't like the language they use. Like what you're doing here.

I feel like you just didn't read a single thing I even wrote.

"If “man” and “woman” are opposed and mutually exclusive categories, if men can only ever be predators and women can only ever be prey, then trans men can’t exist. We are logically impossible under the terms of the current system. You either “treat us like men” by voiding out half our lives, or you write us back into womanhood by denying our male identities. I knew all that, at least in theory, but when I came out, I actually saw my life story disappearing into other people’s blind spots. I watched myself become unthinkable in real time."

Also these:

"This wasn’t about accountability. This was people tactically forgetting my entire life,including incidents from my life they had personally witnessed or been involved in, so that they could shame me for transitioning. It was bad for me to be a man; if I was a man, I was a bad man, I was all the worst things men are. I was hulking, I was threatening, I was predatory, I was violent."

"I was treated as both genders, but only the most monstrous stereotype of each one."

"The idea that I had always occupied a privileged position within patriarchy was, frankly, untrue; nor did it seem to me that a trans person was any less gender-marginalized than your average cis woman. What privilege I had was conditional, and these books were no guide. Men who wanted to “forge a positive masculinity” (and everyone was very clear that I needed one of those) were encouraged to get in touch with their “feminine sides.” Maybe that was healthy for cis guys, but I had been forced to do feminine things, and present in feminine ways, for the entirety of my young life. Whatever liberation I had achieved came from giving myself permission to stop."

As did the ending:

Unfortunately, this post was made by someone who does use the term transandrophobia (although its not my preferred term)! as does at least one of the additions above, and as do many people in the notes. if you agree with this post and think it is "real transmasc activism," i promise you there is PLENTY of transandrophobia/anti-transmasc theory that you would find really compelling. I actually only started using the term myself after finding a trans woman who was outspoken about supporting the word as a way to discuss anti-transmasculine oppression.

If you want to know more, my pinned is a FAQ on the subject. Even if you disagree with what i say here, I think you would find it interesting. I include many links for further introductory reading, including this post and this post where I go over some common criticisms of transandrophobia and my responses to them. I've also recently been posting some quotes from Emi Koyama's Transfeminist Manifesto, which aren't directly related to the term itself but I think are really important for understanding what transfeminism needs to look like, and the issues with how people today (especially on tumblr) imagine it should look like.

The idea of using misandry in a feminist manner is not a brand new one, either. Sophie Lewis, a great feminist writer, used it in her essay on heterofatalism, Collective Turn Off:

But today, in popular feminism, the unfruitfulness of the ‘androcide’ and ‘exodus’ positions has given way not to a revival of the communist dream of sexual liberation but to a widespread stance of misandry-lite characterised by martyred resignation to the dismal quality of heterosex [...] Note, while a majority of heterofatalist misandrists online today seem to think they are trans-affirming, their position not only requires erasing trans men altogether, but also all trace of trans women’s lived experiences as men, regardless of those women’s own self-understanding. Indeed, misandry, as I see it, can never reliably be prevented from collapsing into transphobia.

She also references this article by Sophia Giovannitti, who also uses misandry in a feminist sense:

The thing is, the popular misandrist left discourse, perpetuated by straight women, has almost nothing to do with sexuality, but everything to do with gender. Like political lesbianism, this Political Heterosexuality is not concerned with actual, felt sexual orientation or relationships—it’s concerned with the reifying of binary categories at the expense of a nuanced analysis of gender that accounts for race, class, and transition.

Additionally, it has been used by Black feminists, such as F.D Signifier. He's used in multiple places but here's an example:

As much grief and pain as many men can present within and outside of community, I understand we still also need to resist the urge to be "ironically homophobic or misandrious" as soon as it's time to take issue with a man within or outside of community. This of course does not give boys and men carte blanche to act like assholes, or center themselves in situations where it's not necessary. It just means that we all need to be more proactive and gracious to each other and focus on the whole of the problem. as much as one could muster at least

The term "misandry" is not forever spoiled by use by MRAs; feminists can and do use the term to add further nuance to their feminist theory and activism, especially when it comes to discussing marginalized men whose manhood influences their marginalization in important ways.

None of this requires ignoring misogyny or positioning misandry as simple "the boy version of misogyny" that functions in exactly the same way. The term can be quite useful in describing certain trends in attitudes and behaviors, and can be particularly important in feminist self-critique. bell hooks, while I don't believe she ever used that specific term, wrote about the dangers of anti-male attitudes in feminism to feminism at various points (see Feminism Is For Everybody and The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love). Transandrophobia / anti-transmasculinity theory has always been in conversation with the works of Black feminists and feminist theorists who pushed for greater inter-gender and inter-movement solidarity. It is important that we talk about this issue in feminist, queer, and trans spaces, and there's really no reason we need to let this term belong to misogynistic MRAs.

And the thing is, I know very well that there will never be a perfect term. Because with transandrophobia, no term has ever been "good enough" to avoid anti-transmasculine backlash. The resistance to discussing anti-transmasculinity, and anti-masculinity in general in feminist and queer spaces, will never be solved by finding a Morally Pure Word to discuss it with, because people simply do not want to discuss it.

This is why participating in the backlash to transandrophobia will always be harmful, even if you do want to see more discussions of anti-transmasculinity. The criticisms of the term are by and large not done in good faith, and even those that are are frequently clearly undereducated in what the term actually means. The backlash against transandrophobia has always been apart of that anti-transmasculine "snowballing" you described. This is not to say people have never had valid fears about the term, but it has only gotten to such a point because anti-transmasculinity is something we all internalize and it has been allowed to go largely unchecked in queer and trans spaces for years.

If you want to see more people discussing the kind of things talked about in the posts above, you need to make your peace with the term transandrophobia, because it is the people who use that term who have been the ones most outspoken about the need to talk about these issues before anyone gives us permission or finds the Perfect Word that no one will get mad at us for using. We need to move beyond the linguistic squabbling and take seriously the issues actually being discussed: pay gaps, interpersonal violence, sexual assault, suicide, reproductive rights, misogynistic legal structures, etc.

Contributing to the backlash against transandrophobia fundamentally means contributing to the movement of people who will silence this discussion no matter how perfectly it is worded or how serious its topics are. You don't have to personally like the term transandrophobia, but without it, you would not even be seeing this post that you yourself found impactful, and the term has never, ever been as much of a problem for our community as the reactionary, radical feminist backlash to it has been.

And this backlash has not spared anyone; I have seen multiple trans women talk about being harassed, having people insist they aren't real trans women, that they are lying men, that they should kill themselves, purely for supporting the use of this word. There is so much misinformation out there on transandrophobia and I really do hope you take some time to look into this posts I linked and at least consider them seriously.

I'm the sole income and caregiver for two disabled transfems of color, who are my partners. The government revoked one of my partners' benefits. We're drowning financially. Please share if you can

https://ko-fi.com/razortouched

If your advocacy for Black people stops at Black queer people your allyship is conditional. If your advocacy for Black queer people stops at Black trans fems, your allyship is conditional. If your advocacy for Black people has terms and conditions you have unchecked racist beliefs to unlearn and combat within yourself. That is something you desperately need to address in order to be a genuine ally to the most vulnerable demographics of Black people within our community.

Having F on her birth certificate has not saved her. Systems can still demand further proof of "eligibility." People still refuse to believe her, insisting she is lying, that she is a trans woman, or that she is a man in disguise.

Legal designation does not protect assignment typical cis intersex women from misogyny, intersexism, or transphobic policing of their bodies. It does not prevent them from being publicly scrutinized, accused, and dehumanized when their bodies do not fit expectations.

So when people try to claim that cis intersex women are overwhelmingly supported in their womanhood, understand that this is false. They are asking you to ignore the reality of how quickly society turns on them the moment their bodies do not fit expectations.

Pretending otherwise is propaganda. People use the lives of people like Imane Khelif to push the idea that there is a clean class of people safely exempt from this kind of oppression, that cis intersex women are automatically protected from systemic transmisogyny because they are "really" female on paper.

Being accused of being a man, having your body publicly dissected, and being treated as fraudulent does not stop being that kind of violence just because someone decides you aren't the "right" kind of victim

The moment someone’s body is seen as suspicious, that supposed exemption disappears. They are still subjected to the same suspicion, humiliation, and violence. This reframing uses the same bioessentialist logic TERFS use to selectively define who is even allowed to "count" as a target of misogynistic violence in the first place

When they complain about being invisible it's always in response to transmisogyny being discussed. Whenever they complain about it it's always framed as the fault of trans women.

"you don't prioritize trans men" yes because transphobia is rooted in a hatred of women, which means trans women are and have always been the primary targets.

Trans women and men both face high rates of sexual violence that fluctuate depending on location and year.

Yeah this means "least likely to say "I have experienced sexual violence" on this survey". The survey can't say "these people did or did not experience sexual violence" because the survey has no way of actually telling if that is true outside what the participants "report" to the survey (as in, tell the survey). So they have to frame it and phrase it as "this is what people told us personally on our questionnaire". That is what that means - to translate, it's saying "the demographic that had the least amount of people tell us they experienced sexual assault is trans women".

Anyway, you are contributing to the very thing you claim doesn't happen. You're living proof that we are erased and invisible, because you're trying to erase us and speak over us right now. You are directly participating in transphobia, specifically anti-transmasculinity.

This is bigotry. You are being a bigot. You are engaging in epistemic injustice.

When they complain about being invisible it's always in response to transmisogyny being discussed. Whenever they complain about it it's always framed as the fault of trans women.

"you don't prioritize trans men" yes because transphobia is rooted in a hatred of women, which means trans women are and have always been the primary targets.

Trans women and men both face high rates of sexual violence that fluctuate depending on location and year.

Yeah this means "least likely to say "I have experienced sexual violence" on this survey". The survey can't say "these people did or did not experience sexual violence" because the survey has no way of actually telling if that is true outside what the participants "report" to the survey (as in, tell the survey). So they have to frame it and phrase it as "this is what people told us personally on our questionnaire". That is what that means - to translate, it's saying "the demographic that had the least amount of people tell us they experienced sexual assault is trans women".

Anyway, you are contributing to the very thing you claim doesn't happen. You're living proof that we are erased and invisible, because you're trying to erase us and speak over us right now. You are directly participating in transphobia, specifically anti-transmasculinity.

Because I purposely kept myself out of the loop as the shit was actively hitting the fan, all I can say for certain is that the advertising for the comic on YouTube was inescapable, and that definitely annoyed me sometimes, but that was never refrainbow's fault? But I saw glimpses of what people were saying, and to this day it just feels like such an obvious transphobic smear campaign, especially because the first result that comes up when you Google "refrainbow controversy" is a transphobic subreddit.

It just hurts to see that trans mascs are so unwelcome, and have been for so long, that something as innocuous and trivial as clumsily handling some representation in your webcomic is enough of a transgression that people will gleefully jump at the opportunity to imagine or make art depicting your characters being subject to violence. Which in itself isn't a problem, but the obvious insinuation here is that your characters are a stand-in for you.