i’m like a boy who’s a pretty girl

For example:

Black Americans put forth a simple demand that we, and ideally everybody else, not be executed by armed members of the state without trial. In a word: equality. Liberals can't answer that demand because it is antithetical to their project of maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Instead they give a bunch of shit that nobody asked for which annoys everyone and the right wing of liberalism is able to capitalize on that annoyance to generate a backlash to a demand that was never met.

Instead of dealing with the scourge of killer cops, the democrats kneeled in Kente cloth. This did nothing for Black people and only served to fuel the grievance of white people. Instead of dealing with the effects of redlining, the liberal hegemony got rid of Aunt Jemima. This did nothing for Black people and only served to fuel the grievance of white people. Instead of dismantling white supremacy, the liberals coopted, recuperated, and sheepdogged every movement they could while stoking dissatisfaction and grievance that was then blamed on the "far left"

In essence, the "far left" was blamed for the tactics the liberals used to suppress us.

This pattern can be seen across what are now being attacked by the leadership of the democrat party as "groups"

Whether it be women, queer people, black people, the dreaded "Latinx" (remember that "discourse"?), trans people, disabled people, or any other marginalized group: we asked for equality. Liberals can't answer that demand because it is antithetical to their project of maintaining the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Instead they give a bunch of shit that nobody asked for which annoys everyone and the right wing of liberalism is able to capitalize on the annoyance to generate a backlash to a demand that was never met.

As a result, the left wing of capital can convince itself that it needs to move even further right to win because the spectacle of them fighting against the actual left caused them to do stupid shit that nobody liked that was unpopular and they blame on the actual left whereas the right wing of capital can point at the stupid shit that nobody liked as proof that they are being oppressed by the mere existence of the stupid shit that nobody liked.

The ratchet only turns one way.

Men should not be allowed and encouraged to have their own leagues separate and apart from half the population. Siloing women and trans people into a completely separate space is not equality, it's fully giving away the plot.

To take a small tangent, I wanna talk about a sport-like activity I used to be heavily involved in: Drum Corps International (DCI for short). DCI is a highly competitive marching band league (that's an oversimplification, but enough info for the purpose of this comparison). DCI has two main divisions, World Class and Open Class. Think of these as a major league and a minor league. The main differences between WC and OC are the average age of the members of the corps, the cost of enrolling in the corps, and the amount of time dedicated to training and rehearsal during the season. World Class costs more, has an older average age, and rehearses far longer and more rigorously. Open Class has it's own competitive circuit, and is judged at a slightly lower standard than World Class. OC has its own seeding shows and its own semifinals/finals competition. There is an Open Class Champion named every summer at the end of the season.

And then every Open Class corps also competes in World Class finals week. Every corps in DCI, regardless of division, competes in World Class Prelims, and then the top 24 corps regardless of division advance to World Class Semifinals, and then the top 12 regardless of division advance to Finals. The Open Class champions also get to perform at WC Finals as "the thirteenth corps". When DCI started formatting it's finals competitions like this, Open Class corps got better on average. Having the opportunity to compete at the highest level raised the overall quality of the activity for everyone. Some OC corps regularly make semifinals, some WC corps get knocked out of contention in the process. It's not perfect, but the fact that every corps is allowed to compete in the same competitions is something to be lauded. This isn't a perfect one-to-one with a lot of competitive sports, but I think it's a decent analogue when discussing the effects of economic disparity.

I think, until all of the economic disparities have been addressed (which is as much of a class issue as a gendered issue), women and girls need a space where they can be developed and celebrated. But I don't think that necessitates the existence of Men's Leagues at all. The NHL should not be allowed to bar women and trans people from playing hockey full stop. The NBA should not be allowed to bar women and trans people from playing basketball full stop. There are already women and trans people who play well enough to be in these leagues. The continued existence of Men's Leagues speaks to the misogyny inherent in the culture, and I think the rise of women's sports (the PWHL, the WNBA, the NWSL) is both something to be celebrated but also needs to be understood as a compromise position, not the end-all-be-all of gender equality in sports.

If we degender sports, there will be no way to keep trans women out of sports. Men and women, cis or trans, can all compete on the same level when given the same time, energy, and space. That should be the end goal of any talk of sports advancement.

@lucky-deergirl I want to put this here, because you're completely right. I'm in know way trying to say that DCI is perfect. I marched in the BD organization for 9 years and taught there for 4 (BDC/BDB for marching and BDB for teaching specifically) so while I can't speak to everything that went on at the world class level, I can say that DCI has huge problems with how it handles sexual assault and gendered issues. The last two years I taught there after I came out as trans were a nightmare. Even on staff, I was sexually harassed and eventually let go because I was a trans woman. But I think the competition structure of finals week is worth highlighting as an example of what more equitable competition might look like while the social and economic inequalities get addressed with player/member protections and robust systems that punish abuses of power.

Behaving (trans)misogynistically needs to be considered a breach of the social contract that comes with participating in communal activities like sports. It shouldn't matter how skilled you are or how much money you earn an organization, treating women with anything less than respect and equality should be grounds to remove you from a communal activity. Part of the problem is that practically no space is willing to do this to the degree necessary to actually start to make change.

That's why I think every men's league should be dismantled and rebuilt as co-ed from the ground up. Because institutions like them (and everything else that features and caters to almost-exclusively men as the default) will reproduce misogynist behavior. It's built in to society at the ground level, and needs to be fought on all levels and in all activities.

I think sports is an effective arena to have this conversation in, because it's a community building social activity. If we can dismantle patriarchal norms in sports, especially at younger ages, we can start to build the world we want to see. But just continuing on the trajectory we're setting now (a women's league for every men's league) is just going to heighten the divide further.

We can't expect men to teach themselves to behave in ways that are anti-misogynist. That goes against their material class interest. Giving men spaces of their own will always reinforce this, so these spaces must be removed.

But the goal is not a world where women are privileged over men, or even reap the same benefits men do as a class. The goal should be a world where no class has material interests that rely on the denial and subjugation of others.

But continuing to allow the NHL to exist allows the men who play in it to get away with it. The NHL needs to be burned to the ground and replaced with a league that does condemn that kind of violence. That league needs to be co-ed, because allowing the same men to populate a space by themselves will always result in a space that either tacitly or actively treats women as property.

Also, as a lesbian, I just love watching women play sports against other women. I do. I love watching Laura Stacey absolutely body someone on the ice. But because the PWHL is a women's league exclusively, I know deep in my heart that there is almost no future in which it allows me or my trans sisters to play. Every time one of the coaches or players talks about "female hockey" I know they aren't talking about me.

The only future I can see in which me and my sisters are truly and freely allowed to play with no draconian hormone checks or policies that dictate how long we've had to be transitioning is a future where sports isn't separated on gender lines at all. That future requires fighting misogyny and transmisogyny everywhere all the time. And that requires dismantling men's spaces. It requires constructing spaces that treat everyone equally, regardless of gender. Until those spaces exist, it requires spaces that treat people equitably based on the ways they are oppressed as a class now.

So "forcemasc" is the mirror of "forcefem" as seen by the tumblr trans community. The type of acceptance shown by trans women to other trans women and giving you what you always secretly wanted. Now, we trans women came up with this as an inversion of what forcefem is in larger society, the humiliation of a man being made lesser than himself. So I was thinking whats the inversion of "forcemasc" into actual society? And the only thing I can think of is violence and "male socialization." Violence is how male supremacy is upheld and enforced. If someone hears your a tranny they will beat it out of you, saywyour just a faggot, and if you say your gay they'll try and beat the fag out of you. Maybe there is space to try and reclaim this as a forcemasc kink, but what we just get instead is forcefem but in blue flavor. I think it maybe has something to do with that would have to have them confronting "wanting" to some degree "male socialization," but they cant square that ideological circle so we get water down painted over forcefem instead

I have two main thoughts as to why forcemasc just fundamentally doesn't work the same was as forcefem.

"Being a man" is the default good thing to be in society.

One of the biggest tools involved in male socialization/male bonding/being "one of the guys" is misogyny.

One of the easiest ways to signal to a group of men that you're "one of them" is picking a woman (any woman, really) and going "damn, she's a crazy bitch. amirite?" It's both a bonding ritual and a reinforcement of the status quo.

Everything in a cishetero patriarchal society is forcemasc. If you aren't a "real man" you're punished, no matter what. Cis women and all trans people are punished (but punished differently) for not having the good sense to be born "real men". But aspiring to be a man is still something that can be seen as admirable. Behaving misogynistically has real material benefits, regardless of your gendered positionality.

But being a trans woman, i.e. being born into the class of "real men" and radically rejecting that by desiring to be and taking action to shape yourself into something perceived as "lesser" is an ultimate transgression.

You're correct in identifying the roots of forcefem as a kink in degradation and humiliation. Because to society writ large being feminine is something to be scorned and derided. Radically reclaiming forcefem as something beautiful and desirable is always going to fly in the face of what society tells trans women about themselves.

There is not and cannot be a forcemasc equivalent to the radical reclamation of forcefem, because masculinity isn't punished and derided on a societal level in the same way.

Transmasculine people can be and are punished for not confining themselves to the role society assigned them at birth. Everyone is punished to a degree for deviation from the roles we're supposed to play. I'm not arguing against that.

But it fundamentally is not the same, and therefore can't be mirrored. Any attempt to invert the radical reclamation of forced feminization will always come across as transfeminism painted blue.

If we lived in a purely cis-centric non-patriarchal society (that is to say, a society that valued and treated cisgender cissexual men and women equally, but punished transgender and transsexual people for their perceived deviation), there could be a forcemasc equivalent to forcefem. But we don't. We live in a society that subjugates and punishes every person that isn't a cisgender cissexual man.

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