Summer's Eye

"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.

(how bad was it when you first started?)

It means that trying to assign any kind of "male privilege" to ANY category of trans people will never truly be fruitful, because the concept of "male privilege" was created by cisgender women to discuss cisgender men under cisgender gender dynamics without the experiences of transgender people in mind.

I think we can all agree that transgender women, transgender men, and nonbinary people are NOT cisgender men.

Even when we are discussing trans people who are externally perceived as / assumed to be cisgender men within society because they are stealth, closeted, or non-cis passing — those trans people are experiencing something conditional that can be stripped from them the moment anyone in a position to harm them finds out they are trans.

I think we can all agree that being misgendered and/or having to hide a part of yourself so you do not get hate crimed and/or lose employment or benefits or housing, etc. is NOT an exercising of privilege.

Even when we are discussing misogyny, an important and longstanding part of feminist discussion on misogyny is the fact that everyone is capable of being misogynistic. Misogyny is not stored in the assigned sex or gender identity. We all live in a patriarchal society, NO ONE is immune from internalizing misogynistic, patriarchal worldviews and acting upon them.

I think we can all agree that there is no transgender person who is incapable of being misogynistic, because there is no person in general who is incapable of being misogynistic.

To act as though privilege and bigotry are stored in a sex assignment or gender identity is to be gender/sex essentialist.