#runepolitics

one thing i want to make so vehemently clear is that i am not transmasculine. and yet,

socially in public, i am a trans man. i am currently stealth at work, i’ve only told two trusted people that i am a man. social media wise, i am open as a trans man and hint quite often that i am nonbinary but only a close couple of people know that im nonbinary but in a way no one genuinely understands (i use micro labels honestly as a means to explain my complex relationship with gender). essentially to transadnrophobes truthers, i experience “transmisandry” and “exorsexism”. so y’all can accuse me all you want that i don’t experience what you believe in and that i’m just being a dick to tmes, but i am very much coming from a place of understanding my experiences and simply view the transphobia i experience as just that, simple transphobia. and at the end of the day, transphobia encompasses misogyny, homophobia, sexism, ableism, and religious persecution. i experience it all first hand. every time i mention my husband, im asked if i cook for him. when i bring up that im queer and trans, i get asked invasive questions about transitioning and my husband’s sexuality. when i tell people i’m autistic (which is deeply entangled with my transness) they tell me i’m not, in order to placate me because they believe being autistic is a bad thing, and frankly a monolith. when i bring up that i’m trans, the first thing they’ll do is say they don’t “care how people refer to themselves.” my mother believes my queerness is because i was sexually assaulted ; my family has said i am ugly any time i’ve presented as masculine and once i started dressing femininely they assumed i had detransitioned. when i bring up the fact that i’m queer the first thing a person will say is that they’re religious. and then ask me if i am, and say that one day i may come to find jesus. my mother has spewed religious propaganda since i was a child and once she discovered i was queer it caused me to spiral in deep deep depressive espisode that had me hospitalized and institutionalized twice at 12 years old. when i came out as trans, my mother told me i was breaking her heart for denouncing my deadname. my parents refused to take me to get haircuts and obviously i had no access to gender affirming care until i made my own money. the only way i even got a binder was because my sister bought it for me in secret. i proceeded to wear that binder for two years straight, after years of wearing tight sports bras. now i am physically incapable of wearing binders. in highschool i refused to use the womens bathroom or the mens for that matter, it got so bad that i messed up my bladder and even a little amount of pee makes me feel like im going to explode. when i had to take p.e i asked to be in the mens locker room— i did my best to pass and changed in private. still my classmates refused to acknowledge that i was a man. so many times did they ask me “what are you?”. when i got my first job, i tried to establish myself as a man. the very first day people had arguments over my gender behind my back . i worked with a older queer woman for essentially two years and she still misgendered me until the very day i left. when i went to my GM, she defended her and did nothing to make me feel respected. once i got my current job i made sure that at the very least i would use my chosen name. when people discovered my dead name, despite me saying i did not use it, they used said names interchangeably for me. my dead name is inherently latino and therefore has to be pronounced with an accent, which only other latinos have managed to do. i am one of the palest people in my family, though my hair is very curly and i have plenty of ethnic features. every person i’ve talked to has told me they assumed i was asian and probably mixed white. so yes. while i might be NB, i am perceived as a poc no matter what. in fact i was bullied in elementary school for my ethnic features, despite the fact i went to a very diverse school, as in, white kids were essentially the minority.

concerning romantic or sexual relationships i always establish that i am man. despite this straight men pursue me anyway and then refuse to be seen with me. they’ve used me as sexual object, and turned around and left me when i wanted to be acknowledged. hell, one guy actually dated me but said once i transitioned our relationship would be over.

having said all of this. misandry is not real and is inherently illogical and a reactionary term used to silence and villainize women for seeking equality and being resentful and scared of men for the horrific things they do to them by utilizing the patriarchy in any way they can. and you may ask, well what about black men? and to that i say, talk and listen to black women and men. genuinely just listen to black creators. they are capable of understanding that black people, across this entire damn earth, are systematically the most oppressed class. that’s simply factual. if you do just a little bit of reading you will find that emancipation fundamentally changed the once equal relationship black men and women had.

SO. Take a moment and consider how it must have been to be a trans woman at this time. They were inherently oppressed on the basis that if they even had the opportunity to transition, they would once again be subordinate to men. Being a black trans woman is honestly the antithetical to any privilege they may have once had. To be a trans woman is to forfeit any proximity to privilege that one may have had. Consider in fact what it may have meant to be nonbinary as a black emancipated person. What possible privilege could they have held?

Now let’s consider how people have historically used any proximity to masculinity to protect femme presenting people ; In the mid-20th century, butch lesbians were often limited to jobs that did not enforce strict dress codes for women. During the McCarthy era, butch lesbians faced increased violence and discrimination, but they also played a crucial role in defending gay spaces, particularly in bars, from attacks by police and other oppressors. The butch identity has evolved over the decades, influenced by various social and political movements, including the civil rights, gay rights, and women's rights movements.

If you attempt to use this as an excuse to justify the existence of transandrophobia well, simply put, you have no respect for lesbians.

“However, these spaces weren’t entirely secure. There were laws as early as the 1940s known as the “three article rule.” They made wearing less than a certain number of gender-conforming clothing illegal. You could be arrested. you could be assaulted. You could even be killed. When modern refuters and gatekeepers say butches only existed for “safety purposes,” it’s erasure. If butches were comfortable being femme, they would’ve been. Maybe they had to pass as men in front of cops, but they weren’t men, and they risked their lives to exist as butch. To say that butches of today or, by extension, that any other lesbians can’t express themselves in a way that’s comfortable is spitting in the face of every butch and femme, of every lesbian, that survived the police raids and discrimination and violence in order to freely exist.”

This oppression, whether you like it or not, was not because of misandry. Butches were strictly NON-MEN. Well then what was it? Simple, basic transphobia and misogyny.

Now, i implore you to read this essay concerning the experiences of black transgender women and gnc woc. In full transparency, i have not read the full essay yet, unfortunately just writing out this essay has taken too much time out of my day.

My ending sentiment is this. Misandry has not and never will be a systemic issue. Therefore i have no interest in engaging with said concept.

“The term misandry originated in the late 19th century as an epithet for first-wave feminism, drawing an equivalence between hatred of men and misogyny, the hatred of women.The term re-emerged during the 1980s in men's rights literature and academic literature on structural sexism. In the internet age, use of the term has become common within the manosphere to counter feminist accusations of misogyny as part of an antifeminist backlash.”