I've Said This Before But Like I Hate That I Have Literally Gone From Not Thinking Hard About Transfem

It's genuinely impressive how people will refuse to engage in any way that isn't hate, vilify their opponents, demand that you never speak unless it's about them and in the way they personally approve* Or Else, spread posts with every kind of baseless accusation and dogwhistle, defend bigots who want to see you drop dead, completely deny you the ability to even say something to defend yourself against them, and then claim that they are being erased by you. Genuinely, the only other place where I've seen these attitudes with such force was a Christian doomsday cult

*you will still be punished for speaking at all, but who knows, if you avoid enough Bad Words maybe they'll let you off easy

An incredibly pernicious anti-transmasc argument that keeps making the rounds is that everything we do was plagiarized from trans women.

Coining a term to describe our unique and gendered experiences of oppression? We're just copying trans women.

Complain that we're often rejected from queer circles for our perceived violent maleness? We're just parroting what's happened to trans women.

Forcemasc fetish blogs? We're just copying One Specific Trans Woman-Run Blog that got popular.

These claims are annoying on their own, but together they paint a clear picture of what transandrophobes want you to believe: that trans men and transmascs are incapable of creating anything ourselves, or if we did, it would have nothing in common with what trans women and fems are doing. The function of these claims is to convince you that trans people of seemingly opposite identities are equally opposite in experiences, and any evidence to the contrary is actually cultural appropriation fueled by jealousy.

This is gender essentialism. It's fueled by the radical feminist belief that "woman" and "man" are not so much terms that get abused to justify people's oppression as they are positions in a class conflict, one where All Men seek and/or directly benefit from the oppression of All Women, and that indeed, manhood and womanhood themselves are defined by this relationship to one another. To be a man is to be an entitled parasite; to be a woman is to be an overworked victim.

That notion is racist and transphobic on the face of it, and that is equally obvious in these arguments about trans men - all of which are predicated on the idea that the average trans man is white, well-off, and able to go stealth whenever necessary, and therefore benefits from the maximum amount of male privilege a trans man can be afforded. Following from that logic, any trans man or that you encounter online can be reasonably assumed to share that experience, and any mention he might make of trans men who fail to meet those qualifications is nothing more than a rhetorical cudgel that we use to deny our own privilege.

I'm sure you can see the problem there.

It's not surprising that I typically see these claims made by white women, frequently about Black and Indigenous men. Speaking from the perspective of a white person, it can be very easy to fall into a trap of thinking that our specific experiences with oppression makes us general experts, and grow defensive when someone provides knowledge that shows we were wrong. It can like we're being victimized on the basis of the oppression we do have, and it can be incredibly hard to stop, listen, and admit that we fucked up. This is doubly difficult when the person criticizing us is a member of a demographic that seemingly contributes to the oppression we face.

But just because we think it's happening doesn't always make it so. Yes, there are times when people are acting in bad faith, or overlooking their own areas of ignorance - to err, as they say, is human. But often, we're the ones in the wrong, and need to recognize that fact before acting. So where do we draw the line?

The thing that I've always found crucial is to stop, breathe, and think. We have to honestly ask ourselves whether the other party is saying "your experiences are not real", or just "your understanding of these issues isn't as all-encompassing as you assumed". Simply asking yourself "am I really being harmed, or do I just feel like I'm being harmed?" can often save you from a massive foot-in-mouth situation.

It's necessary to remember that people whose identities are different from our own have their own experience and knowledge. Unless they are coming out and telling us what problems we do or don't have, we need to trust that they're coming from a place of good faith and genuine knowledge, and be willing to listen and change our minds if necessary.

We have to make ourselves comfortable with the fact that we are not always the most, or only, important voice in the room.

That's something that a lot of anti-transmasc women love to remind us, and I wouldn't say they're always wrong. Simply being a man can and often does incentivize people to engage in misogyny, to talk over women and disregard their experiences, when we find them uncomfortable or irrelevant. Again - everybody fucks up sometimes. But it crosses a line when you start demanding that courtesy from others while refusing to extend it back to them; when you treat any information they offer as automatically inferior or entirely invalid, based solely on their perceived relationship to privilege.

In fact, doing so is literally an ad hominem argument.

Aside from that, I must point out that these arguments are being employed specifically to silence trans men's and mascs' voices. This is not an honest misunderstanding; it's an act of profound self-centeredness at best and outright malice at worst. How do I know this? Well, stop me if you've ever heard one of these before:

"Women don't have real interests; they just like silly frivolous things. Men's hobbies are real and meaningful."

"Women are inherently wired to be emotional. Men are logical and level-headed. I'm not sexist, it's just science."

"If you hear a woman say anything smart, you can bet she learned it from a man."

These, too, are silencing tactics, historically (and currently!) used to devalue and silence the voices of women. In fact, they're things that I have personally heard and been affected by, as a trans man who has spent the vast majority of my life being seen and treated as a woman.

I didn't fall for it then, and I sure ain't falling for it now.

Master List of Trans Male/Transmasc Privileges:

The privilege to be forcibly married off

The privilege of being raped and impregnated to "correct" their gender

The privilege of not being treated like a rational human being that knows their body by doctors

The privilege of having your existence erased

The privilege to have little to no studies about trans people involve your voice

The privilege to not have access to domestic violence shelters due to being a man (and not allowed in women's shelters) and not having many, if any shelters for men

The privilege of having your transition treated like you're becoming a violent, disgusting, monster

The privilege of having any sort of hormonal transition impossible to be done DIY due to heavy restrictions on testosterone.

The privilege of increased risk of cervical cancer due to reduced access to pap smears

The privilege of having abortion rights not apply to you

The privilege of being over twice as likely to be raped, compared to cis women (51%/21.3%)

The privilege of having almost 5x the chance of being sexually abused as a child, compared to cis women (50%:11.1%)

The privilege that when you are assaulted, to not have access to rape kits

The privilege of not being able to report a hate crime due to barriers

The privilege of experiencing isolation, rejection and distrust due to now presenting masculine

The privilege to have your pregnancy treated as some sort of sick joke

The privilege of a lack of credible research about how to provide adequate healthcare to transgender men undergoing medical transition

The privilege of not being invited for ovarian cancer screenings due to your gender being listed as M

The privilege of doctors not knowing how to check for breast cancer if you've had top surgery

The privilege of an increased risk of AIDS due to the most common PrEP meds such as Descovy not working on AFAB individuals

Others feel free to chime in! The list is ever growing

If you rrrrreally truly believe in the "evil" of transmascs and their "grabs for gendered power," if you legitimately fear trans men, that's a lot worse for you because it's like, okay, well, good luck with that. I don't really care and no one really should, get over your bizarre personal issues on your own time and then when you're done you can intern for the people agitating for actual transfeminist change in the world since you seem far enough behind that fetching me coffee seems like it might be the zenth of your potential until we can catch you up on remedial praxis.

And don't even start saying I must mean it's ridiculous to be scared of trans men in a bioessentialist way, as though this is me ranking physical strength via AGAB. Any individual transmasc could shoot me or stab me or strangle me with piano wire or indeed, beat me to death with their fists, so could a lot of people, and yet trans men are overwhelmingly supportive allies.

I like it black btw.

I spend hours scrolling through blogs to establish a link between transandrophobia theory and terfism...and...he just...tweeted it out

Calling me a transandrobro who believes in some kind of ideology is like calling the kid who pointed at the emperor and said "he's not wearing any clothes" a "clothes truther" who "clings to his dogmatic ideology." I do not care about ideology. I am just pointing out that you're fucking lying.

ofc the person saying intersex people can't be trans if they don't conform to the sex binary and mtf or ftm "standard" also recommends the platform that's actively erasing us intersex and transmasc people

and to archive their latest take on us:

trans people being forced by doctors to conform to gender roles and present as their gender for 2 years to get evaluated to transition but somehow we are the ones enforcing gender roles

I love the Marxist-Leninist trend of calling anyone they don't like either a fascist or a liberal