If You've Only Seen The Term Transandrophobia Through Discourse, This Is Your Invitation To Think About

If hatred is what fuels your activism, then your activism is probably bullshit

I’m not gonna lie, the whole “what if a big, hairy trans man started using the women’s bathroom? what are TERFs gonna do then?” thing kinda pisses me off being used as some checkmate, because it insinuates that passing trans men would have any kind of power in that situation. If a passing trans man is forced to use the women’s bathroom, you know what will happen? Security will be called on him, he’ll be thrown out, and he’ll be forced to out himself as trans in order to avoid punishment, which will put an even bigger target on his back. He’s still going to be harassed. He’s still going to be forced into an uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation, and he probably won’t avoid punishment anyway because the current laws in place are never going to favour any trans person’s defence over a cis person’s.

It also completely ignores trans men who aren’t “big and hairy” and don’t pass enough to be mistaken for a cis man. Non-passing trans men (or even men who look or sound effeminate enough to be suspected) who are forced to use the women’s bathrooms are still at a huge risk of harassment or even violence, especially young trans boys who are forced into their assigned bathrooms at school. Nex Benedict was literally murdered in a girl’s bathroom. Girls and women aren’t these inherently non-violent, peaceful and submissive beings (for one thing, that’s misogynistic). Trans men and boys get beaten up by them too, because most of us pre-T aren’t considered a threat, and we fucking die.

That’s not even to mention the trouble we already have in men’s bathrooms, because if we don’t pass, cis men will interrogate us on whether or not we’re “real men” and then sexually assault us if they discover we’re trans. Corrective rapes that trans men face is not something to be ignored, and I have trans male friends that it’s happened to who are lucky to be alive right now.

Bathroom laws will affect us just as much. The violence that trans women face is something that trans men can also relate to, and both need to be talked about without people categorising all trans men as “big, hairy, strong men able to beat up anyone who tries to threaten them” when that’s not the case like 90% of the time. Acting like passing trans men are just there to make TERFs look stupid, when TERFs are the ones who are violent towards us no matter how much we pass, is just diminishing our experiences.

What really ticks me off is how often prominent trans women activists try to silence trans men or dismiss their lived experiences as not as important bc they ‘trans misogyny exempt’. Then when transmen try to create their own terms to describe their experiences they claim they’re just attention seeking. Another phenomena that could be behind this is the weird alt right/misogynist to trans woman pipeline for public figures. A lot of self professed ‘former’ nazis dictating the discourse…

I blame Whipping Girl for some of this. It was basically everyone's trans Bible in the 2010s and it massively, massively shit on transmascs and nonbinary people. I don't think we've ever completely recovered from that.

This incident in particular always haunts the back of my mind.

(Obligatory mention that it isn't always trans women that do this. Cis people, nonbinaries, and even trans men themselves will happily trash trans men.)

jesus christ

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

This is now my discourse sideblog. Unless it's extremely, uncompromisingly vital that all 411 of my followers see it, I will redirect all discourse here.

Main at @blunt-force-therapy

Admin details:

20 years old

Brazilian

L2 English speaker

College student (History)

Assorted positions:

Pro-Technocracy

Pro-United Nations

Esperantist

Anti-racist

Anti-communist

Neutral on monarchy/republic

Pro-LGBTQ rights

Pro-Trans rights

Transandrophobia "truther"

Pro LGBTQ inclusionism

Proship

Often posts would go:

*describes a bad thing that many people may go through* (Okay. Nice. Good discourse.)

*adds an addendum about how it disproportionately affects trans women* (Excellent. Important to say. Good addition.)

*adds an addendum to that addendum that specifies I'm a stinky TME and calls trans men a slur* (Why. Why did you have to say that. I get that you hate yourself. I get that you're in a competition to be the feministest. But it's so unnecessary. It also detracts attention from the group whose voices you were trying to boost.)

Radfems latching onto any feminist post, even ones made by people they hate, is not particularly unusual if you view radfems as just highly idealist feminists who look for cool enough aesthetics sometimes without looking too hard even if its transfeminist. This is proven by actual transfem radfems generally rejecting any of the sorts of trans feminism based upon reality once they meet it instead getting some kind of half detrans self hating nonsense like our lovely rodent @velvetvexations does.

Radfems latching onto and keeping ahold of transandrophobia truthing is the telling one however because as a anti feminist MRA movement they could only possibly latch on it if transandrophobia truthers did the poor little afab song and dance every 5 seconds, which they do.

helpful venn diagram of people who are against the term transandrophobia for those of you who arent aware of whats going on right now