If Hatred Is What Fuels Your Activism, Then Your Activism Is Probably Bullshit

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.)

trans women who don't fight for trans men and nonbinary people don't care about all trans people, they only care about themselves.

trans men who don't fight for trans women and nonbinary people don't care about all trans people, they only care about themselves.

nonbinary people who don't fight for trans women and trans men don't care about all trans people, they only care about themselves.

if we want to survive and succeed, the only way is through solidarity. any trans activism that does not include all trans people has failed as trans activism.

So I recently saw this post about a video where a woman is saying "trans men are men because this one trans man yapped at me for ages about a history topic I didn't ask about" and while that post does bring up really good points ("is it mansplaining or is it just a man talking about a topic you aren't interested in"), I'd like to point out how this is actually one of the functions of transandrophobia.

It takes a very neutral behaviour - talking at length about a topic of interest - and, because of our gender identity as men or masculine, it takes that behaviour and turns it into something seen as "annoying" or "cringe" and demonises it as a specifically male behaviour.

It's malgendering as well, "trans men really are men because they're doing this thing I perceive as negatively associated with cis men".

There is something to say about how, within the context of the video, it didn't seem like the actual dude was "mansplaining" - which is a real misogynistic behaviour. But the post linked talks about that in depth so I'll only briefly touch on it here.

There is a difference between talking down to someone you perceive as less knowledgeable (in the case of mansplaining, men talking down to women because they see them as unintelligent due to misogyny, especially about a subject the woman does have an understanding of), and just talking at length about a topic that someone isn't interested in.

The latter of course gets twisted into misogynistic and annoying/cringe behaviour literally due to the person's gender identity.

And of course all that is to say, actually maybe you should let trans men speak because we are more erased and invisible than even cis women. Why are you (person in the video), as a cis person, putting negative gender stereotypes onto a trans person?

if you've only seen the term transandrophobia through discourse, this is your invitation to think about it outside of a discourse context (for both people for and against the term)

there are many of us who use the word to talk about real life issues, though I can excuse you not knowing that if you've only seen the discourse and not any real conversations, since queer discourse has a way of flattening these convos, which I really really dislike

I also encourage you to think about transmisogyny and oppression as a whole outside of the discourse context, just as a refresher, since I see those topics being steamrolled as well which is sad

back in the ace discourse words like aphobia and homophobia/lesbophobia also got steamrolled like this. if you do think that trans men/mascs experience a unique oppression, whether or not you like the word, I encourage you to think of us outside of a discourse context. and even if you don't believe we do, I ask you think of transmisogyny and oppression as a whole outside of a discourse context, just to keep yourself from falling into the steamrolled versions

I think we should be able to talk about trans people dying without it being a footnote in online discourse

Nevermind this isn't staying a comment

Dawg, would you look at that??😯😰😨

A trans"woman" just admitted he is a man and threatened a woman for 'hurting his feelings'. His Y chromosome must be acting up again!

since someone wanted to be a clown and make a "transmisogyny" bingo board, i made my own transandrophobia bingo board

"We don't want no Zionists here" is not a righteous political slogan. 

Every single country that has ever outlawed Zionism went on to persecute, abuse, and even expel its Jewish population…whether said Jews identified as Zionists or not. 

This is one of the many reasons Jewish historical literacy is so important.

IRAQ

When Israel declared its independence in 1948, Zionism became a capital crime in Iraq. However, Iraq’s persecution of “Zionists” dated back to the 1930s; for example, in 1935, all Palestinian Jewish* Hebrew teachers were deported and the head of the Iraqi Zionist organization was put on trial.

For a Jew to be convicted of the crime of “Zionism,” they only had to be denounced by two Muslims, and there was no system of appeal. Under the guise of anti-Zionism, Jews in Iraq were systematically charged with treason, dismissed from their jobs, arrested on trumped up charges, tortured, and even executed. Oftentimes, their assets were seized, totaling around $80 million. 

The “proof” that a Jew was a “Zionist” was often tenuous at best. For example, in one case, a Jewish man was sentenced to five years of forced labor because he owned a Biblical Hebrew inscription, which his accusers falsely claimed was a “coded Zionist message.”

While the Iraqi government claimed to go after “Zionists,”anti-Zionist and non-Zionist Jews were not spared.The most prominent case was that of Shafiq Ades, who had long been openly anti-Zionist. Ades was arrested on charges that he had sold arms to Israel. He was not allowed the right to a defense and was tried and convicted in a show trial. He was publicly executed on September 23, 1948, to a crowd of 12,000 onlookers.

By the early 1950s, 120,000-130,000 out of 150,000 Iraqi Jews had fled Iraq. By 1967, only 3,000 Jews remained in Iraq. Nevertheless, following the Arab countries’ defeat in the 1967 Six Day War, the Iraqi government amped up its crackdown on “Zionism.”

As part of this crackdown, Jews were dismissed from their jobs, their bank accounts were frozen, and they were confined to house arrest. 

In 1968, the new socialist Ba’athist regime announced that they were “hunting down an American-Israeli spy ring” that was supposedly trying to destabilize Iraq. Twelve people -- nine of them Jews -- were arrested. The Jews were hung publicly in January 1969 without trial to a dancing crowd of 500,000 people. Another 40 Jews were “disappeared” by the secret police; in total, some 100 Jews out of the community of 3,000 were imprisoned and tortured in 1969 alone. 

These Jews were accused and convicted of Zionism, treason, and spying not based on legitimate evidence, but rather, entirely arbitrarily. For example, Daoud Ghali Yadgar was one of the nine Jews who were hanged in 1969. In 2019, his cousin, Nitzan Hadad, explained: “Soldiers had entered their home looking for the eldest son, who was in London studying. When they asked who was at home, my aunt replied that her other son, Daoud, was home. So they took Daoud instead and accused him of spying for Israel.”

*At the time, any citizen of the British Mandate of Palestine was known as a “Palestinian,” regardless of their ethnic or religious background.

EGYPT

Egypt, too, claimed to crack down on “Zionists,” but in reality made virtually no effort to distinguish between Zionists and Jews. In 1947, the Egyptian prime minister told the British ambassador, “All Jews are potential Zionists [and] ...anyhow all Zionists are Communists.”

After Israel's independence, scores of Jews were arrested and imprisoned in Abu Qir detention camp. Professor Chacham Choureka, who was later arrested in the 1950s, described the situation, noting, “The authorities didn't differentiate between teaching Judaism and Zionist activity. In reality though, part of teaching Torah is about Israel.”

As in Iraq, the anti-Zionist incitement in Egypt led to a number of repressive policies, arrests, and more. The 1956 Suez Crisis between Israel, Egypt, France, and Great Britain further exacerbated the already precarious situation. Once again, the Egyptian government made its position clear, declaring that “all Jews are Zionists and enemies of the state.” Thousands of Jews were then imprisoned on “Zionism” charges or removed from their jobs. Ironically, prominent anti-Zionist Jews also suffered the same consequences.

THE SOVIET UNION

The Soviets considered all forms of non-Russian nationalism — including Zionism — a threat to their budding communist empire. In 1918, the midst of the Russian Civil War, the Soviet Communist Party established a “Jewish branch,” with the consent of Vladimir Lenin. It was named “Yevsetskiya,” meaning “Jewish Sections of the Communist Party.”

The mission of the Yevsetskiya was, quite literally, the “destruction of traditional Jewish life, the Zionist movement, and Hebrew culture.” In other words, this Jewish branch of the Soviet government was dedicated solely to the destruction of fellow Soviet Jewry. Until their dissolution in 1929, they imprisoned, tortured, and murdered thousands of Jews. According to historian of Soviet history Richard Pipes, “In time, every Jewish cultural and social organization came under assault.”

As early as 1934, the Soviets presented the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, a region in the Russian Far East, as an “alternative” to Zionism. Despite rosy Soviet government propaganda, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, located along the Russia-China border, was nearly impossible to cultivate for non-natives to the region and practically inhospitable. Though the government never outrightly admitted it, the Jewish population transfers to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast were a form of forced deportation, similar to other population transfers of ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union.

Post-World War II, Jews in the far-flung republics Azeri and Uzbek republics of the Soviet Union were forced to attend anti-Zionist demonstrations, where they were made to publicly disavow Israel and Zionism under threat of arrest, deportation to gulags, or worse.

The Soviets’ “anti-Zionist” campaign culminated in the Doctors’ Plot, when “Zionist” Jewish doctors were arrested, tortured, and executed on entirely fake charges that they had plotted to assassinate Stalin. Some historians believe that this was only part of a wider plan for the ethnic cleansing of the Soviet Jewish population…all under the guise of anti-Zionism. However, due to Stalin’s sudden death, the plan was ultimately never carried out.

The Soviets were interestingly never covert about the fact that their “anti-Zionist” campaigns were actually just antisemitic. In the 1960s, Soviet propaganda made blatantly antisemitic claims, including: “The character of the Jewish religion serves the political aims of the Zionists,” “Zionism is inextricable from Judaism, rooted in the idea of the exclusiveness of the Jewish People,” comparisons of Judaism to the Italian mafia, and claims that Israel was merely a means to an end of Jewish imperialism and world domination.

The repression of Soviet Jewry under the guise of “Zionism” only intensified after the 1967 Six Day War. Jewish cultural and religious life was highly restricted. Virtually every institution in Soviet society heavily discriminated against the Jewish population; for example, Jews were subject to highly restrictive university quotas. This placed Jews in a catch-22: on the one hand, they were not free to live as Jews; on the other, they were also barred from integrating as Soviet citizens. 

For this reason, hundreds of thousands of Jews were desperate to flee the Soviet Union. Requesting exit visas was considered an act of treason. In order to apply for exit visas, Jews first had to quit their jobs; however, this put them at risk of being accused of “social parasitism,” which was considered a crime. After having their visas refused, Jews were also then prevented from obtaining new work. Then, this joblessness was criminalized. Soviet Jews were stuck in an impossible living situation.

POLAND

n 1968, a series of student-led protests broke out against the Communist government of Poland. The Polish government responded to the instability by scapegoating their now tiny post-Holocaust Jewish community, enacting a a massive “anti-Zionist” propaganda campaign, spreading conspiracies that Zionist were plotting to take over Poland. 

The Polish public was then forced to renounce Zionism, and Jews, whether they identified as Zionists or not, were purged from their positions in the government and other sectors, accused of holding dual loyalties to Israel. Many were arrested, beaten, and tortured. In its efforts, the Polish government created lists of Jews, eerily echoing the policies in Poland under Nazi occupation just several decades prior.

As a result of these campaigns, 15,000 out of 25,000-30,000 Jews in Poland were stripped of their Polish citizenship. The 1968 Polish political crisis is sometimes called a “symbolic pogrom” because Jews experienced such severe disenfranchisement that many took their lives in a string of suicides.

ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN

According to Iranian-American policy analyst Karim Sadjapour, the three ideological pillars of the Iranian regime are “compulsory hijab, death to America, and death to Israel.” 

Immediately after the Iranian Revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic to power, the Israeli embassy in Tehran was attacked and turned into the Palestinian embassy. To this day, the Islamic Republic has erected an “Israel annihilation clock” in Tehran, counting down the days to Israel’s supposed destruction. Incitement against “Zionists” and the “Zionist entity” is commonplace in Islamic Republic political discourse; for example, in 2006, then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liberated.” 

About a month after the Islamic Republic came into power, the Ayatollah Khomeini made an example of a prominent Jewish community leader, Habib Elghanian, by accusing him of “Zionist espionage.”He was arrested, tried in a sham trial that lasted less than 20 minutes, and executed by firing squad.

Incidents such as this one prompted 80% of Iran’s ancient Jewish population to flee the country. Today, the 8,500 Jews still living in Iran are subject to second-class citizenship and are constantly under the suspicion of the regime, for which they must tread carefully, never openly criticizing the regime’s implementation of Sharia Law or revealing any ties -- however tenuous -- to Zionism or the State of Israel.

ETHIOPIA

In the late 1970s, a new Marxist government rose to power in Ethiopia. An antisemitic, anti-government right-wing group began a killing spree in 1978, cutting children’s feet off, bludgeoning babies, castrating men, raping women, torturing elders, and selling women and children into slavery.

Instead of condemning the attacks, the Ethiopian government decided to crack down on its Jewish community. They claimed to do so in the name of combatting “Zionist propaganda.”

Because of the worsening conditions, Ethiopian Jews tried to flee to Israel. As a punishment for “Zionism,” Jews were collectively arrested, tortured, and hung.

LIBYA

After the establishment of the State of Israel, Libya criminalized individuals who communicated with anyone in Israel, creating a difficult situation for Libyan Jews, most of whom have family in the Jewish state. By 1961, all but six members of the ancient Libyan Jewish community were denied Libyan citizenship.

OTHER

A number of other countries, such as Pakistan and Algeria, have passed laws criminalizing Zionism after the entire Jewish community was already expelled or fled from the country. In Pakistan, the criminalization of “Zionism” means that carrying a Jewish symbol like the Star of David can land you in prison.

SOME TAKEAWAYS

(1) Zionism is a political movement…a political movement, which, whether you like it or not, is objectively rooted in 3000 years of Jewish history, culture, and tradition. Anti-Zionists overwhelmingly reject not only Zionism as a political movement, but the 3000 years of Jewish history, culture, and tradition that precede it, because such history, culture, and tradition may provide an “explanation” or “justification” for Zionism. Therefore, it’s no surprise that, for example, a Jewish man in Iraq was charged with the crime of Zionism for owning a Biblical Hebrew inscription or that the Egyptian authorities did not differentiate between Zionist activism and teaching about Judaism. History shows us that crackdowns on “Zionism” always, without fail, turn into crackdowns of any and all expression of Jewish identity (which is precisely why anti-Israel protestors were shouting “we don’t want no Zionists here” in front of a Jewish hospital, which has no specific ties to Israel or Zionism). 

(2) Polls consistently show that between 80-97% of Jews identify as Zionists and/or believe in the State of Israel’s right to exist. There isn’t much difference between marginalizing 80-97% of Jews and marginalizing allJews. 

Perhaps it’s time to consider that the overwhelming majority of Jews identify as Zionists not because we are collectively evil, but rather, based on our own experiences and understanding of our history, identity, and tradition. Perhaps it’s time to consider that you don’t understand how Zionists define their Zionism.

(3) When you don’t want “Zionists” in Israel and you don’t want “Zionists” wherever else it is you live, perhaps the problem is not where we live, but that we live.

Anti-Zionists claim anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, and yet, every single "anti-Zionist" campaign in history has resulted in antisemitism.

After everything our own parents and grandparents went through, why should we trust that your anti-Zionist campaign is any different?

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rootsmetals

Jewish historical literacy is knowing that once they start going after “Zionists,” anti-Zionist Jews won’t be spared, either.  So have some self-respect and stop groveling to people who hate everything about your Jewish identity.

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

can I say something mean. I think the obsession some guys have with """transandrophobia""" is just like, they thought transitioning would magically make gender not a prison. and then they continue to experience gender (which is a prison) and get confused because they stopped being a woman shouldn't it all be better now??? and it's not (because gender is a prison, even if conforming with it gives you privilege over others) but they lack the introspection and awareness to make that connection. so instead they go "no it must be the trans women who are oppressing me"

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