Okay. So. This Is Clearly A Terf Post Because No One Can Be This Dense About Transandrophobia Without

”trans men are the weakest links of the trans community” my trans male friends and I have lived a lifetime of having our bodily autonomy stripped away to the point of sexual harassment. people talk about our bodies like everyone except us owns them because no one can handle the idea of precious female bodies being “mutilated” by gender affirming care. we are treated like traitors by women and as confused, silly girls by men. we have no spaces in which we belong because even the queer community tries to control our bodies. if we pass as men then we get ousted from queer-friendly spaces, and if we don’t pass as men we’re treated like cringe, theyfab trenders. everything we love is considered annoying. we’re called ugly and sad and “what a shame you guys are men haha”. We have to watch as society uses us as an excuse to ban gender affirming care for young people because our bodies belong to the government, because our bodies belong to our mothers, and because our anatomy is the only thing they see us as. And then we have to sit back as the trans community blames us for these bans. “All of these fake transtrenders are the reason they all hate us” when we’re busy having the women in our lives scrutinise our bodies to make sure we’re not being “infected” by the trans contagion. There’s no space we can belong in. No space that tries to make us feel welcome because either they treat us like women or they treat us like dangerous, cis men.

Every trans man I know has been sexually assaulted. Every trans man I know has been brought to suicide attempts, either due to their families or due to people online bullying them to death. Our struggles are constantly diminished and yet behind the scenes we’re fucking exhausted from fighting attacks from every single goddamn side. How fucking dare you call us weak. We’re going through fucking hell like every other goddamn trans person out there and our bodies are being abused and controlled and scrutinised every day of our fucking lives. Have you seen how TERFs talk about our bodies? How they lament us “mutilating” our breasts, our fertility, our anatomy, all in the name of feminism. That’s sexual fucking harassment, and it’s disgusting. But that’s all they fucking see us as. We’re not human, we’re just defected specimens. Cis women give themselves free passes to harass our bodies because they see us as “one of them”. One of them, but wrong. One of them, but need to be fixed. My mother regularly checks my chest to make sure I’m not trying to flatten it, and she can get away with it because “that’s what mothers do to their daughters.” Even when I’m not her daughter. Even when I’m screaming at the top of my lungs wanting to die because my body doesn’t belong to me. My body stopped belonging to me as soon as I came out as trans, because female empowerment doesn’t apply to me anymore. Female empowerment is now about “correcting” me, to restore my body back to its former glory, because only then was I worth something.

We are not weak. We are strong as fuck for dealing with the shit we have to deal with. And the worst part is, so much of the bullying comes from other trans men. We’ve been taught to hate ourselves so much that the only way to get ahead is to put down our own brothers and treat them in the way we’ve been treated.

There is no weak link of the community because we’re all dealing with absolute shit from all sides, but don’t you ever suggest that trans men are somehow the whiny babies who have nothing to complain about when we’re constantly holding back from screaming our guts out because there’s nothing else we can do.

"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?

For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and  Patreon. 

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.

it's actually crazy to me the way people will just say regular 2014 style truscum shit except change "fakers" and "fetishists" and "hurting trans people" to "theyfabs" and "internalized transmisogyny" and "hurting trans women" & everyone eats that shit up like they're starving. I thought we learned but yall really are just memorizing buzzwords huh

"tmes' genders are just a transmisogynistic stereotype"

=

"TiMs' genders are just a misogynistic stereotype"

hate people wanting to shut down conversations about transandrophobia say that trans men and mascs "measurably" experience less violence than trans women and fems

one of the core aspects of transandrophobia is erasure. the rates of violence we face cannot be "measurably" different than anything, because the rates of violence we face are deliberately not measured and erased whenever posssible

"i have no doubts about the rich inner world of their own gender identies but it's clear they are just men trying to be predatory" how can you write something like this without realizing how transphobic it is holy mother of fucking god. maybe they feel connected to masculinity and not manhood BECAUSE THEY DO NOT IDENTIFY AS MEN. it is not some secret mask to hide behind so they can abuse you. jesus fucking christ the fearmongering has to stop. the perpetual victimhood has to stop. if you have so few braincells you think a non stealth transmasc is oppressing you then maybe you need to get off tumblr and have a fucking brain transplant

RE: Binary Privilege, I really think youtuber VerilyBitchie said it best in her video on monosexism that privilege can be broken down into two parts; unjust enrichment and spared injustice. The example she uses is a bisexual man from a country where being queer is a crime being denied asylum because a judge does not view him as queer enough to actually be in danger(or even queer at all), while a gay man would be approved by that same judge because they think he's more at risk. The gay man is not being unjustly enriched, he needs asylum! But, he is being spared an injustice, namely his sexuality is seen as more real than the bi man's so he gets to escape while the bi man has to go back to his country and risk imprisonment and death. (This is also why I think it's important to keep in mind that being granted privilege does not necessarily mean a person is an oppressor or capable of leveraging their privilege to oppress. The gay man is not oppressing the bi man in this situation, he is just being given grace the bi man is not granted.)

So while I do think that binary trans people may be spared some injustices that nonbinary people have to deal with, I don't think any of that translates to like, unjust enrichment or the ability to oppress nonbinary people on a systemic level. And even then it does depend entirely on the situation and the people involved. I would be considered nonbinary by cishet people, but I use she/they pronouns, so I am spared the injustice someone who uses say, it/its or a neo-pronoun would face because mine are easier for cishet people to adjust to(even though a lot of cishet people default to her and ignore the fact that I'm trans, they are still using the correct pronouns). I am spared the injustice of having people treat me like a freak for my pronouns and default to the wrong ones because mine are seen as normal and easy to ignore, but I am not gaining any unjust enrichment, and certainly am not being granted the kind of privilege that would allow me to systemically oppress another nonbinary person.

I also think maybe it's important to keep in mind that someone can be bigoted without being an oppressor. Like I do not think that monosexual queer people are my systemic oppressors as a bisexual, BUT I can face bigotry and lateral aggression in the form of monosexism from biphobic monosexual queers. Like they can absolutely uphold my systemic oppression and weaponize parts of it against me, but they are NOT the ones who built or are driving the monosexism machine. That's cishet society. I think that's the what we see with like, transmedicalism and exorsexism from other trans people. They still aren't our oppressors, they aren't granted unjust enrichment or power, but they can still be exorsexist and transphobic and weaponize both against nonbinary people in horrifying ways, and they are also granted some slight privilege that we are not in the form of spared injustice.

I think conversations around privilege and oppression and bigotry are really complicated, and it's just important to keep in mind that having privilege you don't does not always mean someone is your oppressor, and also that someone can be bigoted and oppressive towards you without actually being your systemic oppressor class, you know? Or that's at least how I think about it, and it seems to help break down the conversation in a way that avoids too much finger pointing or semantic circular arguments over terminology that get us nowhere.

I like the scientific breakdown of "privilege," that's a very cool way of putting it.

If transmascs were saying "erm transfems being v-coded is just as bad as my dysphoria over not having balls" then people would lose their shit about it (as they should, because it's objectively not true and also an incredibly transmisogynistic thing to say), but somehow it's okay for TRFs to pull out the pitchforks when transmascs say that forced pregnancy as a form of detransition is worse than womb dysphoria???

The double-standards in this community baffle me.

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.