To act like cis men and trans men are sexist in the same way makes no sense.
Like YES, a lot of trans men have male privilege. YES a lot of trans men are sexist. YES, a lot of trans men embrace toxic masculinity, sometimes even in an extra passionate form of toxic masculinity because they believe being the biggest sexist out there will help them be seen as a ‘real man’.
But to act like that comes from the same experiences as the sexist of cis men is ridiculous.
Almost all trans men have experience being perceived as women in society and being treated accordingly, and many many trans men have experience being perceived as a gendernonconforming woman and being treated accordingly.
At the intersection of sexism targetted at gendernonconforming women and transphobia, trans men have often experienced a disproportional amount of violence that is specifically sexist in nature:
- being forced to act and dress feminine
- sexual violence
- forced sterilization and other restrictions on their reproductive rights
Trans men have on average more experience with all these things than cis women. To act like this has no impact on their life as men is ridiculous.
We need to acknowledge these experiences.
We need to acknowledge that there are a lot of trans men who are passionate feminists taking their fight into male spaces even at the risk of outing themselves and facing violence because of it. Trans men that have openly rejected toxic masculinity even at points in their life when not being masculine enough could get them raped or killed.
We need to acknowledge that trans men who are sexist are often acting from a place of trauma and a fear of how badly they will be hurt if they are perceived as not man enough. (& actually a lot of cis men sexist comes from a place of trauma and fear too but not to the same degree and not with the same experiences).
This doesn’t justify trans men’s sexist actions at all but it makes them fundamentally different from the actions of cis men and we need to understand that if we want to make these men less sexist.
I grew up on riot grrrl. I grew up wanting to be a riot grrrl, before I accepted my transness. I ain’t never gonna stop being a riot boi, ain’t never gonna stop being feminist and I sure as hell ain’t gonna sit down and let cis people do all the talking. Feminism taught me to stand up and fight back, and I’m gonna apply that full-force to my life as a trans man and ain’t nobody is gonna tell me not to.
Bless this post.
I just have a problem with this bit:
“Almost all trans men have experience being perceived as women in society and being treated accordingly, and many many trans men have experience being perceived as a gendernonconforming woman and being treated accordingly.”
because it sounds like the whole “you were socialized male so you can’t know what a real woman goes through” bit
lmao. yes, it’s true that there’s often a confusion in the meaning of “socialization” – it’s used as both a term to refer to how people are treated and in particular how that treatment is due to gendered perceptions, and it’s also used to refer to how that differential treatment becomes internalized and manifests as gendered psychologies. often sex-essentialists use this confusion to call transwomen psychologically male or whatever, but the reality is much more nuanced than that.
anyway, it’s not relevant because OP was clearly talking about how gender is enacted on people by society, and how that allows people who face the brunt end of it to recognize it more easily, not how that enactment or that recognition is symptomatic of some psychological gender… imo that interpretation is all on you.
YES YES YES. Thank you for phrasing this in a way that I couldn’t.
TERFS purposely use the term ‘socialization’ to conflate ‘experiencing a particular
treatment is due to gendered perceptions’ and ‘internalizing messages about gender,
accepting the role assigned to you by the patriarchy
and psychologically becoming the kind of person society wants you to be’.
These two are very clearly different and when we do not take apart this conflation, we can not properly fight TERF arguments because they can weaponize the simple truth that trans men were at some point in their life treated as women by society. (violently so).
When we use ‘socialization’ the way TERFs use it, our understanding of experiences of sexism by trans people becomes warped and weirdly unrealistic, resulting in obviously ridiculous binarist statements like “since trans women never have male privilege it must be true that trans men always have male privilege even when they don’t identify as trans yet”. And anyone can see that that is bullshit.
If we want to have a nuanced conversation about the ways that sexism can happen to trans men and trans women at the same time, we can’t do it on TERFs terms.
QueerAnarchism 