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
Well, only if you think trans men and trans women’s experiences are somehow polar opposites, which they’re not.
If I saw ‘trans men look great with blue hair’, I don’t mean ‘trans women look bad with blue hair’. (in fact trans women look AMAZING with blue hair)
If I say ‘trans men have experienced sexism’ I don’t mean ‘trans women have not experiences sexism’. It simply doesn’t work like that.
(I wrote a shit ton about this in the past but can’t find it now. Any followers still got that shit?)
wow okay that had nothing to do with what i said
I don’t mean to be rude but I feel like I responded to exactly what you were concerned about.
I spoke about the fact that most trans men have experienced sexism. When I made that statement I was speaking about trans men and about trans men only.
You read that post and assumed that that statement said something about (or sounded like a statement) about what trans women experience.
It does not. Statements about trans men can not be flipped into opposite statements about trans women.
So there is zero relationship between the statement “Almost all trans men have experience being perceived as women in society” and the statement “you were socialized male so you can’t know what a real woman goes through”
If you feel like I am still not addressing your concern here then I don’t know what to say. This seems perfectly simple to me and I don’t really understand how to communicate it differently.
So this person blocked me and now thinks I’m a TERF and whorephobic and what-have-you because they do not understand the most basic argument that sexism can happen to trans men and trans women at the same time. Holy hell.
Like, I already know that some people are so hell-bent on dividing the whole world in ‘people who have the exact same opinions as me’ and ‘horrible people’ and as a result are completely reluctant to process any new opinions at all, but it’s still frustrating whenever it happens.
I still haven’t found the post I was looking for so I’m going to info-dump a lot of old writing on this topic:
- Transmen and Male Privilege, an incomplete musing
- I have a lot of issues with this concept of trans men ‘transitioning into power’.
- Trans men are dying from all the misdirected misogyny.
- If your ‘feminism’ means looking at the dismal situation and going “well, we gotta decide which trans people are women enough to be entitled to our support”, it is terrible feminism.
- Male guilt and the self-censorship of trans narratives.
- The Privilege and Power of Trans Manhood
Some of these posts are old so there’s undoubtedly some stuff in there that I no longer agree with but I don’t care. I don’t try to publish perfect things. Take these thoughts and make up your own damn mind.
