First, this post is part of a pattern of weirdly hostile-to-trans-women posts I see from some transmasculine people. I absolutely agree that trans men’s issues need to be discussed, but this is not a serious or good way of doing that.
This is a giant strawman, but I'll try to steelman its points.
On 1: yes, some people will of course dispute that there is a distinct structural axis of oppression against men as men, including trans men. This is because men are a privileged position on the gender axis. That is not the same thing as saying trans men don’t experience specific forms of transphobia, discrimination, abuse, or marginalization, and that is not the same thing as saying men are not harmed by patriarchy.
On 2: the criticism generally isn’t "you’re saying trans men have it worse." It’s that discussions of transmisogyny repeatedly get flattened into "all trans people experience basically the same oppression," even where the mechanism being discussed is specifically directed at trans women.
And 3 is just a strawman. Talking about mistreatment of trans men does not inherently invalidate trans women’s suffering, and essentially nobody is arguing that it does. The objection is to using trans men’s experiences to deny, minimize, or talk over specifically transmisogynistic dynamics.
E.g. something I've heard recently, 'we're all faggots in the eyes of the state' demonstrates the issue. Solidarity does not require pretending that every member of a marginalized group is targeted in exactly the same way. You can acknowledge shared transphobia while also acknowledging that different groups experience distinct forms of it.
If we can't read between the lines and ignore all contextual tumblr discourse that gets posted here constantly, sure. Even if you don't say it's trans women, trans women's circumstances are clearly intended to be seen as the impetus for trans mascs being invisible and not taken seriously, with over zealous focusing on transmisogyny and the idea that trans women are taken seriously
I don't even necessarily disagree with the post, because that does happen that transmisogyny is used to shut down discussions of transandrophobia, but it's a poor mirror for the other post.
This is largely a "don't shut discussions of transandrophobia by making it about transmisogyny" while the other post was not about transmisogyny vs transandrophobia at all
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u/SadMediumSmolBean Trans Woman 4h ago
First, this post is part of a pattern of weirdly hostile-to-trans-women posts I see from some transmasculine people. I absolutely agree that trans men’s issues need to be discussed, but this is not a serious or good way of doing that.
This is a giant strawman, but I'll try to steelman its points.
On 1: yes, some people will of course dispute that there is a distinct structural axis of oppression against men as men, including trans men. This is because men are a privileged position on the gender axis. That is not the same thing as saying trans men don’t experience specific forms of transphobia, discrimination, abuse, or marginalization, and that is not the same thing as saying men are not harmed by patriarchy.
On 2: the criticism generally isn’t "you’re saying trans men have it worse." It’s that discussions of transmisogyny repeatedly get flattened into "all trans people experience basically the same oppression," even where the mechanism being discussed is specifically directed at trans women.
And 3 is just a strawman. Talking about mistreatment of trans men does not inherently invalidate trans women’s suffering, and essentially nobody is arguing that it does. The objection is to using trans men’s experiences to deny, minimize, or talk over specifically transmisogynistic dynamics.
E.g. something I've heard recently, 'we're all faggots in the eyes of the state' demonstrates the issue. Solidarity does not require pretending that every member of a marginalized group is targeted in exactly the same way. You can acknowledge shared transphobia while also acknowledging that different groups experience distinct forms of it.