Gender critical feminists claim to not "believe in" in gender, but what they really mean is: gender should not exist. They absolutely understand that gender does exist, and that it's a construct, but they think that it exists solely to give men power, and to make women weak. So therefore, if you are assigned the gender "woman," and you think "man" might fit you better, than you are simply recognizing the existence of the patriarchy.
Under this mindset, femininity is nothing more than shackles on the feet of women. It is the culmination of all the oppressive, restrictive roles given to women. The way to break free from the patriarchy is to break free from gender itself. There is no way to identify as a woman, because "woman" is simply the term for a set of instructions given to you at birth, and those instructions are inherently bad and shouldn't be done by anyone. If you identify with those shackles, you're fundamentally wrong.
The implications this has for trans women is obvious, but there is also a subtler repercussion for transmascs. If you don't identify as a woman, you're right. But also, you can't identify as anything else. Manhood is simply access to privilege.
You can try to be as masculine as you want, but it will never make you a man in their eyes. Since femininity is constructed, you are simply being a "natural woman." Therefore, anyone that was AFAB who physically transitions is destroying their body to try to make it superficially seem male for their own selfish reasons (aka access to male privilege). And identifying as something other than "woman" is nothing more than a rebuke and betrayal of all women.
This is not love for trans men. This is not support for transmascs. This is not inclusion, appreciation, or respect. This is simply a different kind of disgust, revulsion, hate. This is quite literally trans-phobia.
Thinking about gender as this force for evil, and femininity as this coercive performance for the sexual gratification of men, FINALLY gave me the courage to try to present more masculine. I had always wanted to, but was terrified. But finally, I had this reason, excuse honestly, to be masculine. I stopped wearing makeup, and then cut all my hair off a couple weeks later. I had never felt so alive or confident in my life.
CW internalized transphobia, mean transphobic rhetoric i directed at myself
It seemed like proof they were right. Femininity is this huge burden you don't even realize you are carrying. Every woman needs to be free from it! I started to believe that it was true that masculinity was simply natural, while femininity was put-on.
While I did buy that idea, I also didn't want to be too overtly masculine. I began being obsessed with obtaining perfect androgyny, and was constantly angry at men that it was so simple for them to look androgynous and exactly how I wanted (which was just gender envy, but whatever).
One night, I put my makeup on, just to see whether I missed it. It gave me a panic attack and full on breakdown, where I began rubbing my skin raw to get it off.
I knew I could never be that person again.
This was the most life-changing experience of my life. I immediately understood how it must be so simple and easy for other young butches to "think" they were trans. Of course they would mistake that overwhelming feeling (dysphoria) for dysphoria! Once you clean yourself of femininity, you can NEVER go back.
So now I was dealing with crippling physical dysphoria that was absolutely eating away at me. I avoided looking at all mirrors like the plague, generally disassociated every time I had to touch or look at my body, and started wearing baggy, thick tops to hide my chest. I spent every second of my life listening to a podcast or audiobook to avoid thinking about what I knew was right at the back of my mind.
Of course, all of this triggered periodic compulsions to go on a radblr—binge reading detranstion blogs—trying to re-terrify myself. I would spend hours in horror reading about terrible coming out stories, surgery complications, and every T side effect imaginable. If that wasnt enough, I'd particularly focus on the vile, hateful things radfems would say about transmasculine bodies, ripping apart surgery results and writing long diatribes about how particularly painful and disgusting it is to sleep with us. Afterwards, I would desperately try not to think about the implications of just why it was so important to me that I couldn't be trans.
This is such an easy trap to fall into, even if you don't immediately buy the transphobia. Tumblr WLW spaces (which are full of cryptos) constantly perpetuate a claw-less, fetishistic form of gender essentialism. Only another woman could truly love you. You're safe among other women, they Understand your experiences in a way men never will. There's a reason you're a lesbian, and it's something to be cherished. All other relationships would be inherently unequal. This is all slowly woven into a flowery narrative about sisterhood, reconnection with lost feminine divinity, and mutual protection and retaliation against male oppression.
And so, isn't it the most natural thing in the world to idealize the parts of our bodies that mark us as different? Which means you should find beauty, or at least comfort and satisfaction, in your curves, vulva, reproductive ability, and breasts. And then, if you had trouble with that, wouldn't that discomfort in fact be a mark of the patriarchy?
Once you've internalized these ideas, you're primed and ready to accept lesbian separatism and radical feminism. If you believe women are uniquely oppressed above all others, it's such an easy leap to see being a lesbian as a special, peak-oppressed class in its own, which in turn means that an active rejection of that identity is an inherently political, and particularly reprehensible, act.
I deeply felt that if I could just learn to love myself or women or female bodies or lesbianism or feminism or SOMETHING enough, my dysphoria would disappear. It seemed undeniable to me that society did this to anyone born with a body like mine, and maybe I was just a little extra sensitive, or traumatized, but I could just get over this.
Having been sexually abused by multiple men (and women, but I blocked that out) my entire life up until that point, reinforced what everyone was trying to convince me. Dysphoria is a trauma reaction. Anyone assigned female is going to have dysphoria from the trauma of misogyny, but those with sexual trauma are particularly affected. Every time transmascs were brought up, especially specific individuals, it was inevitable that other radfems / GCs would begin speculating on their abuse history. It was a lot of pity-gossip, signally back and forth to each other how distinctly horrible sexual trauma is, and how it is a uniquely female experience. It felt normal to speculate on intimate details of someone's life and trauma history who we didn't know, because the fact that they are transitioning and “ruining” their body made it immediately apparent to all that Someone had hurt their body. This did a number on me, psychologically.
I began to be overwhelmingly socially anxious and agoraphobic. I was terrified of every man around me. I would text my girlfriend descriptions of men walking on the street near me, terrified I'd be their next victim. I stopped believing that any cishet wasn't a monster, that if they hadn't raped anyone yet, it was because they were too afraid to. Every man around me was secretly fantasizing about raping me, and just waiting for an opportunity to do so.
Convincing myself that my feelings and desires are really a combination of socialization and trauma gave me deep de-personalization and dissociation. I felt separated and locked off from my own self, constantly ignoring and fighting my own desires. I convinced myself that this was “internalized objectification” that was happening because only men are allowed to be people. I was also convinced something was deeply wrong and bad in my core, but if you had asked me at the time why I believed that, I couldn't have told you. or maybe I would've said it was a result of society telling me that only men are the subjects of their own life, or the product of female socialization convincing me I'm lesser. I would self-flagellate constantly that I clearly had internalized so much misogyny that I couldn't see women as people.
but actually no part of my brain really thought that. I distinctly did NOT see women as lesser. That was absolutely Not the issue.
I had dehumanized men so thoroughly I had dehumanized myself.
Telling myself over and over and over that I only felt dysphoria bc of internalized misogyny convinced myself that I was just deeply fucked up and beyond help. If no matter how much I tried to be a perfect, selfless fighter for the cause, those feelings never went away, clearly I was just a deeply misogynistic person.
And I'm NOT!!!! I was a deeply traumatized & terrified person who entirely de-humanized men in my head, and who absolutely adored every woman in their life.
And yet radfem theory had me convinced I couldn't believe myself. I didn't know myself. Actually, I was a messed up person who only had these feelings because somewhere deep down, so deep I'm not aware of it myself, I hated women. Even though it didn't feel true even a little, I felt like it was the Logical, Obvious Conclusion. I felt constantly sick with guilt, in the EXACT same way I felt from fundamentalist Christian ideology.
Christians claim that we all have original sin, and that is why we ultimately need to be saved. We are all dirty rotten sinners who just can't help ourselves. We have these deep, inner Desires that are sins In Themselves.
This is the exact same thinking radfems preach. They're so convinced anyone with a complicated gender or kinks has some deep inner Reason that they aren't admitting to themselves. They are so convinced of their own ideology, they believe that it doesn't matter what any trans person, really any person says about their own experiences. I doesn't even matter what YOU know to be true about YOURSELF. Radfems know better. They know the Gospel Truth.
Yeah, this is absolutely gaslighting. On an ideological level. I don't know if there's a term for that, but there should be.
It's part of why so many people label TERFs as a cult, that constant policing of others' inner lives. Its really just a puritanical Christian paradigm placed into a feminist framework. There's an observable link: ideology that constantly preaches that there is inherent, objective truth that you can use to group others into amounts of Wrongness. That line of thinking inevitably leads to policing thoughts and behaviors to eliminate that inner wrong (i.e. dysphoria/internalized misogyny).
And, despite the intentions, despite any intention, it always leads to fascism.
