This is a really good example of how TERFs disguise their attacks against trans men, and why it’s so harmful to consider TERF attitudes towards trans mascs as infantilizing.
The post is made to appear sympathetic to the man they are mocking. “Look at this poor ‘girl’ and how he’s mutilated himself” sounds sympathetic, especially to trans people who are subjected to aggressive, direct attacks on their identities and humanity.
But this performative sympathy is just a front so that TERFs can enjoy being cruel without appearing as the aggressor. This allows the audience to still enjoy the pleasure of engaging in cruelty while dressing it up as pity.
This plays into the broader tactic TERFs deploy with trans mascs.
Rarely ever do they confront us directly the way they do with trans women.
In fact, because they see us as women, their primary objective is to make sure we are never ever heard at all, so that they can maintain the narrative that none of us would ever transition of our own free will.
Instead, they poison the well. They talk to our “handlers”. Our parents, our doctors and psychiatrists, our husbands, boyfriends, our pastors.
The veneer of sympathy is not to appeal to trans men. It is to appeal to those they see as having ownership over us. When trans men fight back against this, the malice comes out in full force.
Trans men do not get attacked less. The attacks are simply not recognized as such, because even in protesting oppression, we place it on a hierarchy.
