@yay-bunnies-zone
hello!! decided to argue my claim in another post so that i can format it a bit better.
while many people may argue that misandry isn't real in its entirety, i would say that in some cases, it is - but only when in correspondence with other axis of oppression. it's not an issue of whether misandry is real or not, but what axis it lies upon versus which axis it doesn't.
according to a study analyzed by the University of Albany, "By age 23, 49 percent of black males, 44 percent of Hispanic males and 38 percent of white males have been arrested." In comparison to the statistics found for women of these groups, "By age 23, arrest rates were 20 percent for white females and 18 percent and 16 percent for Hispanic and black females, respectively," the numbers are staggering. It indicates not only a specific bias towards people of color, but one aimed towards men of color specifically. These statistics are further supported by a study run by sciencedirect, where it's stated that "We find that Black men have the highest levels of violent victimization with the lowest likelihood of evading victimization. Black women experience especially high rates of chronic victimization that decreases over time,(...)". It's evident that there's a uniquely high bias against black men in the justice system - a form of misandry that becomes prevalent when it's intersected with racism. This intersection has been dubbed andronoir in a research paper by Chaaz C Quigley.
Additionally, a study done by the Williams institute showed that in terms of violent crimes, there were no differences between transgender women and transgender men. The study is quoted to have found that "Transgender women and men had higher rates of violent victimization (86.1 and 107.5 per 1,000 people, respectively) than cisgender women and men (23.7 and 19.8 per 1,000 people, respectively)," meaning that in terms of violence transgender men actually were reported to have faced more violent victimization in comparison to their peers. This is further supported by a study poll done by the Jama network, having found in their data that "In a Poisson regression model controlling for age, cisgender men had lower risk (AIRR, 0.5; 95% CI, 0.3-0.7), transgender men had greater risk (AIRR, 3.0; 95% CI, 1.7-5.1), and nonbinary individuals had greater risk (AIRR, 3.3; 95% CI, 2.1-5.2) of past-year sexual violence relative to cisgender women (eTable 3 in Supplement 1)." Trans women were reported to have relatively similar rates of sexual violence to cisgender women in these studies. The reported discrepancy between trans men's rates of victimization comparable to other groups has been dubbed transmisandry, or transandrophobia - not as a reflection of transmisogyny, but as a gender-specific term for the oppression and violence trans men face.
now, i do acknowledge that there are some flaws within these research articles - the study run by the Jama network does underrepresent trans women in their study, with only 35 participants compared to trans men's 52. additionally, the study also acknowledges that there may be some missed data when we bring ethnic violence into the mix, as they have stated that "For example, transgender and nonbinary individuals who belong to minoritized racial and ethnic groups face disproportionate risk of violence and are at greatest risk of fatal violence,24 but we could not assess this in our study due to small cell sizes." There are also many arguments to be made that trans women do face unique challenges that trans men do not, such as their hypervisibility within anti-trans news, their complete ban from the Olympics, and the study done by the Human Rights Campaign revealing that trans women make 60 cents to the average worker's dollar, 10 cents less than trans men's 70 cents. Transmisogyny is a very real, very important societal issue to address.
However, these unique struggles also go the other way. Testosterone is a schedule 3 drug according to the DEA, making it much more difficult to access than estrogen and placing all trans men who use it on a governmental list. Not only that, but abortion bans and medical discrimination affect trans men disproportionately compared to cis women- a study done by the Williams Institute explains that "Transgender men are less likely to obtain regular Pap tests compared to cisgender women, and the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey found that 13% of transgender respondents had been denied coverage by a health insurance company for supposedly gender-specific services such as Pap smears and mammograms." The effects of abortion bans and discrimination in reproductive healthcare on transgender men and nonbinary people are vastly understudied, and there are likely more extensive issues beneath the surface that have gone unnoticed.
There are so many examples of how misandry becomes realized within varied axis of oppression, I don't have time to get into each one. It exists within disability, within religion, within sexuality, within socioeconomic status. Deeming misandry "not real" purely because it does not stand on its own is erasing the experiences of millions of marginalized men, and how their masculinity is inherently tied to the oppression they face. The truth is, it doesn't fit neatly into either box of "real" versus "not real" - it sits in a gray area and only becomes visible when it is intertwined with other forms of discrimination, but there are so many places where it intersects that it ends up in a perpetual in-between zone on how "real" it is. It's a matter of nuance - of understanding that sometimes things are not just one or the other, but somewhere in between.
thanks for coming to my ted talk.
