#antimasculism

[emotionalmoss]

idk y’all should treat fat men better. and i don’t mean mildly chubby guys i mean honest-to-god love-handles-and-double-chins fat guys. stop calling them shit like discord mods or gross weebs or nasty creeps or neckbeards or that they’re stinky or sweaty or beer bellied or whatever else. fatphobia isn’t cute, even repackaged in a neat little box of “ew men”

[cock-holliday]

A lot of trans spaces hate masculinity soo bad it’s unreal. I knew an AMAB nonbinary person who, to those who had never done the gender rodeo before, looked strikingly like a cis man. They were big, broad, with a thick scruffy beard. They dressed masculinely. It was clear by talking to them for even a second that their masculinity was incredibly queer, but to most people they wouldn’t read that way, even with pronoun pins displayed proudly on their chest.

They described themself as “soft masc” and their gender felt very similar to me to so many butches I had met. They toyed with the label themself. Their attraction to women fell under a pretty sapphic umbrella and in plenty of cases were welcomed by queer women, trans and cis alike.

But often they felt more comfortable in transmasc spaces because, as was apparently a cardinal sin in many transfemme spaces, they liked their masculinity.

They got accused of faking being trans. They were implied to be stealing space from trans women. And then accused by wlws of being a predatory cis man invading space to get to women. They constantly had to walk a narrow path to not be seen as something sinister because they weren’t feminine.

Because masculine is seen as equivalent to “man” and “man” is bad. It’s predatory and violent only ever and always.

And over and over and over and over again anti-masculinity folks claim that this stance protects women and transfemmes. But you are never ever ever going to be normal about “women and nonbinary folx” if you hate masculinity so bad! You will never be normal about butches. You will never be normal about transmascs. And you will never be normal about ANYONE who is AMAB. Even the feminine ones.

A trans woman who is a masc lesbian is going to be a predator to you. A trans woman who doesn’t pass well enough for you is going to be a predator to you. A trans woman who LIKES her masculinity or masculine features is always gonna be a faker trying to evilly sneak into your sacred spaces.

Cis women for sure push this shitty narrative, as do trans men and transmascs who think they’re falling on their sword for Women™️ to atone for the sin of being masculine or worse, men; but oof so do trans women and transfemmes who think policing binary gender conformity will protect them.

[cosmicconstruct]

Okay I've been trying very hard to restrain myself and not get involved in discourse but like-- y'all know androphobia affects more than just trans men, right? In my gender studies classes it usually comes up first to discuss the villainization of Black masculinity and the portrayal of Black people as uniquely masculine in the "wrong" way. Even in the context of trans people, trans women usually get brought up first because of the right-wing rhetoric painting transfemmes as predatory men. And androphobia isn't supposed to be a 1:1 correlation for misogyny-- that's why we don't use the term misandry. At least as it's used in my classes, androphobia is about weaponizing percieved masculinity against someone who is in some other way marginalized, regardless of whether that person is even a man-- Black women and trans women are frequent targets of androphobia!

And it fucks me up to see people painting discussions of androphobia as speaking over transfemmes, because we're missing an opportunity to explore the elements of the social imagination that underpin our collective oppression. The idea that being male, amab, masc, on T, etc. makes a person evil, violent, scary, predatory, etc. is used against transfemmes and transmascs alike; it's used against intersex people; it's used against cis butches; it's used against people who aren't even queer! But instead of criticizing a facet of our shared oppression collectively, people on here are arguing about who has the right to speak up about their own experiences. It's so fucking disheartening, and it makes me long to be back in the classroom, where people with a wide variety of personal experiences are so much more happy to listen and learn from each other.

[genderkoolaid]

Post on r/ftm caught my eye: a trans man worried that getting a hysterectomy made him unkind/aggressive bc he'd had multiple friends including his (cis) partner tell him he'd been way more aggressive since it. His partner had the audacity to tell him it made sense bc he now lacks ALL estrogen, but he'd need to be more careful with how he acts now. A friend claimed that bc of the histo he was swearing more and "not [his] happy chipper chill sweet self." This all happened on *the third day after his surgery.* None of them were mentioned even considering that could have to do with the irritability. Sometimes the idea that trans men don't face any ostricisation or negative consequences for transitioning makes me want to Yell.

Honestly this shit is so disgusting. You hear all kinds of trans men&mascs experience this: folks who get surgery, get on T, or even just come out & suddenly their friends/family/coworkers are telling them how mean and cruel and angry and violent they are now! It doesn't matter if you can't see it because everyone else can so you need to constantly be self-policing and checking with them to make sure you are behaving Correctly! And if you ever get angry or annoyed or just mildly upset with them for this, or anything else, they'll tell you how mean and abusive you are for not being perfectly mild and agreeable all the time!

[gay-otlc]

Actually I think we should talk about how incredibly fucked up it is for sapphic women to say shit like "I'm no better than a straight man 😔" when attracted to a woman in a way that isn't 100% pure and wholesome, or act like men's attraction to women is inherently dirty, predatory, or objectifying.

[our-queer-experience]

hey shoutout to butches who dont preform masculinity in the “ok and safe” range. shoutout to butches who are large and intimidating and hairy and loud and dont represent the weird watered down butchness that the media loves to showcase.

[vtsomenjoyer]

As a nonbinary person and man, i appreciate the terms transandrophobia and exorsexism, however i also feel a bit awkward using these two terms to refer to myself, as I feel I have to separate my identity when talking abt it in the context of oppression, despite the fact that the point of intersectionality is to acknowledge the social position of the person as a whole.

That's why I suggest transandroexorsexism, or perhaps exortransandrosexism to refer to oppression towards nonbinary trans men, genderqueer trans men, multigender trans men, and anyone similar, or seen as such.

I also propose androexorsexism and mascexorsexism, the latter for masculine nonbinary identities and others similar.

[unhinged-transmasc-man]

I have to get this off my chest: Femininity is not liberating for everyone. Especially not for people who were forced into femininity. Masculinity is not inherently bad. For a lot of people masculinity is far more comforting and liberating than femininity will ever be. Do the work to separate your trauma with cis men and toxic masculinity, and stop hurting transmasc people with your bs bio/gender essentialist rhetoric. Trans men and trans masc people are not your enemies, masculinity is not your enemy, and femininity is not always your friend. As long as it’s not hurting people let trans men be happy to be masculine. To deny trans men their masculinity is transphobic. You aren’t less transphobic towards trans men just because you say how pretty transfems are every fifteen seconds for brownie points, bc this demonization of masculinity hurts them too. Trans joy includes affirming masculinity.