#malgendering

[dad-fucker666]

the thing about being trans is your a man when it’s convenient to make your life harder your a woman when it’s convenient to make your life harder and your neither when it’s convenient to make your life harder no matter what you are

[genderkoolaid]

"The Tom-Boy Who Was Changed Into A Real Boy," a children's poem written between 1859 and 1862 and published by McLoughlin Brothers Publishing in New York.

The poem is part of the "Aunt Oddamadood series," which appeared to primarily create entertaining yet moralistic poems for children, in which a naughty child (other examples include "Little Miss Consequence," "The Conceited Boy," "The Mischievous Fingers") is presented and shown the error of their ways, to teach children what will happen if they do not behave. With that context, the purpose of this poem appears to warning children raised as girls that, should they act like a tomboy, they will eventually be quietly sent off to sea. It is made clear both at the beginning and the end of the poem that the child's tomboyish nature is a "fault" and something the audience must be "cautioned" about.

I learned about this poem from this small collection of transgender antebellum (pre-Civil War) USAmerican children's literature, collected by historian Jen Manion. Another relevant example from that collection is "Lucy Nelson; or, the Boy-Girl," the story of a child assigned female who dislikes femininity and prefers playing with her brothers and acting like a boy. Lucy and their brothers get in trouble, but Lucy is singled out for punishment. They are forced to wear boys clothes for a month; this doesn't initially seem that bad, but it becomes clear that the real punishment is subjecting Lucy to gendered humiliation. Lucy's brother laugh at them, declare that if they dress as a boy then they will "be treated as one," leading to them being physically and verbally cruel to them. At a dinner party, the stress of the gendered humiliation they are facing for their transmasculinity reaches a breaking point. A guest's fixation and confusion on their gender leads them to shout, in tears, "I am not a boy!" to end the inquisition.

Lucy's story ends not with them simply realizing they are a girl; it is explicitly detailed that it is very difficult for them to resist their "boyish" nature and they were "in danger of lapsing," but that eventually they became an "obedient little girl," having been successfully humiliated back into appropriate (and, notably, white) daughterhood. These examples show clearly how the narrative around the "acceptance" of tomboys hides the very real disdain and cruelty directed at transmasculinized youth that has existed in Western culture for centuries. Rather than their masculinity being praised, or the masculinization of a young girl being seen as positive, these tomboys are depicted as out-of-control, insufficiently white, and further masculinization is depicted as a punishment done to tomboys, something meant to be humiliating and scary, thus coercing them back to the role of daughterwifemother.

[testosterone-tuesday]

The crazy part about being a trans man is that you live for a time as a woman/girl being constantly talked over and never taken seriously. Then you transition and people talk over you even more and take you even less seriously, including by cis women who were your allies before you came out.

And when you get one moment where you express your voice, you try to impress your existence upon the world, tell your perspective and experience and refuse to be minimized- people will for real treat you like you're just here to bulldoze over the conversation, like men (derogatory) always do, and that you need to accept for once it's your turn to sit down.

Like. You're kidding right?

I am granted no status upon transition, no soapbox, no audience, I am in fact belittled and diminished and erased- and you're telling me I'm motherfucking used to speaking over others? Dude I don't even get to lead the conversations about me, when there even are any.

People are literally so out of touch with reality. They seriously think manhood is some magical category with universal privileges and behaviors and social position. Gender in society isn't coming from magic otherworldly plane like that, and gender dynamics between men and women are not static constructs that just mystically transfer cis experiences over to trans ones without variable or nuance.

Literally engaging with trans men's realities at all would dispel this myth- but that implies listening to us in the first place.

But some people will first jump to calling trans men whiny entitled boys when we don't match up to their boiled down approximations of us based entirely off of cis men, and whatever ideas and attitudes they think are bestowed upon us automatically by the fairy godparent of trans inclusive gender essentialism. From like. The moment we come out, or figure ourselves out as trans, or have like boy brains from birth or whatever.

And they really think they're trans affirming for this. For telling us to shut up if we advocate for ourselves or mention existing at all. #manmoment amiright

Listen to us, even if it makes you uncomfortable. You owe it to us to listen, because no one else is. We can't and shouldn't shut up, because if we do there is no one left to speak for us. Maybe if you were listening, you'd realize we don't have a voice.

[asheville03]

if you say the phrase "tme cunts" you have absolutely zero right to call yourself a feminist

[sodomit]

being gendered correctly is not “malgendering” because it forces you to reckon with your place in society you fucking stupid piece of shit

Lemme break this down for you -

Gendering correctly: "you're a man", "you're a woman", "you're nonbinary".

Malgendering: "you're a man, so you're violent and dangerous", "you're a woman, so you're dumb and bitchy", "you're nonbinary, so you're a mentally ill inhuman creature".

When you're affirming a trans person's gender in a way that simultaneously insists on their inferiority, inadequacy, and other inherent negative qualities, it's not "gendering correctly". You're just using gender as an excuse to hurt people.

Also, what about my place in society? What do you know about me and my life? I bet you don't even know where I live or what my transition status is. You can't deduce my amount of privilege and oppression, or the type of it, from the list of labels in my bio.

[tboy-cock]

is the trans/queer/transfeminist community ready to admit that purposefully obscuring and erasing a trans persons trans status and identity in situations and places where their trans identity is integral to the correct understanding of their experience is a form of misgendering and malgendering or are we sleeping a little longer on that one

[bdbdbdbdmn]

"malgendering is a word trans men are using to not have to take accountability for being men" you're making it sound like being a trans guy is equivalent to rape lmao you're out of touch as shit.

and friendly reminder, being men is what makes them queer/trans/lgbt. this is like if we had to hold lesbians accountable for banging/being in relationships with chicks because being a lover of women puts you in a position of power over them, not being banged by/in relationships with men is privileging, and society values liking girls (while failing to mention that it's only valued in cis guys). if you feel the need to hold a queer person accountable for... being queer?... you've fallen for anti-lgbt propaganda.

[tranarchafeminist]

It's kind of obvious that gender essentialists can say "trans men are men" and that alone is malgendering. like. some people cannot engage with any man in good faith. cannot recognise men as closer to them than oppressors.

I think the solution to this is sex and gender abolition.