I want to challenge the dominant narrative that all trans mens lives get easier once they live as men. It's a kind of odd narrative. And it gets told even by people talking about the harm transandrophobia causes, inadvertently in many cases i think. Because so much discussion is already dedicated to that narrative that they feel it necessary to address it even on posts that do not support that narrative.
It comes down to the major issue plaguing all trans-inclusive-radical-feminism and anything influenced by it. Which is that it disregards the existence of transphobia.
Setting aside exceptions like the experience of many intersex people for the sake of argument conciseness: Any and all trans people face the additional issue of transphobia compared to cis people. Transitioning alone is a massive, time and resource stealing hurdle that cis people do not go through. Structural transphobia affects so many administrative and practical issues. Medical transphobia not only complicates transitioning more or less severely, it also causes worse health outcomes for trans people. Being trans at all in the cisnormative world we live in causes significant health issues, largely stress and mental health impacts as well as lack of resources causing harm.
It's utterly and beyond cruelty ridiculous to disregard the major elephant in the room of transphobia in discussions around the gender related experience of trans people. Nor in the discussion of gender related social position of all people.
I find it very odd and alienating to read, over and over, discussion and theory about trans men that gives more weight to misogyny experienced while living as a cis person compared to the transphobia and misogyny experienced while living as a trans person. And especially when the transphobia is relegated to second fiddle even when acknowledged.
"Trans men experienced the full force of misogyny while growing up and that impact never goes away." ok and where is the next part? Because misogyny is generally a punishment for not adhering to gender roles, so setting the gender role of woman aside by coming out as a trans man does not help at fucking all to lessen the misogyny actually. Plus now you have to deal with the full force of transphobia on top of that.
I haven't experienced more than minor issues about my gender identity of girl while growing up. I have, however, by the same people and many other people, been treated with a lot of transandrophobia beforehand, and particularly once i came out as a trans man. I was suddenly confronted with the structural transphobia of society, with living through an active hate campaign by bigots, with the dehumanisation of the medical system around transitioning, and notably the severe loss of cis privilege i suddenly had to deal with. With not having any opportunity to learn the gender role of man the way i had as a child for girl, which leads to social friction and risk. With suddenly navigating different flavours of biphobia and homophobia than before for my sexuality. With facing the restrictive and often punitive gender role for men (including very notably from the women around me who got a lot less gracious with me for the same behaviour as before) while being inexperienced and crucially, by being trans, inherently unable to ever fully measure up because i am not cis.
I don't think that it can be assumed a given that a cis girl experienced unquestionably more harm and difficulty than a trans man. It is a narrative that's pushed hard by many people, but in the end, it's nothing more than that. The ideology of radical feminism that puts misogyny as the root of all evil and the worst thing anyone can experience is just a narrative and not truth, and i would appreciate if we all got more conscious of that.
