I think there’s a special flavor of dysphoria in “this person is (only) gendering me correctly so they can use my gender as a weapon to beat me with” and also in “the only times I’m not misgendered are when people want to (use my gender, explicitly or implicitly, to) [exploit, mock, talk over, etc.] me.” It kind of… almost still feels like misgendering, somehow? The surface language being used is correct but something about the undercurrent feels a bit like the way that misgendering asserts the other person’s invented version of your gender over your actual gender to me. IDK.
I think it's a form of malicious compliance. "Oh, you want me to respect your gender? Fine. But I'm not going to respect anything else about you." It's (often unconsciously) punishing the trans person for being trans. It might sometimes be a conscious attempt to get the person to detransition. I wouldn't be surprised.
I think when malgendering happens to trans women, it often looks like "Welcome to womanhood" or guys like Steven "trans women are women so I have more women to be misogynist to" Moffat.
Wow. As a transmasc, I’ve been so scared to transition properly and this essay perfectly encapsulates why. The support I receive as a “woman” seems so much better than having no support as a “man”. It feels like the wrong support is less painful than no support at all, like feeling as though my suffering as a trans person is rendered invalid because “men don’t suffer”. The part where you said the reason trans men and transmasculine people are being invalidated because of transness specifically and not because of masculinity or “manliness” was particularly eye-opening for me, and somewhat comforting, in a weird way. Thank you so much for writing and sharing this, it feels like every conflicting thought I’ve had about this subject has been laid out and made sense of, and written so much better than I’ve been able to articulate in my own mind. And yeah, the rage-bait title totally worked on me so 😂
Very happy to hear this was helpful for you. My goal was to reach out to at least one other guy and give him so comfort and clarity, so you help me accomplished that very quickly. Much love to you.
I don't know anything about your life, so please only do what is safe for you, always.
It's completely understandable to feel that fear, but I want to offer a different perspective: receiving "no support" as a trans man isn't universal or inevitable. That narrative isn't any more true than the "trans men pass instantly and have zero problems" narrative. There's a lot more nuance out there.
For instance, my ex, a trans lesbian, broke up with me when I came out as a dude because... well, she's a lesbian. But we ended up building a deeper platonic relationship than we ever had while dating. She's truly my chosen sister now.
My connections within my local queer community, largely with transfems but also fellow transmascs, have saved me from homelessness or sleeping rough multiple times. People do care about men's suffering, and in particular trans men's suffering. While it might not always feel like enough, we're definitely not alone.
I also have a point about the general trans experience: being falsely "supported" in ways that give you dysphoria can actually be worse in the long run. I don't know what your legal and medical rights would look like if you came out; I'm privileged in those areas. But I can confirm that having even one true friend who supports you as your desired gender is infinitely better than dozens of transphobic "friends" who don't truly see you.
Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of an… awkward predicament right now, especially in terms of family. It’s not really safe for me to stay and due to financial abuse, I’m not able to leave. I live in a conservative and kind of isolated part of the UK, but law wise I’d be alright, probably. However, I am trying to remain positive as I know it will eventually end, whether it’s tomorrow or 30 years down the line, I know I will be free eventually. My hope is that it won’t be too late for me to start my life by the time that day comes. In the meantime, I’m just trying to make friends online and form my own support system. It’s so comforting to know that I’m not alone in all this, even if it all feels a little bleak right now. Your comment definitely makes me feel a lot more hopeful for the future, so thank you!
There have been at least two trans women in the UK who transitioned in their NINETIES. Patricia Davies and Louise Jennings. Both were WWII vets. Waiting to transition fucking sucks, AND ALSO it truly is never too late to transition. Trans people can find joy at any age.
It sounds like you're doing what's right for you to survive. Solidarity to you and all trans people who have to choose the closet for now.
It's fascinating how many of our experiences as trans men and trans women overlap. I have tried to push the idea that we are "socialised trans" and not as girls or boys - because who we are inside a) has an active part in how we perceive and incorporate our socialisation, b) determines how we actively shape it (who we look up to, etc., which mannerisms as subconsciously learn) and c) leaks outside, so people notice we are different and treat us as such. (Which especially leads to that kind of sexual violence you described we get for being somehow queer/gender deviant).
This does not mean the transmasc and transfem childhood experiences are the same - but being trans, even unknowingly is a huge factor that influences us all.
The other point you touch and I think get across quite good is that people have coopted the analysis of systemic oppression in order to allege power imbalances in individual relationships. And while in some cases they might be obvious because of the *actions* people take, you can't put people on an "oppression scale" because of them. Individual lives have privilege, oppression, trauma in so many dimensions that we barely know them all.
Yes, we know that *statistically* women are victims of sexual assault more often than men. But that doesn't mean when you pick *one* man and *one* woman and let them talk about the topic the woman will automatically have more experience. And if you compare specific sub groups that statistic might even flip.
It's the same fallacy people use against trans women when they say "they are males and males statistically do X".
I'm so sad for all the stories you share of being disregarded and treated as suspicious. What a stupid, pointless waste of good labor and goodwill.
I have to be honest I'm not wild about Bhatt because I think she, like many others, seems to take for granted that circumstances shape themselves around gender culture, to the exclusion of the inverse possibility-- that gender culture readily reshapes itself around its circumstances. As in, boys don't go to war because violence is what a real man does, they go to war because the government needs *somebody* to fight, and it's just too easy to leverage men's sense of paternalistic protectiveness to motivate enlistment. You kinda mention this at the end with that Gerda Lerner reference but it seems like people struggle to actually apply it, treating culture itself as a primary circumstance which shapes us rather than looking at the circumstances which culture responds to.
I still struggle to understand how its possible to articulate all of the ways that patriarchy/capitalism/compulsory heterosexuality/etc harm men and still say that "men are not oppressed for being men." It seems like moving the goalposts to say that bad things happen to some people because of presumptions made about their gender's nature or telos or whatever, but it only counts as "oppression" if it happens to women. I think a lot of the struggle for trans men (and particularly that urge to delineate ourselves from cis men) is because we cannot describe our problems as particularly male-- too many MRAs have framed gendered oppression as a zero-sum game, as if saying bluntly that maleness invites particular forms of oppression is somehow diminishing the severity of what women have endured.
Like, not to be rude, but-- "the devaluing of men is a double edged sword that derives from men being treated as agents in a way that women are not"-- okay, so what? Is harm not really harmful if its done under the guise of flattery? It seems everybody is really good at noticing when this happens to women-- like, men love to foist domestic labor onto women under the guise of feigned incompetence, as if women are just better at doing that work than they are, to pick a random example-- but it's somehow a different story when it happens to men, as if the bad things that happen to them as a result of flattery are somehow of a wholly different quality.
I just don't find that there's a huge difference between my feelings about gender (particularly the self-hating ones) as a trans man vs the feelings of many cis men or amab nonbinary people. Like, what exactly is the difference between a tguy who reverts to feminizing himself under duress vs an amab person who identifies as nonbinary explicitly because they hate the domination and violence implied by male identity? It seems like they are just doing different flavors of the same thing, rejecting maleness because it carries such heavy moral baggage. I just don't find our circumstances to be wildly different, and I find it kind of troubling how often people feel compelled to draw a distinction here-- like, most complaints about "transmasc privilege" are saying that trans and cis men share in common the capacity to do harm, but even trans guys who agree with the idea that they have male privilege tend to assume that their capacity to *be* harmed is somehow fundamentally different from that of cis men. And that just doesn't make sense to me.
To your point about gender and culture -- it often feels very chicken or the egg, no? Sort of a self-fulfilling cycle. You need people for war, Men make a lot of sense pragmatically (just recently I was wondering how badly a population would be impacted if you had young cis women fighting in wars to the same extent or more than cis men), you develop a kind of mythology around it, ???, Gender. Lerner talks about gender as a consequence of the segregation that develops for logistical reasons and then formalizes into mythology, symbolism, etc. But obviously it is still largely impacted by the things around us. We're definitely in a weird moment I think where patriarchy isn't really like, working the way it used to? Like men are doing kind of astoundingly bad right now but people don't want to address or they address it do it normally?
I feel like I struggle because there are obviously a large number of ways that men are advantaged over women and that's what people (me) are getting at when they say, "men aren't oppressed by patriarchy." But then you run the risk of completely minimizing or dismissing the ways that men are harmed. Like, they are oppressed... but also, there's an out somewhere, maybe? It's hard to articulate, especially when things like race and class can play such a huge role in altering the way you're treated by the System TM. Anyhow, I do appreciate what you're saying, it's just hard to pull apart.
Definitely!! Our circumstances have changed, so the symbolism and mythos we use to explain what it means have changed, too. Jessa Crispin over at The Culture We Deserve kind of blew my mind when she described what we have now as a "zombie patriarchy"-- the systems of patriarchy (marriage in particular comes to mind) are still in place, but they no longer have the legal backing they used to. Since the Victorian era, the idea that "women are property" has been legally undermined in a lot of significant ways-- women have fully equal rights to own property, to work and earn their own money, get divorced for any-or-no reason, and both genders share equally in the obligation to pay support to their ex-spouse if they split. I think culture has struggled since the 70s to figure out what to do with these new circumstances, how to make them make sense in some way that satisfyingly tracks with old ideas about gender, but we're still being bowled over by the contradictions between cultural expectations and a new material reality.
Regarding your point about moving the goalposts on men's oppression, because I do think it's a fair question to ask: *why* is it not oppression? Or rather, more precisely, why are we framing it as *not oppression* in these contexts. Since it definitely sucks and it's definitely harm.
I think something that happens in the discourse at large, especially in the 21st Century, is that oppression and harm get conflated to the point that harm outside of the context of systemic oppression (as opposed to interpersonal power dynamics) is assumed to not exist. As an aside, that kinda thing goes hand in hand with totalising moral interpretations of power and powerlessness in a systemic context and also is one of those things that ultimately ends up rewarding the already powerful and punishing the already powerless. In interpersonal contexts, talking about my experiences with anti-immigrant systems and antisemitism and Christian hegemony has led to some people immediately concluding that I was asserting some kind of moral superiority over them by talking about how shit it's been to be foreign and not a Christian in Western Europe. Most of those people were white and from Christian backgrounds.
Back to the question of the harms men suffer under patriarchy — the notional "default man" suffers harm that he is assumed to have proudly opted into, since, remember, one of the assumptions of patriarchy is that men love violence, that we are made for violence, that we always look for an excuse to be violent. Even some leftist types make admiring jokes about "guys being dudes", even though the idea that exertion of physical and social power and exercise of physical strength is a man's joyful right is deeply culturally contingent. Even within the Christian West, there are cultural contexts where a man blowing up an old washing machine would be unmanning himself through not exercising the self-control and decorum that a man of his station should have, you know? The fact is, the patriarchy doesn't set out to oppress or exploit men for being men (though the criteria of a "real man" ends up including class, race, sexuality, etc.), the patriarchy sets out to empower and benefit men (the ones who are fully men, white Christians of good socioeconomic background only need apply, making the rest of us "probationary men" who have to prove ourselves), indeed at its extreme manifestations, patriarchy assumes that men are the *only* people, that women are something else, not persons. And so the harm that men suffer under patriarchy *from being men* (as opposed to the harms suffered by marginalised and minoritised men for being something else unrelated to manhood, that may or may not put that manhood into question) is not a regretful byproduct or an oppression. It is simply assumed to *not exist*. That's the gaslighting perpetuated against men. That the violence we are pushed to do and the violence we are threatened with are *good for us, as men*. That might makes right and that's a good thing and we all enjoy it and crave it.
I'm saying "the patriarchy", but I mean Western (white Christian) patriarchy in the modern day. I highly, highly recommend Daniel Boyarin's Unheroic Conduct for an in-depth look at a different kind of patriarchy, where violence is not assumed to be a man's rightful domain, and why it's still patriarchy and also how it *didn't and doesn't have to be*. The violence is only half the problem. The other problem is the domination and exploitation of women.
As to your other point, about the assumption that trans manhood is just not at all comparable to cis manhood, ever: yeah, that's a problem I've noticed. I don't think my anxieties or my problems or my views and experiences are actually meaningfully different to that of a nontrans gay Soviet Jewish man. I think there's a sometimes nasty and sometimes outright homophobic tendency in trans masc discourse at large to assume that cis men, and also nontrans queer men and nonbinary camab queers are all somehow Different from us. And that's where we get into the punitive and disciplinary nature of degendering, and that it functions not only directly against transfeminised/womanised people but also as a threat against camab people who might be tempted to not be cis straight men.
And wouldn't it be convenient if the probationary men most likely to have solidarity with other men who aren't *quite* adequate men on grounds of sexuality and gender expression were discouraged from seeing themselves as all of one class?
EDIT, addendum to the above: Or if the mere idea of opting out of "man" or "woman" was portrayed as incoherent, through the bioessentialist justification of assignment? This part of my response is a little incoherent, I admit. How exactly nonbinary camab people fit into all of this is something that just about everyone I've read struggles with, because it seems like in the current norms that we all exist under, that's a category that we're not even permitted to think might exist.
Anyway, I also find it to be quite bullshit. Transition worked. I'm a man now. Me being trans doesn't mean I'm a wholly different kind of man. And it bugs me that many trans mascs, even ones who aren't out and out transmisogynists, even ones who are in solidarity with trans women for real, still sometimes (or often!) act like trans men are not men but a whole other gender.
"oppression and harm get conflated to the point that harm outside of the context of systemic oppression (as opposed to interpersonal power dynamics) is assumed to not exist. [...] that kinda thing goes hand in hand with totalising moral interpretations of power and powerlessness in a systemic context and also is one of those things that ultimately ends up rewarding the already powerful and punishing the already powerless." I *think* I'm picking up what you're putting down, but can you say more about this? Particularly that second part.
I mentioned in my other reply to Trans Dandy that at this point, I think of a problem as "systemic" if its rooted in institutional policy and law, not just vibes or widespread cultural narratives. So like your personal example totally tracks, like, ~Western Christendom~ has the level of power it has today not *just* because lots of people like it and think its cool, but because centuries'-worth of resources have been funneled towards its institutions, and laws have been put in place to protect them from challenge. I think Dandy's right in that culture and policy are mutually-reinforcing, but I have an inkling that culture has less power to move policy than the other way around. (Maybe this is a particularly American problem? I'm not sure, I don't want to project, but there are certainly a lot of policy suggestions [like universal healthcare or abortion access] that are wildly popular here but still don't get done, because the people who want them are not the people in power.)
So like, I wouldn't consider ~women being mean to men as a way to vent their anger about patriarchy~ or whatever to be a systemic problem, even if it causes [a lot of] interpersonal strife/"harm"-- but there *are* policies that affect men negatively in a way that is justified by cultural assumptions about gender. Here in America, the draft is a pretty obvious one, that men are required to register with the military in case they are called upon to go to war whether or not they actually want to. People tend to roll their eyes about complaining-about-the-draft because it hasn't been used in at least a generation or two, or they say that it's fine because men simply love being violent, etc. Capitalism is another obvious one-- like, I don't understand how we recognize that sexism makes men the primary workforce, and that capitalism oppresses that workforce, and still for some reason have to claim that men are not the group primarily oppressed by capitalist workplace dynamics, because actually it's women who Really Suffer by being disallowed from participating at all. When weird conservative women like Abby Shapiro say that capitalist self-sufficiency is a raw deal, one which women are better off rejecting than demanding inclusion-in, I can see where they're coming from (*and* why left-leaning men tend to latch onto labor issues rather than gender issues-- the only way to deal with our gendered problems without becoming selfish and solipsistic is to talk about labor as it affects us all). It sort of seems like these systems screw everyone, just in differently-gendered ways.
But these issues are constantly framed as a problem of "men hurting themselves bc hubris" rather than a problem of particular powers hurting their subjects who ~just so happen~ to be men. In that way, I think the idea of "men are the gender with agency" winds up becoming an unfalsifiable presumption, which obfuscates the way that many men have no such agency at all-- patriarchy is not about valuing or uplifting men, it's about concentrating power in the hands of the powerful.
Importantly, I don't think it makes a difference whether a policy is *intentionally* oppressive, or is only incidentally so-- I think a lot of left-ish people talk about misogynist policy as if it's bad *because* it came from bad intentions, that constant refrain of "these systems exist because people hate women." But I think that oppressive policy is bad regardless of whether it's bad-on-purpose or bad-on-accident, and arguing about motives sort of leaves the door open for bad policy so long as its proponents can invent some benevolent excuse.
In any case I think it becomes a sort of self-perpetuating truism that men who are oppressed are "probationary men," i.e. their maleness is presumed to be in a precarious position specifically *because* they are oppressed by patriarchal norms & policy. I don't really think that tracks with the particular problems faced by queer or nonwhite men, who sometimes-or-often wind up maligned in a way that frames them as *too* "masculine" rather than not masculine enough. We wind up assuming that there is some kind of Man's Man who patriarchy unconditionally loves, in a way that I don't think anyone ever lives up to and which sort of elides the very possibility that patriarchy might oppress men in any way other than emasculation. That just doesn't track with my experience, and I think its a lot of what leads trans men to feel distanced from maleness as a result of their particular oppression.
Apologies for the very late reply, I've been awfully busy the past few months.
Basically, re: "rewarding the powerful/punishing the powerless" as regards totalising moral interpretations ... often it shakes out that when issues of interpersonal conflict come up, the people who have more credibility in terms of defining the interactions are the ones who've got more access to power and systemic protection, and "harm must equal oppression" can be then weaponised against whoever they're beefing with.
And in my experience, I've most often seen white fragility (especially, if I can be blunt, Waspy fragility) be weaponised that way, and especially against trans women. The worst I've seen is when trans women of colour get treated as by default wishing to cause harm when all they're doing is being kinda abrasive at worst or even being friendly and trying to engage in conversation but not doing it in the cloying deferential way that's the norm in too many nerd spaces. I've also seen this happen with cis women of colour, with white trans women, I've been occasionally a target of it myself as a TME fag who can't really "do" the kinda conflict-avoidant passive-aggressive shtik and has other shit going on that makes people view me as, well, mean and duplicitous no matter what I do.
Basically, for those of us who are marginalised/minoritised even within queer communities, we're implicitly put upon to prove that any harm we're experiencing is related to systemic issues or else often it's just not taken seriously. Though in my experience, sometimes even being able to point towards actual patterns of shit behaviour towards people of colour, towards trans women, towards Jews, towards people who are all three — that ends up not mattering if the person who's acting out of line is seen as a harmless smol bean with anxiety. And because they're seen as someone who Cannot Oppress Others, regardless of whether they're e.g. taking advantage of being a Wasp to bully others, no harm is assumed to be done unless they say something truly egregious. Because the defense is always "oh they couldn't know better" or "they didn't mean that".
It's also an issue of beginning conflict resolution with the intent of figuring out who's acting all nicey and who's being Mean, and generally, wouldn't you know it, it's the white Christians/ex-Christians who are judged to be acting Nice, even when they're in the wrong.
Nothing personal, but when I first saw the title of this in my email notifications, I said to myself "oh boy" in the tone of the IT department head waking up to frantic texts from their bosses and coworkers. Having actually read the piece now, I don't feel that way anymore, and in fact, I think this is one of the most honest takes on this issue that I've seen.
I mentioned once on your essay responding to Jude Doyle that I grew up in basically the opposite online social circles to you, namely anti-sjw tumblr. And let me tell you, it's been real ass trying to actually care about social justice causes while also navigating being transmasc, cause it feels like everyone is conspiring to prove my teenage anti-sjw self right lol. It really does seem like the Correct Transfeminists takes right now are that trans men are just collateral damage to transmisogyny, but we still use the term 'transphobia' for... idk nostalgia reasons? It kind of makes me respect the OG baeddels (the 2010s tumblr clique, not any other fakers!) for just saying men can't be trans or face transphobia with their full chests, rather than twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid saying that while all of what they say implies otherwise.
And in general it feels like no matter what I say, unless I'm posting about how all other trans men are whiny stupid babies who don't understand real oppression, I'm going to get branded as an MRA if I ever object to how people talk about trans men or how they're just plain wrong about our experiences. Or maybe I just have to prove I'm One Of The Good Ones by tirelessly selflessly sacrificing my time and energy for others, like you have, and then finally I'll have earned the right to talk about my struggles. Maybe this entire thought process proves I'm one of the Bad Ones, though, I dunno.
I wish I could take your last paragraph to heart, but I just can't. I think the only think waiting for me if I ever open my mouth is harassment, ESPECIALLY by fellow trans people. Sorry to be a bummer, but that's my truth and it may just be the only truth I ever get to express on this matter.
EDIT: I should probably mention I'm bigender, both a man and a woman, so this whole thing is even more complicated for me. But it's actually more depressing, cause people will either think I'm trying to avoid accountability by still identifying with 'femaleness' (not a concept I even believe in) or shrug their shoulders and say nothing they're saying applies to nonbinary people anyway. So my experiences get ignored and disregarded no matter what I do! Awesome!! /s
Glad to see other trans men trying to help each other heal!!
The dialectic of:
Yes, we DO have to come up with decent theory to explain our oppression and suffering, lest we end up arguing for "solutions" that cause more harm (to others but also ourselves!), and
We (trans men) are in general extremely traumatized, lonely, and abused. Many of us need crisis intervention - often literal suicide counseling. Cis people (overall) don't understand or give a damn; I've met trans women who care but are also dealing with their own problems. So that leaves us trans men to care for each other.
I've written and deleted this comment several times because explaining all the interpersonal trauma and systemic erasure that led to me feeling I didn't deserve to live would take too long. Suffice to say, I personally feel the desire and moral obligation to do emotional work for other trans men, the emotional work I needed someone to do for me.
We don't need to be supermen to justify our own existence. We can just be men. People, even.
Obviously there were many points made in this essay. As someone who is in very different social circles (cis, hetero, but still a white man) I appreciated this perspective. I've met a large handful of trans women over my life and through their friendships and observing their journeys I've always been curious about how it feels like the trans male experience is so often excluded from the stereotypes and generalizations of transness. So I found this to br a very fresh read for me.
I identified as a trans man for four years, and then stopped because I had to move back home after college. I was only out to like, five people, so I didn’t detransition in a traditional sense. But because I needed to survive I decided I couldn’t be a man anymore.
I don’t know if I’m a trans man, nonbinary, bigender, or something else. I’m trying to restart that journey, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to until I have more distance from my family. But I do know that whatever it is, it fucking hurts, and I feel so alone. This made me feel very seen. Thank you.
Feeling alone is a very common transmasculine experience - to me it seems almost systemic. I'm so, so sorry you had to go back in the closet for your own safety. Good luck getting away from your family. Do what you gotta do.
I've noticed over the years that whenever I was victimised, there was always within easy reach the narrative of being a victimised and wronged man, emasculated by the current progressive paradigms and denied the dignity of being recognised as someone who's been hurt. And I can't say that I always avoided that temptation, either!
It's something that's also, in my experience, pops up with racism and white supremacy — the weirdo racists accusing "The Left" of not caring about poor rural whites or ethnic whites or whatever.
All of this is, like. Fucking news to me, you know? As a white man, disabled and gay and trans and foreign, I've still found it much easier to navigate the benefits system and housing assistance and whatever. I only had to have a couple of shitty and humiliating conversations with staff at a general population homeless shelter before being transferred, without me even asking, to a specialist shelter that admitted only men deemed to be vulnerable. I didn't have to be assaulted and I didn't have to beg or threaten or even raise legal action and there was no question of me *not* belonging in a men's shelter. I was not fobbed off by the council when first presenting as homeless and I was not misled as to whether I could access services. Being a white man is probably all I've got going for me, in terms of protection from systemic violence. I think I'd be dead without that sliver of protection.
It's standard, almost, I'm sure you know this and have seen this yourself – the redirection of grievances towards the marginalised and exploited and the attempts to prevent meaningful solidarity forming between various exploited classes and the offer of that additional sliver of protection, especially to people who damn well know it will make a difference between life and death. Everyone is subject to the threat of violence under patriarchy, but men are offered the chance to strike first, to wield the violence, to have agency as to when and to whom it happens. We're told violence is the law of the land and that it's a game we can win. And if we don't want to play, the consequence is a risk — a very real risk — of being relegated to the part of humanity who are the objects of violence.
And there's the fact that hegemony is totalising but society is not homogenous. Within my own communities and within my own classes and my own contexts, the agency and power that being a white man give me are significant. Sometimes they make a difference outside of those contexts. Sometimes they don't, not really.
But it also means that when trans mascs are victimised and targeted by the patriarchy and then told we can *get out of that*, even in terms of self-image and interpersonal relationships, if we would only assert our right as men — through exerting power over women — the logical and obvious targets are the women in our own communities, and especially trans women. Punching down is always presented as a way out. Except what it actually does is harm our own communities and destroy class solidarity in favour of identity. I'm sure nothing I'm saying is new, but still. It's relevant here.
Wow there's something about reading a thought you've only ever had in your head (about playing the cards you were dealt and not trying for a redraw) written out nearly word for word... thank you for writing this. I'm struck.
Love love love this, it describes something that has been floating around in my mind for years. It also reminds me of how my transness, my yiddish-ness, and my anti-zionism are all deeply enriching of one another.
Being on the margins but able to opt in to privilege and power, having to navigate contradictions between surface-level perceptions and deeper analysis, learning what it means to be a victim but not self-victimizing…
"Because the idealist concept of identity politics is so easy to weaponize, reactionaries utilize this to obscure the real conflict at hand" I think this is a pretty good essay, but the term you're looking for here is not identity politics, it's identity reductionism. Identity politics is a legitimate framework created primarily to understand misogynoir. I see a lot of leftists (especially yes, white people) use "identity politics" to refer to this idea (and to degrade things that are not, in fact, harmful) when a completely different term more concisely describes what's going on.
I was crying by the end. I am still crying now. This essay feels really important for me and for the rest of the world frankly. Thank you for writing this, I hope you are proud of what you have created. You have helped me to understand this wretched fucked up experience I have been having over the last 8 years that has kept me in limbo. Or maybe stuck on a pendulem swinging between genders. I have been unable to articulate what I have been experiencing, most intensely, recently.
Thank you for the validation and the cheerleading. This essay is going to help me unlock positive change in my life and I will be returning to it again and again to fully understand your meaning.
This is absolutely brilliant omg. It's such a relief to read something that perfectly explains a phenomenon I haven't been able to accurately explain in my own words. It's so easy to fall for gender essentialist talking points because our entire world is structured around them, but reading essays like this by trans authors reminds me that, actually, no! I don't need to blindly force myself, as a trans man, into cisgender categorizations! Hella kudos from a fellow trans dude o7
your work encapsulates things i’ve been trying to say to people for years now while working my way out of the essentialist trap. perfect essay, no notes. this is so accessible to people who haven’t yet formed a proper system of analysis, this is exactly what we need as trans men and transmascs to form our own group identity and better serve the coalition with trans women and fems in the fight for our existence.
I think there’s a special flavor of dysphoria in “this person is (only) gendering me correctly so they can use my gender as a weapon to beat me with” and also in “the only times I’m not misgendered are when people want to (use my gender, explicitly or implicitly, to) [exploit, mock, talk over, etc.] me.” It kind of… almost still feels like misgendering, somehow? The surface language being used is correct but something about the undercurrent feels a bit like the way that misgendering asserts the other person’s invented version of your gender over your actual gender to me. IDK.
Just come over here and sum up what I was trying to say in 11,000 words, lol
I've heard some use the term "malgendering"
came here to say this. Yeah “malgendering” is a super useful term, imo
I think it's a form of malicious compliance. "Oh, you want me to respect your gender? Fine. But I'm not going to respect anything else about you." It's (often unconsciously) punishing the trans person for being trans. It might sometimes be a conscious attempt to get the person to detransition. I wouldn't be surprised.
I think when malgendering happens to trans women, it often looks like "Welcome to womanhood" or guys like Steven "trans women are women so I have more women to be misogynist to" Moffat.
Wow. As a transmasc, I’ve been so scared to transition properly and this essay perfectly encapsulates why. The support I receive as a “woman” seems so much better than having no support as a “man”. It feels like the wrong support is less painful than no support at all, like feeling as though my suffering as a trans person is rendered invalid because “men don’t suffer”. The part where you said the reason trans men and transmasculine people are being invalidated because of transness specifically and not because of masculinity or “manliness” was particularly eye-opening for me, and somewhat comforting, in a weird way. Thank you so much for writing and sharing this, it feels like every conflicting thought I’ve had about this subject has been laid out and made sense of, and written so much better than I’ve been able to articulate in my own mind. And yeah, the rage-bait title totally worked on me so 😂
Very happy to hear this was helpful for you. My goal was to reach out to at least one other guy and give him so comfort and clarity, so you help me accomplished that very quickly. Much love to you.
I don't know anything about your life, so please only do what is safe for you, always.
It's completely understandable to feel that fear, but I want to offer a different perspective: receiving "no support" as a trans man isn't universal or inevitable. That narrative isn't any more true than the "trans men pass instantly and have zero problems" narrative. There's a lot more nuance out there.
For instance, my ex, a trans lesbian, broke up with me when I came out as a dude because... well, she's a lesbian. But we ended up building a deeper platonic relationship than we ever had while dating. She's truly my chosen sister now.
My connections within my local queer community, largely with transfems but also fellow transmascs, have saved me from homelessness or sleeping rough multiple times. People do care about men's suffering, and in particular trans men's suffering. While it might not always feel like enough, we're definitely not alone.
I also have a point about the general trans experience: being falsely "supported" in ways that give you dysphoria can actually be worse in the long run. I don't know what your legal and medical rights would look like if you came out; I'm privileged in those areas. But I can confirm that having even one true friend who supports you as your desired gender is infinitely better than dozens of transphobic "friends" who don't truly see you.
Unfortunately, I’m in a bit of an… awkward predicament right now, especially in terms of family. It’s not really safe for me to stay and due to financial abuse, I’m not able to leave. I live in a conservative and kind of isolated part of the UK, but law wise I’d be alright, probably. However, I am trying to remain positive as I know it will eventually end, whether it’s tomorrow or 30 years down the line, I know I will be free eventually. My hope is that it won’t be too late for me to start my life by the time that day comes. In the meantime, I’m just trying to make friends online and form my own support system. It’s so comforting to know that I’m not alone in all this, even if it all feels a little bleak right now. Your comment definitely makes me feel a lot more hopeful for the future, so thank you!
There have been at least two trans women in the UK who transitioned in their NINETIES. Patricia Davies and Louise Jennings. Both were WWII vets. Waiting to transition fucking sucks, AND ALSO it truly is never too late to transition. Trans people can find joy at any age.
It sounds like you're doing what's right for you to survive. Solidarity to you and all trans people who have to choose the closet for now.
It's fascinating how many of our experiences as trans men and trans women overlap. I have tried to push the idea that we are "socialised trans" and not as girls or boys - because who we are inside a) has an active part in how we perceive and incorporate our socialisation, b) determines how we actively shape it (who we look up to, etc., which mannerisms as subconsciously learn) and c) leaks outside, so people notice we are different and treat us as such. (Which especially leads to that kind of sexual violence you described we get for being somehow queer/gender deviant).
This does not mean the transmasc and transfem childhood experiences are the same - but being trans, even unknowingly is a huge factor that influences us all.
The other point you touch and I think get across quite good is that people have coopted the analysis of systemic oppression in order to allege power imbalances in individual relationships. And while in some cases they might be obvious because of the *actions* people take, you can't put people on an "oppression scale" because of them. Individual lives have privilege, oppression, trauma in so many dimensions that we barely know them all.
Yes, we know that *statistically* women are victims of sexual assault more often than men. But that doesn't mean when you pick *one* man and *one* woman and let them talk about the topic the woman will automatically have more experience. And if you compare specific sub groups that statistic might even flip.
It's the same fallacy people use against trans women when they say "they are males and males statistically do X".
Your comment reminds me of a tag on tumblr I saw recently. Something like, "afab is something that happened to me, it's not who I am".
I'm so sad for all the stories you share of being disregarded and treated as suspicious. What a stupid, pointless waste of good labor and goodwill.
I have to be honest I'm not wild about Bhatt because I think she, like many others, seems to take for granted that circumstances shape themselves around gender culture, to the exclusion of the inverse possibility-- that gender culture readily reshapes itself around its circumstances. As in, boys don't go to war because violence is what a real man does, they go to war because the government needs *somebody* to fight, and it's just too easy to leverage men's sense of paternalistic protectiveness to motivate enlistment. You kinda mention this at the end with that Gerda Lerner reference but it seems like people struggle to actually apply it, treating culture itself as a primary circumstance which shapes us rather than looking at the circumstances which culture responds to.
I still struggle to understand how its possible to articulate all of the ways that patriarchy/capitalism/compulsory heterosexuality/etc harm men and still say that "men are not oppressed for being men." It seems like moving the goalposts to say that bad things happen to some people because of presumptions made about their gender's nature or telos or whatever, but it only counts as "oppression" if it happens to women. I think a lot of the struggle for trans men (and particularly that urge to delineate ourselves from cis men) is because we cannot describe our problems as particularly male-- too many MRAs have framed gendered oppression as a zero-sum game, as if saying bluntly that maleness invites particular forms of oppression is somehow diminishing the severity of what women have endured.
Like, not to be rude, but-- "the devaluing of men is a double edged sword that derives from men being treated as agents in a way that women are not"-- okay, so what? Is harm not really harmful if its done under the guise of flattery? It seems everybody is really good at noticing when this happens to women-- like, men love to foist domestic labor onto women under the guise of feigned incompetence, as if women are just better at doing that work than they are, to pick a random example-- but it's somehow a different story when it happens to men, as if the bad things that happen to them as a result of flattery are somehow of a wholly different quality.
I just don't find that there's a huge difference between my feelings about gender (particularly the self-hating ones) as a trans man vs the feelings of many cis men or amab nonbinary people. Like, what exactly is the difference between a tguy who reverts to feminizing himself under duress vs an amab person who identifies as nonbinary explicitly because they hate the domination and violence implied by male identity? It seems like they are just doing different flavors of the same thing, rejecting maleness because it carries such heavy moral baggage. I just don't find our circumstances to be wildly different, and I find it kind of troubling how often people feel compelled to draw a distinction here-- like, most complaints about "transmasc privilege" are saying that trans and cis men share in common the capacity to do harm, but even trans guys who agree with the idea that they have male privilege tend to assume that their capacity to *be* harmed is somehow fundamentally different from that of cis men. And that just doesn't make sense to me.
To your point about gender and culture -- it often feels very chicken or the egg, no? Sort of a self-fulfilling cycle. You need people for war, Men make a lot of sense pragmatically (just recently I was wondering how badly a population would be impacted if you had young cis women fighting in wars to the same extent or more than cis men), you develop a kind of mythology around it, ???, Gender. Lerner talks about gender as a consequence of the segregation that develops for logistical reasons and then formalizes into mythology, symbolism, etc. But obviously it is still largely impacted by the things around us. We're definitely in a weird moment I think where patriarchy isn't really like, working the way it used to? Like men are doing kind of astoundingly bad right now but people don't want to address or they address it do it normally?
I feel like I struggle because there are obviously a large number of ways that men are advantaged over women and that's what people (me) are getting at when they say, "men aren't oppressed by patriarchy." But then you run the risk of completely minimizing or dismissing the ways that men are harmed. Like, they are oppressed... but also, there's an out somewhere, maybe? It's hard to articulate, especially when things like race and class can play such a huge role in altering the way you're treated by the System TM. Anyhow, I do appreciate what you're saying, it's just hard to pull apart.
Definitely!! Our circumstances have changed, so the symbolism and mythos we use to explain what it means have changed, too. Jessa Crispin over at The Culture We Deserve kind of blew my mind when she described what we have now as a "zombie patriarchy"-- the systems of patriarchy (marriage in particular comes to mind) are still in place, but they no longer have the legal backing they used to. Since the Victorian era, the idea that "women are property" has been legally undermined in a lot of significant ways-- women have fully equal rights to own property, to work and earn their own money, get divorced for any-or-no reason, and both genders share equally in the obligation to pay support to their ex-spouse if they split. I think culture has struggled since the 70s to figure out what to do with these new circumstances, how to make them make sense in some way that satisfyingly tracks with old ideas about gender, but we're still being bowled over by the contradictions between cultural expectations and a new material reality.
Regarding your point about moving the goalposts on men's oppression, because I do think it's a fair question to ask: *why* is it not oppression? Or rather, more precisely, why are we framing it as *not oppression* in these contexts. Since it definitely sucks and it's definitely harm.
I think something that happens in the discourse at large, especially in the 21st Century, is that oppression and harm get conflated to the point that harm outside of the context of systemic oppression (as opposed to interpersonal power dynamics) is assumed to not exist. As an aside, that kinda thing goes hand in hand with totalising moral interpretations of power and powerlessness in a systemic context and also is one of those things that ultimately ends up rewarding the already powerful and punishing the already powerless. In interpersonal contexts, talking about my experiences with anti-immigrant systems and antisemitism and Christian hegemony has led to some people immediately concluding that I was asserting some kind of moral superiority over them by talking about how shit it's been to be foreign and not a Christian in Western Europe. Most of those people were white and from Christian backgrounds.
Back to the question of the harms men suffer under patriarchy — the notional "default man" suffers harm that he is assumed to have proudly opted into, since, remember, one of the assumptions of patriarchy is that men love violence, that we are made for violence, that we always look for an excuse to be violent. Even some leftist types make admiring jokes about "guys being dudes", even though the idea that exertion of physical and social power and exercise of physical strength is a man's joyful right is deeply culturally contingent. Even within the Christian West, there are cultural contexts where a man blowing up an old washing machine would be unmanning himself through not exercising the self-control and decorum that a man of his station should have, you know? The fact is, the patriarchy doesn't set out to oppress or exploit men for being men (though the criteria of a "real man" ends up including class, race, sexuality, etc.), the patriarchy sets out to empower and benefit men (the ones who are fully men, white Christians of good socioeconomic background only need apply, making the rest of us "probationary men" who have to prove ourselves), indeed at its extreme manifestations, patriarchy assumes that men are the *only* people, that women are something else, not persons. And so the harm that men suffer under patriarchy *from being men* (as opposed to the harms suffered by marginalised and minoritised men for being something else unrelated to manhood, that may or may not put that manhood into question) is not a regretful byproduct or an oppression. It is simply assumed to *not exist*. That's the gaslighting perpetuated against men. That the violence we are pushed to do and the violence we are threatened with are *good for us, as men*. That might makes right and that's a good thing and we all enjoy it and crave it.
I'm saying "the patriarchy", but I mean Western (white Christian) patriarchy in the modern day. I highly, highly recommend Daniel Boyarin's Unheroic Conduct for an in-depth look at a different kind of patriarchy, where violence is not assumed to be a man's rightful domain, and why it's still patriarchy and also how it *didn't and doesn't have to be*. The violence is only half the problem. The other problem is the domination and exploitation of women.
As to your other point, about the assumption that trans manhood is just not at all comparable to cis manhood, ever: yeah, that's a problem I've noticed. I don't think my anxieties or my problems or my views and experiences are actually meaningfully different to that of a nontrans gay Soviet Jewish man. I think there's a sometimes nasty and sometimes outright homophobic tendency in trans masc discourse at large to assume that cis men, and also nontrans queer men and nonbinary camab queers are all somehow Different from us. And that's where we get into the punitive and disciplinary nature of degendering, and that it functions not only directly against transfeminised/womanised people but also as a threat against camab people who might be tempted to not be cis straight men.
And wouldn't it be convenient if the probationary men most likely to have solidarity with other men who aren't *quite* adequate men on grounds of sexuality and gender expression were discouraged from seeing themselves as all of one class?
EDIT, addendum to the above: Or if the mere idea of opting out of "man" or "woman" was portrayed as incoherent, through the bioessentialist justification of assignment? This part of my response is a little incoherent, I admit. How exactly nonbinary camab people fit into all of this is something that just about everyone I've read struggles with, because it seems like in the current norms that we all exist under, that's a category that we're not even permitted to think might exist.
Anyway, I also find it to be quite bullshit. Transition worked. I'm a man now. Me being trans doesn't mean I'm a wholly different kind of man. And it bugs me that many trans mascs, even ones who aren't out and out transmisogynists, even ones who are in solidarity with trans women for real, still sometimes (or often!) act like trans men are not men but a whole other gender.
Great response, thank you for your thoughts!!!
"oppression and harm get conflated to the point that harm outside of the context of systemic oppression (as opposed to interpersonal power dynamics) is assumed to not exist. [...] that kinda thing goes hand in hand with totalising moral interpretations of power and powerlessness in a systemic context and also is one of those things that ultimately ends up rewarding the already powerful and punishing the already powerless." I *think* I'm picking up what you're putting down, but can you say more about this? Particularly that second part.
I mentioned in my other reply to Trans Dandy that at this point, I think of a problem as "systemic" if its rooted in institutional policy and law, not just vibes or widespread cultural narratives. So like your personal example totally tracks, like, ~Western Christendom~ has the level of power it has today not *just* because lots of people like it and think its cool, but because centuries'-worth of resources have been funneled towards its institutions, and laws have been put in place to protect them from challenge. I think Dandy's right in that culture and policy are mutually-reinforcing, but I have an inkling that culture has less power to move policy than the other way around. (Maybe this is a particularly American problem? I'm not sure, I don't want to project, but there are certainly a lot of policy suggestions [like universal healthcare or abortion access] that are wildly popular here but still don't get done, because the people who want them are not the people in power.)
So like, I wouldn't consider ~women being mean to men as a way to vent their anger about patriarchy~ or whatever to be a systemic problem, even if it causes [a lot of] interpersonal strife/"harm"-- but there *are* policies that affect men negatively in a way that is justified by cultural assumptions about gender. Here in America, the draft is a pretty obvious one, that men are required to register with the military in case they are called upon to go to war whether or not they actually want to. People tend to roll their eyes about complaining-about-the-draft because it hasn't been used in at least a generation or two, or they say that it's fine because men simply love being violent, etc. Capitalism is another obvious one-- like, I don't understand how we recognize that sexism makes men the primary workforce, and that capitalism oppresses that workforce, and still for some reason have to claim that men are not the group primarily oppressed by capitalist workplace dynamics, because actually it's women who Really Suffer by being disallowed from participating at all. When weird conservative women like Abby Shapiro say that capitalist self-sufficiency is a raw deal, one which women are better off rejecting than demanding inclusion-in, I can see where they're coming from (*and* why left-leaning men tend to latch onto labor issues rather than gender issues-- the only way to deal with our gendered problems without becoming selfish and solipsistic is to talk about labor as it affects us all). It sort of seems like these systems screw everyone, just in differently-gendered ways.
But these issues are constantly framed as a problem of "men hurting themselves bc hubris" rather than a problem of particular powers hurting their subjects who ~just so happen~ to be men. In that way, I think the idea of "men are the gender with agency" winds up becoming an unfalsifiable presumption, which obfuscates the way that many men have no such agency at all-- patriarchy is not about valuing or uplifting men, it's about concentrating power in the hands of the powerful.
Importantly, I don't think it makes a difference whether a policy is *intentionally* oppressive, or is only incidentally so-- I think a lot of left-ish people talk about misogynist policy as if it's bad *because* it came from bad intentions, that constant refrain of "these systems exist because people hate women." But I think that oppressive policy is bad regardless of whether it's bad-on-purpose or bad-on-accident, and arguing about motives sort of leaves the door open for bad policy so long as its proponents can invent some benevolent excuse.
In any case I think it becomes a sort of self-perpetuating truism that men who are oppressed are "probationary men," i.e. their maleness is presumed to be in a precarious position specifically *because* they are oppressed by patriarchal norms & policy. I don't really think that tracks with the particular problems faced by queer or nonwhite men, who sometimes-or-often wind up maligned in a way that frames them as *too* "masculine" rather than not masculine enough. We wind up assuming that there is some kind of Man's Man who patriarchy unconditionally loves, in a way that I don't think anyone ever lives up to and which sort of elides the very possibility that patriarchy might oppress men in any way other than emasculation. That just doesn't track with my experience, and I think its a lot of what leads trans men to feel distanced from maleness as a result of their particular oppression.
Apologies for the very late reply, I've been awfully busy the past few months.
Basically, re: "rewarding the powerful/punishing the powerless" as regards totalising moral interpretations ... often it shakes out that when issues of interpersonal conflict come up, the people who have more credibility in terms of defining the interactions are the ones who've got more access to power and systemic protection, and "harm must equal oppression" can be then weaponised against whoever they're beefing with.
And in my experience, I've most often seen white fragility (especially, if I can be blunt, Waspy fragility) be weaponised that way, and especially against trans women. The worst I've seen is when trans women of colour get treated as by default wishing to cause harm when all they're doing is being kinda abrasive at worst or even being friendly and trying to engage in conversation but not doing it in the cloying deferential way that's the norm in too many nerd spaces. I've also seen this happen with cis women of colour, with white trans women, I've been occasionally a target of it myself as a TME fag who can't really "do" the kinda conflict-avoidant passive-aggressive shtik and has other shit going on that makes people view me as, well, mean and duplicitous no matter what I do.
Basically, for those of us who are marginalised/minoritised even within queer communities, we're implicitly put upon to prove that any harm we're experiencing is related to systemic issues or else often it's just not taken seriously. Though in my experience, sometimes even being able to point towards actual patterns of shit behaviour towards people of colour, towards trans women, towards Jews, towards people who are all three — that ends up not mattering if the person who's acting out of line is seen as a harmless smol bean with anxiety. And because they're seen as someone who Cannot Oppress Others, regardless of whether they're e.g. taking advantage of being a Wasp to bully others, no harm is assumed to be done unless they say something truly egregious. Because the defense is always "oh they couldn't know better" or "they didn't mean that".
It's also an issue of beginning conflict resolution with the intent of figuring out who's acting all nicey and who's being Mean, and generally, wouldn't you know it, it's the white Christians/ex-Christians who are judged to be acting Nice, even when they're in the wrong.
Nothing personal, but when I first saw the title of this in my email notifications, I said to myself "oh boy" in the tone of the IT department head waking up to frantic texts from their bosses and coworkers. Having actually read the piece now, I don't feel that way anymore, and in fact, I think this is one of the most honest takes on this issue that I've seen.
I mentioned once on your essay responding to Jude Doyle that I grew up in basically the opposite online social circles to you, namely anti-sjw tumblr. And let me tell you, it's been real ass trying to actually care about social justice causes while also navigating being transmasc, cause it feels like everyone is conspiring to prove my teenage anti-sjw self right lol. It really does seem like the Correct Transfeminists takes right now are that trans men are just collateral damage to transmisogyny, but we still use the term 'transphobia' for... idk nostalgia reasons? It kind of makes me respect the OG baeddels (the 2010s tumblr clique, not any other fakers!) for just saying men can't be trans or face transphobia with their full chests, rather than twisting themselves into pretzels to avoid saying that while all of what they say implies otherwise.
And in general it feels like no matter what I say, unless I'm posting about how all other trans men are whiny stupid babies who don't understand real oppression, I'm going to get branded as an MRA if I ever object to how people talk about trans men or how they're just plain wrong about our experiences. Or maybe I just have to prove I'm One Of The Good Ones by tirelessly selflessly sacrificing my time and energy for others, like you have, and then finally I'll have earned the right to talk about my struggles. Maybe this entire thought process proves I'm one of the Bad Ones, though, I dunno.
I wish I could take your last paragraph to heart, but I just can't. I think the only think waiting for me if I ever open my mouth is harassment, ESPECIALLY by fellow trans people. Sorry to be a bummer, but that's my truth and it may just be the only truth I ever get to express on this matter.
EDIT: I should probably mention I'm bigender, both a man and a woman, so this whole thing is even more complicated for me. But it's actually more depressing, cause people will either think I'm trying to avoid accountability by still identifying with 'femaleness' (not a concept I even believe in) or shrug their shoulders and say nothing they're saying applies to nonbinary people anyway. So my experiences get ignored and disregarded no matter what I do! Awesome!! /s
Glad to see other trans men trying to help each other heal!!
The dialectic of:
Yes, we DO have to come up with decent theory to explain our oppression and suffering, lest we end up arguing for "solutions" that cause more harm (to others but also ourselves!), and
We (trans men) are in general extremely traumatized, lonely, and abused. Many of us need crisis intervention - often literal suicide counseling. Cis people (overall) don't understand or give a damn; I've met trans women who care but are also dealing with their own problems. So that leaves us trans men to care for each other.
I've written and deleted this comment several times because explaining all the interpersonal trauma and systemic erasure that led to me feeling I didn't deserve to live would take too long. Suffice to say, I personally feel the desire and moral obligation to do emotional work for other trans men, the emotional work I needed someone to do for me.
We don't need to be supermen to justify our own existence. We can just be men. People, even.
Obviously there were many points made in this essay. As someone who is in very different social circles (cis, hetero, but still a white man) I appreciated this perspective. I've met a large handful of trans women over my life and through their friendships and observing their journeys I've always been curious about how it feels like the trans male experience is so often excluded from the stereotypes and generalizations of transness. So I found this to br a very fresh read for me.
I identified as a trans man for four years, and then stopped because I had to move back home after college. I was only out to like, five people, so I didn’t detransition in a traditional sense. But because I needed to survive I decided I couldn’t be a man anymore.
I don’t know if I’m a trans man, nonbinary, bigender, or something else. I’m trying to restart that journey, but I don’t think I’ll ever be able to until I have more distance from my family. But I do know that whatever it is, it fucking hurts, and I feel so alone. This made me feel very seen. Thank you.
Feeling alone is a very common transmasculine experience - to me it seems almost systemic. I'm so, so sorry you had to go back in the closet for your own safety. Good luck getting away from your family. Do what you gotta do.
I've noticed over the years that whenever I was victimised, there was always within easy reach the narrative of being a victimised and wronged man, emasculated by the current progressive paradigms and denied the dignity of being recognised as someone who's been hurt. And I can't say that I always avoided that temptation, either!
It's something that's also, in my experience, pops up with racism and white supremacy — the weirdo racists accusing "The Left" of not caring about poor rural whites or ethnic whites or whatever.
All of this is, like. Fucking news to me, you know? As a white man, disabled and gay and trans and foreign, I've still found it much easier to navigate the benefits system and housing assistance and whatever. I only had to have a couple of shitty and humiliating conversations with staff at a general population homeless shelter before being transferred, without me even asking, to a specialist shelter that admitted only men deemed to be vulnerable. I didn't have to be assaulted and I didn't have to beg or threaten or even raise legal action and there was no question of me *not* belonging in a men's shelter. I was not fobbed off by the council when first presenting as homeless and I was not misled as to whether I could access services. Being a white man is probably all I've got going for me, in terms of protection from systemic violence. I think I'd be dead without that sliver of protection.
It's standard, almost, I'm sure you know this and have seen this yourself – the redirection of grievances towards the marginalised and exploited and the attempts to prevent meaningful solidarity forming between various exploited classes and the offer of that additional sliver of protection, especially to people who damn well know it will make a difference between life and death. Everyone is subject to the threat of violence under patriarchy, but men are offered the chance to strike first, to wield the violence, to have agency as to when and to whom it happens. We're told violence is the law of the land and that it's a game we can win. And if we don't want to play, the consequence is a risk — a very real risk — of being relegated to the part of humanity who are the objects of violence.
And there's the fact that hegemony is totalising but society is not homogenous. Within my own communities and within my own classes and my own contexts, the agency and power that being a white man give me are significant. Sometimes they make a difference outside of those contexts. Sometimes they don't, not really.
But it also means that when trans mascs are victimised and targeted by the patriarchy and then told we can *get out of that*, even in terms of self-image and interpersonal relationships, if we would only assert our right as men — through exerting power over women — the logical and obvious targets are the women in our own communities, and especially trans women. Punching down is always presented as a way out. Except what it actually does is harm our own communities and destroy class solidarity in favour of identity. I'm sure nothing I'm saying is new, but still. It's relevant here.
Wow there's something about reading a thought you've only ever had in your head (about playing the cards you were dealt and not trying for a redraw) written out nearly word for word... thank you for writing this. I'm struck.
Love love love this, it describes something that has been floating around in my mind for years. It also reminds me of how my transness, my yiddish-ness, and my anti-zionism are all deeply enriching of one another.
Being on the margins but able to opt in to privilege and power, having to navigate contradictions between surface-level perceptions and deeper analysis, learning what it means to be a victim but not self-victimizing…
"Because the idealist concept of identity politics is so easy to weaponize, reactionaries utilize this to obscure the real conflict at hand" I think this is a pretty good essay, but the term you're looking for here is not identity politics, it's identity reductionism. Identity politics is a legitimate framework created primarily to understand misogynoir. I see a lot of leftists (especially yes, white people) use "identity politics" to refer to this idea (and to degrade things that are not, in fact, harmful) when a completely different term more concisely describes what's going on.
Thank you.
I was crying by the end. I am still crying now. This essay feels really important for me and for the rest of the world frankly. Thank you for writing this, I hope you are proud of what you have created. You have helped me to understand this wretched fucked up experience I have been having over the last 8 years that has kept me in limbo. Or maybe stuck on a pendulem swinging between genders. I have been unable to articulate what I have been experiencing, most intensely, recently.
Thank you for the validation and the cheerleading. This essay is going to help me unlock positive change in my life and I will be returning to it again and again to fully understand your meaning.
This is absolutely brilliant omg. It's such a relief to read something that perfectly explains a phenomenon I haven't been able to accurately explain in my own words. It's so easy to fall for gender essentialist talking points because our entire world is structured around them, but reading essays like this by trans authors reminds me that, actually, no! I don't need to blindly force myself, as a trans man, into cisgender categorizations! Hella kudos from a fellow trans dude o7
your work encapsulates things i’ve been trying to say to people for years now while working my way out of the essentialist trap. perfect essay, no notes. this is so accessible to people who haven’t yet formed a proper system of analysis, this is exactly what we need as trans men and transmascs to form our own group identity and better serve the coalition with trans women and fems in the fight for our existence.
Thank you