YUP! My partner transitioned in the middle of a job hunt and suddenly everyone was calling him back and trying to hire him. Same exact resume, but he’d been out of work even longer.
Not to mention even the shift from being butch/masc in any way can also be huge. Men get mad if you’re not fuckable, and also people’s general annoyance at gender transition. I’m a hs teacher and dress masc, and I noticed that people would basically treat that as me being immature and refusing to grow up/refusing to be professional. When you’re (read as) a female teacher, there’s this expectation that your teacher persona should be Mary Poppins or Mrs. Trunchbull, and you can’t have chill dad energy in the way the male teachers can without being read as lazy or spacey or a pushover. And then those same schools/teachers/admins have the gall to act like they’re so cool with queer folks, when it’s so obvious that they’re only okay with the most heteronormative ones.
this is beautifully put! transmisandry as a concept has never made much sense to me, and this so effectively and cleanly breaks down why. i think there are interesting conversations to be had about the demonization of certain types of masculinity (Black masculinity, butch masculinity, TERF beliefs in femininity being pure, etc), but that doesn't equate to a structural presence of misandry
This article gave me a lot to ponder. I found part of myself reacting to it even though I agree with Devon's finer points on intersectional oppression. Turns out I want everyone to have opportunity to heal from their particular experiences, even men. I can't see how claiming men aren't oppressed is contributing to a kinder future for all of us. Here's what I wrote about that: https://libervrc.substack.com/p/gatekeeping-oppression-is-missing
This was a great essay!! really enjoyed reading this! Can you write something about the experiences of Black femme trans men/Black gender fluid trans men? I found that over the years I have more in common socially with Black trans woman particularly with how I am received
I think the next article needs to be "trans masc invisibility does not exist" Where are trans mascs invisible? They occupy more space on the boards of non-profits, positions in DEI, administration jobs at LGBTQ centers, more positions in academia, highly privildged in the publishing of queer theory. Where is the invisibility? Trans women can't even get people to read transmisogyny 101 without being accused of causing infighting or called slurs.
It seems this is often about representation in media, but you can't understand that without also understanding transmisogyny. Trans women's visibility in media is a result of fetishization and objectification, the stories told about us in main stream media are rarely are own, they are stigmatizing. At worst, we are are serial kills, deceivers, predators, and at best, we are a character with a tragic back story that serves the main cis character as something to empathize with and build their arc. This is why there is pushback against "transmiadnry, anti-transmasculinity" because no matter what, its almost framed into opposition to and as a denials of transmiogyny. Parts of transmisogyny's function is to frames the oppression of trans women (our fetishization, objectification) into a privilege we must atone for. I can't take seriously any framework that calls this "visibility" a privilege, its like saying cis women are priviledged for being the objects of porn, a think men's right's activists argue.
You can see the effect of this on transition rates among youth, of which far more trans masculine people are transitioning than trans women. This is because of transmisogyny, the "visibility" of trans women is incredibly stigmatizing and the social pressures against transition are far greater. There was a time when there was an information gap on the existence of trans men and trans masculine affirming care, but we are past that. Not only does transmiogyny and trans femme "visibility" contribute to more stigmatization and less trans women transitioning, but it shapes the way transphobes view this. The higher rates of trans masculine people transitioning get invoked as a moral panic in which the evil trans women ggroomers are manipulating poor innocent girls into transmiogyny. Through transmiogyny, trans women's "visibility" gets invoked to blame trans women for what is actually trans men being the more visible group.
"The trans man’s oppression here is inextricably tied to the oppression of all women, and of all trans people."
The issue with any "misandry" or "anti-masculinity" frame work or group, is that no matter the intent it inevitably ends up blaming women for the problems of men. All men, cis or trans, must be aligned with women and anti-misogyny.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that more transmascs are transitioning today, but the 2022 US Transgender Survey shows that trans men make up about 25% of the total number of trans people; trans women make up 35%, nonbinary people make up 30%. While transmisogyny is one likely reason among many for why some people don't transition, but flattening multi-variant pressures into one singular problem is not accurate or helpful.
In recent years there has been an undeniable shift in trans women's positive media visibility-- the so-called "transgender tipping point" was ten years ago, and there's been a significant uptick in shows about trans women, many of them with trans women as creators (Pose, Euphoria, Sense8). Obviously our media never presents any characters as perfectly admirable people, but to act like trans women only ever show up in culture to be mocked and degraded just isn't true. There is no transmasc equivalent to Kim Petras or the Wachowskis or the dozens of impressive and glamorous trans women who wind up on RuPaul. I don't understand why this denial is par for the course, and even gets a like from Dr. Price, when it seems the only point is to tell trans men that our problems aren't real or aren't that bad or actually don't have anything at all to do with us.
Julia Serano, the inventor of the concept of transmisogyny & author of "transmisogyny 101" (Whipping Girl), actually has a pretty nuanced view of the difficulties that trans men face, at least compared to the bulk of people talking about it online. In her essays "On “Male Socialization” And The “Trans Masc Versus Trans Fem” Discourse™" and "What is Transmisogyny?" (both here on substack and medium) go into this in detail.
YUP! My partner transitioned in the middle of a job hunt and suddenly everyone was calling him back and trying to hire him. Same exact resume, but he’d been out of work even longer.
Not to mention even the shift from being butch/masc in any way can also be huge. Men get mad if you’re not fuckable, and also people’s general annoyance at gender transition. I’m a hs teacher and dress masc, and I noticed that people would basically treat that as me being immature and refusing to grow up/refusing to be professional. When you’re (read as) a female teacher, there’s this expectation that your teacher persona should be Mary Poppins or Mrs. Trunchbull, and you can’t have chill dad energy in the way the male teachers can without being read as lazy or spacey or a pushover. And then those same schools/teachers/admins have the gall to act like they’re so cool with queer folks, when it’s so obvious that they’re only okay with the most heteronormative ones.
this is beautifully put! transmisandry as a concept has never made much sense to me, and this so effectively and cleanly breaks down why. i think there are interesting conversations to be had about the demonization of certain types of masculinity (Black masculinity, butch masculinity, TERF beliefs in femininity being pure, etc), but that doesn't equate to a structural presence of misandry
Yes, I absolutely agree!
This article gave me a lot to ponder. I found part of myself reacting to it even though I agree with Devon's finer points on intersectional oppression. Turns out I want everyone to have opportunity to heal from their particular experiences, even men. I can't see how claiming men aren't oppressed is contributing to a kinder future for all of us. Here's what I wrote about that: https://libervrc.substack.com/p/gatekeeping-oppression-is-missing
This was a great essay!! really enjoyed reading this! Can you write something about the experiences of Black femme trans men/Black gender fluid trans men? I found that over the years I have more in common socially with Black trans woman particularly with how I am received
I think the next article needs to be "trans masc invisibility does not exist" Where are trans mascs invisible? They occupy more space on the boards of non-profits, positions in DEI, administration jobs at LGBTQ centers, more positions in academia, highly privildged in the publishing of queer theory. Where is the invisibility? Trans women can't even get people to read transmisogyny 101 without being accused of causing infighting or called slurs.
It seems this is often about representation in media, but you can't understand that without also understanding transmisogyny. Trans women's visibility in media is a result of fetishization and objectification, the stories told about us in main stream media are rarely are own, they are stigmatizing. At worst, we are are serial kills, deceivers, predators, and at best, we are a character with a tragic back story that serves the main cis character as something to empathize with and build their arc. This is why there is pushback against "transmiadnry, anti-transmasculinity" because no matter what, its almost framed into opposition to and as a denials of transmiogyny. Parts of transmisogyny's function is to frames the oppression of trans women (our fetishization, objectification) into a privilege we must atone for. I can't take seriously any framework that calls this "visibility" a privilege, its like saying cis women are priviledged for being the objects of porn, a think men's right's activists argue.
You can see the effect of this on transition rates among youth, of which far more trans masculine people are transitioning than trans women. This is because of transmisogyny, the "visibility" of trans women is incredibly stigmatizing and the social pressures against transition are far greater. There was a time when there was an information gap on the existence of trans men and trans masculine affirming care, but we are past that. Not only does transmiogyny and trans femme "visibility" contribute to more stigmatization and less trans women transitioning, but it shapes the way transphobes view this. The higher rates of trans masculine people transitioning get invoked as a moral panic in which the evil trans women ggroomers are manipulating poor innocent girls into transmiogyny. Through transmiogyny, trans women's "visibility" gets invoked to blame trans women for what is actually trans men being the more visible group.
"The trans man’s oppression here is inextricably tied to the oppression of all women, and of all trans people."
The issue with any "misandry" or "anti-masculinity" frame work or group, is that no matter the intent it inevitably ends up blaming women for the problems of men. All men, cis or trans, must be aligned with women and anti-misogyny.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that more transmascs are transitioning today, but the 2022 US Transgender Survey shows that trans men make up about 25% of the total number of trans people; trans women make up 35%, nonbinary people make up 30%. While transmisogyny is one likely reason among many for why some people don't transition, but flattening multi-variant pressures into one singular problem is not accurate or helpful.
In recent years there has been an undeniable shift in trans women's positive media visibility-- the so-called "transgender tipping point" was ten years ago, and there's been a significant uptick in shows about trans women, many of them with trans women as creators (Pose, Euphoria, Sense8). Obviously our media never presents any characters as perfectly admirable people, but to act like trans women only ever show up in culture to be mocked and degraded just isn't true. There is no transmasc equivalent to Kim Petras or the Wachowskis or the dozens of impressive and glamorous trans women who wind up on RuPaul. I don't understand why this denial is par for the course, and even gets a like from Dr. Price, when it seems the only point is to tell trans men that our problems aren't real or aren't that bad or actually don't have anything at all to do with us.
Julia Serano, the inventor of the concept of transmisogyny & author of "transmisogyny 101" (Whipping Girl), actually has a pretty nuanced view of the difficulties that trans men face, at least compared to the bulk of people talking about it online. In her essays "On “Male Socialization” And The “Trans Masc Versus Trans Fem” Discourse™" and "What is Transmisogyny?" (both here on substack and medium) go into this in detail.