On Transmisandry

When people say ‘transmisandry doesn’t exist because misandry doesn’t exist’. they are fixating on the semantics instead of on our need for a specific word to describe issues that affect only us. Transphobia doesn’t cover it any more than ‘misogyny’ covers transmisogyny.

Trans men do not experience misandry. They experience something different which can be called transmisandry , which is not at all the same thing as being hated for being men, and is not the same as what trans women experience so it’s not interchangeable with transphobia .

You can use another word but I really need to protest against the arguments that put misandry as defined by cis men as a criteria for what trans men experience.

Here are just some of the things that trans men experience due to society’s hostility that we need our own specific language and space for:

being assumed to have the same male privilege as cis men

being assumed to WANT this privilege at the cost of women; i.e. treated like predators

being denied shared experiences with women because we are not women

being accused of invading women’s spaces

fearing cis men even though we are also men

not being respected by cis men

struggling with feeling inferior to cis men, to trans women, and to cis women

misdirected lesbophobia and the issues it causes

our bodies being affected by birth control issues

risking misgendering in ways specific to trans men (for example not being able to pee standing up)

struggling to define our gender while rejecting the toxic social constructs of it

being hated for being women (!! we are perceived as women by so many)

struggling with the influence of cis men on our behaviour

the safety of feminine spaces vs the desire not to encroach on them

making women uncomfortable

supporting feminism while rejecting things typically seen as feminine

for example, not being able to take part in destigmatising periods because of dysphoria and provoking misgendering

the guilt of rejecting femininity

the guilt of embracing masculinity

the guilt of hating our female-coded bodies in a world that hates women’s bodies already

underrepresentation in media of trans men specifically

fatphobia and body policing in a trans male context

and finally, I’m sorry, but this kind of dismissive attitude and erasure of our need to have our own words simultaneous with a complete support for trans women to have theirs, based on…well…the fact that we’re men. That’s exactly transmisandry- we’re trans people whose struggles are brushed aside because we’re men. :/



And yeah, trans women experience some of the above too- but in a different context that only they can truly understand, and that’s why they have ‘transmisogyny’ as a word to describe it.



We need our own space and our own language just like they do. It’s not just for our benefit (which should be reason enough!), but also to avoid bringing male-focused conversations into spaces where they can make women (cis and trans) uncomfortable or distract from their specific issues.



I don’t wanna pull emotional manipulations here but I do need to say this: it hurts a LOT having to constantly argue that I and others like me do actually struggle in a very specific way, especially in groups that are already ostensibly trans-friendly, and to have validation of my experience hanging on semantics. The concept of our struggle is always thrown out along with the word, as if they were one and the same.



(this is a slightly edited version of a reblog I once made to a post on the topic)