Androphobia - Tumblr Posts
Personally, we're really not bothered by the occasional quip of "men are trash" or "I hate men" or whatever. We recognize that they come from a place of trauma and genuine expression of frustration. We fully believe people are allowed to express their pain in imperfect ways.
What we take issue with is repeated patterns of behavior in which men are treated as inherently more dangerous or untrustworthy than any other gender. Keep in mind, that this is different than pointing out common behaviors of misogyny from men, that stems from being raised in a patriarchal society.
I'm talking specifically about the rhetoric that posits that men are innately and irrevocably more violent or bigoted. This is gender esssntialism. This is what we are talking about when we bring up people who treat men badly on the basis of their gender. Treating real human beings as if their gender is just some curse that poisons their entire being.
This phenomenon overlaps very strongly with other forms of bigotry. Black men being treated as dangerous thugs - yes, because they're Black, but also specifically because they're Black men. Their masculinity is seen as violent and unsafe, and gender essentialism is weaponized against them more violently because of how it overlaps with racism.
When trans men come out, and are told that taking testosterone will make us angry, aggressive, and most importantly - ugly and infertile. When we experience corrective rape, have our life saving medications taken away from us. This is gender essentialism, overlapping with transphobia and misogyny. It's not just that we're transitioning, it's specifically that our masculinity is treated as more unsafe, more untrustworthy, more vile, because we're trans men.
And this does absolutely start with the way we treat cis men. Dehumanizing cis men on the basis of their gender, will inevitably lead to you dehumanizing marginalized men. You will contribute to the marginalization of men of color and trans men. You will actively contribute to racism and transphobia, because the oppression that we experience is intertwined with that same gender essentialism.
This is what intersectionality is. You cannot perpetuate gender essentialism and expect it not to have broader impacts on other marginalized groups. Because these forms of oppression intersect! They can't be separated from each other. You can't seperate the harm that Black men experience from the idea that men are inherently dangerous. You can't seperate the harm that trans men experience from the idea that testosterone makes you violent. Your ideas about men do not exist in a vacuum.
This started off as a multigender rant but includes other things, because I'm so pissed off at the queer community for these things that I need to fit it all in one post. Sit back and prepare for this, it's a long read (also feel free to scroll past) being multigender sucks because I feel too paradoxical to be taken seriously. It doesn't help that I'm also agender :/ Like yeah, identity is your own and you shouldn't shave off parts of it to appease others, but damn does the 'passive' hostility and invalidation towards multigender people such as myself make me feel pushed towards changing myself sometimes. You can scream into the void all you want about being normal about multigender people and how they label their experiences, but some people just... never will be. That's what it feels like, from the fucking queer community as well as cishet society. It sucks. I can never be comfortable to explore my womanhood because then my manhood and agenderhood will never be taken seriously. Hell, the fact that I simultaneously experience gender AND being genderless is enough for people to just shit on me and exile me from queer spaces. The fact that I prefer ze/hir and it/its and nounself pronouns is enough for people to call me one of the bad ones. AND, the fact that I am more comfortable being perceived as a man suddenly makes me a 'danger to women'. There are so many issues with how multigender people, neurodivergent queers (literally any kind of neurodivergent, not just the neopronoun xenogender autistic person), queer POC, the list goes on are treated; if you aren't a white woman god help you, god forbid you're a man in any way either. And don't even get me started about how aroace people are fucking treated. I could go on for another few paragraphs about how I, as someone who is aroace spec and a plethora of other things, don't feel safe sometimes. I could go on and on and on. And fuck it, I will (under the cut because this post is already comically long):
'Aroace is a spectrum' this, 'all aroaces are valid' that, until you're romance/sex oscillating or even favorable, until you're polyamorous, until you're also a lesbian or a gay person or m-spec. Even in the fucking aroace community you're held by some bar of being aroace enough, and if you diverge even slightly god forbid. Allo fictives of aroace characters, hell even those who are aroace in a different way, have to listen to the incessant whining of the 'stop making sexual/romantic fiction of this character! they're repulsed in canon!' crowd. It's fucking obnoxious. Aroace people are already not taken seriously, aroallos and alloaces are already not taken seriously, and then you have the clown parade of people forcing their own idea of what they want you to be down your throat. The queer community and its many facets feel so fucking unsafe at times, and that sucks because we're all we've got. Some people don't have supportive family or connections outside of online queer spaces, and this is what they get. It's so incredibly shitty. I don't feel aroace enough because of my experiences, despite also having very stereotypical aroace experiences. I feel forced to constantly be sex/romance averse at times because again, god forbid you're ever favorable. I have two partners, okay? I have partners who I don't necessarily 'love' but care about a lot, and then I have to come across things that erase the fact that I am quite often averse to sex and romance because of this fact! People like me are constantly erased, and when they're represented in fiction people throw a hissy fit. "Oh you're forcing an aroace character into allonormativity!" Hey asshole: maybe, just maybe, aroace people can date just as much as they aren't required to. Fucking. Jesus. Some community this is, for there to be so much exclusion and hatred and segregation.
Misandry is men getting laughed at when they come out about being sexually or physically abused. Misandry is the suicide rates of men, and the normalization of telling men to just deal with their problems, to 'man up' whenever they have issues. Misandry is the generalization that men are all aggressive and dangerous. Misandry is painting testosterone as a poison. Transandrophobia is the demonization of masculine trans men and mascs, telling them that T will ruin their body, that bottom surgery is disgusting. Transandrophobia is shoving the words 'male privilege' down a trans man's throat when they dare speak up about the harmful way we are treated in the community. Transandrophobia is the erasure of our issues, of our deaths, of our oppression. It's treating being transmasculine as so much easier than being transfeminine. It's making fun of a trans guy's voice, pointing out their chest as an excuse to misgender them, simultaneous expectations of masculinity and femininity (if you stopped being so masculine then people wouldn't be afraid of you! oh but not like that, now you just look like a woman so your manhood isn't valid). It's infantilization, and demonization of those who cannot be infantilized.
when you aren't even human and have the no empathy disorders (trademark), but manage to do a better job at being a decent 'person' than the anti misandry and anti transandrophobia crowd.
oh by the way, read the tags, thanks!
lesbianism does not mean hating men. yes, unoriginal post and even I've made a post saying that already etc. etc. But people really seem to not understand that not being interested in men doesn't mean downright hating them. It feels very try-hard: in their need to be vindicated within their lesbian identity, they go the extra mile and convince themselves that not only are they not into men, but they also despise men. it sounds so tiring to base your identity on hatred rather than who you are or are into.
Me: hey there's a big issue with anti-masculinity in queer and leftist spaces. Trans fems, if they don't constantly perform hyperfemininity and aren't little and skinny and white, are demonised and people call them pedophiles because there's such a dislike of any association with masculinity. Trans mascs are told they're "whiny MRAs" when they talk about the oppression they face. Masculine intersex people are erased or told they should just be more feminine if they don't want people to be scared of them for looking masculine. People act like marginalised men (queer men, trans men, men of colour, etc, intersex men) aren't actually marginalised because they're men. The vocal "all men literally ARE evil" rhetoric isn't actually venting when it's constant and public, it's harming marginalised men and is a contributing factor to teens and young cis (often but not always het) going down the alt-right pipeline, and is directly linked with trans people not transitioning or being too scared to transition because by becoming a man they are becoming "the enemy". There's the idea of "women +" or "women and nonbinary," which positions all nonbinary people as 'basically women' or affiliated with femininity, and in practice ends up pushing away anyone who appears or identifies with masculinity, regardless of their gender identity. Butches are treated as if they're just sex toys, or that they're scary and dangerous because of their masc presentation. This is actually a huge, pervasive issue that is further hurting already marginalised people AND is pushing potential allies away because it's making them feel bad for something they can't control (being men.)
Dumbasses: lol op thinks cis men are oppressed by minorities