youareagoodperson:

the-four-humors:

Honestly, the reason trans men tend to fall into terf-y ways of thinking is not because all terfs are secretly trans men. most terfs are cis women and it lets cis women off the hook for transmisogyny otherwise. 

but take it from a trans man who used to hold proto-terf ideas – and who still has some transmisogynist beliefs he trying to work past – the reason trans men fall in with that group is for a similar reason to why cis white men have started going so far right politically.

for a breakdown on that phenomenon, i suggest watching this video, but i’ll sum up the parts that apply to trans men:

Trans men, especially those that are interested in social justice, are told that men unilaterally benefit from the patriarchy. But unless we pass fully in our day-to-day lives, trans men do not see all the benefits from patriarchy that we are told by multiple sources that we should. A trans man who cannot publicly pass will still experience misplaced misogyny, be it in the form of day-to-day interactions like catcalling, or institutionalized issues like birth control legislation or the wage gap. 

So you’ve got this man who does not see the benefits of cis manhood, and who is looking for support from people who understand him. And what system is there in place to defend reproductive health and end street harassment? Feminism. So he starts getting into feminism. 

And then he starts talking to women who are telling him that yes, yes he is being oppressed because he has a vagina. And that everyone with a vagina is oppressed by everyone with a penis. And that anyone born with a penis will never really know what it is like to be oppressed based on genitalia. 

Now you’ve got a trans man who is saying that because trans women were ‘socialized as male’ that they benefit from patriarchy but that he doesn’t. 

He got to that point because he does not benefit from (cis) patriarchy. But what he of course does not stop to think about is that trans women can never tap into the patriarchy. He also doesn’t realize that the feminists who are so much in support of him aren’t supporting him because they think he’s a man – they’re supporting him because they think he’s just a confused tomboy. 

Now, I think that there should be conversations about the ways in which trans men do and do not benefit from patriarchy. In some ways we do, in many ways we don’t. I don’t think it’s wrong to say that pre-transition or transitioning trans men are treated differently under the system than cis men are. But, that does not mean that we have the same disadvantages as trans women, or that trans women in any way benefit from patriarchy. 

Trans men can be TERFs. But they do not on their own perpetuate it. To say that they do a) ignores the ways in which trans men end up there and refuses to give them other alternatives, and b) lets cis women off the hook by implying that transmisogyny is purely trans male-on-trans female violence and not, y’know, a product of cis people.

Is this along the same line as why more truscum tend to be ftm trans people? Because I was thinking something along the lines of toxic masculinity