transandrophobia isnt real the way transmisogyny is real because thats not how intersectionality works. transmisogyny is specifically the intersection of oppression transfemmes face of transphobia and misogyny. for transandrophobia to be real, androphobia itself would have to be real. men are not an oppressed class. there is no systemic disenfranchisement men face for being men when living in a patriarchal society. transmascs absolutely face transphobia, and there are certain aspects of transphobia that may be different between transmascs and transfemmes, but that is not transandrophobia.
This is a fantastic explanation for why the term faces skepticism and I appreciate it because it’s finally made the argument against it click for me
The remaining issue is, I don’t have a different word to use when I specifically reference “transphobia that is distinctly directed towards trans men in ways that combine transphobia bioessentialism and mysoginy, that is similar to but also slightly different from that which is directed towards trans women” that still acknowleges that trans men are not women
IE, “You’re not a man, you just hate facing oppression as a woman”, “You’re not trans, you just have internalized mysoginy”, “You don’t have to be a man to accomplish your goals, You’re just pretending to be one so you don’t have to face female gender discrimination”, “Transitioning to male means you’re eager to oppress women”, “Now that you’re a man you don’t have to deal with mysoginy or gender-based violence”, etc
I think the men’s rights movement is bullshit, don’t get me wrong, but walking around being an openly trans man, emphasis on trans man and not just man, seems to read to a lot of people as “female gender-traitor pervert”, and I don’t have the VOCABULARY for that experience
and this particular exchange, the “men aren’t oppressed” vs “I don’t have words to talk about how trans men are oppressed,” is a great example of another way transandrophobia functions: through hermeneutical injustice.
“hermeneutical injustice” is a type of epistemic injustice, the other type being “testimonial injustice.” these terms were coined by Miranda Fricker in 1999 to describe a framework by which particular marginalized groups or people are barred from expressing, describing, or sharing their understanding of their own lived experience.
to briefly explain the two subtypes, testimonial injustice refers to someone’s descriptions of their own experience to be distrusted, erased, or silenced based on the belief that they are not a reliable narrator or are otherwise being disingenuous somehow. Trans men often experience this too, but my main focus here is hermeneutical injustice, which is an imposed limitation on someone’s ability to interpret their own experiences - limitations on which types of inferences are considered valid or acceptable, or what vocabulary and concepts are allowed to be used in discussions.
Think of the aim of the fictional constructed form of English known as “Newspeak” in George Orwell’s 1984 - in the book, the intent of the language’s architects was to limit the types of ideas that could be entertained in conversations and even thoughts, removing ideas like “bad” and replacing them with ideas like “un-good.” The goal there was that anyone dissatisfied with the Ingsoc regime would be forced into discussing it in terms of mere shortcomings (ways it wasn’t good) and not the active evils that it perpetrated (ways it was bad).
So by limiting trans men and mascs’ ability to create terms for ourselves, this is what is being done - we are not able to name and specify the forms of oppression that affect us specifically unless we have the language to do so; without terms like “transandrophobia” (or transmisandry, or antitransmasculinity, or any of the other more niche terms that have been coined in an attempt to avoid this hermeneutical injustice) we must refer to “transphobia that is different than what transfems face” or constructions that are similarly awkward and circumscribed. Notably, these constructions force us to compare our struggles to transfems or cis women - much like “un-good” forces one to think in terms of a certain ideal of perfection while “bad” allows us to directly name problems, depriving us of our words for direct oppression against trans men do not allow us to discuss our own experiences without reference to the experiences of others.
We do not want to compare struggles. We do not want to say who has it better or worse. We just want the space to describe what happens to us, in our own words, so that we can raise awareness of the struggles we face and the solidarity we need.
THIS IS *EXACTLY* WHAT I MEAN!
“Men’s rights activists” dont need to exist because we alreadu live in a patriarchy- men already have rights, they just exist as pushback against feminism.
Just like how “white power” movements don’t need to exist because white people are already getting preferential treatment- they exist as pushback against civil rights movements.
But when I, as a transmasc, need to say, “I am continuously being reduced to a mysoginistic caricature of female victimhood in a way that denies my identity as a man”, that does NOT exist as pushpack against transfemmes
In this case, having a word to describe an experience is NOT an “all lives matter” reactionary movement- a counter-protest to a valid protest designed to undermine the movement- it’s just. Developing vocabulary to speak on a different problem
like. Why do you say “seafood allergy” when we ALREADY say “peanut allergy”? If it’s not an allergy to peanuts, you should just say “allergy”.
Well. Yeah, we could, but then how would I most efficiently describe my allergy to seafood
i would also like to add to this the fact that transandrophobia was coined by a black trans man who states that hatred, demonization, and fear of men IS an intersectional aspect of his oppression. as i am not black, i am not qualified to speak on the specific intersection of how blackness, manhood/masculinity, and transness intersect. i recommend checking out his blog @/saint-speaks to read about what transandrophobia means to hymn, as i think it’s an essential part of this conversation.
Yeah, to add to the most recent addition, not only is the term intersectional, it’s allowed to ‘work’ as a word differently from the way transmisogyny does.
Just because the word transmisogyny is a direct smushing together of transphobia and misogyny which are both their own axes of oppression, that doesn’t mean that any and all intersectional language has to follow this rule, else it doesn’t ‘work’. Because intersectionality doesn’t only look at intersections between oppressions, but also how different aspects of your identity will change how oppression will look.
It’d be nice if the people telling us we need to be more intersectional could actually learn what intersectionality is, and not use what they think it means as a weapon to silence us when we are directly applying intersectional lenses to our own experiences.
As mentioned in another branch of this post, transandrophobia is an unpaired word. It may lose that status at some point in the future via back-formation, but.
Transmisogyny is not an unpaired word, but transandrophobia is. It’s as simple as that. We don’t need to go further: this is basic grammar stuff.
