I was on tumblr at that time. Trying to figure myself out while following people on the fringes of both the baeddel side and on the -later turned out to be TERFs- butch lesbian side (because they seemed to be the only ones being somewhat positive about masculinity even if still being shitty about men).
Wasnt a fun time.
Your writing gives me hope that if i start being more open irl about this sorta stuff i wont be alone.... tho a lot of other trans writing on here dims that hope a little lol...
Yeah, it was/is very weird. The history of battle-of-the-sexes-style feminism is tangled and has been leading in this direction for a very long time (with some notable exceptions, like bell hooks' The Will To Change). The reactionary backlash via MRAs/the manosphere/etc sure didn't help. The boys are not set up to push back against it much, but maybe we can at least hold each other up in the face of it and not internalize accusations of power that we don't really have.
like a page out of my heart's diary. is it internalized transphobia or just an issue of attention-economic lag? is it misogyny if i can't agree? i'm trash as in excess to some high ideal -- thanks for laying it out, always a blessing to see someone else in it, too.
Thank you, truly. For what it's worth, the more transmascs I talk to, the more I find that a lot of us are on roughly the same page about our anxieties and frustrations re: feminist messaging and what we're supposed to do about it (besides sacrificing our transness on the altar of Listening To Women or whatever). I want us to listen, but I also want us to speak, and I want to believe that feminism *has already* outlined and championed the human dignity we all share. I'm hoping that if I can confront the terrifying question, it might encourage more people to at least wrestle with it together instead of lingering in guilty isolation.
hey! AMAB guy/non-binary-ish person here - i have never seen someone else approach this ugly side of things when it comes to being a man - in particular, within environments with bits and pieces of rad-fem inspiration.
fuuuuuck. it is refreshing to hear stuff like;
“I was utterly convinced that my male identity and appearance conferred a kind of indescribable social weight which I had a duty to subvert or deny whenever I could. (…) It didn’t matter that I soaked constantly in guilty terror at the risk of offending or disappointing the women I spent so much time with, who I both admired and depended on as wise and insightful teachers. I could not bring myself to dismiss or demean the criticisms of people who told me that I had an obligation to listen and be better for their sake. If their bar for decency-in-manhood was too high for me to clear, then the failure there must be mine.
(…)
Our current pop-feminist culture does not entertain men’s collective potential as helpful political actors or generative community participants; when men are good, it is in spite of ourselves. We do not complement men for being good men, but for being not like other men.”
from someone else. actually insane. i always feel such a deep impostor syndrome as a staunch male feminist, to the point where i think it detached me from masculinity. i’ve been thinking about writing on that, actually. this might be a sign
Please do!! I feel like this is the kind of baggage that both men and others-who-get-read-as-men share in common, and I'm happy to see anyone finding and speaking to that point of connection, but also the specifics of how they personally wrestle with it in terms of, well-- behavior, sense of self, interpersonal dynamics, the semiotics of belonging, everything. Maybe by our powers combined we can figure out how to deal with it and move forward into something better.
I was on tumblr at that time. Trying to figure myself out while following people on the fringes of both the baeddel side and on the -later turned out to be TERFs- butch lesbian side (because they seemed to be the only ones being somewhat positive about masculinity even if still being shitty about men).
Wasnt a fun time.
Your writing gives me hope that if i start being more open irl about this sorta stuff i wont be alone.... tho a lot of other trans writing on here dims that hope a little lol...
Yeah, it was/is very weird. The history of battle-of-the-sexes-style feminism is tangled and has been leading in this direction for a very long time (with some notable exceptions, like bell hooks' The Will To Change). The reactionary backlash via MRAs/the manosphere/etc sure didn't help. The boys are not set up to push back against it much, but maybe we can at least hold each other up in the face of it and not internalize accusations of power that we don't really have.
like a page out of my heart's diary. is it internalized transphobia or just an issue of attention-economic lag? is it misogyny if i can't agree? i'm trash as in excess to some high ideal -- thanks for laying it out, always a blessing to see someone else in it, too.
Thank you, truly. For what it's worth, the more transmascs I talk to, the more I find that a lot of us are on roughly the same page about our anxieties and frustrations re: feminist messaging and what we're supposed to do about it (besides sacrificing our transness on the altar of Listening To Women or whatever). I want us to listen, but I also want us to speak, and I want to believe that feminism *has already* outlined and championed the human dignity we all share. I'm hoping that if I can confront the terrifying question, it might encourage more people to at least wrestle with it together instead of lingering in guilty isolation.
hey! AMAB guy/non-binary-ish person here - i have never seen someone else approach this ugly side of things when it comes to being a man - in particular, within environments with bits and pieces of rad-fem inspiration.
fuuuuuck. it is refreshing to hear stuff like;
“I was utterly convinced that my male identity and appearance conferred a kind of indescribable social weight which I had a duty to subvert or deny whenever I could. (…) It didn’t matter that I soaked constantly in guilty terror at the risk of offending or disappointing the women I spent so much time with, who I both admired and depended on as wise and insightful teachers. I could not bring myself to dismiss or demean the criticisms of people who told me that I had an obligation to listen and be better for their sake. If their bar for decency-in-manhood was too high for me to clear, then the failure there must be mine.
(…)
Our current pop-feminist culture does not entertain men’s collective potential as helpful political actors or generative community participants; when men are good, it is in spite of ourselves. We do not complement men for being good men, but for being not like other men.”
from someone else. actually insane. i always feel such a deep impostor syndrome as a staunch male feminist, to the point where i think it detached me from masculinity. i’ve been thinking about writing on that, actually. this might be a sign
Please do!! I feel like this is the kind of baggage that both men and others-who-get-read-as-men share in common, and I'm happy to see anyone finding and speaking to that point of connection, but also the specifics of how they personally wrestle with it in terms of, well-- behavior, sense of self, interpersonal dynamics, the semiotics of belonging, everything. Maybe by our powers combined we can figure out how to deal with it and move forward into something better.