saw a radfem post about how there's no female version of emasculation. bestie yes there is
"masculinity is empowering and dominant and femininity is degrading and restrictive. there's no humiliating way of being stripped of chains" i want you to look women of color & disabled women in the eyes and tell them this. that there is no humiliating way to be stripped of your womanhood.
people are reblogging this again so I wanna add that on top of women of color and disabled women you can also just talk to trans men&mascs and nonbinary and intersex people raised female about this.
it's very funny to me whenever people who insist they are the final voice for Trve Feminism and have such an accurate understanding of misogyny, also completely ignore how much the cover-up of the violent policing of failed womanhood plays a role in patriarchy. babe stop believing everything the patriarchy says!!!!! IT IS LYING TO US CONSTANTLY!!!!!!!!
lots of good talk in the notes of different ways different groups are affected by this (lets call it unwomaning, but feel free to workshop lol). but! i want to prompt us to go a little deeper. clearly, this does happen, and it happens to a lot of different people. so how can people - and not just any people, but feminists - claim it doesn't? why does nearly everyone understand the concept of emasculation, but unwomaning is a non-topic?
ill talk about my own ideas later, but i wanna hear yall discuss this!
#important to add here that not just transmascs or trans people 'born women' are effected by this#trans women are too#constantly#and they also deserve to be in this conversation
yes! very true!
thats also part of why its important to talk about why this happens and what purpose it serves in feminism. all trans people (& intersex people for that matter) have unique relationships with different gender-spheres and are affected by the social processes of emasculation and dewomaning in different ways. exploring what role these social tools play in patriarchy connects us back to what role transphobia (in all its forms) plays as well, & why these forces exist.
#ooh im thinking about that last part and how it relates to transmisogyny#like most patriarchal oppression its always an endless feedback loop of imposed gender and being stripped of gender#obv so much of transmisogyny is about how 'men' need to fight for their manhood#and because transfems refuse to participate in that they are the shining example of a 'failed man'#but when they assert their womanhood... because it's transgressive there's no way for it to be natural and effortless!#trans women are unwomaned! obviously!#just like how trans men are emasculated! our manhood is transgressive and no amount of fighting for it will make it not be transgressive by @tr1ppykay
another really good observation. trans people Do Gender On Purpose but also in ways which fundamentally break the rules for who is allowed to do what gender. trans women's womanhood is always too purposeful, too self-aware, too thoughtful about what it means to be a woman instead of passively swallowing whatever lies the patriarchy spoons into people's mouths. it reminds people that womanhood is more than something seen but not heard, something that can self-directed and expansive. trans men are seen as the biological opposite of true manhood, and yet they insist on their manhood anyways, fully aware that the world doesn't believe they've "earned" it or that they ever can, and showing that men can simply refuse to play the game, that manhood can be something you just let yourself relax into instead of something you need to fight for every scrap of.
so to start, i want to clarify something: emasculating is not just "when a person who is a man, is not treated as a man" nor is dewomaning "when a person who is a woman, is not treated as a woman." it is a social tool for punishing someone who is seen as a man/seen as a woman who is not successfully upholding patriarchal / socially acceptable masculinity / femininity.
this absolute affects trans women. emasculation absolutely affects trans men. but saying that "trans men are only incidentally affected" is fucking ridiculous. if i said emasculation was primarily wielded against trans men & only incidentally affected trans women, that would also being fucking ridiculous. and none of this is ever "incidental."
also. trans women were never "excluded" from this post. just because the og post never explicitly named trans women does not mean they were "excluded." you can just. add to the post yknow. i am not stopping you from talking about how trans women are dewomaned.
just because i mentioned trans men does not mean that i was saying "this is only about people born with a pussy!!!!!!!!" that was not an implication i was intending at all. the reason i highlighted transmascs is because fucking constantly in feminism, people are fully incapable of discussing people classed as women without conflating that class with people who are women. and this happens constantly within transfeminism as well. and if i do not EXPLICITLY talk about how a misogynistic forces affect trans men on purpose, i know NONE of y'all are ever gonna bring it up or talk about it.
and this is not meant to deny or erase or downplay the erasure trans women also experience.
but i cannot express how frustrating it is that in nearly every. single. space. that is not explicitly about transmascs talking about transmasc issue. when misogyny gets brought up. everyone talks about "women and girls" and never stops for a single solitary second to consider how people who are treated as women & girls but aren't are affected. even when those people are inclusive of trans women & talk about how trans women are affected.
so i wanted to make crystal fucking clear to everyone reblogging this post that this is something which affects trans men, which trans men&mascs often experience as a constant presence in their life from childhood, something which has quite literally been used as justification to rape and kill trans men. and i, not exaggerating in the slightest, never hear anyone ever talk about this who is not already invested in discussing anti-transmasculinity & transfeminism from a transmasc perspective. which is mostly other transmascs.
and then ofc i have to explain all of this, every single time, because no one ever thinks about anti-transmasculinity, so when transmascs act in response to it, y'all act like it came out of nowhere.
i am really not trying to like. be a dick here or be exclusive of trans women. again, if you want to contribute to the question i asked & talk about how this phenomenon works in trans women's lives, please do it! but i really really need everyone to get 100x more chill about trans men&mascs talking about their relationship with misogyny and womanhood & how such things specifically affect transmascs, without making assumptions about how we must think trans women relate to these things. trans people need to get way less gender essentialist.
january is one of those months where you experience every feeling on the human spectrum and you just have to go about your day like that isn't happening
posting on a blackboard discussion board and replying to two of your fellow students has to be one of the nine circles of hell
Great point, Dylan! I especially agree with it being “one of the nine circles of hell”. Well said.
If I could offer a bit of criticism to your post Dylan, I would say that this phenomenon is not limited to blackboard, but also extends to other education websites, such as Canvas. Overall though, I agree with your point.
I agree with what other people have said above. I have noticed your reference to Dante's Inferno. Very good use of earlier texts in the course.
