Anonymous
asked:
Idk if you’ve seen this, but for around 2-3 years now, there’s been a really unsettling rise in people saying the phrase “I hate that I have to defend a man, but—” whenever they hear about a man being the victim of any form of abuse/harassment, particularly from a woman. One main example I can think of is back when that “I fell in love with my psychiatrist” story was making its way through the airways and, despite seeing this white woman sexually harassing, stalking, and doxxing a Pakistani man, people would say, “ugh, I hate that I have to defend a man, but she was wrong” (it was especially disheartening to see one of my favorite YouTubers, Rotten Mango/Stephanie Soo, “jokingly” repeat this when she was covering it).
And I’m just sitting here like… why is the fact that he’s a man making you hesitant to recognize that this is wrong??? Like hello??? This just feels like another side effect of radfem ideology (specifically, the infantilization of cis white women/demonization of men of color and its general framing of man/masculine = predator, woman/feminine = victim) seeping its way into the mainstream in recent years, and the fact that so many people are complacent in repeating phrases like this is, and I’m sorry to be dramatic, fucking terrifying.
It’s things like this that are lowk making me hesitant to fully transition into being more masc presenting. I’m intersex, and for the majority of my life as a “girl” and even now, I was abused in all forms by mostly women and girls— hell, in fact, the only times I’ve been stalked and literally almost MURDERED have been by women and girls. Being perceived as the more “masculine” person due to being taller and more muscular at a fairly young age, I was always invalidated (“well, you’re stronger, you should’ve fought them off!”) or villainized for defending myself (“you hurt her!! You should know better, you’re stronger than most girls! Why didn’t you just walk away??”) when these things would happen and, just when I thought that there was some inkling of hope that people were fighting against these bio/gender essentialist beliefs, here we are, seemingly right back at square one.
Getting support for my trauma as a “girl” was already hard enough, now I’m worried that the ridicule will be just as bad, if not worse if I identify more openly as trans masc (I’m only out online and to a few friends irl). It’s just rough out here man, and the fact that I’ve even seen people who label themselves as feminists and/or say that they care about intersectionality parrot gender essentialist radfem shit like this makes me paranoid about who I can really trust :/
