#i don't think this is the last time i'll discuss transandrophobia either

[aro-barrel]

too many anti-transandrophobia arguments fall back on a framework resting heavily on "the Patriarchy" as the central cause of gendered oppression with intersectionality tacked on as an afterthought.

yeah, they can acknowledge that men face oppression, but they say race, class, sexual orientation, gender identity, or abledness should be discussed instead (as modifying the "man" label) because those modifiers may contain "real" and "valid" oppressed identities. according to this argument, men are not affected negatively as a result of being men/masculine because masculinity offers inherent privilege. they posit that trans men, GNC women, butch women, masculine people are oppressed only due to their proximity to womanhood/femininity, so the discrimination they face is transmisogyny and not transandrophobia.

such an argument runs the risk of placing "men" as a neutral category from which we theorize oppression around (i.e., having an identity farther away from being a man means more oppression). you can't treat masculinity as a vacuous hole or some non-identity/default identity. masculinity exists. and masculinity itself is not always inherently privileged. someone gender-nonconforming can be oppressed for their presence of masculinity in addition to the presence of femininity. masculinity isn't always going to grant privilege—it's circumstantial. the image of "man" as this inherently privileged creature inescapably centers manhood around one type of "default" man (probably a well-off, able-bodied, white, allocishet man untouched by discrimination). do i need to explain how problematic it is to center theories around one particular kind of man?

frameworks that view "the Patriarchy" as the most important system in formulating oppression dynamics tend to be rather white-centric, through the creation of a default woman and man. if intersectionality of race is even taken into consideration, it is an intersectionality that tries to cleanly divide identities to prescribe oppression. for example, if you're an asian man, the asian part of would get separated from the "man" part (so that only the asian part faces oppression). but reality doesn't work like that. people's identities cannot be ripped apart, hence intersectionality. multiple identities are always in conversation with each other—one identity does not exist without the other. with intersectionality, no identity rests in stagnant position ready to be analyzed in a vacuum. thus, a man's masculinity affects and is affected by their race (among other things), even if it is a feminized masculinity (as with east asian men). masculinity then, can take many forms—privileged or unprivileged.

i am personally a little wary of certain people who only discuss intersectionality by cutting down the blurry edges of identity so they can discuss "axes of oppression." it's hardly ever that clear-cut. i don't think anyone can definitively outline a hierarchy of oppression using identities. when we try to separate someone's identity into discrete identities, we might end up denying them their holistic experiences.

it is important to discuss patriarchal systems when we discuss gender, but we can't make "the Patriarchy" the primary lens through which we view gendered oppression. gender and race (among any other "identities") are inseparable through the lens of intersectionality. you don't make your white feminist analysis less problematic by adding a half-assed intersectional analysis.

#i'm sorry i'm going insane #i see a lot of bad uses of intersectionality #and i've always wanted to write stuff on it #i don't think this is the last time i'll discuss transandrophobia either #i think bad intersectionality is leveraged against transmascs quite a lot #aro-barrel