[controversial] on transmisogyny and male privilege

[aaskew]

(apologies in advance because this possibly comes across as a 'what about the menz? :(' post. I've tried my best not to make it so, but this is a topic I'd like to discuss further

Comments

[the_physicist]

i guess this proves that i should have just stuck to 'it depends on the individual' and left my response at that, hahahah.

I took the awesome cars away from the boys at kindergarten. I remember getting in trouble for that too and being banned from ever playing with the cars again. That telling off i got really stuck with me too, eventhough i can't remember what i did, as i never played with cars again for years really. i definitely lost my 'taste' for them at that point, lmao. i don't think it was until i really got into F1 that i found it again but by then i was too old :P.

i also remember standing up to pee a fair bit why i was young and trying to pursuade my mum i had a penis. she was worried and checked to make sure, lol.

I had good friends at junior school both girls and boys (mostly girls though) who shared my idea of fun: playing football in the street, building tree houses, climbing trees, falling into the streams beneath them, running around the woods poking dead animals, collecting skulls, and generally doing everything possible to make sure i came home muddy, lol.

highschool was... not the same experience to say the least.

i think in general my experience was different from what you describe though. i don't think my experience of sexism was necessarily any different than someone else growing up as a girl, except of course that I was possibly subject to a bit more of it at highschool for being different. not even in terms of not doing stereotypical things, but because i didn't walk like a girl and stuff like that (well, and for short hair and being increadibly hairy and wearing the wrong kind of clothes) kids are very perceptive at times, lol.

of course others who happened to fit certain feminine stereotypes too much also received a lot of shit i think by being treated as if they were nothing more than an assortment of stereotypes.

I do remember being very annoyed at not being able to be as physically strong as i wanted to be and finding that unfair, but I don't think I ever conflated that feeling with sexism, no. and i don't think i misunderstood feminism either. I do understand how especially teenage feelings of how unfair life is as not giving you the right body might get mixed in with rage against sexism though XD.

[aaskew]

Basically generalisations don't work. XD Though it might be interesting to know what kinds of trans male pre-transition experiences were more common in terms of self-conception and how this affected perceptions of sexism.

oh man the cars. My brother had a lot of them and I was always going over to his room to play with the things. Meanwhile I apparently went sleepwalking one night when I was really young, and ended up in the bathroom trying to pee standing up. which did not end well.

I had a pretty mixed childhood experience in terms of gender. My female peers actually frequently accused me of being too feminine and mocked me for being "a sissy", because as I got older (pre-teens) I developed a fear that people would find out that I wanted to be a boy, because I thought that made me a lesbian and people did not like lesbians; and so ended up overcompensating by being generally compliant to all the gender stuff that was forced on me. If my mother bought me a dress, I wore it, even though I might have preferred something else. At one point I was the only one in my peer group wearing dresses (my mother liked them) when most of the girls were going around in T-shirts and jeans and making fun of me, and that made me pretty miserable. I was also bullied for being 'different', though this could have been more due to me being on the autistic spectrum.

I had the same thing with physical strength. It took me until my mid/late teenage years to realise that male and female bodies were different in ways other than reproductive systems and breasts, and found it really depressing to know that no matter how much I worked out, I'd never be on par with a cis man who put in the same effort. Aaand it turned out that I was physically the weakest in my 'all-girls' class, even despite my secret weight-lifting on the side, which was a total bummer. Worried doctors tested me for muscle dystrophy once because they said I was unnaturally thin and weak. Tests came back all negative and they said it looked like I was just really thin after all. Going on T finally changed that and has made me look like a slightly-underweight person rather than a skeleton, and made me physically strong enough to do lots of basic stuff that had previously been beyond me, so that was nice.

[the_physicist]

I developed a fear that people would find out that I wanted to be a boy...and so ended up overcompensating by being generally compliant to all the gender stuff that was forced on me.

are you me? ;) i understand you so much.

I do a hell of a lot of exercise and always have and yeah, it's a bummer that I just can't get those muscles. I'm starting more weight training now (well, not this week as I'm currently recovering from a slipped disk), but then I'm back to my exercise routine of excessive training in the hope that i can be slightly less puny (i'm still a US size 0-2, so yeah... oh well, i hope the extra weight training might work).