By David Futrelle
The angry misogynists who call themselves Men Going Their Own Way like to think of themselves as gender nonconformists of a sort, refusing to give in to what they see as intense social pressure to settle down and become husbands and providers — even if such pressure doesn’t actually amount to more than occasional naggy questions from relatives and coworkers about why they’re not married, and even though the overwhelming majority of married women themselves work.
But if you think their oft-proclaimed status as, er, gender outlaws of a sort might give them a tiny bit of empathy for or understanding of trans people — whose very existence challenges traditional notions of a simple and immutable gender binary — well, let’s just say you’d be very disappointed. Indeed, MGTOWs’ takes on trans women are as fucked-up as their takes on cis women, if not more so.
Today on the MGTOW subreddit — one of the largest MGTOW forums online, with more than 90,000 subscribers — some of the regulars are discussing this little screengrab, evidently nicked from one of the chans:
Naturally, the regulars agree with this assessment wholeheartedly, seeing the logic as self-evident: women have lives that are so much better than men in almost every way that men are deciding to go trans as a way to make their lives easier.
Clearly this deserves a reaction gif of some sorts, though I can’t think of any quite strong enough. Perhaps some turbocharged combination of these two classics?
But this is what these guys really and truly believe.
“The game isn’t just ‘too hard’, it’s biased and rigged,” writes a MGTOW Redditor calling himself fasterfind.
Women treat men like shit. The only way to be an acceptable member of society or to be treated nicely is to be a woman. Until then, you’re disposable and nothing matters. You’ll also play as a man, which means that if you’re looking for love or acceptance, then your resources will be depleted and taken, then you will still be disposed of. It’s not worth it.
While sympathetic to the boys he thinks are “becoming girls” to make their lives super-easy, Fasterfind concludes that it makes more sense to simply refuse to “play the game” in the first place, becoming a MGTOW who demonstrates his complete independence from women by complaining about them on the internet all day.
“I’ll admit I’ve considered popping easy mode pills before,” confesses someone calling himself shetoldmeto80.
[N]ow I am too old and too masculine looking to get away with it.
This wasn’t some gender dysphoria thing really, it was a social/practical thing I guess. Why not live life on easy mode?
In another comment, shetoldmeto80 uses the alleged “fact” that cis men are deciding to become trans women to make things easier for themselves as further evidence that life really is easier for women.
What is truly in question then, if this is a big trend, is how much more priviledged women are that men want to become one for practical reasons… If most men going M2F are doing it for practical reasons, then we can safely assume that society is sexist towards men and gender equality actually means “female domination”…
A lot of “iffing” going on there.
You do not see many F2Ms simply because there is no major upside to becoming a man. There was an article back then of some woman trying out testosterone injections for a while and stopping because she claimed it was a fucking nightmare.
Well, no, dude, the reason you “do not see many F2Ms” isn’t because trans men don’t exist; it’s because you — and society in general — isn’t really interested in recognizing their existence.
Though hard numbers on the demographics of the trans and gender nonconforming population are notoriously difficult to come by — for assorted reasons mostly connected to transphobia — one recent study based on Centers for Disease Control data concludes that the ratio of trans women to trans men, while not 1:1, is much lower than previous studies have concluded (and the popular imagination has assumed), with roughly 46 trans women to every 33 trans men.
Not that the MGTOW Redditors would be much interested in knowing about trans men, because their existence in large numbers undermines the crackpot theory that trans women are, for the most part, really men seeking an easier life.
Given that the MGTOW Redditors think that trans women are really men, it’s perhaps not surprising that they think these men make better women than “real” women do.
“What is really fucked up,” writes someone called
T0000009,
is that those boys are actually better looking and more feminine that real females
“Even the ones that don’t look better usually look more FEMININE,” declares someone called Tsukikoselenia, who turns out to have rather a lot of opinions on the subject.
Thing is, a MtF has to really try in order to look feminine. Biology is pretty much against him, even if he wasn’t a “buff guy” to begin with. Aside from fakeup, it usually implies a complicated diet for a while in order to ensure the desired fat redistribution, etc. Few people know the typical female body characteristics (such as the importance of eyebrows when it comes to gender identification as an example; something women don’t care about and jut remove them and draw them with a pencil instead…) as well as a “serious” MtF.
Although I’ve also seen quite a lot of them that were just thinking that putting a dress and using 2 filters on snapchat meant switching gender. But whatever about these ones.
Thing is, if you want to be good-looking, no matter the gener, it requires efforts. It’s just that for women these “efforts” nowadays mean crap like only fakeup and nail art, or dressing in a slutty way. Of course compared to this, anyone doing even the bare minimum will look ok if not better.
In another comment, Tsukikoselenia expounds further on the alleged failure of “real” women to do the hard work necessary to become sufficiently hot in his eyes.
If you care about your body enough to try to transition, chances are, you’ll try to avoid looking like a landwhale and eating junk food every single day. Most actual women don’t give a crap about this. Look at them complain about how they -need- makeup because men just don’t know how bad a woman’s skin is without makeup, instead of just eating better in order to avoid looking like a zombie. When the other side doesn’t even try anymore because it is too lazy and because of feminism and PROGRESS, it’s quite easy to look better compared to it.
A few commenters actually come out and say that they would prefer to date trans women over their “real” counterparts. Someone called Vrabo spells out what he sees as their many advantages:
More feminine, has a cock, speaks your mental language, can’t hit the wall, doesn’t have female rights to fuck you over…
I’m in.
But not all of the assembled MGTOWs are willing to go quite so far. While agreeing that these men-turned-women-who-are-still-basically-men do look better than “real” women, a commenter called DarkNights292 declares that he doesn’t think he “could get past that it has a dick flopping around.”
Yes, he used the word “it.”
Still, his outright transphobia is probably a better thing for trans women than Vrabo’s brand of trans fetishisn — rooted as it is in misogyny and transmisogyny. No woman, cis or trans, deserves to be burdened with the sexual attentions of a MGTOW.
H/T — Thanks to trans researcher Os Keyes for pointing me to the study on the demographics of the trans and gender nonconforming population.
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@FreneticFerret
I’d assume that also largely depends on the circumstances.
A friend of mine has been navigating Egypt while trans, she says that many men simply don’t have a chance to transition, because growing up as women their lives are more restricted. Their families would notice immediately if they tried.
Edit: Not all of them, and not all of the time of course, but there is a tendency. I could imagine it’s not too unsimilar in lots of WEIRD nations as well, depending on the family. Sons (perceived or actual) seem to enjoy more freedoms overall.
A complicated diet of medically prescribed oestrogen, yeah. Seriously, where do they get this ‘information’ from?
@Citerior Motive:
PIDOOTA?
Soooo umm seeing this discussion re: trans men’s vs trans women’s experiences, I have to pitch in that passing well, access to testosterone, etc. are not universal even for wealthy people in wealthy countries – T is a controlled substance, gatekeeping is intense. And it’s not guaranteed to change voice, body shape etc. I know rather a lot of trans men, and most of them have trouble passing.
Trans masc erasure is a real thing, while the rates of suicide and sexual violence that trans men experience are astronomical (even higher than for trans women by some studies).
If I sound angry, it’s because I see a lot of people erasing that because they’re angry at men, and while anger at men is very legitimate, I am not here for it segueing into transphobic crap about trans guys having it easy.
@Cat Mara:
Not only that, but a couple of other factors are strongly at play as well:
1. It’s hard to know how many people in the general pop are transgender, but if someone is transsexual, then their efforts to access surgeries and other medical interventions require disclosure to the medical establishment, which can then track the number of people requesting or gaining that access.
Thus, historically people researching trans* populations have used surgical access as a proxy for trans* populations as a whole. However, this has been very misleading both in snapshot research and in tracking trends over time, and is likely probably still misleading, at least in many countries and certainly including the US.
**This is because** when things like surgical interventions are dramatically less satisfying and dramatically more expensive for FtM folks than for MtF folks, you’ll naturally have more MtF folks seeking that access – and thus more MtF folks being counted – not because of different number of AMAB and AFAB people coming to understand themselves as trans*, but because the medical establishment has less to offer. There are simply fewer or less convincing reasons to disclose to a doctor in a way that might eventually be tabulated.
I haven’t done research on this in a long time, but even today insurance coverage for SRS can be very difficult to come by in the US, and the costs of phalloplasty are still significantly more than the cost of vaginoplasty. Historically, then, you had a disproportionate number of FtM folks simply not bothering to try to find a sympathetic provider, because at the end of the day phalloplasties* would be out of reach anyway.
2. As any journalist will tell you, “Dog Bites Man” is not a newsworthy story, but “Man Bites Dog” can sell a paper.
For a society that privileges masculinity and which still has the upper echelons of media decision makers (editors, publishers & the like) dominated by men, stories about “a woman wanting to be a man”** seems like “Dog Bites Man”. They’ve got it pretty good, and they wouldn’t want to be stuck at home doing the housework and getting no money, so, sure, a woman wanting that is simply to be expected.
However “a man wanting to be a woman”**? Now that requires explanation! That’s a story to these folks who wouldn’t dream of giving up their privileges.
It also helps explain why such a disproportionate amount of attention is paid to MtF women who are content to live a life that fits (largely) within the bounds of stereotypical femininity. In their dichotomous conception of masculinity and femininity, the more femininity is embraced, the more masculinity is rejected. The more masculinity is rejected, the more bites of that dog the trans* woman is taking. Ultimately, the most attractive stories for the media and the most attractive subjects for academic interest are those that seem most strongly to reject masculinity … and they determine which persons’ stories most strongly reject masculinity by determining which persons’ lives most closely adhere to stereotypical femininity.
Thus for MtF people, the more stereotypically feminine you are, the more you’re held up as an exemplar of what trans*ness is by cisfolks who really have no business deciding what is or isn’t authentically trans*. Meanwhile, as I established above, the more masculine an FtM person is, the more they are held to be uninteresting and unimportant: after all their lives seem only to confirm the desirability and relative value of masculinity.
To stupid, ignorant cis* folks, “being trans” is about rejecting the status quo gender system. Rejecting masculinity as desirable appears to cis folks to do just that. Rejecting femininity does not.
This has everything to do with how we’re perceived by lots of anti-trans* folks. TERFs, for instance, view trans* guys as women but believe that they’re anti-feminist for embracing a relative value of masculinity that is higher than their relative value of femininity. They could view MtF folk as allies for rejecting femininity, but instead they focus on remaining masculinity. If MtF folks were really feminist allies, they frequently suggest, they’d ditch ALL of their masculinity, not just some of it. Meanwhile, if we conform too closely to stereotypes about women then we’re “embracing the stereotypes” which is also anti-feminist. We’re fucked (or not fucked, as the cotton ceiling might suggest) either way.
What none of these cis folks get is that it’s not about you! Just as women can embrace or reject some stereotypes for reasons other than overthrowing the racist, capitalist, bullshit patriarchy while still conforming to others for reasons other than embracing the RCBP, trans* lives that are truly autonomous, trans* lives that truly belong to the trans* individuals that live them are going to be a muddled mess of experiences and choices that both conform to and that break expectations. We get to be, or should get to be, human without our autonomy and individuality being used as proof that we “really” advocate or “really” oppose feminism.
Embracing or opposing feminism is simply one more of those choices, and though some trans* folks will choose not to embrace feminism, far more do, and in any case cissexist jerkfaces don’t get to use demographic tendencies to tell us what our lives really mean or what our motives really are even if they have the data to prove those tendencies exist.
The fact that they don’t have such data is the least problematic aspect of all this bullshit.
*Stupid spellcheck. While I appreciate that since I first started writing on these topics in 1992 they’ve become much more advanced, and while it’s certainly a symbol of some level of progress that “phalloplasty” and “vaginoplasty” are in my spellchecker at all, it’s weird as fuck that as soon as I use the plural the spellchecker freaks out again. What’s with that, Apple? You only allow for the existence of a single FtM surgery in the history of the world? Kinda stingy of you, don’t you think?
** this is how cis people tend to think about the stories of trans* lives. I’m not asserting this is actually a reasonably truthful frame.
Reference:
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As a cismale, I can definitely understand their point.
Who needs:
Feeling secure while walking at night/in secluded areas;
Earning more for the same work;
A presumption of competence;
Strangers/Acquaintances assuming it is inappropriate to ask me about my genitalia;
bathroom use that doesn’t spark national debates;
an assumption that I belong, regardless of the space;
the ability to openly express affection for my S.O.;
etc.;
Asshats.
Cat Mara:
Pretty much, aye. The only remaining question is whether TA stands for ‘their arses’, or for ‘their arse’, as in the enormous bottom that they possess collectively.
I suspect that if any of these MRAs were to actually try ‘popping easy-mode pills’ they would be quickly disabused of the notion that women have it easy. Many of them would also find out first-hand how crippling dysphoria can be.
Lol right, women live on “easy mode”, sure. Cause women, since the dawn of humanity, have sat knitting and eating bonbons while the men were out hunting mammoths. Citation needed.
Being a cis dude is the real easy mode. No cramps, zero chance of pregnancy ever, much, much, MUCH easier to get fit and strong, and all of the automatic assumptions of competency, ability, etc of the patriarchy.
Excluding racism, disabilities, etc, it takes an exceptionally mediocre dude to mess that all up, assuming we’re talking about experiencing genuine difficulty, and not the classic undefined, ethereal MRA “men’s burden” .
I doubt it though. In my experience, the most coddled infants are the loudest whiners.
Addendum: not to imply that lacking a uterus makes things easier for women, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest it makes life even harder, for trans women especially, but even cis women experience some social pressure if they decide/have to get surgery to remove part or all of their reproductive organs. You’d think that would make people more sympathetic towards trans people, but no, that’s just too sensible.
@Cyborgette – thank you thank you thank you.
@Crip Dyke – i hadn’t thought about how they get the population size, and how that works with medical procedures!
That makes sense.
@Citerior Motive
I did have a period where I ate a weird amount of jerky and orange soda. Less a conscious diet choice and more just odd food cravings though.
@ Jane Done
Hey, that’s not true. We’re oppressed in loads of ways. There’s…er, hang on.
Nope, not that. What about…No, not that either…Hmmm?
Oh yeah, there was once a woman only showing of a film!!!!
I just read a review about a movie that sounds like it perpetuates the whole “women have it so easy!” myth, of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl variety:
https://www.flickfilosopher.com/2019/01/burning-beoning-movie-review-same-old-mr-nice-guy.html
See how easy women have it? And how dare she turn down the protagonist in favor of a rich guy!
Seriously, this sounds like the kind of story that could’ve been so much more daring if they’d bothered to address the protagonist’s shortcomings, or if they’d remembered that most women gather a squad of friends as part of their support system.
@Alan
In support of a domestic violence prevention program, no less!
Just last night I saw this Contrapoints video, which torpedoes the notion that trans women have it easy quite nicely.
A remember a transwoman friend phoning me up after a job interview wanting to talk about another interviewee’s weird attitude. Did I think he was rude and condescending because she’d been “made”?
It sounded to me as though he was rude and condescending precisely because she hadn’t been made. I’d have bet money he treated most women like that. She’d just replaced a presumption of competence with one of being incompetent and of course it was a shock.
That Contrapoints video (and really just her work in general) is a big part of me realizing that I can’t keep accepting that I just don’t get to be happy.
@Alan Robertshaw:
But… lifeboats! And conscription! Help, help, we’re being oppressed! OPPRESSED I TELL YOU ?
Wow, it takes work for these guys to be this dense. They’re so bought into this idea that women have the easiest life because “muh alimony” or “muh Ladies Night” that they really do think that if somebody AMAB presents as a woman, that they’re suddenly imbued with all the ease of life they already envision for women.
I can’t help but think of that amazing latest video by Innuendo Studios about how anonymity allows people to believe whatever they say they believe at that moment and never have to construct a coherent set of principles or a worldview. We don’t know whether these assholes actually believe it, but they want us to believe that they believe that people going against the grain of society in a visible and challenging way have an easy go of it. Despite all the emotional labour and the all-too-frequent mental and physical trauma that trans and nonbinary folk have to endure.
Frankly, I don’t think they’ve given it enough thought to care either way. Devaluation and dominance is all they care about.
Ugh as a trans femme person I don’t have the energy to address the bulk of the ridiculousness here. Y’all are doing fine. I’ll just add two things:
Last study I saw out of Ontario had trans masc and trans femme folks in equal numbers. Self-reported, so it has more accuracy than medicalization sources.
Mgtows, MRAs, TERFs, etc: trans people DON’T WANT TO BE WITH YOU
@Gender Superposition
sympathies <3
Related, especially for the cis/hetero folks here – an acquaintance sent me this earlier, it's a pretty good (and disturbing) overview of how entertainment media stereotype trans fems as violent predators. CW for said stereotypes, all kinds of Hollywood badness, medical gatekeeping stuff, and discussion of serial killers (both real and fictional).
https://medium.com/@ranibaker/do-transsexuals-eat-women-defanging-trans-horror-tropes-53209fdec548
This shit is as common and pernicious as antisemitic tropes if you know what to look for.
@Crip Dyke, Thanks for that really thoughtful comment. As someone who has not been thinking about these issues since 1992, your reflections were really helpful to me.
Uh, no. We’re more heavily criticized for our gender expression choices, and no choice we make is good enough.
But aside from that, my understanding is that gender presentation (and gender roles, too) aren’t what makes a trans person trans. It might be triggering for them to be expected to present in a certain way or fill a certain role, but their gender is still not the same as the one assigned them at birth regardless of their level of comfort with how they express their gender and the roles they take on.