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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@Cyborgette
Oh yeah, the whole Sleepaway Camp series is predicated on that trope. God, what dumb dumb goofily dumb movies.
Transitioning certainly wasn’t easy mode for the first 10 years. For the first 5 years I couldn’t even get a job, proper housing or walk up the street without some shouted abuse. Gradually the shouts quietened to mutters and whispers. But I can never really trust people who I don’t know anymore.
Most MRAs would have taken the “easy” way out if they had been me.
I had a discussion with my last therapist regarding Silence. She pointed out the line that Hannibal gives, claiming that Gumb isn’t “really” trans, just thinks he is. I pointed out that that’s gatekeeping bullshit, and that the writer wanted a trans killer trope but was too chicken to commit to it.
Isn’t “Cant hit the wall” Code that these MGTOWs havn’t seen a single trans women besides the people 4chan creepily lusts over and therefor think transwomen have the secret to eternal youth or some shit? I know it all comes back to T***s but I cannot get how that works other than MGTOWs dont think trans women age or they really are just talking about how alot of trans women are killed
@Bakunin
TBH tropes like that were a big part of why I took so long to even consider transitioning. I have a lot of anger about this kind of rubbish.
@Cyborgette
I’m glad that the Medium article mentions The Silence of the Lambs’ issues with claiming that Buffalo Bill isn’t trans while coding him as trans all the while. I love that movie so much, but it is VERY problematic.
It’s much like how the producers of Big Bang Theory keep saying “Why are you calling Sheldon Cooper an autistic stereotype? We NEVER said he was autistic” all while coding him as Autism Guy.
Re: “the wall”
So there is this thing where going through a second puberty can make people appear to age in reverse for a bit. I started transition with premature jowls and perpetual bags under my eyes, and spent a year looking like I was just out of high school again, before my body settled on its current (more dignified) shape.
TBQH I suspect the whole thing about trans women “not hitting the wall” is more about MGTOWs and their ilk fetishizing the living creepy fuck out of this, because remember, they also fetishize teenage girls. Because they’re just that scummy.
FYI the 2015 transgender survey(google it) says that the ratio of Ftms to Mtfs is almost exactly equal. People only perceive there to be more transwomen because passing is harder for transwomen since the barrier to passing for cis male is far lower to the barrier for passing as a cis woman. Plus society is very sensationalistic towards transwomen because to society a “man becoming a woman”(despite transwomen not considering themselves men) is more scandalous than “woman becoming men).
This thought pattern isn’t the shark in the water, it’s the fuckin’ WATER…. That’s why even liberal whites (read: “white liberals”) can say the MAGA kid wasn’t being smug — they just can’t see how endemic the sense of entitlement of white men IS….
The mgtows who post this shit are driven by one grievance: “I’M NOT GETTIN’ MINE, AND IT’S YOUR FAULT!!!”
….
I’m tired
Oh, and for David, the best gif for stuff like this is a clip from “Blazing Saddles”, Clevon Little (after he threatens to shoot himself if the townspeople try to hang him for being Black While Sheriff)…
He sez “I am so smart… and they are soooo DUMB” — just the second part.
@ Cyborgette;, @ Cat Mara
I think you’re giving them way too much credit…. I think they believe that because they only fetishize a particular person for a short time, then move to another. Then they never see any aging in any one person.
https://ytcropper.com/cropped/G55c537de25611e
@Cyborgette:
☹️
Just when you think the manosphere can go no lower, they find a way… they are like a Bose-Einstein condensate¹ of suck.
¹ An exotic state of matter where all the atoms enter a super-low quantum state when chilled close to absolute zero. One of the bizarre properties exhibited by a Bose-Einstein condensate is superfluidity; that is, it will actually crawl out of any container it is put in. Much, in fact, like the way my flesh does reading about the manosphere.
@Cyborgette
I hear you. I had my own issues before realising AGP was nonsense. And the author of the Medium article missed a movie. Ace Ventura.
Given how it seems like they cribbed the image used in that post from 4chan I lean more to “They just only look at and fetishize the more conventionally attractive trans women (And a fair few cis men who happen to actually be the real cis men being the real gender noncomformists)” Also can I mention how the whole T*** thing erases gender nonconforming men? cause like it implies “men would never actually wanna dress in GIRLY clothes, they must be gay or evil and are tricking straight men” cause of course straight cis male crossdressers do not exist apparently
@ AlanRobertshaw; @ Cat Mara:
Ya think…? Please to remember, the overriding reason the dumpster-fire-in-chief won the “angst-y white male” vote is because White Genocide Oppression… things like; “asking white men to stop publicly abusing people who aren’t them” and “asking white men to stop assuming EVERYTHING is thought, said, and done EXCLUSIVELY for them.”
Not to mention outrages like “allowing non-heterosexual people to marry”, “allowing transgender people to use the bathroom”, “asking police to stop murdering black people”… Shall I go on??
If THAT’S not “oppression”, I dunno what is….
On presentation, here’s a personal story.
So, while it’s been relatively recent that I’ve increasingly been able to accept the reason for this, I’ve felt my body was awful and wrong effectively since puberty. It’s manifested in a variety of kind of embarrassing ways throughout my life, many connected to personal hygiene. Anyway I’ve also always been small and slight (I won’t be super tall for a woman and I’m certainly not for a man), and just to stop looking like a literal child I would also rarely shave. I’m old enough to actually appreciate getting carded and it still happens from time to time. So to actually take this story somewhere, I’m currently in the midst of a struggle with said facial hair (I’ve got some stuff to try waxing it showing up tomorrow fingers crossed!) and it’s occurring to me how fucking EASY it is for me to present as a man. I have to push uphill just to get to a point where I’ve not got a bunch of gross hair screaming MAN on my face. Equally though, I can’t just go back now because just the tiny baby steps I’m taking forwards are making me feel fulfillment I’m not sure I’ve ever really felt before.
Ellesar: Just a wee note that nowadays the accepted spelling is ‘trans woman’ or ‘trans man’ with a space, as trans is an adjective that modifies the noun—‘transwoman’ kind of gives the impression that we are a separate category from women, rather than a particular type of woman, and similarly for ‘transman’.
I have a friend who is a trans woman, and once she admitted that she was an MRA before realising she was trans because she envied cis women and assumed that all men felt the gender dysphoria that she did.
It makes me wonder how many MRAs or MGTOW types are like that.
It’s true that trans men are invisible.
I’m more agender in a cis woman body. I have higher natural testosterone than most women, says my endocrinologist.
It makes me feel like having sex a lot…or I feel like having sex a lot regardless.
I don’t have a desire to have a penis, though. I get sick of my breasts as it is, they always get in the way.
It took me so many years to figure out how to orgasm with my lady parts that I’m not about to give them up now.
But I would love to not have periods. That would be nice.
Allandrel, great point about Sheldon Cooper. I said it on the last post, Sheldon is basically a hate crime.
My easy mode currently consists of:
1) No transition at work for fear of job loss (and the fear of a small number of people generally being assholes about it). I don’t feel whole there, and I’m there 50-60 hours a week.
2) No idea when I will see my son again.
3) A trial separation from my spouse while they decide if our marriage will survive my transition.
It doesn’t feel super-easy ATM if I’m honest.
(I’m fine, by the way. Just facing a lot of change at a time of life that I expected things to feel much more stable.)
Pretty much mgtow. But according to the multiverse therapy, there’s a universe with mgtows help men, those both who are cis and trans, with exploring new hobbies and understanding mental health. They aren’t hostile and quite helpful
Also, gotta appreciate how these guys pit trans women and cis women against each other in terms of appearances. So tired of that narrative that women must fight each other for our worth and for a man’s approval. It should be both women stand up and leave to have an awesome day while the angry mgtow is left alone.
Once again, with migtoes, all I ever see is them Going Their Own Way…from REALITY.
Take everything they say, swap the genders around, or rotate it 180º, and you’ll get something a lot closer to the truth.
Must be nice to have the (cis/het/white) male privilege of being so damn delusional.
@Bina
No I can totally see it, because I know there was every risk that I’d have fallen down my own asshole like them. Where the difference comes is who ones blames for one’s problems. They have this idea that they’re perfect and that any problem in their lives must come from the outside, whereas even when it’s actually someone else’s fault I always blame myself first for every single wrong thing in my life.
Like it’s a super spurious example but for example I enjoy some rather difficult action games and I’m really quite bad at them. I die a goddamn lot but every time I can identify the way in which I failed and it doesn’t feel good (it sometimes feels downright unfair), but even if it can be a bad spiral to constantly negatively self-assess at least that allows for something in your control that can improve your situation. MGTOWs and their ilk have created a scheme where they claim not to care what anyone else thinks but SUPER do. Like all this weird shit about trans women says it exactly because if you take their shit to its logical conclusion we’re the real ‘men going our own way’. That way being the fuck away from masculinity.
@Lainy
That makes gruesome sense, but I don’t think these guys get that part.
It is funny, because we just recently talked with some girls about getting penises, to achieve success in the corporate and political scenes. (As a joke, of course, just saying.) We decided it would be too troublesome to get surgery, but a huge (white!) rubber dildo should do the trick. He’d be called Dick McMann. We’d just march in and place Dick in the middle the meeting room table, to assert dominance. And if someone is being inappropriate, or otherwise sexist, we can just tell them to talk to Dick 🙂