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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@Priscilla Poopalot
That is basically what is already happening anyhow in boardrooms all across everywhere.
I wanted to add something to the discussion of transmasc invisibility. As a trans man, who’s mostly read as a cis man now, but wasn’t always, I don’t think it’s just that it’s easier for trans men to pass as cis. I do get read as a cis man, but I have plenty of friends who are also trans men and aren’t, some of who likely never will be (IME height is a big factor in this).
My take is more that when trans men don’t get read as cis men, we get read as cis women. Because the cis general public’s ideas of transness are so heavily tied with transfemininity, they generally don’t recognise even very visibly transmasc people as transmasc, but either as butch cis women or cis men. A trans woman can not be read as a cis woman, but still be very visibly a trans woman, whereas a trans man who doesn’t read as a cis man will likely get read as a cis woman.
(Also as a side note, that ’35 years life expectancy’ factoid isn’t true. That comes from 35 being the average age of death of people on a TDOR list one year. There are plenty of trans people who don’t get murdered. We can acknowledge the horrors of transphobia, transmisogyny, and transmisogynoir without spreading false statistics, especially ones that lead young trans people to believe they have no future.)
@Priscilla
I can think of several thousand briefings where your method would have livened things up to almost “don’t mind staying awake” levels, so it’s got that going for it. 😛
It must be really difficult for Mgtows to decide who they hate more: cis women or trans women.
Re “won’t hit the wall” – that whole ridiculous notion of the wall is tied up with MGTOWs’ equally ridiculous notion of evo-psych, or bio-troofs. As far as I know, “hitting the wall” is based on their belief that cis women peak in sexual attractiveness and fertility (as these are one and the same for miggies), at around age 20 – or is it even younger now? So, in their twisted logic, trans women won’t hit the wall.
Shorter version, if I can paraphrase @qorl above:
So I guess trans men are just playing the game on ultra then?
I do love the unspoken assumption of most transphobes that the whole process of gender transition just “happens”, and isn’t strictly gate-kept all the way by people who are intent on making sure the people who are wanting to transition aren’t just undergoing serious bodily alteration for funsies, or as a symptom of (the wrong type of) mental illness. It’s like “yeah, trans women asserting their female identities do have to perform a tightrope walk between being feminine enough to pass, but not becoming hyper-feminine, because that’s fetishisation and BadWrong”. They aren’t allowed to transition to become the sort of woman who spends her life in jeans and t-shirts, working on cars and things like that – they’re expected to take up a stereotypically female role in society, perform stereotypical femininity in their dress and performance, and if they don’t do this, they can have their access to the hormones which allow them to keep their bodies matching the “them” in their minds taken away. (Similarly, trans men asserting their masculine identities also have to present in stereotypically masculine ways, and largely seek out stereotypically masculine activities and occupations).
I doubt there’s many trans women out there who are allowed to transition to be women like me – someone who only occasionally goes into skirts, habitually doesn’t wear make-up, doesn’t shave her legs or underarms by choice, shaves her face[1] only on days where she’s expecting to be out in public, and who tends to dress for comfort rather than femininity. I get this particular privilege because I obtained my female status by surviving puberty, at a time where the ways of performing femininity were under question and in flux, and therefore a more “butch” presentation (wrecked, I have to admit, by my rather short and curvy figure) was just as acceptable as a “femme” one. But it costs me in other ways – I’ve no doubt my lack of make-up, and lack of appropriately “feminine” presentation have cost me job opportunities at times, although to be honest, if an employer isn’t willing to employ me because I’d rather wear trousers and flat shoes than high heels and a pencil skirt, I may be better off without that job in the first place.
PS: No, I’m not trans. I definitely identify as cis female (cis-het, even). I’m just not femme very often. (I am autistic, though).
[1] Yes, I shave my face. Blame hormones; mine went all wonky in my mid-twenties through mid-thirties, and by the time it got sorted out, I had a crop of facial hair which was thick enough that I decided the traditional masculine method of removal was a lot less painful and expensive in the long term.
@Megpie71:
Sounds like we’re almost exactly alike, but I had the “luck” of transitioning in Portland, Oregon, where there were no gender clinics and when a provider was gatekeeping a little too hard, I just left and never came back. Meanwhile I had queer friends of mine going to Planned Parenthood for birth control pills they didn’t want or need then giving them to me so I could use them to as closely as possible reproduce the dosages that had been previously prescribed and worked well before docs got discouraged that I wasn’t femme-ing correctly.
A few years after I got birth control pills from friends who got them from PP, the local PP started dispensing them directly to trans* folk, but when I went on hormones it took more creativity than that.
As someone who identified as trans masculine from an early age, I was told not to transition by my doctor who says that I was a ‘pretty girl and should just go and get on with my life’. Being influenced also by the Plymouth Brethren, who deny females the right to speak in their assembly and the right to have any personal authority, I was told the Lord made me female and I should find my identity in Christ as ‘separate but equal’. I lost my close male friends as they were not allowed to have female friends who would be Jezebels and lead them into sin. I felt abandoned and have always blamed my gender for this.
A trans man, in their eyes is somebody trying to ‘steal the crown’, and the authority of God. I was made to feel like Babe the pig, or Racing Stripes in that however aspirational being a man would be, I’d still be another species and a fake. I battle with this every day. I identify as NB now, but I’m not even sure I’ll be able to medically transition.
Bakunin (the commentator here, not the Russian anarchist xD)
What is the problem with realizing a person can identify as a transwoman and also like women, hence be a lesbian?!
Colleagues in the ambulance crew (!!) told me about some transitioned MtF person they knew who now, as a woman, was dating women. They laughed their asses off in absolute amazement and incomprehension, rambling on like “What the hell did he [yes, they constantly misgendered her and even went on calling her and other trans people “it” esp. when they weren’t sure what pronomina to use]… What the hell did he do that for?! I mean, he’s still fucking women now! Hahahahaha He fucks women! WOMEN! Haaaahahahahaha How does that make any sense? Why the fuck would you want to become a female only to sleep with gals when you had a cock in the first place?!” Yes. Seriously. I know: facepalm, facepalm, facepalm.
The other one enthusiastically nodded, the two of them looking at me in the obvious expectation I’d chime in to their laughter and recognize this as the joke of the year.
I tried to explain to them that transitioning isn’t about whom you’re sleeping with but about your gender identification and that trans people come in different orientations just like everybody else – but this totally blew their mind. Unimaginable that a “man-who-became-a-woman” might just be a lesbian! Obviously this was way too confusing and complicated for them.
If they change their gender then they must be attracted to the now opposite gender, that was their primitive logic. And the difference between what gender you identify with and to what gender(s) you’re attracted was unconceivable to them, it simply never crossed their mind.
Even when I told him: “But you identify as a man, right?” – “Of course!” (with an undercurrent of indignation how this could be in the slightest way questionable). “And you’re attracted to females, aren’t you?” – “Naturally!” – “See, this isn’t the same, right? Male is what you ARE and females are people you’re ATTRACTED to. That’s two things.” – Pause. He’s staring at me with blank cluelessness, I can almost see the little wheels behind his forehead frantically spinning, trying to make sense of it. After a short – apparently way too short – moment of consideration: “Yeah but I’m a man, of course I like women. I mean, that’s just normal!”
Those same colleagues filed a complaint to the city boss of that private EMS because of a person wearing make-up. Yep, you read it correctly.
The case was the boss didn’t allow to wear funny hats, masks, carnival make-up or any of the like during Fasching because he found it was inappropriate (well, he had a point with that), misrepresenting the EMS and making them look unserious.
This was accepted by everyone without further questioning.
Until a biologically male person joined the team who afaik identified as a woman but so far had not undergone any transitioning measures, who was allowed to wear make-up at work.
Her face and body looked like a normal man’s and of course she had to wear a uniform at work. A uniform not very flattening even to the curviest naturally female body, rendering any efforts to make a male body appear more feminine futile and unsuccessful.
So her only outlet to indicate the gender she identified with was wearing make-up at work.
Her colleagues didn’t consider that, it never crossed their minds obviously. They had nothing better to do than to complain how unfair it was that they weren’t allowed to wear carnival make-up while “he” (the trans woman) was allowed to put on make-up every day.
Rescuers with make-up would look unserious, the boss had said (he meant cis-males with carnival make-up; women weren’t allowed the carnival stuff either but were free to (unostentatiously) apply normal everyday make-up), but how did “he” make the EMS look then with that stuff on “his” face?
Yes, they likened carnival make-up to the expression of gender.
Again I tried several times to explain the difference between Fasching make-up and the efforts of a trans person to assume the appearance of the gender she identified herself with but I could as well have talked to the wall. They just wouldn’t get it.
They simply refuse to acknowledge her make-up’s not about some carnival-like fooling around. Not that any of them wants to wear normal female make-up. No, no! It’s about the principle altogether! Why is “this guy” allowed to wear make-up when they aren’t? Why is “he” so “unjustly favored”?
Yes, they seriously talk like that.
I’m so sorry for this woman, I can imagine how these idiots must treat her.
And that’s happening in an EMS! (In Germany) Despite there’s a strict long-standing firm policy of neutrality, civility and equality! Everyone is told: “If you can’t treat every person with proper respect regardless of religion, political views, gender, sexual orientation, color,… diseases including mental illnesses and addiction etc. – you have no place here.” Apparently, many think this regards only patients (not that they would understand it better then).
On the other hand there are people who say they want to be women but when they clarify what they mean it turns out their picture of women is extremely sexist.
They’re just incessantly rambling on about clothes, make-up, high heels and all that. As if women were brainless creatures whose sole purpose it is to doll up and stilt around on high heels! As if this had anything to do with what it means to be female!
Such people make me really angry.
Maybe they’re just transvestites or drag beginners. Nothing wrong with that. Nut then just say you want to wear make-up and female clothes, you feel sexy when you do that, you like it – it’s fine. Ask for advice to make it more authentic if you want to. But that’s a wholly different thing than actually being female.
Instead they’re surprisingly similar to the worst douchebags of the manosphere coming from another angle in their belief this is what being a woman amounts to and is all about. That’s probably where all this BS came from.
Basically from presumptuous men who, for whatever reason, assume they have the right to define femininity.