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So this is definitely one of the stranger posts I’ve ever seen on the Men’s Rights subreddit, which is really saying something, and I’m inclined to say that it’s all bullshit. I mean, I don’t necessarily doubt the body dysmorphia; I doubt the explanation. And I suspect you will too.
I’d be curious what you all make of it, especially trans folks.
Here’s the post, titled “TW need to rant/vent misandry induced gender dysphoria.”
Uggh, where do I begin with this one. This is something I should’ve written a long time ago, but here we go. Since I was a child, I’ve always had this inclination that society saw women as morally superior and men as morally degenerate or inferior.
Well, some people do. And some people think of women as “degenerate or inferior,” as attested to by the 4827 posts on this blog (among other places).
As I entered puberty, this became more pervasive as I developed facial hair and chest hair, characteristics of the evil male aggressor. In society the penis is seen as disgusting and evil and the vagina is seen as whole and pure. I mean fuck, people refer to the penis as junk and to the vagina as cucci/gucci.
Yeah, no one has ever said anything bad about the vagina. No women ever feel anything but 100 percent positive about their bodies.
I began to see my male body as disgusting.
Ok, sure, a lot of people, including boys and men, have body issues. I just don’t think it’s because people call the penis “junk.”
All of this changed when I learned about feminist revisionist history.
Hold on. Prepare yourself for a deluge of bullshit.
I learned about how women were not oppressed throughout history. I learned about how the vote was related to the draft and how women could and did own property. I learned about the skimmington ride and riding the donkey backwards and how men who were beaten by their wives were punished while dv against women was never tolerated. I learned about made to penetrate and the truth about DV.
So he swallowed that “Red Pill,” I guess.
In addition to all of this, some other things I thought about were how women also have armpit hair and ass hair, which men also have.
WOMEN HAVE BODY HAIR. SPECIAL REPORT AT 11.
The male body is never praised but is seen as inherently immoral.
Tell that to the ancient greeks.
Women never praise men for their bodies or tell them how beautiful they are.
Not true.
My last two posts were about how men have no reproductive doctor. Women have one but men don’t. So if the morally sound gender has a reproductive doctor, then the morally unsound gender does not.
No, it’s just that cis men have less complicated reproductive health needs than cis women, what with cis women being the ones who can make an entire new human being inside their body.
I learned that worldwide, despite what most people think, there are more boys out of school than girls and in many developing nations women are equally violent towards their partners and the majority of sexual abuse and rape victims are boys.
Bullshit.
Men don’t get any free STD testing but the morally sound gender does.
Nope. Men can get free or cheap STD testing just like women.
Men have just as many reproductive problems as women but no specialist.
Now you’re repeating yourself.
Despite knowing all this, I wonder, would I be seen as more virtuous if I had a vagina?
Oh dear. Prepare for an even bigger flood of bullshit.
I feel as the only way for this dysphoria to go away would be for the feminist system to be exposed, all lies about women’s oppression throughout history debunked and holding women accountable.
MRAs really love “holding women accountable.” But for what? Not agreeing with MRA bullshit?
Feminist propaganda, all of which is lies are rampant in our society. If I saw ads such as “teach her young, a DV awareness PSA” I would begin to see my penis as less evil and disgusting.
No you wouldn’t.
If I saw women being told that they’re inherently rapists because of made to penetrate, I might stop seeing my penis as morally unsound and unvirtuous.
What is all this shit about “morally unsound” or “unvirtuous” bodies and body parts? Your dick is not a moral agent; it’s just a tool you use for peeing and sex.
If men had a reproductive doctor that gave well-men tests and tested for Epididymitis, spermatocele, inguinal hernias, Varicocele, Hydrocele, Peyronie’s disease, Polycystic ovarian syndrome ( which yes men can develop), postpartum depression, checkups on undescended testis (especially in male infants), smegma ( I know dude wipes are a thing now and if circumcision wasn’t so widespread they would be a lot more common, yeast infections and UTIs (which, if we stopped mutilating male infants, the need for would increase), checkups on men with bell-clapper deformity, BPH, , priapism, free STD testing (especially HPV-cancers causes by HPV in men will surpass those in women very soon if they haven’t already)
Sigh. Our medical system is fucked up in many ways, but there are ways to get your sexual health checked for low or no cost — and that applies to men as well as women.
I don’t think women realize how misandrist they are. In an ideal situation, all of this would be acknowledged by women, women would be allies and would be marching in the streets with #sheforhe slogans.
Men’s Rights “activists” aren’t’ even marching in the streets for themselves. Because all they like to do is complain about the alleged evils of feminists and women in general. God forbid they lift a finger to actually, practically help other men; let’s put the burden on women instead and get mad at them for not doing what we’re also not doing.
Only then would I stop seeing my penis as evil and unvirtuous.
So feminism needs to be destroyed before you feel ok about your dick?
I do have to be honest, I have been feeling a lot of animosity towards women lately and their lack of allyship and or acknowledgement of any of this.
Oh really? I didn’t notice.
So what do you all make of this peculiar mix of misogyny and self-hatred?
###
Okay, I am so confused reading this. What is “made to penetrate? ” Can cis men get polycystic ovarian syndrome? Do many cis fathers experience postpartum depression?
Gonna be completely honest here. Repressed trans fem MRAs are not that common, but this person? Sounds like one. Seeing maleness as evil/impure, hating one’s own maleness, and blaming that on feminism rather than trying to find the source of the unease, is classic “rotten egg” stuff. The mention of trans masc health issues is also a bit of a tell.
Source: personal experience. I think almost all trans people have encountered someone like this at some point. They suck, they hurt people, they make the rest of the community look bad, and we really wish they weren’t a thing.
Does this guy think Zardoz was a documentary?
MRA gross creep bullshit says
As David says: not true, not true, not true.
I do it every day.
Gross creep MRAs are just mad because I choose which men’s bodies I praise and which ones I think look beautiful and hot.
My first thought is “This is a person who was AMAB and really would be happier transitioning, but was raised in too-toxic an environment.” But maybe it’s “just” body dysmorphia, and he was also raised in an environment that doesn’t recognize problems like that can be identified and treated.
Also, urologists are going to be really surprised that they don’t exist, since no doctors at all ever deal with male fertility, testicles (descended or not), prostates, penises, and everything else he’s worried about.
@Cheesynougats: Some men do have PPD; it’s just far less common than women’s PPD. AFAIK, no cis men have polycystic ovaries unless they’re some sort of chimera or of non-average biology and happen to have ovaries along with a penis. Which is fine, but I’m sure vanishingly rare.
This person could easily be self closeted trans fem. They could also be more generally body dysphoric cis guy with a severe case of grass-is-greener.
I hope they find a good therapist at some point, because either one of those ways is still a terrible way to live life.
That said, their ideas about feminism as a root cause is still garbage. If their dysphoria is a trauma response to social stigmas, I kind of get the impression the crab bucket of anger and rage they set themselves to steeping in by hanging out in the manosphere might have far more to do with it.
There are super healthy male centered communities out there, but that is definitely not one of ‘em.
But seriously, dysphoria sucks and I hope they get good help.
Well, it was nice knowing you.
https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/breaking-russian-troops-spotted-entering-26295247
Yep, that’s right. Putin started World War III about five or six hours ago.
I’ve never been much of a drinker … what would you suggest as an alternative?
@Surplus Good bourbon works for me.
Not trans here, but I’m of the opinion that this is one long troll-job, appropriating the language of the gender-dysphoric to express typical MRA grievances.
Though it’s funny how they supposedly wish for better healthcare to be available, while in all probability voting for the right-wing politicians most likely to go after or punish feminists/SJWs/(((globalists)))/etc., but least likely to improve healthcare access.
As a trans woman, I can confirm that the feminists transed me. /s
There are a lot of negative stereotypes about men but if anything feminists fight against them, noting that they are often pushed by men who hold themselves to low standards. Men who are creeps claim all men are naturally predatory, gross men claim all men are gross, etc. Meanwhile women are pressured to meet unrealistic ideals. Being called “The fairer sex” is usually problematic. There also just a lot of jokes about men being gross and women being clean freaks. Technically both redpillers and feminists say that you shouldn’t put women on a pedestal, but for very different reasons. It seems that underlying the claims of redpillers is the assumption that if women are not angels, then they must be demons (of course feminists insist on the radical notion that women are people…an entity that is neither entirely good nor entirely bad).
@Cheesynougats “Made to penetrate” is the phrase used by the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS) to describe men who are raped in a way where their penis is inside someone else. It was a massive survey and rather than use the word “rape” it asked people if they had ever been forced or coerced to have sex (which gives much more accurate results). While there is no ethical distinction that survey, and most lawbooks make a big distinction between penetrating another and being penetrated. The survey also counted the number of women who were made to penetrate but that number was only 1.2%. Only 1.7% of men were raped by being penetrated.
From the 2015 survey:
“1 in 5 women have experienced completed or attempted rape in their lifetime”
“1 in 14 men was made to penetrate someone (complete or attempted) during his lifetime”
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/datasources/nisvs/2015NISVSdatabrief.html
From the 2010 survey: “28.6% of heterosexual men who experienced sexual violence other than rape in their lifetime reported having only male perpetrators, while 54.8% reported only female perpetrators, and 16.6% reported both male and female perpetrators.” (That includes “made to penetrate” and several other forms of sexual violence).
Women raping men is a serious issue and it is tragic that more people are not aware of it. On the other hand, as one might assume, women are the victim far more often. It is a smaller issue but still very significant and the frequency that people talk about is simply isn’t proportional to the number of victims. Feminists don’t seem to talk about it, but neither does anyone else, and I can’t help but think that is because of how people traditionally conceive of rape.
Occasionally you see people in the manosphere use it to minimize the issue of men raping women, though even then they are more likely to talk about false rape accusations (which happen but are very rare, but it is impossible to say exactly how rare). I just feel sad and confused that I don’t see more people taking all forced and coerced sex seriously regardless of gender.
“Made to penetrate”? That’s a new one on me, though I was able to figure it out via context.
I like the list of health conditions for men, half of which are hardly cause for alarm. Varicocele? Please. I’ve had that most of my life. Since I’m not trying to get anyone pregnant, it hasn’t exactly disfigured me down there, caused any functional issues, etc, the overall effect on my life is zilch. Not like it can’t be surgically fixed if it gets worse or it does prove to be a fertility issue.
That brings me to my next thought on that list: Most of those are also fairly well known and have treatments for. It isn’t like BPH medications don’t work if prescribed by a general practitioner, nurse, or whatever. This person is acting like men have zero options for anything downstairs. In the US, five minutes of watching drug ads will prove otherwise.
Oh, and HPV testing requires a Pap smear last I heard, so there might be some issues for the average guy on that one.
@ Surplus to Requirements
Well… shit. It seems a little cold to sit here and say this, but it may not get much worse than Russia simply annexing part of Ukraine. Countries are constantly fighting proxy wars, saber rattling, and invading places. (It helps if you can call it police action or claim humanitarian reasons.) An invasion is not exactly a good thing, but it may not escalate to a full blown world war.
And I’m basically defending an invasion on the grounds of a small war is better than a big war… Hell of a world we live in.
OK, I can no longer edit, so:
Ooops, I was totally wrong about “made to penetrate”. In context of the OP, I was thinking more like “penises are built to penetrate and I feel bad about that”, not “men are being forced to use their penises to penetrate against their will”. Thanks for the enlightenment, QuantumInc.
Men don’t need ovaries for PCOs because it is a problem an endocrinologist sees in cis men when they suffer from disregulated androgen and insulin conditions. Saying PCO means they share a set of symptoms with cis women.
“By demonstrating a high rates of cardiometabolic dysfunction and androgenic conditions in men with a high PCOS risk score, “we have shown that these genetic risk factors can act independently of ovarian function,” reported Jia Zhu, MD” https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/947998
I’ve just read an article indicating the reason Putin is invading is to control the canal that supplies water to Crimea. Crimea is arid needs water Ukraine regulates. Russia has has to subsidize Crimeans with billions of dollars as the region has lost so much once arable land to drought/desertification. I do not know why this has not been widely reported by MSM before or if I mised this. Then again maybe it is counted by experts as just one more factor but it sounds important to me.
Here is the Putin wants water article from a source supporting shifting to a steady state sustainable economy. https://steadystate.org/its-not-grain-putin-wants-its-water/
This person’s story doesn’t feel like a trans person’s story to me.
I would compare it to the story of a gay man who was made to feel filthy for who he was. I’m not saying that this person is a repressed gay man, but merely that the focus here is on relationships with OTHERS, not with oneself.
There’s a lot here about sex, but the remainder here is about how feminists or others view/portray the penis and the female genitalia. I’m aware of boys abused by mothers who stereotyped men as aggressive, evil, and as inevitably fated to rape. One possible response to such abuse is to wish that your genitals were different.
This kind of thinking is common to abused persons, where the desire is really to stop the abuse, but the abuse has been internalized enough so that the target believes that they deserve the abuse, and thus changing themselves (rather than the abuser) becomes the focus of safety fantasies.
There’s nothing in here about how the author would finally be able to relax with himself while alone post-genital surgery. It’s about how after such surgery (or perhaps after a magical transformation) the author could finally escape external blaming & demonization. Now the author attributes this blaming & demonization to feminists. This is, of course, inaccurate and maybe completely false – there’s still a small chance a feminist family member is being abusive, so we can’t rule out completely that some of these messages came from a feminist person even if the messages themselves are anti-feminist. Nonetheless, I think it’s important to note that the torture is not portrayed as having originated external to the self but now coming **entirely** from within. (That narrative might make me think that the person was simply wrong that the dysmorphia would end when external sources of shame ended.) The torture is portrayed as dependent on ongoing external blame and demonization to exist.
The supposed lack of doctors, the supposed lack of women’s allyship to men’s liberation from gender constraints, the (real, actually) denial of women’s capacity for sexual assault — these are the focus of the author’s complaints, and they are all about external conditions. Although the author reports negative feelings or perceptions of their own genitalia, you don’t hear complaints about, say, feeling uncomfortable using a public restroom because other people might see their genitals while peeing. This is something about which a trans person struggling to understand themselves might reasonably report while blaming external shaming for their internal discomfort at using a men’s bathroom. It would fit the narrative that they’re building about feeling shame around their genitals, but has at least the potential for supporting a very different interpretation: they are uncomfortable with someone seeing their gentialia while peeing not because the genitalia are intrinsically shameful, but because they don’t want those particular genitals to be associated with their identity or to have such power over how others perceive them.
Other things would be even more indicative of possible sex-related body dysmorphia. A report that this feminist-led shaming has been internalized to the point that they can’t touch themselves to masturbate, for instance. It wouldn’t be uncommon for a trans person to have trouble locating the origin of an intense desire to be dissociated from one’s genitals. And if one felt that desire for dissociation after hearing as a child that their genitals are shameful, it’s not at all unlikely for them to seriously consider (and even for a time believe) that the primary source of their desire for dissociation is the shaming that they encountered.
But in the narrative of the author, we don’t hear much (if any) desire to be permanently separated from their genitals. instead we hear an anguished plea for assistance in reconnecting with their genitals, in resolving the conflict that they feel.
What they appear to desire from what I’ve read is genital reconciliation, not genital reconstruction or change.
Of course I can’t diagnose anyone – over the internet or otherwise. I’m simply not qualified.
But since you asked how this story sounds and whether it rings a bell of similarity to trans narratives, I would have to say no.
1) The narrative of genital reconciliation without genital transformation is not a transsexual narrative.
2) There is a complete absence of any discussion of the kind of transgender or agender discomfort with social roles and gendered attributions of the author that would make me think this is the story of a person who is struggling to see themselves as validly occupying a different gender than that assigned at birth, with the presence of certain genitals complicating that struggle for perceiving one’s own gender as valid. In those cases there may indeed be a sense of dysmorphia towards one’s sexed body parts, and it may indeed resolve through reconciliation without genital transformation. In those cases, however, there is still a real problem that’s different from simply someone else saying your genitals are nasty. The utter absence of a narrative of dissociation from one’s social gender role makes me think this second possibility is as unlikely as the first.
In short there is nothing in this sufficiently characteristic of either transsexual or transgender/agender/non-binary narratives to make me think this is anything other than a serious reaction to actual or perceived shaming.
If it was merely the latter, there may be a psychological or communicative disorder present, but it wouldn’t be related to the diagnoses employed to treat trans persons. But also I think such a huge focus on this without any actual shaming is unlikely. It would have to be the result of really, really severe distortions of communication and/or one’s ability to perceive reality. Almost by definition “severe” distortions would be more rare.
No, as someone who has worked for a couple decades in the anti-violence/anti-abuse movement, this person’s story bears the most similarities to the story of someone subjected to serious psychological and/or physical abuse with a strong sexual component.
Unfortunately, it sounds to me rather like the body hatred of some persons raised in homes that are both abusive and highly religious, with a strong focus on a negative view of sexuality as sinful.
===============================================
PS. It really pisses me off to hear him talk about the (supposed) lack of sexual health care for cis men combined with his insistence that women aren’t allies to men. The place where you get that care (in the USA at least) is Planned Parenthood, and while PP has trans folks and cis men on staff in a number of different roles, the organization was founded by women, sustained by women, and continue to be staffed by a majority of women.
Women aren’t allies to men in providing for men’s sexual health because there is no movement for men’s sexual health sufficient to put together actual clinics caring for actual cis men clients. Women aren’t the allies because they did it themselves.
I tell my husband he’s beautiful about six times a day.
I can see this a man who’s never intellectualised childbirth or considered that sitting on a donut cushion for 6 months and lifelong incontinence are consequences that the medical profession believe are just minor inconveniences in the process of a “normal, natural” birth. He should read about the vaginal mesh scandal for a horror story. Or ask himself why men appear to be routinely offered valium for the (usually) uncomfortable but painless procedure of a vasectomy while women are expected to white knuckle getting an IUD.
@Lollypop
I’ve no idea who told you it’s painless. It isn’t. At all.
Source: I’ve had 2. (first reversed itself and the first thing we knew about that were the missus were pregnant again.)
Cis here, so I hope I’m not stepping on any toes, but I call bullshit. This whole thing reeks of a great big steamer of an attempt to use trans identity/gender dysphoria as a shield for their typical anti-women screed, and if so, fuck them.
@Zalis
That’s my take too.
If the guy isn’t 100% trolling, I’d say Crip Dyke’s take covers his possible mentality pretty well.
@QuantumInc
Actually, a number of us do, but maybe we need to discuss it more often, and louder, so that everyone else can get the message.
And last, but not least, Putin can land face first in a cactus patch. (Sorry, but “step on a lego” isn’t going to cut it for this one.)
TMI approaches re: smegma; fair warning.
What the fuck is wrong with these guys? As an uncircumcised dude, the only time I have ever had smegma was when I dislocated my hip and was stuck in a hospital bed for two weeks. Do they simply not wash their junk (reference intended) when they shower or wipe when they go to the bathroom?
It really isn’t complicated; it’s just basic hygiene.
I wouldn’t be as quick as other commenters to suggest this person *hasn’t* been talking to / reading feminists – a LOT of the penis=bad, penis=rapist, penis=guilty stuff here is common talking points among the louder Terfs and “gender critical” feminists. I’ll admit that many of these spokespeople are very much not feminists but they say they are and are accepted as such by a loud minority of people who are definitely feminists
What do I make of this?
This guy’s talking himself into believing that rape (by men of women) is okay. Is warranted. Is payback for women’s crimes. Or maybe he’s a rapist already.
@QuantumInc.
Since popular culture is my thing, I have really noticed what you are talking about there.
Superhero comics have a history of handling rape very, very badly. This is hardly a secret. But particularly grating is that many people ARE unaware of how badly they handle male characters being raped, because, thanks to our ugly ideas about rape, many of those instances are not generally considered rape.
Who am I talking about? A short “off the top of my head” list:
Superman
Batman
Spider-Man
Wolverine
The Hulk
Green Arrow
Nightwing
Cyclops
Havok
Deadpool
You will seriously find people arguing that all of these characters’ rapes “were not really rape,” partly because most of them were raped by women, and because a number of these were “fantastical” (mind control, shapeshifting fraud, etc.) and that somehow “doesn’t count.”
The worst was Green Arrow, whose rape was treated by several writers as infidelity on his part.
Or Nightwing, where the writer insisted that it wasn’t rape, “just non-consensual sex.”
Postnatal depression can happen to men too, although it isn’t as common as for mothers. Often it can come out of problems in a relationship with the mother, problems forming attachments with the baby, lack of social support, and other factors that are the result of a society not guiding and supporting young men into forming healthy relationships.
https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/postnatal-depression-in-dads-the-science-underlining-this-overlooked-condition/
@Crip Dyke
That’s entirely fair, and I’m sorry if I hit a nerve.
@Rachim
FWIW I got sucked into TERF/SWERFism pretty badly before I transitioned, and I’ve met other trans people who’ve said same. I think some of this is because the movement is designed to draw in psychologically vulnerable, deeply repressed trans people, for purposes of abuse. Some TERFs are very much projecting when they talk about transness being a cult that attracts and exploits the vulnerable.
@QuantumInc
Yeah this is the thing about living in rape culture, it’s omnipresent. It’s much worse for women and LGBT folks, but at the end of the day nobody escapes.
Feminists definitely discuss it though. Part of what prompted me to reject TERFism was actually seeing that, from trans inclusive feminists discussing how men were often both victims and perpetrators.
@Allandrel
Yet another thing among so, so, so many that Marvel/DC/Image have been absolutely garbage on for decades.