Yeah, liberal feminism in general relies on the demonization of masculinity as inherently patriarchal, which is extremely alienating to trans men and other AFAB masculine people in particular, as well as anti-patriarchal men in general.
While it’s true that most benefit from patriarchy, it’s in the sense that they’ve learned how to minimize the abuse of other patriarchal men: by remaining stoic and avoiding femininity at all costs. It’s portrayed as dominance because the most dominant men act the same way, but for the vast majority of men it’s a pretty miserable position which makes them easy to manipulate and keep in line.
So much of undoing patriarchal programming for me has just been to not give a shit about how I might be judged for so many things in my life. I would instinctually recoil back and then realize upon further inspection that the thing I was avoiding doing wasn’t harmful in any way. And it’s put me in touch with aspects of my masculinity that I’ve never had a conscious relationship with. Things which are traditionally considered feminine are part of my masculinity because the act of refusing to ground my identity in othering people is part of the masculine ideal I strive towards
Some of second wave feminism involves treating gender as a class, with women existing only as a contrast to men, and that women would therefore become class conscious and lead the gender revolution. There's some genuinely interesting stuff, but TERFs frequently spin this into things like "lesbianism" being a political choice, men being evil as a rule, and of course all the horrible anti-trans stuff.
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Takes like this are pretty common from TERFs in my experience yeah.
Yeah TERFs also almost always seem to be biological determinists, so they think Y chromosomes are just inherently corrupt
It is really sad we have people arguing online which chromosome is superior.
Yeah, liberal feminism in general relies on the demonization of masculinity as inherently patriarchal, which is extremely alienating to trans men and other AFAB masculine people in particular, as well as anti-patriarchal men in general.
While it’s true that most benefit from patriarchy, it’s in the sense that they’ve learned how to minimize the abuse of other patriarchal men: by remaining stoic and avoiding femininity at all costs. It’s portrayed as dominance because the most dominant men act the same way, but for the vast majority of men it’s a pretty miserable position which makes them easy to manipulate and keep in line.
So much of undoing patriarchal programming for me has just been to not give a shit about how I might be judged for so many things in my life. I would instinctually recoil back and then realize upon further inspection that the thing I was avoiding doing wasn’t harmful in any way. And it’s put me in touch with aspects of my masculinity that I’ve never had a conscious relationship with. Things which are traditionally considered feminine are part of my masculinity because the act of refusing to ground my identity in othering people is part of the masculine ideal I strive towards
Some of second wave feminism involves treating gender as a class, with women existing only as a contrast to men, and that women would therefore become class conscious and lead the gender revolution. There's some genuinely interesting stuff, but TERFs frequently spin this into things like "lesbianism" being a political choice, men being evil as a rule, and of course all the horrible anti-trans stuff.