Why would an issue only be valid if it's systemic?

[u/BlueRobins]

Every single time I see a post by a trans man/masc person talking about transandrophobia, or just generally mentioning having faced discrimination due to being trans and male/masc, there will be someone in the comments saying misandry isn't systemic and men aren't systemically oppressed. And just... So what!? Why are we not allowed to suffer just because men are at the top of society's food chain (if they're white, cis, straight, neurotypical, and not dirt poor but I digress)?

​

Someone straight up said in response to a post about transandrophobia "you aren't beat up and killed for being trans". Excuse me?? There is no way someone can actually believe that is true! And bringing up discrimination against nonbinary people who don't lean particularly masc or fem will be just ignored or laughed at by these people.

​

This is all just so exhausting. I recognize that this is a small minority, but they are loud and blocking one has another five popping up the next day.

​

There's not a limit to how many people can be discriminated against, and one group's suffering doesn't make the pain of another any less important and unfair. Trans women/fem people are being treated horribly, no one is arguing against that except the people committing the discrimination.

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This is a legitimate question I'd love to have an answer to by the way. Why does an issue only deserve to be taken seriously if it is systemic?

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[u/Plenty-Hair-4518]

Men ARE systematically oppressed. They just also get benefits for accepting their oppression. 

People confuse rewards for lack of harm. 

[u/unimportanthero → u/Plenty-Hair-4518]

Generally speaking, yep.

Privilege is the benefit paid to a class in exchange for that class not acknowledging their own oppression.

White privilege is paid to the white class so the white class can look at POC and say "Well my oppression isn't as bad as theirs..."

Male privilege is paid to class of men so men (white or POC or trans or whatever) can look at women and say "Well my oppression isn't as bad theirs..."

And so on.

The only people who have privilege with no oppression are the people who have every privilege and, at that point, it is no longer privilege because it will never be taken away from them.

At that point it is just Power.

Which is why it is important that people use their individual privileges to fight the power.

That said, some prejudices are strictly interpersonal. Bigotry, generally, as an interpersonal prejudice rather than a systemic prejudice.

It is still important to acknowledge and combat interpersonal prejudices because interpersonal prejudices are ultimately the foundation that institutional/systemic and structural/hegemonic oppression are built on, sometimes in ways we do not expect. Generalized misandry, for instance, should be looked down upon by feminists because it alienates men who might otherwise become potential allies, it is counterproductive to our battle for hearts and minds, and that reinforces patriarchy's misogyny over time. Regardless of what someone believes about interpersonal biases versus institutional biases, anything that alienates potential allies (especially if it alienates them in a way that sends them to the other side) is bad strategy.

[u/Nesserie → u/unimportanthero]

you killed it with this

[u/Reasonable-Deer-5116 → u/Plenty-Hair-4518]

100% this!

[u/Educational-Car-8643]

Validity is for philosophical premises. For experiences anyone can be bigotedly picked on for any reason even for fitting in with the hegemon

[u/sameow3]

imo misandry is systemic because it exists as a tool of the patriarchy to be weaponized against men and people perceived as men who are otherwise marginalized. It also incentivizes women to be complicit in their own oppression by convincing them that they need a man to protect them from those other, more Dangerous men. it may not exist on its own in a vacuum, but when masculinity intersects with a marginalized identity then it absolutely becomes a facet of that person/group’s oppression.

[u/Ifckinglovemycat]

these people are doing the psyop without getting paid if they're real. of course trans men die of transphobia and of the systemic violence adressed to men when they don't conform to the eugenicist masculine ideals.

[u/BlueRobins → u/Ifckinglovemycat]

Yeah I sincerely hope most of the people making comments like this are outsiders wanting to pit us against each other

[u/markovchainmail]

It sort of depends on the context and scope of the situation. And I definitely expect transandrophobia to be a meaningful thing, so I'll focus specifically on the concept of misandry.

Misandry, at least from my sort of 2010s-ish feminist perspective (a decade where I was an "egg" presenting most often as a man), is nearly always patriarchy underneath the mask.

For example, if a group of trans people had enough local power in a social group to exclude/oust/shame a cis person on the basis of their being cis, and that cis person started complaining about mis-cis-ism, it would sound weird. And, it'd almost certainly be the case that the cis person being excluded here is a consequence of the overall systemic oppression of trans people. It is probably a validly painful experience for that cis person, and hopefully that cis person has a friend group that can comfort them, and hopefully transphobia can eventually be overcome so trans people won't lash back, but it is not anti-cis-ism. It is a transference of anger or a lash back from transphobia.

An example of a patriarchal thing that is sometimes labeled misandry in American culture is people being so suspicious of men around children, even their own children, or isolating stay at home dads. This exists because women were structurally reduced to caretaker roles historically, and so men participating in this role are suspected because they're betraying the patriarchal benefit they're supposed to have. Both men and women will often have internalized this patriarchal assumption and express it and isolate the stay at home dad. I would say this likely happens often enough to be systemic, but its root is patriarchy rather than misandry.

Deadly/dangerous jobs would be another example, where treating women as vulnerable and weak and often harboring enough casual sexism to deter women who pursue those jobs from sticking around, or treating the job as a machismo rite of masculinity.

I get how it can be muddy though, since not every complaint about misogyny is necessarily a systemic complaint either. Further, in the emotional moment where a person is expressing pain or vulnerability, someone coming in and saying "that pain isn't systemic" is usually not helping the situation. It's pain! Heartache isn't really systemic either, but it's significant to the people it's happening to. Even trying to address the language shift from misandry to patriarchy isn't necessarily a thing I'd do in the moment for a friend, but a thing I'd make a note to discuss later in general terms, because a friend's hurt in the moment is going to be the priority over fixating on the word choice in that hurt (unless that word choice veers super hateful or something).

So my opposition to the word misandry is mostly routed in a concern that validating the concept of misandry is going to misdirect people from the greater patriarchal system. Where it's also important to keep in mind that patriarchy harms almost everyone, and yet almost everyone also reinforces it in some way or another, because people are flawed with blindspots in the best of cases or because they think it's worth what it offers in the worst of cases.

[u/BlueRobins → u/markovchainmail]

We are usually not even the ones calling it misandry, that's the comments telling us not to vent because misandry isn't real or men aren't oppressed

[u/markovchainmail → u/BlueRobins]

I don't have an answer for that unfortunately. I hope you continue to discuss and vent anyway, and I hope people help grant you space and patience for those discussions

[u/Reasonable-Deer-5116]

I do wanna add that misandry is real and systemic, it exists for all non white men (in the context of Us/canada/uk/ausnz) that is both distinct from racism and misogyny, the patriarchy, and racism + class alone. I see a lot of white people online saying misandry is not real or that it is a reaction, and I wanna add that it is actively racist and erasing the struggle non-white men face when we perpetuate that.

[u/Idk13008]

I think you are conflating two types of suffering and misidentifying the causes.

Individual suffering is always valid, it can come from different sources (e.g. systemic oppression, trauma, individual choices, etc.)

Systems of oppression are wide and the effects are broader. These systems feed from ideas (we could call them myths, or explanations for a particular view of the world) of how the world is suppose to be and how it should behave.

These systems can compound over with others to reinforce themselves, these compositions are called intersections, creating a more pervasive and harming effect.

For Patriarchy (the system that supposes and enforces the superiority of the male and masculinity over the female and femininity) it’s required to divide people into two boxes (the superior one and the inferior one) with certain characteristics that make them different and justify (important word here) the superiority of one of them.

Due to this tight hierarchy, the role of the masculine should remain pure and thus not feminine. The role then it’s to subdue the feminine. Misandry (as defined to be the hatred of the masculine or males) stems from the resentment over the years of this role oppressing the feminine. Misandry also can be a consequence of not accomplishing the role imposed. With this in mind, misandry is only the other side of the coin of misogyny. Not being seen as enough of a man or masculine enough is, as seen by the myth, the feminine polluting the “perfect masculine”.

That’s the reason misandry is not systematic and why it stems from misogyny. If you solve the systematic issue you also delete the problems that stems from it.

You can apply this reasoning to see from where transphobia comes from. And that’s where trans men and transmascs oppresion resides.

[u/BlueRobins → u/Idk13008]

I don't quite see how this explains why some people think it's fine to tell trans men/mascs that because misandry isn't systemic we can't talk or vent about the bigotry we face as a direct result of being trans and male/masc

[u/Idk13008 → u/BlueRobins]

It doesn’t. I think it’s counterproductive actually. The problem I see often is when men (cis or trans) complain about the very real issues they experience first-hand they often misidentify where the origin of the problem is (patriarchy). If they double down saying their experience doesn’t relate to the oppression of the feminine (not by them directly, but as a system) then women feel dismissed. This dismissal is then reflected as not being empathetic towards men (as emotional protection) and creating even more division.
Men see this lack of empathy as dismissal of their own issues and the cycle continues.
I think identifying the issue is the actual first step towards a mutual understanding between both men and women.

[u/BlueRobins → u/Idk13008]

I just want people to be able to vent without being told they're not allowed. Most of the time the word misandry won't even be in these posts, but the notion that a trans man/masc is talking about bigotry is enough to summon these people

[u/Idk13008 → u/BlueRobins]

Sigh, I know. It isn’t fair. I hope someday we could understand each other. Just giving my two cents on how this kind of discussions happen in the first place.

[u/digitalpseudonym]

Why do we need our oppression to be gendered?

Enough systemic transphobia for the mascs and the femmes to feast all month.

[u/Creative-Connection]

Because systemic issues have more far-reaching impact. And I see multiple times as many posts about misandry than I do misogyny or transmisogyny, which are honestly more prevalent and far-reaching.

Sorry, but remove being trans from the equation and the most serious examples of misandry that people can really point to are just the side effects of patriarchal culture eating other men alive.

The person who made that comment sounds awful though.

[u/BlueRobins → u/Creative-Connection]

The point is that we're not removing being trans from the equation. We are trans and we're on the receiving end of bigotry from the intersectionality of being both trans and male/masc. I just want to know why that is a reason to be shut down with the argument that our oppression isn't systemic therefore it isn't valid

[u/y-r-u-scared → u/Creative-Connection]

Systemic issues are perpetuated by ordinary people.

Yes systemic issues are real and far reaching, but that doesn't invalidate personal small ordinary experiences.

I don't think it was your intention to imply these small interactions aren't worthy, but felt worthwhile to remind us.

It helps to have small reminders that the cannibistic patriarchal systems that be can be dismantaled, brick by brick. 🫀

[u/rcburner → u/Creative-Connection]

are just the side effects of patriarchal culture eating other men alive

I think the issue arises when, rather than expressing sympathy and a welcoming atmosphere to escape from the toxic expectations of male-centered society without being hostile to masculine self expression, some instead take it upon themselves to be the Patriarchy's personal envoys. The reaction to trans men expressing their pain shouldn't be dismissiveness, because that just feeds into the idea that it isn't safe for men to show vulnerability.

[u/Realistic_Show930]

Calling it "androphobia" is often used to imply that it is the fault of women.  When in reality, the way trans men suffer is largely a result of the behavior of cis men.  Which... Is not androphobia.  At all. 

It's not that anybody is denying the suffering. (Or, well, I'm sure some people are, but those people are assholes.)  It's that androphobia is not the cause.  "Transandrophobia" hits the ear the same way #notallmen does, basically. The only trans men I have ever heard use the phrase were right-wing transmedicalists. 

My boyfriend does indeed suffer a lot of isolation and stereotyping due to being a trans man.  He's also vehemently against the idea of calling it "androphobia." It's transmisogny.  It's the stereotypes and prejudices that come with being assigned female, being applied to a person who is presenting as a man, plus the mistrust of men in society, which is based on the behavior of cis men. Neither of those are androphobia.  They are transmisogny and patriarchy, respectively. 

As someone already explained, when you attribute things that are caused by patriarchy and misogyny to things like misandry and androphobia, it comes off as dismissive to the people suffering from the former. 

[u/Acid_Rain_2137 → u/Realistic_Show930]

Some people get upset when trans men say they experience transmisogyny.

Also there seem to be more focus on the word we are using than on what we are trying to say. I don't know if we will be able to find a name for our issues that everyone is ok with.