I know many trans men and I wouldn’t characterize any of them as weak or feminine, but the latest attacks by the right-wing is call them that.
The New Smear Against Transgender MenYup, I told you that Lisa Littman paper would be used against us.
Anti-trans advocates claim we’re weak and gullible—like girls.
Slate
By Evan Urquhart
October 3, 2018
Until recently, most attacks on the transgender community attempted to stoke fears of transgender women. By portraying trans women as unnaturally and dangerously masculine—imposters at best and sexual predators at worst—anti–trans rights groups have sought to drum up opposition to trans people in public bathrooms and use anti-trans sentiment as a wedge against Democrats. Trans men have proved more difficult to demonize, since cis men don’t generally fear men with a transition history in their bathrooms or locker rooms. So, for the most part, they have been ignored.
This indifference is starting to change. Anti-trans propagandists have begun to focus more on trans men and boys—perhaps in reaction to the success in court of transgender boys like Gavin Grimm, Ashton Whitaker, and Max Brennan, each of whom won the right to equal treatment at school. But rather than painting trans men as predators, anti-trans activists portray us as victims, led astray by peers and fundamentally incapable of knowing our own minds.
Ironically, the attitude that trans men are really damaged, naïve, easily led women seems to have begun on websites with an ostensibly feminist ethos, such as 4thWaveNow and Transgender Trend. It subsequently crossed into the mainstream with the publication of a paper by Lisa Littman of Brown University in August. Littman studied the attitudes and beliefs of parents who frequented anti-trans websites and had a child between the ages of 11 and 27 who, they believed, had falsely claimed to be transgender. A total of 82.8 percent of these parents reported that their child was assigned female at birth. And although Littman referred to the children as adolescents and young adults, or AYAs, she repeatedly quoted parents who use female pronouns and refer to them as their daughters. Sympathetic media accounts have echoed this language, referring to the kids under discussion as daughters and girls, and echoing the parents’ belief that media and peers who promote trans acceptance are turning these “daughters” into trans men.
We’ve learned that no matter how young trans girls are, they’re never too young or too vulnerable for the anti-trans camp to portray them as dangerous and predatory, too much of a risk to cis girls to be treated with dignity and respect. Now, it seems, no matter how old transgender men are—remember, Littman’s study included an adult of 27 years old!—we’re not old enough to make health decisions for ourselves, or know our own minds. This creepy suggestion of susceptibility to peer influence in trans boys suggests that trans men must not be allowed to access medical treatment for gender dysphoria and that any act of advocacy on behalf of trans youth has the power to poison young minds, turning weak-willed girls into trans boys.
That is incredibly dangerous and also sexist as hell. The stereotype that women are unable to reason or know their own minds isn’t new. It was used to reject women’s suffrage, on the basis that it was useless to give to women the vote, since they’d only vote however their husbands told them to. (By this logic, married men had two votes, an unfair advantage over single men.) Women were kept from the workplace under the theory that their biological and emotional weakness made them unsuited for labor, and arguments about women’s emotional instability were used to prevent them from seeking public office. Now, these same stereotypes about the dimness of women have been repurposed to suggest that transgender men shouldn’t be believed when we speak about the truths of our own lives and that we must be protected at all costs from the freedom to determine our own paths.
But what do you expect from conservatives?
They are the ones that are justifying rape and attempted rape as “boys will be boys.” They will try anything to suppress us… lying, creating fear, and labeling us perverts. Nothing is beneath them.
All the trans men that I know are brave and emotionally strong men.
I am heading up to the Cape for the Columbus Day weekend with friends.
I don’t like Columbus Day, I do not think we show be celebrating a person who subjugated an entire race. Also he wasn’t the first person who discovered the Americas; China was here first on the west coast and the Viking settle the east coast first, Columbus just had the best public relations firm.
Columbus brought germ warfare with him with such infectious diseases as smallpox, measles, and influenza.
No I am not a big fan of Columbus.
Here in Seattle, although Columbus has not been completely eliminated, we celebrate Native American (or Indigenous) Day. Why such an important waterway as the one that runs through the Northwest was named The Columbia River, I never did understand. I remember asking my third grade teacher why it was named after Columbus, when he never even knew of its existence. Her answer, of course, did not include his nefariousness.
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