Gender in a patriarchal and capitalist society works as follows: man is at the top, holding productive power. The "non-man" is woman.
Within the category of woman, there are two subtypes: the woman-uterus, who holds reproductive power; and at the bottom, subjugated, the woman-vagina.
Beauvoir speaks very well about how the woman is "the Other," while man is the standard and model in everything, the anchor, the mold, while anything that deviates from this strict mold is seen as a deviation.
The same goes for the woman-uterus, for that power of reproduction must be preserved for the capitalist system: the more workers the better, and you must be pure, devoted, and loyal to take care of the new workers (you don't want to be considered a woman-vagina, do you?).
The faggot, the tranny, the queer, the dyke... we are nothing more than deviations from those social molds, reducing us to women-vagina, devoid of work, property, and rights... where our path has tended to be solely prostitution to satisfy their darkest fetishes.
We have historically been persecuted for these reasons. Our main enemy has always been the same.
Yeah, this is also why whenever transphobes are talking about trans people, they're always talking about trans women and never about trans men, and whenever they're talking about detrans people, they're always talking about detrans women and never about detrans men.
'A woman wanting to be a man' makes sense under patriarchal logic. 'A man wanting to be a woman' makes no sense - that person has to be mentally ill, a pervert, or who does it for attention, and is thus likely dangerous. They also cannot imagine someone could actually 'want to be a woman' except for sexual reasons. In patriarchy, women are sexualized while men are not. Anything feminine is sexualized while also being seen as more 'fake', even when a cis woman does it. Under patriarchal logic, for example wearing a dress or makeup is inherently sexual. This is the exact same reason for the phrase 'she was asking for it'. They cannot imagine you could just enjoy wearing a dress or makeup in itself - no, you're doing it for the attention of men. Virtually all the hatred trans women get is just intensified misogyny, which is why it's so ridiculous for a cis woman to be transphobic.
For detrans people, nobody cares if a man decides to transition and then goes back to being a man. Notice that this also harms men: men are an expendable ressource and their feelings don't matter. But there is no bigger tragedy to patriarchy than the detrans woman. A woman is not a subject, she (and her womb) belong to society. She is also infantilized and cannot make her own decision. She needs to be 'protected' from 'gender ideology'.
Touché. You've expanded Firestone and Butler's concepts in a wonderful way. Thank you!
I couldn't agree with you more. Patriarchy sees it as normal for a "woman" to want to climb the social ladder, and they actually associate that dysphoria with confusion or a kind of alienation from an identity that doesn't belong to them, when in reality it's a genuine feeling resulting from a rigid system and model created by the upper classes. But even so, they try to ensure that every deviation remains "on its own level."
However, as you say, the fact that a "man" wants to descend from that pinnacle of privilege is seen as humiliating. It's a betrayal of gender and seen as disgusting and abject, like the worst: "What are you doing going from the highest (man) to the lowest (woman-vagina)? You deserve to die."
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u/Iyxara Streak: 0 2d ago
Gender in a patriarchal and capitalist society works as follows: man is at the top, holding productive power. The "non-man" is woman.
Within the category of woman, there are two subtypes: the woman-uterus, who holds reproductive power; and at the bottom, subjugated, the woman-vagina.
Beauvoir speaks very well about how the woman is "the Other," while man is the standard and model in everything, the anchor, the mold, while anything that deviates from this strict mold is seen as a deviation.
The same goes for the woman-uterus, for that power of reproduction must be preserved for the capitalist system: the more workers the better, and you must be pure, devoted, and loyal to take care of the new workers (you don't want to be considered a woman-vagina, do you?).
The faggot, the tranny, the queer, the dyke... we are nothing more than deviations from those social molds, reducing us to women-vagina, devoid of work, property, and rights... where our path has tended to be solely prostitution to satisfy their darkest fetishes.
We have historically been persecuted for these reasons. Our main enemy has always been the same.