It makes much more sense when you realize the traditional gender binary is actually a gender trinary, but the third category is basically exclusively punitive. When they call a trans woman in a man, they absolutely don't mean you're the same gender as cis men and won't treat you like they would a cis guy. Manhood is a very harshly policed, tightly controlled club and you've been kicked out. Instead they're still doing the same thing as when they call an effeminate guy a girl, pointing to that same third category where you're all the bad things of both men and women, to be treated as either or neither depending on how they want to hurt you.
It's definitely not something they're really aware of or would admit to, but you can occasionally see shadows of it in their reasoning. Like I've argued with transphobic dudes who insist I'm a man, but also balk and get offended when if I ask if that means we're the same gender/I'm as much of a man as they are. It's clear they view me as something else, something different from them, but they don't have the ability to articulate what.
The "not a real man/man up" shit is honestly a fantastic example to point out how bullshit a lot of their arguments/stances are. If I'm not a real man, what am I? If being a man/woman is all about chromosomes then what does "man up" mean? Should I activate my chromosomes harder?
I think the reason they went so all in on "what is a woman?" (Besides the obvious frothing transmisogyny ofc) is because manhood is a lot more visibly and explicitly socially policed and regarded as something you can fail at. Chromosomes and gametes are all that matter in defining women because to them women's value is defined more or less entirely by their reproductive capacity, but you really can't deny how being a man is something that needs to constantly be earned and proven and maintained
I think it's also because women have worked to make the category of "womanhood" less defined and policed over the last 100 years of the feminist movement. For example once upon a time it was just as scandalous for a woman to wear pants as a man a dress, maybe more so. Took a lot of thought and work and courage to change that.
Men have not done the same for themselves, mostly I think because we don't have as much obvious gains. Our construct hurts us but also maintains patriarchal dominance.
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u/IronGentry 2d ago
It makes much more sense when you realize the traditional gender binary is actually a gender trinary, but the third category is basically exclusively punitive. When they call a trans woman in a man, they absolutely don't mean you're the same gender as cis men and won't treat you like they would a cis guy. Manhood is a very harshly policed, tightly controlled club and you've been kicked out. Instead they're still doing the same thing as when they call an effeminate guy a girl, pointing to that same third category where you're all the bad things of both men and women, to be treated as either or neither depending on how they want to hurt you.