New blog: (Wo)Man Boobz: Taking the piss out of misandry and transphobia since 2012.

So HeatherN, the woman behind this new blog, emailed me about it:

http://womanboobz.wordpress.com/

Here's her "about" page:

Turns out the stereotype of man-hating lesbians isn’t completely false. They exist, sad to say. So as a fellow lesbian and feminist (but not a fellow nutcase), what am I to do? I could either get angry, get even, or take the piss out of them. I choose taking the piss out of them. (I suppose I could have ignored it too, but what’s the fun in that?)

So that’s what this site is all about. I’ll generally mock and ridicule the statements made by women womyn when they are particularly anti-male or transphobic. It’s called (Wo)ManBoobz after it’s inspiration, the site ManBoobz, which takes a similar approach to commenting on misogyny among MRAs/PUAs/MGTOWs.

If you have any suggestions for websites I should comment on or articles you’d like to see me write about, feel free to leave links in the comments section. If you’re interested in seeing my more rational and well thought out writing, I encourage you to visit the Good Men Project or my personal blog.

Her page on GMP: http://goodmenproject.com/author/heathernorum/
Her blog: http://a-radical-centrist.blogspot.com/

I sent her a note. Here's some of it:

The blog looks promising, and I'm flattered that MBz is an inspiration to you. Certainly there's plenty of boobery amongst the rad fems.

But I do have one rather large concern, and that is that is that the way you've set up the blog it looks as though you're treating transphobia and misandry as if they're equally serious problems, when they're really not.

Trans people as you know really do have to deal with tons of shit because of widespread transphobia. Rad fems certainly contribute to that, but so do a lot of people, ranging from right-wing homophobes who hate everyone but heterosexuals, to clueless liberals who are utterly ignorant of the issues, to MRAs themselves.

But men really aren't oppressed by misandry. We just aren't. Sure, there are women and some men out there (including many rad fems) who hate men, or who hold basically sexist ideas about men. But as a dude I can't say that this actually affects me in the real world in any significant way.

And there are certainly ways in which men are forced into rigid roles by traditional (basically patriatchal) notions of gender. MRAs are quick to blame this on misandry, but it's really not that at all. Take the difference in sentencing of criminals in the US; women do get somewhat shorter terms, but it's not because rad fem (or even moderate feminist) judges are sentencing them to longer prison terms -- the judges that issue shorter sentences tend to be male judges with rather traditional ideas about gender and a patronizing view of women (as more pure than men, etc.).

Sure, it's probably worth pointing out some of the more comically egregious examples of misandry from rad fems once in a while. But their transphobia is a much, much more significant problem. That affects people who face real bigotry every day of their lives.

Also, if you're looking for misandry, I think you'll find a lot more of it from women who AREN'T feminists in any way; more traditional women are far more likely to buy into the traditional (and again largely patriarchal) notions of men as protectors, men as sex-obsessed "pigs," etc etc etc.

I suggested that she might want to hash out some of this stuff with you all, and let her know that I was setting up this topic here. (She just signed up for the forum.)

Ah hi all...I'll basically just post some of my clarifying points that I send to David here:

I very nearly only focused on transphobia instead of mentioning misandry at all, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. However, a lot of the transphobia they have does seem to stem from a hatred of men.

Thanks for bringing this up though, as I'll make sure to clarify in the About page. Perhaps I'll change the tagline so it's something more like "taking the piss out of transphobia (and underlying misandry) since 2012" or something.

And I'm certainly not going to limit myself to the radfems, but that's the place I'm starting. I sort of specifically wanted to comment on radical politically-minded women...and perhaps I'll end up doing something that highlights how similar so much of the really bad stuff radfems spout is to the more traditionally minded women (i.e. all the gender essentialist nonsense).

Just realized this bit: " I sort of specifically wanted to comment on radical politically-minded women," makes it sound like I'm looking to poke at women. That's not it...just looking for a little balance in the snark is all.

So yeah all, I appreciate any helpful feedback.

Trying to "balance" inherently imbalanced social issues is supportive of oppression. And calling transphobia "misandry" is misgendering, sexist, or both. And it denies dynamics within trans communities (white cis-passing trans men are given more respect and status than other trans people, especially trans women of color) as well as sexist oppression of women (both cis and trans).

Restraints on the privileged class are not oppression. Men being restrained by gender roles isn't oppression of men, it's a side effect of the system of sexist oppression of women which provides significant benefits to men as a class. Men being policed around things associated with women is no more oppression of men than rich people policed around things associated with poor people is oppression of the rich, hetero people around things associated with queer people is oppression of heteros, etc. There is no such thing as institutionalized misandry, nor has there ever been, to the best of my knowledge, in any culture ever (I'm open to being corrected on that in regards to non-western matriarchal cultures). Institutionalized misogyny, on the other hand, is the global norm. There have been very few (arguably) cultures without it. Sexist oppression of women and patriarchy are very real things. The false equivalency implied by the term "misandry" is counter-reality.

Also, if you think "traditionally minded women" are the women hit most harshly by the worse elements of radfems, you're seriously erasing that this is not the case at all, it's trans women, bi women, women of color, colonized women, poor women, etc. Refusal to tolerate sexist women (like Palin) is not the worse elements of radfem's problem, it's not really even a problem at all as long as they don't tolerate sexism against those women, their primary problem is massive intersectionality fail and attacking groups of marginalized women.

Hi Heather!

Unfortunately "underlying misandry" just makes it sound (to me) like you're still denying that transphobia exists; it sounds like you're saying that the only reason people might dislike trans women is because they really, really hate men and they lump trans women into the same category. I don't think that's what you're trying to say, because it certainly isn't true. No one gets beaten to death because his partner found out he was a cis man!

In fact, I really don't think you should use the word "misandry" at all. It isn't really a thing that exists, any more than "reverse discrimination" against white people. Majority groups just don't face, or suffer from, that kind of institutionalized hatred, and coining a word like that implies that they do, and that they have it just as bad as the oppressed group. Sure, there are people who really hate men, but there are probably people who really hate any possible demographic. I'm not going to run out and coin "azuroptism" if I run into someone who has an irrational hatred of blue eyes!

"Also, if you think "traditionally minded women" are the women hit most harshly by the worse elements of radfems."

Nono, I meant that they often end up with surprisingly similar sets of bigotry...i.e. they end up trapped by the patriarchy that radfems claim to be trying to get rid of.

Also, I most certainly do NOT mean to imply that the only reason people are trasphobic is because of anti-male sentiment. Goodness no...I was just saying that's what I'm seeing a lot of specifically at radfemhub. They talk about how transwomen are "men trying to invade women's spaces." That strikes me as coming from a place where they hate men and hate the idea of men "invading" their spaces so much that they will exclude anyone they don't recognize as a woman.

I'll work on my about page and other explanatory pages to better explain this.

Also darksidecat, what you're talking about with regards to institutional misandry not existing, is something I agree with. So yeah, perhaps I'll just not use that term, as using it makes people assume I mean misandry in the MRA nonsense way, which I don't.

EDIT: Okey pokey, taking into account what you all are saying, I've added a page that hopefully clarifies. Here it is: http://womanboobz.wordpress.com/this-isnt-transphobia/

As per usual, it's one of those things where getting across what you're opinion actually is doesn't always work so well. I just want to emphasize that I do NOT think that institutional misandry is a real problem in western culture and that I do NOT think that all transphobia stems from a hatred of men. If my posts suggest that, it just means I'm not expressing myself well and I apologize.

Sounds like you buy into the mra trans sell point that transphobia is mostly influenced by misandry which is a load of crap. Radfems are effected by cultural transphobia just like how many liberal feminists are. From what I gather radfem disliking trans women is more about them a.)considering transwomen as men and b.)thinking that they are using male privledge to "pretend to be a woman" but suffer no consequences. Obvious thats not true and transphobic as hell but it has little to do with "misandry" and more to do with rationalizing their transphobia. It's like when conservatives claim they dislike homosexuals because its a sin, its rationalizing their hatred and fear of gay people.

Also radfem's do not only hate transwomen they loath other transpeople too. If you looked at heavily antitrans radfem sites out there you will notice they don't spare transmen or genderqueer people from their hate.

EDIT: Okey pokey, taking into account what you all are saying, I've added a page that hopefully clarifies. Here it is: http://womanboobz.wordpress.com/this-isnt-transphobia/

As per usual, it's one of those things where getting across what you're opinion actually is doesn't always work so well. I just want to emphasize that I do NOT think that institutional misandry is a real problem in western culture and that I do NOT think that all transphobia stems from a hatred of men. If my posts suggest that, it just means I'm not expressing myself well and I apologize

Your edited clarification again still buys into the idea radfem transphobia is somehow special and different than normal transphobia. It's not, they just use a different way then most people to try to rationalize their hate. If you can't aknowledge this, I don't think you should really be making a blog about transphobia (seeing as misandry vanished from the subtitle) if you misunderstand it. There is also other blog's that do this already without making a cheap point about misandry.

I do think that radfem transphobia is certainly influenced by hatred of men. They do seem (at least in what I've read) to focus most of their hate on trans women (much more so than trans men) misgendering them as men, and wanting them banned from what they define as "women only" spaces, etc.

I don't think that it's primarily driven by "underlying misandry" -- it's really impossible to separate their transphobia and their hatred/distrust of men -- but certainly that's a part of it that can't be ignored. Certianly, though, the vehemence of their transphobia shows that there's a lot more going on than just misandry.

I don't think the MRAs, pretty much all of them transphobic in some ways, even have a coherent ideology about trans people. The MRAs are mainly interested in making rad fems look bad. But in many ways their transphobic views are identical to the rad fems -- they see trans women as men, only they see them as being attacked by evil misandrists.

Basically I'll just say that what I was trying to explain in that post is what David said. A lot of the transphobia in radfem spaces is driven by a hatred of men. Not all of it, but a lot of it. And that certainly doesn't somehow diminish the way in which that transphobia results in discrimination against and oppression of transwomen.

RadFem hatred of men is laughable, because it doesn't reflect the reality of mainstream culture (as I said, institutional misandry doesn't exist). RadFem transphobia is horrifying, because it does actually reflect reality of mainstream culture.

I took out the underlying misandry bit because, yes, that did end up making it seem like I was saying that all transphobia was about hatred of men, which I didn't mean. Actually, I took out the term 'misandry' entirely because it was just too problematic.

Also make sure to always cite your sources clearly. Your latest post has a picture, but it's not clear if you got the picture from a radfem site, or if it's a picture illustrating something you read on a radfem site, or what.

katz wrote:Also make sure to always cite your sources clearly. Your latest post has a picture, but it's not clear if you got the picture from a radfem site, or if it's a picture illustrating something you read on a radfem site, or what.

Clicking on the link picture should take you to the original source, but I added a caption.

I think what may be going on is more like rad fem transphobia is being filtered through a rad fem ideology that's fundamentally distrustful of men. But that's a bit of an oversimplification: I think we've got two kinds of bigotry so intertwined it's impossible to say which is the underlying one -- they're both underlying, as it were.

All that said, it's the transphobia that's the real problem here, because in the real world its trans people who are being hated, bashed, discriminated against, etc etc etc.

David Futrelle wrote:I think what may be going on is more like rad fem transphobia is being filtered through a rad fem ideology that's fundamentally distrustful of men. But that's a bit of an oversimplification: I think we've got two kinds of bigotry so intertwined it's impossible to say which is the underlying one -- they're both underlying, as it were.

All that said, it's the transphobia that's the real problem here, because in the real world its trans people who are being hated, bashed, discriminated against, etc etc etc.

Yeah, but I find of feel like the misandry (anti-male sentiments, whatever you want to call it) is almost a source of uncomplicated stupidity. The transphobia is the real problem, and it is where the most real damage stems from. That means that mocking it can end up with readers laughing at or rolling their eyes at what is actually quite horrible...because it's just so outrageously horrible...and that is obviously part of the point.

With the anti-male crap, at least there isn't the sickening feeling that actual social trends and legal policies are being made with those ideas in mind.

It's two different sources of mockery, I suppose. But as you say, they are so completely intertwined I couldn't very well poke at one without poking at the other.

I don't think they're that connected. Trans* women clearly are not men, plus radscum don't specifically single out trans* women because of the "OMG icky boys!" thing, it's a lot more complicated than that.

Also, trans* men aren't nearly as singled out by radfems in terms of hatred. Some of us do get trouble, but not all. If it was just about "boys are gross" then all radscum would hate us equally to trans* women. Yet I don't see them running hate campaigns against trans* men on the regular.

(I know I haven't mentioned non-binary people. That's because radscum pretend they don't exist, mostly.)

I have a problem with the word "misandry" because I think it's a false parallel to misogyny.

Someone can, on a personal level, hate men. Just like someone can hate Swedish people, or dog owners, or people who do aerobics. But this personal, idosyncratic hatred has no systemic aspect. An aerobics-hater cannot throw aerobicizers' history of oppression in their faces. They cannot find support in the mainstream culture's warped view of aerobics. If they disclose their opinions in social situations, they'll be greeted with "WTF???" instead of "guess he's on the conservative side." Most importantly, they cannot add their voice to an already pervasive movement to deprive aerobicizers of financial security and bodily autonomy and personal safety.

Hating men is not like hating women or trans people. It's like hating aerobics enthusiasts.



Except that if you hate aerobics enthusiasts, you only make yourself look silly. If you hate men, your words can be used against everyone in your gender and/or political movement. The blog is going to be MRA quote-mining fuel, and although that'll mostly just be annoying (or refreshing? at least they'll have something besides Dworkin and Solanas for once), it could be used to slander feminism and convert guys to the MRA dark side.

please note: trans* is not a third gender

Actually I don't think David's really right about this and I'll try to explain why.

Radfems are "anti-male" in a lot of ways but I don't think all of it is necessarily illegitimate. Many of these women have been abused or hurt by men and seek safe spaces where they won't experience gendered violence. Many of them are also lesbians and seek spaces where they can find other lesbians without experiencing the male gaze and how it complicates attraction and so on. I think it is totally fine for radfems to want a woman-only space and to feel a certain kind of anger or mistrust against men in general, and I feel like this project is declaring those sorts of feelings "bigotry" when they're actually the response of a marginalized people to patriarchy.

Now of course radfems are transphobic about who they include in these spaces, because they don't count trans women as women, and sometimes allow trans men in these spaces (who are obvs. not women). Now, I don't think it's necessarily transphobic to have a space just for cis women, there's an intersection of gender + sex there (such as experiencing pregnancy as somebody who is gendered as a woman) which gives cis women unique experiences. But the problem with radfems here is twofold: 1. that their reasoning for making certain spaces cis woman only is flawed, there is no reason to exclude trans women from most of their spaces (such as Mich Fest) and 2. they don't merely insist on having cis woman only spaces for themselves but harass and bully trans women through a number of different avenues.

Those two things are not primarily a result of their ideology about trans women being secret men who are infiltrating women's spaces. As jumbofish said, their transphobia has been collected from general societal transphobia and they merely rationalize it using their ideological commitments. There is nothing about radfems' distrust of men which requires them to make websites that post pictures of trans people and make fun of their appearance. (You can see they don't do this with cis men; there's no "mantrenders" or whatever out there.) Furthermore, it's already a trope out in the wild that trans women are just perverted male crossdressers or whatever; radfems are NOT the source of that. While these radfems are wary of trans women because they are distrustful of anything male and they see trans women as male, so are straight men often wary of trans women (lest they be seen as gay), and other cis women are wary of trans women (MY BATHROOM!!!).

Also from looking at WomanBoobz it seems like you are missing the point of some radical feminist critiques of things like PIV sex. If you disagree with it, fine, but I don't think most radical feminist works are so "out there" that they can be dismissed that easily. It's all too easy to say "LOL WACKY FEMINISTS" and you need to be careful about that since that feeds into a certain narrative the mainstream has about feminism. Attacking transphobia is something that needs to be done to make feminism a more complete and just movement, but attacking "misandry" just seems like you're telling feminists that it's not appropriate to be critical of men/masculinity/patriarchy.

You should also remember that there are non-transphobic people who identify as radical feminists (even a few trans women, such as here: http://radtransfem.tumblr.com/). Someone on this board (I forget who) id's as a radical feminist. There are rad fems who are working at cleaning up their house and actively fighting against transphobia, racism, classism, etc. in the movement. You need to be clear who you are making fun of and why.

Whoops, I wrote my little rant before seeing Heather took "misandry" out of the title. I'm glad to see that. Although all the posts currently up are about man-hating feminists.

And I feel like that inevitably is going to put it in some really, really bad company. I think Heather means for it to be a place for feminists to look at it and say "yeah, feminism is so not like that," but it's going to attract a lot of people who look at it and say "yeah, we never should have given them the vote."

(It also puts the feminists in the position of saying "but we loooove men, we think men are super awesome!" as a reaction to that, which is... problematic. I love men in the sense that I love my neighbor, but pushing women and particularly feminists to prove their love for men gets creepy fast.)

Trans* women clearly are not men, plus radscum don't specifically single out trans* women because of the "OMG icky boys!" thing, it's a lot more complicated than that.

Obviously you're right that it is more complicated than that, but I have seen a lot of transphobic rad fems talking about trans women as if they are men; a lot of them clearly don't accept trans women as women (like a lot of other transphobes). That doesn't mean that what's going on is really misandry rather than transphobia, but that's how they talk about it.

I think that may also account for them paying less attention to trans men; they don't see them as really being men.

It's hard to separate out the different prejudices, and not just when rad fems are involved. Certainly, for example, misogyny is an aspect of a lot of transphobia against trans women from straight cis men.

Also, I second a lot of what Kladle and Pervocracy are saying about the dangers of playing into broader cultural (antifeminist, andtiwoman) narratives.

I know they don't accept trans* women as women. They treat trans* women as freaks. Just like douchebros. Should they encounter a trans* woman (or someone they perceive as such) they'll start screaming "pervert", "freak" and various slurs. Their actions, again just like douchebros', make them out to be an outrageous parody of masculinity.

Ah, I get it now.

Now, I don't think it's necessarily transphobic to have a space just for cis women,

I can't think of a single situation where this is true. Excluding trans women from women's spaces on the excuse of "biology" is rooted in transphobia. It's very unlikely that a trans woman or other woman without a uterus would seek to participate in, say, a discussion group for pregnant women, but this holds true for non-pregnant cis women and cis women without uteruses as well, so any designation of the space as cis woman specific reeks not of trying to limit it to the women engaging in a certain thing (such as pregnancy) and more like a flimsy excuse to exclude trans women. If you start calling your women's pregnancy group a cis women's pregnancy group, your going to earn raised eyebrows from me damned quick. There's no more reason to ban a trans woman from groups that discuss issues around pregnancy, abortion, etc. than there is to exclude sterile cis women, cis women who have had hysterectomies, etc.

Very well said, Darksidecat.

David Futrelle wrote:Also, I second a lot of what Kladle and Pervocracy are saying about the dangers of playing into broader cultural (antifeminist, andtiwoman) narratives.

But that's a bit...what I shouldn't mock them because it could be taken wrong? I think it's kind of wrong to say I should call them out on their outrageousness because they also identify as feminists. I know they're not representative of all radical feminists...which is why I don't suggest that they are in the blog. Perhaps I should provide a link to No Seriously What About Teh Menz (Ozy identifies as radical feminist I believe) to sort of point toward someone who's doing it right.

And...like I took out the term misandry because, yes, I can see where having it up there makes it appear I am making a false equivalency. And I tried to emphasize I'm not saying that their transphobia comes from a hatred of men (yeah 'underlying' was a bad term).

darksidecat wrote:

Now, I don't think it's necessarily transphobic to have a space just for cis women,

I can't think of a single situation where this is true. Excluding trans women from women's spaces on the excuse of "biology" is rooted in transphobia.

Just want to point out that I'm in complete agreement with darksidecat.

@Pervocracy:

My next post was going to be about the letter up at radfemhub about a woman who won't be going to MichFest this year because it's not ciswomen only. The site where I found that American Gothic picture has a bunch of other pics, some of them very much directly transphobic that I was going to comment on. All I can say about that is that I only started it last night...bear with me.

I liked it so far! Not to say you shouldn't listen to other people who have criticisms, because I often just plain don't notice potential problems. I might not visit it so often because blatant transphobia from feminists is kind of painful to me -- from the MRAs it's like, well, who cares what they think? But it's sort of hurtful to read such nasty things from people who seem like they should be allies.

Can I ask you what the point of this blog is? Why did you create it? What purpose are you hoping for it to serve?