Just wondering if anyone else has encountered this and has advice or comments.
There are a handful of (mostly cis) people I’ve met who call themselves allies but when it comes to trans masc identities, it seems it’s hard for them to separate a trans identity from hatred for cis men/patriarchy.
There would be comments that felt weird but I felt too sensitive for feeling that way. And most of the time, the comments would be said in a joking tone that I felt weird questioning. There would be comments about “you’re such a guy” when I made mistakes or when I talked over someone in a conversation. Even when they were positive (e.g., “wow way to be a man and know how to parallel park”, telling me I can’t talk about periods now that I’m a man) it still felt forced in a way that it a) erased the fact that a majority of my “traits” I learned when presenting as a woman and b) fit me into a binary that idk as a trans person has never *fully* fit me.
I’ll preface by saying I think the person who did a lot of this was dealing with figuring out their own gender, but that doesn’t mean it was ok for them to push their struggles and beliefs onto my identity.
For me personally, it was really difficult at the time because I was so early in my social and physical transition that it really made me second guess my identity as a trans man/trans masc person. Because if all I would be seen as was problematic for indulging in masculine things I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be ostracised like that.
I’m not saying I would prefer outright misgendering (I’ve gotten enough of that to know that it’s hell), but at least misgendering is usually overt whereas the covertness of malgendering really fucks with me. Because it could (at times) be seen as just ignorance, but I would argue it still does damage.
I’ll also add (TW: SA) that in discussions around SA it’s also difficult to talk about SA without people dismissing it because Im a guy. Victims of any gender are treated horribly by society, but I have noticed that while there are support groups etc put in place for women and lgbtq groups, there isn’t a lot of places for men/trans men.
So, all of that to say, as someone who wasn’t aware what malgendering was until recently, I want to know what others have experienced or think about it? And also just talk about it in whole because I felt like I was going crazy until I learned what the term for it was.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading :)
