Can you be against feminism without being a misogynist?

I think the answer to this question lies in distinguishing feminism as a set of movements and feminism as an ideal.

There are valid criticisms of feminist movements, and those that genuinely and honestly dislike feminism as a movement because of those things are not necessarily woman haters, and in some cases are anything but.  A non-feminist identified womanist who feels alienated by the history of erasure of woman of color and racism by some sections of the feminist movement is not a misogynist.  A trans woman who criticizes histories of transphobia within certain sections of the feminist movement is not engaging in woman hating solely by doing so.

On the other hand, attacks on feminism qua feminism, as a movement for rights of women, as women's non-inferiority and personhood, etc. are inherently misogynist.  Opposition to the notion that women are full people is misogynist to its very core, assertions that women should be denied bodily autonomy or access to social participation is intrinsically misogynist.  There is no real way to attack the idea of opposition to oppression of women as such and not being a misogynist.

Misogynist anti-feminist love to conflate their intrinsically misogynist attacks on feminism with the not intrinsically misogynist genuine criticisms of various feminist movements, but they are not the same thing at all.  The form, content, and intent of criticisms of feminism absolutely do matter.

If someone says that they do not like feminism because they have experienced a great deal of classism in feminist spaces, that alone does not make them a misogynist or indicate they are a misogynist.  However, those that take issue with feminism because it aims to advocate against sexist oppression, they are simply misogynists.

Coko and Trayvon

I just read this moving post over at queer black feminist http://queerblackfeminist.blogspot.com/2012/04/trayvon-martin-was-good-boy.html and it got me thinking of this http://leftytgirl.wordpress.com/2012/04/03/transmisogynistic-media-report-on-murdered-trans-woman-from-detroit-local-fox-affiliate/

Both Coko and Trayvon are being painted as bad subjects by so many people, bad victims, as "criminals", as not worthy of respect even when they are murdered.  Because they are marginalized people, they get presumed to be bad, to be unworthy.  And it is just so very fucked up.  They were murdered.  And people are painting them as bad to try and suggest they are unworthy of life and unworthy of mourning in death.  Marginalized people don't get to be human, don't get to make mistakes, don't get to be living and surviving in the rough situations they often are placed in by that very marginalization, don't get to be kids and friends and lovers, they just get to be "criminals" who we shouldn't be crying so much over.

A young autistic child is a threat in their eyes, not a person, not a beloved son or neighbor, and a butter knife becomes a steakknife to them.  http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/calumet-city-police-stephon-steven-watts-139072509.html

Edit:  Rekia Boyd was not a bad or unworthy human being either.  http://www.blackyouthproject.com/2012/03/22-year-old-rekia-boyd-killed-by-off-duty-chicago-police-officer-cellphone-mistaken-for-handgun/

I don't want to want more things I can't have

So...I've been re-thinking the issue of hormones lately.  I have known for some time that I wanted rid of the breasts, but hormones I was not sure about.  Partially because I needed time to see what my body would work like not being on estrogen containing pills for the PCOS.  Because, I have testosterone that is higher than what is considered "normal" for a cis woman by a good shot anyways, but I also have "average" levels of estrogen and progesterone.

Also, can I just say here how tired I am of this myth that estrogen and progesterone don't really shape the body all that much and that testosterone is so powerful and overwhelming?  Not all FAAB trans people have naturally "boyish" figures.  No one in the history of my life has considered my figure boyish.  It takes quite a bit of baggy clothes and binding to reshape the lines of my body to get taken as not a woman on a few occaions (which means getting taken as a man, which also doesn't really reflect reality, what makes me happiest is when I get "ma'am" at one place, cross the street and get "sir").  I went from tiny and delicate as a small child to curvy and broad hipped and big breasted, and then to curvy and broad hipped and big breasted and fat.  "Normal" levels of estrogen and progesterone are more than enough to shape a body in huge ways even with testosterone levels in between what would be expected for a cis male and a cis female.

I've been watching my body during this time, experiencing being an adult and watching and feeling my hormones shift.  I've purposefully tried to focus on keeping my speaking voice in the lower range, but now I feel like I have the voice of a thirteen year old cis boy.  Did you know when I'm not on hormones and my voice slips into certain modes, I can sing low enough to go along with a tenor and then slip back into soprano as falsetto or on other days soprano as just my base tone?  My voice even cracks sometimes.  I've never left puberty.

 I can watch my face shape change and shift.

 I know whether my testosterone or estrogen or both are high with a pretty good estimate at this point from observing my body.

I've had six months in a row without periods before, that's what got me in for a PCOS diagnosis.  Now, if I don't get a period every three or four months or so, I medically induce one.  I don't really have bottom dysphoria (I mean, I am one of those people who doesn't find the idea of having other genitals upsetting, but also doesn't feel upset by them as they are) and menstruation is not dysphoria inducing for me.   That certainly doesn't apply to all genderqueer people, it's just the way I feel.  It doesn't particularly bother me.  I don't have too many physical symptoms around menstruation like some people, so that might be part of it (I don't get anemia at times like my older sister does, I don't have bad cramping like my little sister).  If anything, the break in hormonal wildness that it usually takes to produce a period without pills means that I feel rather good and calm.  And, now that I get my body better, I'm much better at estimating when they are coming, so it doesn't have the panic inducing randomness factor that used to bother me as a kid.

Anyways, I wonder sometimes if I should consider going on blockers and hormones.  I wonder if they would make my thighs a bit less...well...but I had very wide hips even when thinner, they aren't really going to get small, and I wear long enough shorts that it's less of a big deal in public anyways.  It might help with the voice stuff.  But, when I start wondering, a lot of times I will shut myself down thinking "I don't need to want them anyways, I don't want to want them anyways.  You can't have top surgery realistically for years yet, and you've wanted that way longer and way harder.  Why even want hormones if you just know you can't have them?  Wouldn't that just upset you?  Just don't think about it."

And, I'm not sure that I want hormones anyways, but I want to get over that hump.  I want to be able to think about and explore that idea like I have other stuff, regardless of what the end decision might be.   Stinking medical gatekeeping, it's even interfering with my brain's ability to let me figure out what I want.

An Inadequacy of Terms

So, yeah, I spent way more time playing with this in class than I should have (available here http://www.dolldivine.com/marie-antoinette.php).  But it got me thinking again about a terminology issue I've been struggling with.  I think we all know that within trans communities, anti-femme sentiment exists, and some trans people are targeted more by each other and by society for certain types of violence and oppression.  But, what terms do we use?  FAAB and MAAB are sometimes useful, we can talk about violence and rhetorics that target more harshly MAAB trans people, including trans women, and how some FAAB trans people, including trans men, sometimes direct those unique combinations of sexism, femmephobia, and transphobia against them as well.  However, some people, especially non-binary or non-normative presenting people find these terms reductive.  Not everyone thinks that it's okay for people to be that focused on their birth assignment when discussing their experiences and bodies.  But, terms like "trans feminine" and "trans masculine" certainly don't work either.  Butch trans women, femme trans men, genderqueer people who do not present as just butch or femme do exist.  So, am I a butch or a femme?  Feminine or Masculine.  Mostly, I talk about being coded butch or masculine, but a lot of that is a function of the fact that most people who I encounter perceive me as a woman, which I am not.  If you look at my behavior through that lens, I am on the butcher side in most people's eyes.  But what if you looked at me as a man (something I also am not)?  Then my habit of painting my nails, my Mario Mushroom earings, my playing with dress up dolls on the internet, that I am willing to wear bright pink shirts, that I sometimes willingly dress up more high femmey as an almost costume sort of deal, makes me far more than the normative level of femme for a man.  We certainly need terms to discuss which trans people are the targets of transmisogyny, the people who are targeted by transphobic violence at higher rates, the unique ways in which sex assigned at birth and appearance and perception interact, and we need to be discussing these things.  I just think that when people group me as "transmasculine", they should consider the discourses they are using and the frameworks in which they are viewing me.

Queer Babies

Sometimes, I wish I bought into the idea that queerness and transness were genetic.  I have a certain fondness for the notion of having and raising queer trans babies, of being able to share queer and trans cultures and community ties with them, of having.  Maybe it would be enough to tip the scales and make me willing to face the social hell that would be heaped on me if I ever had kids if I could know that I'd be able to have little queer trans aspie kids.  I could read them Feinberg for bedtime stories, help them learn the eyebrow codes, and show them queer movies.  They'd grow up knowing their history, Compton Cafeteria Riots and Lawrence v. Texas. And dysphoria sucks, but if my babies had dysphoria, I would get them treatment, I would fight for them.  Because we already have cures for a great deal of dysphoria.  We've got hormones and surgeries.  It's one of those things that transphobes don't think of when they suggest we need "cured".  We've been working on that, and we've made a shit ton of medical progress, and if people would stop getting in our way, we'd make even more.  It's just our version of what we need is totally fucking different from what they imagine people should need.

Of course, in real life, you wouldn't know, and in real life, the trans or queer kids of a genderqueer queer person might tear themselves up and tangle themselves up because of social pressures to not be like their queer parent(s).  It's not okay to pressure kids to have a certain sexuality or gender.  Of course, the rest of the fucking world brutally forces everyone else, but still.  And of course if I had a child that was hetero and cis and neurotypical, I would love them too.  Though there's still a part of me that, when reading studies of "same sex" parenting and they emphasize that the kids won't turn out queer, is rather disappointed by that news.