Ask Lemmy

Ky Schevers is an interesting voice on this sort of thing. There's a good interview here: An “Ex-Detransitioner” Disavows the Anti-Trans Movement She Helped Spark

At 35, Schevers is no longer saying she was wrong about everything, either in her transition or her detransition. She now identifies as “a transmasculine butch dyke, genderqueer, something like that,” she told me, and her she/her pronouns contrast with her male-sounding voice and masculine presentation. She doesn’t think that every single detransitioned woman is really trans, and understands that others may have different experiences. Schevers believes strongly that every person deserves the right to question their gender identity and find their own paths.

She recognizes the good in her detransition experience, explaining: “There’s not always space in trans and queer communities for transmasculine people to talk about internalized misogyny. I could talk about it openly without worrying that people were going to be upset by it.” She even sees the good in some of the ideology, which is based in radical feminist ideas about internalized misogyny and male violence. “Not all the radical feminist ideas were terrible either: I learned a lot about women’s history,” Schevers said. “A lot of what I read was pretty interesting, so I’m glad that I explored that stuff.”

The internalised misogyny she talks about there is thought to be responsible for a small percentage of the small percentage of trans men who regret it. They mistook the whole "girls are crap because they like wearing dresses and playing with dolls" idea that so many tomboys have as meaning that they are trans rather than that they were being indoctrinated by a gender-obsessed society.

I don't think anyone knows if transness would exist in a genuinely non-gender-based culture; I've seen the question asked a few times and the response has always been "no idea". Is it more than just I hate the stereotype of my sex so much I won't be forced to live down to it? (Note that this is subtly different to the internalised misogyny of the tomboy who hates the stereotype of their sex so much they despise members of the same sex.)

No one knows and I don't think anyone should care, either. I don't have to understand the deep bio-cultural science of transness, or have peer-reviewed studies to hand, to know that trans people exist and it is possible to not be an arse about it.

I've only ever heard the above argument made for tomboys (cis women) but I don't see why it would not also be something that cis men could experience. Just because everyone knows it's crap to be a girl doesn't mean it isn't also crap to be a boy. The gender binary is a mirror; you can't treat women differently without also treating men differently and not all of the differences favour men (and often, they make everyone worse off because most men are not members of the patriarchy, of course).