Misogyny

Please look at the links before reading the article.

Top Ten Transmen

http://www.oddee.com/item_98038.aspx

Top Ten Transwomen

http://www.oddee.com/item_98035.aspx

 With the transmen article there is a wide range of occupations, which these men have. These occupations range from athletes to writers, activists, musicians, and even a man in the porn industry. The transwomen article only has models. So why was there a difference in the focus of the articles? I first thought that maybe each article was written by a different person. Turns out they were both written by the same person, Beverly Jenkins.

These two articles underline an all too common problem in society, misogyny. While all men get to be seen as a complete and complex person, a woman’s value is tied to her physical appearance. This attitude turns women into mere objects. Several people ask “What is the harm of showing attractive women in the media?” The problem is that most of these women are only shown as attractive things, that you cannot be seen as a beautiful woman unless you can look like this. The pressure to meeting this very narrow version of beauty is too much. These pressures have led to many girls/women to having a negative body image, eating disorders, and depression.

While the above issues of misogyny are well known and talked about often, what has been ignored far too often is how this media portrayal of women affects men. From the time that a boy enters the world he is bombarded with the same images as girls are. These boys are indoctrinated to see women as objects or people on this planet for their benefit. To explain how this works let’s compare the media portrayal of women and propaganda used in World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans started to make movies, posters, and laws to turn Japanese people into monsters. This made it easier for Americans to imprison Japanese-Americans and for American troops to kill Japanese people. By turning women into objects it makes it easier to beat them, kill them, and rape them.

Now let’s add another layer, of complexity, by including trans-people. Society tells us that men are “superior” to women and therefore subjugation of women is okay. That somehow the biology of men and women are opposites. If men and women were true opposites than why are there so many trans-people? Some people say that trans-men transition because all that they want is the power of being a man. If this was true why are there trans-women? By the mere existence of trans-people it proves that anatomy is not the defining characteristic of male or female. By the act of CAMAB(coercively assigned male at birth) and CAFAB(coercively assigned female at birth) people changing their gender expressions it could led to the liberation of cis-people to play with gender, then and only then can the sexes be equal.

The video is a reading of Julia Serano’s Transwoman Manifesto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7eeD1_-MsA