On "Men I Can Treat Like Women"

Oct. 16 2025

Note: this is from a previous BlueSky thread which is why it's formatted this way. It may be edited for clarity but otherwise is the same. It seemed to controversial to leave there, but I generally stand by it.

I kind of feel like at some point we're going to have to discuss that under a patriarchal system, "finally, a man I can treat like a woman" is a very exciting and cathartic target and takes up a specific role in society as a sort of sin eater, but who has this role shifts according to your position

Like the traditional thought of person who takes up this position is effeminate gay men, who are this to heterosexual men. But historically, a group especially in Europe was Jewish men, so it's not necessarily attached to real gender and sexuality identification. But let's keep going.

Women also love to engage with this. Lesbians, especially masculine lesbians, have always been a target. Within some lesbian communities, butches are a target. Again, it doesn't have to do with real gender or sexuality identification -- it's just a socially acceptable target of resentment.

A lesbian can still be a woman and still fit the "man I can treat like a woman" target criteria. The most visible societal target for this is trans women right now, which helps explain where some of the orgy of hate comes from right now. Note, the biggest indicator of "man I can treat like a woman"

is that the person is called a man, or masculine, or considered "man-like" and is treated in a way no "real man" in their position is treated. The fear of confronting a "real man" in the space of the "man I can treat like a woman" is gone, and thus the latter is a soft target for hatred of the first

But I'm not going to stop here. I'm going to talk about trans men and transmasculine people and transmasculine identity. Because while this does not apply to all of us, a significant amount of us do not identify as how one typically formulates "man" in our society

but seem to really, really strongly identify with "man I can treat like a woman", which is not supposed to happen. It is so much not supposed to happen that a mother treating her son as a "man I can treat like a woman" as a child permanently fucks the kid up and turns him into a serial killer

is a pretty common trope. Yet the reason why so many transmascs identify so strongly with "man I can treat like a woman" is, well, probably because it is how they have experienced their entire lives, and don't really want to change that, but rather put that out in the open and be treated better

If you said, for example, "I don't want to stop being gay, I just want to be able to be gay openly and be treated better for it", well, in progressive circles this is a milquetoast thought. Like it's really normie and boring. It is THE normal desire, really.

But when a transmasc does this everyone loses their fucking minds -- because to identify as a "man I can treat like a woman" is actually SUPER transgressive, though we don't like to admit it. Society absolutely begs the target of "man I can treat like a woman" to pick a damn side, to either

assert masculinity in a conventional, hegemonic way, or to truly become a woman and no longer be fair game for "man I can treat like a woman", just normal misogyny. This is why it's easier to swallow "trans women are women"*, why being a tomboy is a phase you grow out of and butches are considered

forever immature, why depictions of lesbians in media seemed to get MORE feminized as lesbians became more accepted, etc. To stake out "man I can treat like a woman" is truly wrong and the wrongness for transmascs comes up in this idea that any transmasc who does not take on a conventional masc

identity is a faker, or is immature and will OF COURSE grow into it with enough years on T. That any that claims a difference will detransition and turn into a TERF, or just wants to be a smol bean and look like "her" favorite K-pop star. The idea that someone would remain in this space

is deeply, DEEPLY uncomfortable and that they also want to be respected while in that space makes it worse. But also, you are being drawn into the role the transmasc has embodied every day of his life and you are the one having so much difficulty with it. Maybe think about that.

Of course there's a lot to be written about "man I can treat like a woman" besides its relation to transmasculinity. But I thought I'd just say that. Maybe people smarter than me can say the rest, or have already.

*Because people are already leaping down my throat to take this out of context: "trans women are women" is easier to swallow for progressive groups than a more complex truth like maybe the entire concept of womanhood is fundamentally flawed, or that transfeminine nonbinary people exist

and also deserve and protection from harm despite not being classifiable as women, etc etc etc. which is why this is right next to the point about lesbians being presented as more and more feminized upon being more "accepted", because to be acceptable means vacating the space.

I didn't really want to belabor the point of trans women also occupying the space of "man I can treat like a woman" because I would expect it to be very dysphoria-inducing

but it's one of those things where you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. This is what you get for being a man you can treat like a woman.