Were you a misogynist before realizing you were trans?

[transtastic]

This is something I feel ashamed of every feeling.
Growing up I always felt strong hatred towards women and girls in general.
Looking at degrading porn, thinking they were more stupid than men, couldn't
drive, dressed sluty. Didn't have a single female friend (didn't have many
friends at all for that matter). Didn't say or do bad things but my thoughts were
often very hateful.

When I started to accept my feminine qualities as an adult more and more
those attitudes just vanished. I now have many female friends and I admire
women for everything they have to go through in a male-centered world.
Over the years it's been a complete turn-around for me.

As I said I feel ashamed of ever having felt those feelings, but I have!
I never identified it as jealousy  but looking back I'm thinking to myself,
a deep seated jealousy could explain those feelings I had as a teenager.

Have you been through something similiar?

[PinkCloud]

Well, there is always time enough to grow and learn. I had some prejudice myself in other areas, mostly educated ignorance. At least you learned from your behavior, many will never even attempt to make an affort to make themselves a better human being.

[Ms Grace]

Oh yes. I wouldn't say I had it as strongly as you apparently did but it was there. On reflection it was rage at not only being excluded from the gender I identified as but also from being lumped in with the group I didn't belong to. It was strongest during my first two years at university, I was a total creep. I never acted on it, it was extremely internalised and impotent. Somewhere in all that haze I planned and came close to committing suicide. The decision not to was a turning point; in my third year at uni I (somehow, miraculously) became part of a group of first year female friends. For the first time I felt like one of the girls even if I was presenting as male. One of them even refered to me as an honary woman (did my heart sing or what!?). That was the end of the misogyny...

Well, there is always time enough to grow and learn. I had some prejudice myself in other areas, mostly educated ignorance. At least you learned from your behavior, many will never even attempt to make an affort to make themselves a better human being.

This is true. Our society, despite advances in women's rights, is still deeply patriarchal and steeped in demeaning, dismissive and outright hateful attitudes towards women. When you're growing up in that kind of muck, especially as a male bodied person, it can be hard without the right guidance to see it as anything but "reality".

[Jill F]

No, not even remotely, unless you count self-loathing. 

[Angela]

Honestly for me it was almost the opposite. Besides my Dad women were the only people I ever felt safe around. I had mostly female friends growing up because they never pushed me towards more male, aggressive activities and weren't as quick to judge. Always felt like I was going to get called out for being too feminine. I've kind of mellowed out on the issue though as I've gotten older unless I really have to socialize to a fair extent.

[Kimberley Beauregard]

Only at a very young age before I gained some self-awareness and new perspectives.  Coming out to myself came much, much later.

[PucksWaywardSon]

growing up assigned female... I thought that way! I looked down on the "girly girls" as airheads. It was infuriating to me that they should even exist when the tomboys (and boys) I tended to prefer to hang out with were so much more intelligent, had better toys and more meaningful conversation. I have also noticed that in "guy mode" I do tend to be a bit of a dick... (part of this is by tendency not to really do subtlety, thank you dyspraxia, but it's also the confidence/arrogance that comes from dressing/binding) so much for the Sensitive/Feminist-Ally Transguys narrative huh.

[tuuliu]

Hmm yeah I think I've had (and still have) some harmful attitudes towards women. As in, I may have thought women are not as good in certain jobs as men. I now realize, aside the patriarchal nature of our societies, that it's been because of not being able to be in human contact with people because I couldn't stand to see myself. I still get down there when I lose my self-confidence but now I'm able to realize it's because I'm not feeling good about myself. So I've projected hate towards myself instead of others.

I remember one example from high school when I started French and was horror-struck and perpetually frozen in place by the fact that the other 9 in the class were girls. I had been hoping to be a part of a girl group for so long though I didn't have the guts to admit that to myself just yet, and so I dreaded that this desire would be visible to anyone. So I just played a guy part and brushed off any attempts to actually include myself in this group or show that I was comfortable. Instead, I'd show that yeah really this is below me.

[transtastic]

Hmm yeah I think I've had (and still have) some harmful attitudes towards women. [...] I still get down there when I lose my self-confidence but now I'm able to realize it's because I'm not feeling good about myself. So I've projected hate towards myself instead of others.

That is so interesting. Never thought about it in that way, but for me there was definately a link between
disappointments in life and angry feelings towards women. It was like life disappointments activated my
angry feelings.

It's interesting that some of you recognize these feelings, while others don't.

[Clhoe G]

Arrr?  Yep I really felt jealous, not so much angry cis women, but sometimes I was angry at myself, which I still find hard to explain because I know I didn't have a choice in my birth gender.

I still get jealous tho, but who doesn't.

[Eevee]

I wasn't a misogynist. In fact, I was even a bit of a feminist. I did have one major flaw though: I was homophobic and transphobic. I was raised that way, so that's how I acted. I grew out of my ignorance around the time I started thinking for myself.

[orangejuice]

I just told my friends about a family friend that has recently come out as gay and the responses were '->-bleeped-<-got', 'bender' and '->-bleeped-<- sauce'. None of them are actually homophobic and they'd never use words like that outside my close knit group of friends, but the sense of humour is to be as outrageous as possible and ye I take part in that.....I'm pretty sure I'm never coming out to anyone.

[ImagineKate]

Nope not really. I just felt envious because I thought the idea of male privilege was a myth.

[Gothic Dandy]

Wow, props to you for admitting that about yourself in public. Self-reflection is such a powerful tool in one's personal growth.

I'm ashamed to admit I went the other way around, being female-bodied and all. It started in elementary school, when the boys and girls were always separated. I had this notion that boys weren't for making friends with. They were only for being boyfriends. So I was pretty much objectifying boys at the age of like...7. Now I feel really gross.

Then puberty hit, and my dad swooped in with the good old "Boys are scum, all they want is to get in your pants." So I believed that all the way up through college, and treated men who approached me accordingly, even if they'd previously been friends. While in college, I sensed an elusive male side of myself and was frustrated by this; at the same time, I was uninterested in dating men and vowed to never "belong" to a man through marriage (well I broke that one!). I didn't actively HATE men, but I did have a ton of internalized misandry (actually, wait, in middle school I DID proclaim a hatred of boys at some point).

It took a self-described misogynist to open up my eyes to the fact that the way I treated men was hurtful, and that I viewed them as objects instead of people. How embarrassing.

Now I'm the exact opposite. I love men and manhood and can't get enough of it. And realizing that I'm (probably) a feminine man, and have been that this whole time, fills me with such relief and peace. I understand everything about myself now. So many things about myself that have baffled me for years now make sense. I wonder if I would have realized I were a man earlier if I didn't hate them so much while growing up.

Although I hated being lumped in with the girly-girls, I never wished those girls would change just to make me feel better about myself. I never thought poorly of girls who weren't like me, even though there were traits and interests that I despised. (Traits and interests are not People.) In fact, I become absolutely LIVID anytime I hear women bash other women for just being themselves, because I'm a big advocate for individuality and being true to yourself.

Weird how I always thought of girls/women as individual people, but men as enigmatic objects.