So Tumblr Just Recommended Me An "anti-feminist" "men's Rights Activist" Post And Like

*gripping my hands so hard on a young trans persons shoulders that their bones are about to break*

do not log on to 4chan.com. do not get involved in passing olympics. you will always lose. do not put afab/amab/tma/tme, that is cisgender society trying to know your “real” gender. you do not exist to please cisgender people. there is no ‘right’ way to be trans. learn your goddamn history, listen to your elders. listen to other disenfranchised groups. listen to intersex people and check yourself for intersexism. listen to trans poc and check yourself for racism. listen to disabled people and check yourself for ableism. be open to learning always. labels are meant to fit you, not the other way around. you are not weird or predatory for simply being attracted to others. you’re fine if you’re not a skinny white twink or a barbie doll. you’re fine if your body is ‘weird’. you’re fine if you don’t have heavy or any dysphoria. it’s okay if you actually don’t want to transition or anything like that. life is worth living at any stage, you deserve to be happy. I SWEAR THAT YOU ARE OKAY!!!!!

Ok, I want to preface this by asking you to please not immediately react with denial, anger, or accuse me of neglecting other groups, or just being uneducated.

Look up

'trans people india'

'trans people pakistan'

'trans people bangladesh'

'trans people malaysia'

'trans people turkey'

'trans people afghanistan'

'trans people tajkistan'

Look at interviewers, new reporters, trans life accounts, descriptions of trans communities, trans activists, autobiographies, protests, everything.

And ask yourself.

Where are the trans men?

And do not balk, or accuse me of saying trans men are the most oppressed group in the world,

When I tell you they are enslaved. Or married. Or dead.

jesus christ

I'm just gonna say it: people using the term "transandrobros" gives me the exact same vibe as people saying "feminazis".

'transandrophobia is white male fragility' mfs when i start talking about the insane situation of trans men in the global south and how they're all useless westerners who don't give a shit about non-american poc.

RE: Binary Privilege, I really think youtuber VerilyBitchie said it best in her video on monosexism that privilege can be broken down into two parts; unjust enrichment and spared injustice. The example she uses is a bisexual man from a country where being queer is a crime being denied asylum because a judge does not view him as queer enough to actually be in danger(or even queer at all), while a gay man would be approved by that same judge because they think he's more at risk. The gay man is not being unjustly enriched, he needs asylum! But, he is being spared an injustice, namely his sexuality is seen as more real than the bi man's so he gets to escape while the bi man has to go back to his country and risk imprisonment and death. (This is also why I think it's important to keep in mind that being granted privilege does not necessarily mean a person is an oppressor or capable of leveraging their privilege to oppress. The gay man is not oppressing the bi man in this situation, he is just being given grace the bi man is not granted.)

So while I do think that binary trans people may be spared some injustices that nonbinary people have to deal with, I don't think any of that translates to like, unjust enrichment or the ability to oppress nonbinary people on a systemic level. And even then it does depend entirely on the situation and the people involved. I would be considered nonbinary by cishet people, but I use she/they pronouns, so I am spared the injustice someone who uses say, it/its or a neo-pronoun would face because mine are easier for cishet people to adjust to(even though a lot of cishet people default to her and ignore the fact that I'm trans, they are still using the correct pronouns). I am spared the injustice of having people treat me like a freak for my pronouns and default to the wrong ones because mine are seen as normal and easy to ignore, but I am not gaining any unjust enrichment, and certainly am not being granted the kind of privilege that would allow me to systemically oppress another nonbinary person.

I also think maybe it's important to keep in mind that someone can be bigoted without being an oppressor. Like I do not think that monosexual queer people are my systemic oppressors as a bisexual, BUT I can face bigotry and lateral aggression in the form of monosexism from biphobic monosexual queers. Like they can absolutely uphold my systemic oppression and weaponize parts of it against me, but they are NOT the ones who built or are driving the monosexism machine. That's cishet society. I think that's the what we see with like, transmedicalism and exorsexism from other trans people. They still aren't our oppressors, they aren't granted unjust enrichment or power, but they can still be exorsexist and transphobic and weaponize both against nonbinary people in horrifying ways, and they are also granted some slight privilege that we are not in the form of spared injustice.

I think conversations around privilege and oppression and bigotry are really complicated, and it's just important to keep in mind that having privilege you don't does not always mean someone is your oppressor, and also that someone can be bigoted and oppressive towards you without actually being your systemic oppressor class, you know? Or that's at least how I think about it, and it seems to help break down the conversation in a way that avoids too much finger pointing or semantic circular arguments over terminology that get us nowhere.

I like the scientific breakdown of "privilege," that's a very cool way of putting it.

another day another post in which someone fairly complains about an issue affecting trans women, yet for some reason decides that this issue is Unique To Trans Women Only and probably orchestrated by The TMEs, despite trans men dealing with quite literally the exact same issue on a regular and public basis

Please stop forgetting nonbinary people!

Theyfab isn't a transmasc-specific slur. It's always been used against any nonbinary person assumed to be AFAB.

Though the AGAB of nonbinary people is nobody's business in the first place, it bears repeating that not every AFAB nonbinary person is transmasculine, just as not every AMAB nonbinary person is transfeminine.

These bigots aren't just transphobic towards trans men/mascs, they're exorsexist as well. We'll be stronger if we stick up for each other and push back against them together!

Edit: Just to make it clear, theyfab is being used against transmascs as well! I just want people to also acknowledge the non-transmasc nonbinary people being hurt.

With this latest round of discourse being "trans men shouldn't complain about being kicked out of women's spaces", I felt the urge to write up a relatively long post regarding the topic, as I feel it is a long tangled mess and involves a significant amount of people simply talking past each other.

To begin, what is a woman's space? I ask this, because "women's spaces" often fall under one of three categories: medical services, social services, and social gatherings. Of the three, trans men need access to nearly everything if not everything included within "medical services" and "social services". These things often need to be considered co-ed anyway, but are still considered "for women" and often are labeled things like "women's health" or "women's defense". Social gatherings- things such as book clubs, concerts, festivals, and other similar outings- can have a nuanced and complicated history when it comes to the inclusion, or exclusion, of trans men.

As an example- I am a binary, gay trans man who has not yet been sterilized. If I become pregnant and need to seek out social services, I must do so via my provider's "Women and Babies" department. I am neither of those things, and yet regardless of whether I am completing or terminating the pregnancy, I must label myself a woman in order to receive care. If I wish to have a pap smear, receive birth control, or investigate my chances of ovarian and cervical cancer, I must do so via the "Women's Health Clinic". I am not a woman, but I must label myself as one in order to discuss sterilization options. Many trans men who have had their gender markers changed prior to sterilization have reported difficulty even booking an appointment, as well as difficulty convincing their insurance to pay for this appointment due to a discrepancy with gender markers vs gendered care. Many have discussed the realities of being a pregnant man, whether they remained pregnant until their child was born, or whether they terminated said pregnancy with an abortion.

It should come as no surprise that the statistics for trans men receiving quality gynecological care are abysmal. It should be equally unsurprising to hear how many trans men have died from botched abortions, untreated miscarriages, infections and cancers of the uterus and cervix and ovaries, and complications during pregnancy or birth. We belong in this space, despite it being labeled "for women", and the only thing pushing us out has done is quite literally what's been killing us.

This is, of course, not even taking into account the numbers of trans men who have been forced to become pregnant via their husbands or families as a means to detransition them, and those who have become pregnant as a result of corrective rape. There is a saying among trans men of my age- it isn't "we all know a guy this has happened to", it's "which of us haven't experienced this? who among us doesn't fear this? who will it happen to next?"

Which brings me to my next point: women's social services. As with women's medical care, nearly everything labeled "for women" as a social service must be inclusive to trans men. Shelters for domestic violence survivors, rape crisis centers, self defense classes, family planning, these are all things that honestly should already be co-ed. But, many times, they are exclusively targeted towards women. I understand why, I do. But with trans men being statistically more likely than cis women to experience the need for these services, it seems a cruelty to close their doors to a vulnerable demographic reaching out for help.

Where should trans men in crisis go? Shutting the door to us without addressing the reason we need to access these resources gives us a single ultimatum: detransition, or die. Go back to being a woman, or die knowing the likelihood that a woman's name will adorn your headstone, and "daughter, wife, mother" will be said in your obituary. Much like the medical services, this incomplete answer has lead many trans men to their deaths. Whether by their own hands, or by their attackers'.

But there are other social services out there that perhaps are not as dire. Women's scholarships, colleges, all girls schools. Girl Scouts, women's sport leagues, gym memberships. Trans men don't need access to these, right?

Well... is the trans man in question out? Has he been living as a man, or is he still closeted? Is it safe for him to come out? Does he pass, or has he just bought his first binder and given himself his first buzz cut? Is he living under the control of his parents, or is he able to freely decide for himself the type of person he'd like to be and the type of life he'd like to live?

You see, I was a Girl Scout once. And, if we are to believe to our core that trans men are men even before they know the words "transgender", this means I was a boy in a girl's space. I didn't know that being transgender was an option for me at the point where my troop disbanded, and another leader to replace the first within my local area was not found until after I had aged out.

But also... I was in 7th grade when my troop disbanded. Two years later, I would learn the word "transgender", and suddenly everything would make sense. Two years later, I would come out to my parents and my sisters. To put this into perspective, I graduated high school in 2010. The Boy Scouts officially allowed cisgender girls and transgender people of all genders to join all programs in 2019.

I was not expelled from my Girl Scout troop. My leader simply stopped showing up to meetings, and my troop disbanded to go our separate ways when leadership could not find someone quickly enough to replace her. But... if this had not happened, I would have been a recently out transgender boy in a girl's social service, still wearing push up bras and frilly shirts because that's all my parents would buy me until I became an adult and moved out and had a job with my own money to re-purchase myself a wardrobe. Indistinguishable from any of the others, outside of what went on inside my own mind.

I would not have been accepted into the Boy Scouts, if Girl Scouts had been taken from me as abruptly as it was from a different transgender boy in the same state I was born and raised. Which would have left me with... nothing. Neither. And the only reason I even joined the Girl Scouts was because I had wanted to join the Boy Scouts and the local troop had refused to allow me, because they had labeled me a girl.

I don't believe I'm the one that coined Schrodinger's Gender, but I do reference it often. In this situation, one is both a boy when it hurts, and a girl when it hurts. Even if that gender label changes by the second, the point is to use your gender and your assigned sex to hurt you.

But then, why do these services even have to be gendered to begin with? After all, Boy Scouts just updated to be The Scouts, and has removed (on paper) the insistence on gendering.

Well... I certainly agree that the majority of gendering these services is at this point a concept that needs to be reformed, but I'm unconvinced that we will be able to completely integrate without addressing the reason they were segregated by gender in the first place.

Women's gym memberships are gender segregated for two reasons. Women and girls- and anyone labeled as women and girls, regardless of true identity- are frequently not afforded the same access to resources as cisgender men and boys. Women and girls- and anyone labeled such- are frequently at high risk of predatory sexual behavior and physical violence. Both of these problems are symptoms of a larger system of misogyny at play, and both of these problems directly affect trans men especially those who have not transitioned in a way that makes them pass for cis men.

Regardless of the truth of my identity, the reality is that I was seen as and treated as a girl when it came to physical fitness, and thus barred from the same activities freely offered to the boys. Regardless of the truth of my identity, I have experienced predatory sexual behavior from cis men as young as 8 or 9 years old, continuing past when I came out and began to transition socially.

If the problem is not addressed, cis women cannot re-integrate with cis men. But, additionally, if the problem is not addressed, the choice still remains clear for trans men. Detransition, stay closeted, or go without.

A common complaint of trans men is the invisibility and erasure our demographic faces. It should be easy to see why this happens. The problem of a misogynistic society is one that continues to this day, and without addressing the problem we cannot hope for success in creating a more inclusive space. At the same time, trans men are being pushed out and isolated as they realize they must make a choice.

As for social gatherings, such as a woman's retreat or a woman's music festival? Of course, it may sound odd to say that a trans man should feel welcome there. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the trans men asking for the ability to stay are trans men who have been within that space for years already, prior to coming out, prior to realizing some things about their genders, prior to taking their first steps as men.

I'm pretty good friends with an older butch who told me that I am the first person they ever told that they were a nonbinary man. This person is in their 50s. They're married. But the wife doesn't like it, and they love their wife too much to cause friction in the relationship, so they keep it to themselves, and they keep quiet, and they don't say anything about being transgender, but in their head they aren't a woman. This person is not a woman, by their own insistence. Should this person be forcibly ejected from their local lesbian community, which they and the wife helped form decades ago? Should they divorce their wife, since that would make her not a lesbian anymore?

What harm is it, truly, to allow this person to stay? Social isolation kills people. The trans man suicide statistics are just as abysmal as any of the others I've mentioned here. Forcing someone to burn 20, 30, 40 years of their lives and their friends and their achievements because they are finally living as themselves is a deeply hurtful and isolating experience.

The majority of trans men asking to be included in these spaces are not trans men like me- who never really jived with the idea of womanhood and distanced ourselves as much as possible the moment we saw the opportunity. They are men like my friend, often existing outside of the binary, often with a deep love and appreciation for womanhood despite realizing that perhaps the label does not fit them as well as they once thought. They often have many years of connection, entire lives spent intwined in these spaces.

What good does it do to chase them out? What harm does it to do let them stay?

Well I've got a list of blocked blogs longer than the fucking Iliad and I still got myself in the trenches :p

tumblr discourse after 13 years on this fucking website