Non-transmasc. Before You Is A Transmasc Person Talking About Their Experiences With Being Transmasculine

people have lost sight of what "reclaiming" means I fear. calling someone else a slur in a way that translates to "I think you're stupid/a bad person/whatever" is not reclaiming that slur. using a term in the same way it has been historically used (i.e. to put people down, to reify a particular power dynamic, etc) is not "reclaiming". I don't care if you're part of the same group. you're just being an asshole

I am not a big Tumblr poster. Ok? I'm an observer in all aspects. A lurker, if you will. I don't reblog stuff. I barely even like things. I only follow people sometimes.

But recently I've been scrolling through the 'transandrophobia' tag a lot more than I used to. recently I've seen posts that send me into a train of thought that's like. "People really think like this?" And it's more tiring than I realize sometimes. So I'm putting my thoughts into this post.

I've recently watched masculine trans people and queer people of all kinds getting the short end of the stick. I watch people put others down based on their masculinity, and I think- if this is such a big issue when done to femininity, why in the world would you think it's acceptable to flip it around? Feminism has never been about saying that women are better. It's never been about hating men. It's been about uplifting women so that they'll be seen as equals, and breaking both men and women out of patriarchal mindsets. It's about uniting over the fact that no group of people is better than another.

Trans men and enbies and mascs do not have whatever perceived systemic privilege you think they do. Trans people in general will only ever have conditional privilege in specific situations, if that. Society only praises performative masculinity- the kind that fits into their neat little boxes of 'should' and 'shouldn't'. Masculine queer people have never fit into those stupid little boxes. Trans men. Mascs. Butches.

I'm tired of this. Tired of the 'femininity good masculinity bad' talk. You're not children. Grow up and learn some nuance. Trans men are whiny and annoying to you because they've never had the privilege of being anything other than invisible. Constantly erased and brushed off so when they start getting angry you see it as an attack because you haven't cared to see them before. You haven't cared to see them when they were scared. You haven't cared to see them when they were just begging to be seen. You haven't cared to see them as anything other than traitors or thieves or anything because until it's not about you anymore, you don't give a fuck. You only look at them when you're personally slighted by whatever they have to say.

What does it cost to have empathy for other's lived experiences? Nothing. When a group of people is telling you what they've consistently and repeatedly been through, you listen to them. You don't shut them down because of an immutable trait. You don't shut them down because you've never seen it happen. You don't shut them down because they're not your idea of someone who's oppressed. That's not how this works. People are angry for a REASON. Masculine queer people have every right to be angry. we've been pushed aside and had statistics ignored and been told that other people's oppression is more important than ours simply for what? the sin of masculinity?

Now, above all, trans people should be united. Instead of fussing over whatever sort of strawmen and caricatures you have in your head, we should just be listening to each other. we should be able to listen to other's lives and traumas and pains without throwing a fit over words or theories. Having words to describe oppression is important. Being able to label your pain is important. But none of that matters more than what's happening to people in their real lives. the people who are dying. The people who are being raped and silenced and shunned out of public spaces and even their own homes. No words will ever matter more than the people who are actively hurting due to your refusal to even look in their direction.

if you want to talk about this, be my guest. Ask me questions. Tell me I'm wrong. Whatever. I just have a need for this to be known above all else. I don't care what people on the internet think of what I have to say. This site is a fuckin cesspool. so's every other corner of the internet.

Thanks for reading.

Tumblr is great because there are people who without a hint of irony will essentially say “being mean is a fundamental part of my ideology” and expect you to respect that

it kills me how much people love to speculate on the trans male experience. transphobes and even other trans people will conjure up ideas of what it must be like for us to live, how hormones affect us, and especially what society treats us like. they love to tell us how we live our lives; strawman after strawman about fictional trans men who started hormones and became "evil and ugly", completely fabricated stories about about how every trans man they know suddenly "gained male privilege" and never deal with misogyny or transandrophobia.

people who tell you how your transmasculine experience will go have no idea what they are talking about. even if they sound confident, they are not correct- each and every transmasculine person has a different experience in life- we do not automatically gain the societal privilege of cishet white men once we decide to socially transition. they cannot see what your future holds. you don't deserve to have someone telling you how you will experience your own life, it is yours, you are allowed to live your truth, pave your own way and prove that we have varied lives that transcend what transphobes think the trans male experience is.

Not a fan of egg jokes in general, but it's so telling that it's always like 'oh you use flower deodorant now? can't wait to check on you next year, girlfriend' and not like 'oh you don't wear nail polish anymore? can't wait to see an agender flag pin on your vest' or whatever. Like it's always binary egg jokes, we can't ever be anything else when trying out differently gendered activities.

this is exorsexism.

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The crux of the anti trans movement is a war on bodily autonomy. They don't want you to have any agency over what you look like, how you dress, who you date, whether to have kids, etc.

They want total control over you. Not just trans people. Not just queer people. You. Everyone.

Trans people are just a scapegoat. They want total control over everyone's self expression. They want the right to mold you into their perfect little cog in their dehumanizing machine.

Happy Trans Day of Visibility. Our rights are your rights. Our destruction is your destruction.

So much pointless LGBT+ discourse could be avoided if people just stopped assuming they knew everything about the oppression OTHER identities face.

For example, if you’re nonbinary, you can absolutely talk about the struggles you’ve dealt with as a nonbinary person, and speak of the issues your community is dealing with. But if you’re not transfem, it’s not your place to comment on how transfem issues compare to your own.

And if you’re a trans woman, you should absolutely not be talking about how trans men “have it easier” or what transitioning is like for them, because you fundamentally don’t know! You’re not a trans man!

And it goes both ways- trans men shouldn’t speak on trans women’s issues! Binary trans people shouldn’t claim to know what it’s like to be nonbinary!

It even hearkens back to older varieties of discourse, like ace discourse. You saw non-ace people talking about what THEY thought being ace was like, because they believed that being LGBT+ themselves made them the arbiters of oppression.

Or hell, gay men claiming that lesbians had it sooo easy compared to what they went through! Like, man, how the hell would you know, you're not a lesbian!

Just. Stop! Stop talking about the assumed experiences of other people! Being one flavor of queer doesn’t mean you’re the expert on ALL queer oppression! LISTEN to other people, stop talking over them!

I think if people accepted this, 90% of stupid online identity discourse would vanish overnight.

what the actual fuck...

It’s funny to me that people use “TMRA” as a negative descriptor. Like I get it, they're comparing an oppressed group of people to MRAs, cause they're fucking clowns.

But it goes to show they think any sort of advocacy that centers trans men is a bad thing. They refuse to see them as trans, just men. Pretending that the "man" part overrides the "trans" part of the identity makes them feel better about their own bullying. And if they paint anyone who defends them as a "men's rights activist", they can dismiss their concerns without ever addressing their arguments.

I advocate for the rights of TRANS men alongside the rights of trans women and nonbinary people! Because, as it turns out, ALL trans people are oppressed, and trans men aren’t the exception! I place just as much importance on their struggles as I do on my own.

What kind of person would think that’s a bad thing?

Oh, right. Transphobes.