ihavenomouthandimustmouth

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

I mean this is a pretty hot take but I think until y'all can sit down and actually provide examples of what you mean by "privilege" instead of using the word as a means of referring to the nebulous idea that some people have it better and its Their Fault, there will continue to be absolutely braindead takes about who holds what privilege and how it conflicts with actual first-hand experience.

That's why, when I ask what male privilege I was apparently either born with or received immediately upon coming out, I get crickets.

When we talk about male privilege, we talk about getting paid more. We talk about getting hired more, and into higher-paying jobs more. We talk about being able to vote and drive and have credit cards and bank accounts. We talk about reproductive freedom and body autonomy. We talk about rape statistics, domestic violence, and other forms of violent crime. We talk about immigration and citizenship status and human trafficking. We talk about power dynamics in relationships. We talk about society's expectations for gender roles.

There's two big problems with this:

Unless a trans man is completely binary, fully stealth, and has burned every trace of his past, almost none of this is accessible to him. Trans men don't get paid more unless their gender marker is M, there's no mention of ever being anything but cisgender, and they're completely stealth. They don't get hired more, unless these things are true. Many lived lives being discouraged from chasing higher paying jobs such as STEM fields due to being seen as girls, so they're not going into these jobs more either. Similarly with voting- when I registered to vote I was non-passing, with my legal name and gender marker. To the voting office, I was a woman. To my credit card company, who has never seen my face, I'm *still* a woman, despite passing most of the time. To my bank account, which I've had since I was 8, I've never not been a woman. When I took my driver's test, I was treated as a woman.

When I asked for a hysterectomy at 20, I was told not until I was over 30, had a minimum of two children, or had a husband to sign off on it. Just like a woman. When I whacked my head as a kid and was rushed to the doctor, the doctor specifically said if I was a boy he wouldn't have bothered stitching but a girl can't have scars on her face *while he was stitching my forehead back together*. I had to fight to be allowed to cut my long hair. I had to fight to be allowed to take care of it by myself.

I have needed to leave relationships when I realized I was with a man that would hurt me for his gain. I've been assaulted by my peers for being a black woman or a black girl in a space that I was not wanted.

I was raised with the expectation that I would be a mother to a large family with a husband that kept me pregnant and likely staying at home like a typical tradwife. I was punished, physically, mentally, emotionally, socially for rejecting that life. I lost literally all my social group from before I came out. I lost a good chunk of family members too, and the ones I have left are... trying, but not perfect.

And:

Other marginalized men are also often denied access to these things either. White men might be paid more, but white women make more than men of any other race. White men might be hired more, but "Rachel" is more likely to get a call back than "Rafael". White men are more likely to be in a STEM position, but tell me when the last time you saw a Native doctor. It may have been *legal* for racially marginalized men to vote, but those who did not speak English had no ability to do so until 45 years *after* white women had the right to vote (and technically it took another 10 years for translations to actually be provided). Banks and credit companies and driver's tests and mortgage brokers and more are *known* to discriminate, between barely-legal remnants of redlining to outright illegal discrimination because they know they can get away with it.

Black and Native children are taken from their birth families and placed into foster care and adoptive homes daily due to state-sponsered genocide. It's more than just the mother that's affected by this. Black men are largely targeted by stop-and-frisk policing policies that exist to do nothing except harass and assault them for just existing in a place, and are an extreme body violation.

New studies show that men experience rape and domestic violence at roughly the equivilant rate as women, but reporting is obscenely low due to social pressures and rigid gendering of victim vs abuser policies. The demographic with the highest rate of murder victims is black men.

Single, childless adult men are not allowed to immigrate to multiple countries, including the US, on refugee status. Men of marginalized races- largely latine and asian- are trafficked by largescale construction companies and then deported or abandoned when no longer needed.

Disabled men are killed or abandoned regularly by their able-bodied partners who got tired of dealing with them.

I know more than one man who feels trapped into a place where he cannot, ever, show any emotion besides horny, hungry, or angry as a direct result of strict gender roles being pushed on him. I know more than one man who has tried to take his own life because of it.

I know more than one man who has succeeded.

And I gotta be honest the further I get in transition and the more I pass the more I think that being a man... also kinda sucks. Like it sucked when I was a woman. Doesn't really feel like it sucks less as a man. Seems to me like society treats both of these pretty poorly and I was told the grass was way greener on this side and it's, uh, not. Not really. Not when you start making cis male friends and start realizing that a lot of these guys had a lot of the same experiences you grew up being told was part of a woman's life.

And I'm not saying that these guys don't have interactions where life is better for them because they're men. Of course they do. That's patriarchy for you. But I do think it's difficult to have a "male privilege" argument when people try to argue on a 1-to-1 basis and it just straight up doesn't work like that.

And I know a lot of what I'm saying ties back to the theory of intersectionality, that this can't flatten nuance like this is directly tied to the fact that a white woman, a native woman, an asian woman, a black man, a latino man, and an arabic man, are all going to have WILDLY different experiences that you can't just "well you're [gender] so you don't experience [harm]" about because it's blatantly untrue. Especially if you continue to add marginalizations, like immigration status, religion, sexuality, transition, language, and more.

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

Testosterone is only an evil hormone when it comes to trans people and intersex people it seems. The same people who post about women with high T dominating sports, trans women being violent because of ‘male puberty’, and trans men being ‘poisoned by T’, so all these groups must be banned from ever being in public because they are too ‘dangerous’ are usually the first to say that perisex cis men just can’t help their behavior because of T and that we should just accept that and forgive them when they are violent bigots.

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

as a trans man, calling myself a "full-grown man" in front of cis people and watching their reaction is a great litmus test for their attitudes towards transmasculinity

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

I will say hatred of men in a vacuum is not systemically harmful. It's definitely not nice but it's not bigotry.

But it is used to justify bigotry.

Common stereotypes for visibly deformed+disabled people are things like social ineptitude, lack of morals ('evil cripples' are a whole monster on their own),

And then general idea of being a 'man', in a patriarchal sense (strong, determined, sexual), combine with stereotypes present in marginalization.

So when people interact with visibly deformed+disabled men, they're typically doing so through both these lenses.

Think of a visibly deformed+disabled man. There is a stereotype surrounding those men; that they're creepy, that a lack of understanding social cues means they'll assault women, the semi-unconscious logic of deformed=creepy=perv. Think of something like Perfect Blue (1997), or like, any media appearance of dwarfism. This shit goes double for men with dwarfism.

People treat disabled men like shit; act like they're assaulters-in-waiting, act like they're manipulative for having needs, treating any man visibly deformed as if he's a resentful incel freak, backing away from him in a froward, doing anything to not be near him. And they will justify their ableism with "it's because he's a man". They will say that they're "just wary of men", while leaning into heavily ableist stereotypes, using the fact he's a man to justify their treatment of him.

When a woman deliberately takes a path to avoid me, I think: "would she do this if I wasn't deformed? Does she even know?"

Yeah and all of this is to say. This is why trans men generally hate hearing "I hate all men". Because it's used to justify people's transphobic biases towards us.

When a woman tells me directly how much she hates men, I think: "would she be saying this to me if I wasn't trans? Is she saying this because I'm a man, or because she wants to show her distaste for how I transitioned to a man?"

(I am a visibly deformed+disabled trans man, I wrote this post using language I prefer, keep in mind not everyone is fond of being called "deformed".)

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

I know most people don’t look at Twitter but I don’t see people talking about this. On September 14th Laim Johns, a transgender man died from kidney failure. Transphobes are misgendering him and saying his death was caused by testosterone or complications with phalloplasty.

The lack of empathy for a person who died and his family who is mourning is just sad. A man died and they just have to jump to being transphobic.

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

It's actually pretty ridiculous how some of you guys treat trans men. They're both somehow an aggressive man taking man poison and a hysterical woman to y'all. "I could never be a man" yea doofus, human beings are different, doesn't mean you shouldn't have empathy for them.

Some of you know you're trans but refuse to evolve your brain past a 4th graders' understanding of gender.

And also if you're not a trans man, and don't talk to trans men, maybe nobody needs to know your opinion on trans men.

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

yknow in another life i think i could have genuinely like the term tboy for myself but ive seen too many people use it to mean "trans men i think are annoying white teenage girls"

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

tboy wrestling I miss you 🥲

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

okay im gonna say it. if you're not transmasc, you don't get to have an opinion about forcemasc. personally it's not my thing, but again, if you're not transmasc it's none of your business. it's not your place to call it misogynist or say it's not a real kink or whatever the fuck. let trans men have one thing, the world doesn't revolve around you

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

everyone knows that cis people need to be less weird about trans bodies but trans people also need to be less weird about trans bodies. no one gaf if ur scared of bottom growth or thinks its weird. keep that shit to urself. ppl keep talking about normalising trans people who don't medically transition but like. don't normalise not wanting to medically transition to the point that medical transition is stigmatised bcs you guys r freaks about trans bodies. no one cares u think that either ftm or mtf bottom surgery is ugly or weird looking. keep that to urself

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

most cis men are so insecure they would not survive being trans. I think god made us trans because we’re stronger than them.

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

LMAOOOO

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

I truly believe any neurodivergent person can be framed as manipulative if their doctor dislikes them. What is masking if not manipulation if you view it uncharitably enough?

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

Femininity is a cage people when you ask them to recognize that trans men saying the same exact thing is not misogyny:

[ihavenomouthandimustmouth]

Let a transmasc in your life know that they're seen and heard and appreciated and welcome in your life and your community today