#abviriy

[clowncary]

Cattle Boy: Performing Masculinity Wrong

Original Medium version here.

Azriel Pierce is a cistrans mascfem Soulgirl who cannot be described as anything but a “Radical Gender Expansionist”.

...

When you are this thing, a cattle boy, they’ll put more weight on you — testing your durability. Seeing if you can handle masculinity and manhood present within it. If you wanted out, you were called emotional and a traitor. You are the meat they eat, you are the dairy they drink — the leather they wear.

...

Masculine World

Masculinity is not one overarching concept. Instead, it varies depending on how the culture views who and what gets to be masculine and how that is presented in language and time. To become a man and be declared a man is a specific form of growth that does not finish, that does not bloom, but grows like nails and vines. Manhood is consistently tried and put on display to criticize in a way that mocks itself.

To many, masculinity is to adhere to the common themes of ego, stubborness, strength, and breadwinning natures described as traits used by those “on top”. This form of masculinity is often called toxic or patriarchal masculinity because it upholds the patriarchy against men and women alike.

In those specific themes, you must always deny your association with womanhood and must listen to other men by ignoring the pleas of comfortability. You must also focus on asserting yourself into sexuality as the primary benefactor, your family life and trauma should not curse you, and your body must have no imperfections from past battles.

Anything other than this is a blight to masculinity and is to be questioned and mocked so that one may “experience” said growth (“Show me you’re a real man”).

If you do not have the ego, you cannot be a hero. If you are not stubborn, you cannot be deny responsibility. If you do not have strength, you are weak and feminine. And without making money, you are not valued.

Masculinity is vast, and yet we are stuck with the outlined attributes created and perpetrated by western standards spreading through our cultures. And because masculinity in the western world has always been related to being white, heterosexual, and Christian, being anyhting but these is effeminate and unvalued.

Masculinity that challenges male dominance, such as butchness or tomboyish attitudes, is seen as “ugly” in women and GNC/trans people. Said masculinity in these people are not valued, sought out, or recognized beyond lesbianism. Yet, even when said lesbianism allows masculinity, it is expected to still be apart or attached to a feminine figure or person who was born into “femaleness”.

Between The Two

I was born with a mullerian indication, meaning that I had indicators that helped in me being assigned female. I had a mullerian growth which resulted in being protomullerian — which are sex traits aligned with femaleness. XX chromosomes, enlarged breasts, wide hips, uterus and vulva, etc.

Being protomullerian had not caused me dysphoria until I hit puberty, in which I had begun to grow out these features that left me disgusted with my body. Since middle school, I have always been interested in being like the boys. I had an affinity for femininity or womanhood as if I was an outsider, a het boy. If I was smarter then, I’d realize that my attraction was being used against me by those around me.

Boys who saw me and my then girlfriend would gawk. It would be something that they had dreamed of. Two women, holding hands and laughing and being in love. They asked questions, they observed as if this was something taboo. Yet, I saw this as a young boy falling in love with a young girl. This was a heterosexual relationship. They were intruding.

I was always like the boys. I was the only mullerian outside of my mother in the family. My younger and older brothers were protowolffian — meaning they had sex traits aligned with maleness. I grew up the same way they did and had been allowed to be a tomboy.

Even when my neighbors were girls or I had friends in middle school who were just like me — mullerian — I did not refer to myself as being like them. I had ended up seeing myself entirely as this distinct concept from masculinity and femininity because I was never percieved as having both or any of it. They could call it androgynous, but that isn’t the right word for what I was dealing with from others.

When I reached high school, I noticed a lot of changes. I had gotten bigger, bulky and fat, but not exactly overweight. I tested out different names and learned a lot about how I felt regarding women and men. From the start, my presentation was lazy and I covered my body in jackets and hoodies. I dared not show my skin or my chest, and if I did, I was too fat to be feminine anyway. Hiding the fat, hiding the chest, hiding the hips — I tried to run away from my own skin in fear of being a woman because I sure was not a man and if I was not a man then I was a woman.

My friend group was full of white wolffian nerds and queer black women.

My earliest identity crisis regarding being transmasc had to have been during the discovery of plurality. In which I became aware that I was masculine because someone who snuck into my head had declared they were. I was outwardly plural in school, at home, and even with extended family — but I never shared our names. I had relations with the many people in my head as if they were physically there, and I felt pains along my body when they dug nails and cried into my skin. I felt it physically, and still often refer to myself as ‘We’ instead of ‘I’ when introducing myself online or to the public.

Self expression like that had caused the first rift. My da has always been traditional, and will never stop being so just because my ma is a little understanding of queer people.

Because I was masculine but not a man, I was not seen as entirely masculine but as butch. Butch is another word for masculine, but is seen used by lesbians and is now associated with them. I had called myself a lesbian for some time, which made me uncomfortable when a gay man in the plural system decided to control the body. I questioned a lot of my expression and sense of self, and definitely felt guilt for “appropriating manhood”.

I was expected to be feminine even if I was known as a stud/bulldyke. I completely distanced myself from femininity because I was never accepted as having it.

Black people like me, especially black women, have been called witches and “men” for showing inklings of their assertiveness and being ruthless towards those who seem to take them as a joke. From the start, people of african american descent were always seen as having hyper-masculine attributes — from our roots in slavery to our fashion and presentation. Black people like me never get to be feminine unless we are lighter, had thinner hair, short in stature, or were half-naked. So due to the fact that I never had any sisters, was called “grown” for being feminine, treated similarly by classmates, and looked with disgust because of my weight and race — I never obtained the connection to femininity and girlhood that I felt as though I wanted. I never had it and so I was never entirely a woman when I became an adult.

Breeding Bullock

I was not a woman because I was not feminine, but I had to be a woman so I could not be a man — and if I was masculine but not a man — then I was butch, a stud, or a bulldyke and not seen as a man or a woman.

My da once asked me why I had to be like a boy and why I couldn’t just be like my older cousin, who was a lesbian.

“Why can’t you just be like her?”

By then, I had severe body dysphoria regarding my breasts and my vulva. I felt beyond dirty, like a moldy rag. I felt as though my body was not supposed to be like this, and if it was, I was supposed to have a body that fit what I was — masculine.

I wasn’t allowed to be masculine though.

I stepped out of the house on day, into the backyard. It was summer, a nice peaceful summer. I had a white wife-beater on, with no bra. I was 16 or 17 at this time. My bottom was covered with shorts, sport shorts that fit boys in particular. I walked out to see what my parents were doing, which to no ones surprise, was smoking and fixing a broken tool. I walked out with shoes, intending to help them. This was routine. If I saw my da outside working on a car or his lawnmowers, I would go out and help him. That was the extent of my masculinity.

And he had told me, when I walked out with clothes on — with what my brothers had been wearing, with what HE had been wearing —

“You ain’t no boy.”

And that sunk in. I had enough. I went back inside, I sat on the bed. And I simply hugged myself. I had carried myself as a boy, questioned myself as a boy, present myself as if I was a boy — even if I knew that I had not entirely adopted the manhood and its labels. I still felt boyhood as a way that I was socialized, as a way I was raised, and as a way people treated me, until I no longer wasn’t when it was convient for others. I am always told what to wear, what not to wear — that sexual assault is the fault of the clothes not the hands that breached consent. And here, it was just another example.

Maybe, it was silly betting all of my emotions into being a boy.

But I had felt true freedom as a boy. As playing the role of a man, I felt true bliss. Yet, I did not have the same privileges to be arrogant and cocky and to be masculine as boys did and I still am not regarded as entirely seperate from the man and woman diachotomy. I was denied my womanhood because I never got to be a girl, but I also wasn’t allowed within manhood because I had been born into a body that wasn’t a boy.

Compared to a cis man like my da, he had already shown that he was capable of being everything a man was and more. There was no reason to teach his children how to be men — how to be masculine — when they were always expected to learn from other wolffian leaders in their environment. So instead of fixing bad behaviour that I had picked up as a result of only having masculine friends and wolffian influences, I used said toxic masculinity as a way to hide being a girl. People didn’t recognize I was one, others didn’t see me as anything but an enigma — between or stranger to what was the gender binary.

Masculinity, as a whole, can only be described by using vague experiences such as leadership or assertiveness. Even masculine black cis men will not have the same experiences as masculine white cis men, and those factors are specifically tied to how black men are seen as more masculine due to their race, the supposed links to violence, and racism. I will never share the same experiences with a masculine black cis man or a masculine white cis man because of how I was raised, and I will never have cis man privileges or the privileges of anyone born to fit into the patriarchy. That will never happen for me, and I have never expected it to..

I was just never raised as a girl, and was never in social spaces with women, and never interacted with them outside of how a heterosexual boy or a protector would — which created the confusion of how I was supposed to identify when people saw me this way and others saw me as the opposite. I was tied in the middle when there was no middle for me to start with.

For some ungodly reason, I was punished for being a boy when I was raised and treated as such due to hyper-masculinity. I was denied femininity and still am on the basis of my race and upbringing. So what was it? What was I?

The closest thing was being a butch. In AAVE, related terms were studs or bulldykes.

There seems to be a bit of a confusing way to use these terms, as butch has been used to mean masculine — but is something entirely different from both manhood and womanhood all together. To be butch is more than to be just a masculine lesbian, those are tomboy lesbians (I just call em’ tomms). To be butch is to be mature, to be the form of queer masculinity that isnt manhood and is tied to womanhood due to lesbianism, but not always functioning as women.

Even in lesbian spaces, due to not being feminine and because many believe masculinity equates manhood, butches are subsequently left out in fear of “men invading women spaces”. This belief has carried onto the fear of anyone who presents with queer masculinity — which is masculinity outside of the cis binary, and instead follows anything that is remotely distinct, nonbinary, xenic, trans, or nonhuman in a way. Lesbians who are freightened of butches have subsequently pushed butchphobia into queer spaces where phrases like “femmes and nonbinary people only spaces” actively tear down and rip into the community when it comes to housing, conversation, workplaces, safety, etc.

A woman being masculine, a butch, a stud, a bulldyke, a bulldagger, a stag — it was and still is regarded as disgusting to so many people.

I have had multiple similar experiences that studs have faced for being queer masculine, where our masculinity was tested by the use of introducing how we would react to physical violence by men and sometimes as a crude transphobic joke — by trans women. They would say that “even a trans woman would put us in our place”, and that men could fix us by corrective rape.

Recent events surrounding boxing, which made people around the world comment intersexist and transphobic things about a real person, choosing to attack her for the way she looks and the way she acts. People calling this woman “a transgender” in order to claim that she had been born with wolffian clusters. To claim she was a “man disguised as a woman”. That she won because she was “biologically stronger”.

At the height of that, I saw people advocating for the absolute harassment of queer masculinity, provoked by a boxing figure who could not by her nation and her religion — could never be transgender, and could never represent their country if she was. Said queer masculinity in this case was never even introduced, and yet it was caught in the intersexist crossfire to build upon the oppression and fear of masculinity in sports, in women spaces, in queer spaces, and much more. I had seen words written and said by queer people as a way to push masculinity down and perpetuate complete disgust towards butches.

Representation in lesbian spaces happen to be femme leaning, and in trans spaces those who seem to speak up the most are transfems. The majority of nonbinary people who are acknowledged are called “she/theys” and “theyfabs” as insults and slurs as a way to mock how they are all feminine in some way. All of these aspects tend to bleed into how there is testimony and genuine fear in many queermascs who deal with being erased because of how traditional queerness is often depicted — feminine.

Beef Cattle

Queer masculinity has always been a way to defy what traditional queerness looks like, intentionally or not.

In queer spaces, femininity is often seen as queerness itself because women who are feminine and not submissive are easily seen as lesbians. This isn’t just how men see a lot of assertive women, it is how cis lesbian women react to butches and studs. When they see a lesbian, they expect someone who is still presenting as a traditional woman or a fem. If not, then you must be adhering to “heteronormative rules” or relationships.

Since feminine men are seen as gay men or “fruity”, nonbinary people are always depicted as being mullerian, and feminine women are seen as gay women — queer as a label has been pictured to mean hyperfeminine. This is where we get into how the supression of masculinity is inherent in a community where queerness is always seen as feminine.

In lesbian spaces, androphobic lesbian women who hate trans women because of their “manhood” always cite their fears with masculinity as being from possibilities and never in the case of real queer mascs harming people. If you are a masculine trans woman, you are then treated even worse. This vilifying rhethoric is towards transmascs, masculine women, BIPOC lesbians, intersex lesbians, and multigender lesbians. In all of these cases, a Gold Star Lesbian — probably named after the reward a kindergartner gets when being the teacher’s pet, in this case when a lesbian outs and harasses other lesbians for gender identity and orientation to please cishetnormative society — would create strife and say that transmascs cannot be lesbians because of their manhood, or that they can be lesbians as long as they don’t transition and that they are perceieved as lesbians.

For me, I was described as masculine because it was easier to say that than queer masculine — and had never crossed my mind at that time that queermascs were being left out of the conversation to “better” the community.

With gay men, not all of them are feminine and many fit into traditional roles of masculinity that allows them to feel respected in outside situations that do not revolve around queerness. This is not a claim of them being privileged, it is a claim of masculine gay men being extremely underepresented because it is harder to clock them or to depict them as anything but “secure in their manhood”. Gay bears who are masculine are one example of this.

On the other hand, masculine gay women are punished for “wanting to be like men”, and are downplayed in their masculinity because its easier to clock them as gay. In the case for butches, if they fail to meet the standards of cis masculinity, that means that they are either pretending to be masculine all together or they “switched sides”, further giving rise to the idea that those connected to womanhood and are masculine in some way are able to use “AFAB privilege” to hide back into the closet.

For anyone who is not connected to womanhood, manhood, and are nonbinary, intersex, or agender, masculinity is a variable and a presentation used to address how they would feel if they were connected — because in this world, you are either cis masculine or subservient, where all femininity is seen as being apart of the subservient class alongside those presenting masculine wrong. If you do masculinity wrong, you are punished for it and are seen as submissive and weaker — regarded as a faggot and fairy.

Masculinity is said to reward others for their hard work to fit in, but I do not feel as though I was ever helped, as if I was ever aided in being who I was supposed to be. When I am called by name or by mention, my femininity is disregarded despite it being right next to my masculinity, my transness is always forgotten about when it came to discussions about trans issues, and I was always seen as this faker or poser in spaces that were supposed to help me and represent people like me. Not once have I ever been rewarded by cis men for being masculine, I have always been punished and I have always been told that my boyhood and my masculinity is a danger to queer people and white people alike.

I do not have the meat of a wolffian cis man, I do not have those parts that they have, but the other halves of me — breasts and vulva — are still on the market and are seen as ripe and for the picking because of how mature they are. These tits are strictly tied to me, and when I express slicing them off or getting rid of them, I am specifically targeted for not being “grateful” for the body that God gave me. When I express that my uterus is useless and that my clitoris should be four inches — that is when I am ungrateful and that is when I will “change my mind” about never having kids. When I speak out loud, an audience appears and tells me that I will regret the choice that I make because it will be irreversible damage. That is the point.

But the difference between a choice I have made and selling this body to someone else’s wishes is that when I finally make that choice, it is not okay to do so because it was not the “right parts” and the “right way” to remove my possession of them. I am supposed to bend to the wishes of others, and allow them to slaughter me. I am a feeder cattle who was raised for this meat to no longer be in my possession so that they may have enjoyment in eating me instead of me being able to take that choice. They slaughter me before I can make that choice.

To maintain forced femininity, queermascs (no matter their sex traits) must be bred to induce and support the narrative that we are confused little girls or mentally ill gender freaks.

Our masculinity is tried and tested because it is not viewed as real enough, and so I question those willing to call our struggle a privilege in times where queermascs are able to exist and not be seen, and said invisibility creates a veil between our community and our place in the world.

Draft Animal

What would one call this pressure? The outlined hate for queer masculinity by use of transphobic, butchphobic, intersexist, and exorsexist language against masculine people of those groups?

To put a label to the condescension, to the irrational screaming from TERFs claiming that queermascs have been deluded into being scary men, and how ugly we will become and how angry we will act when we begin T.

A mutilated body, a bald head, patchy and sweaty skin, to fear those results to the point of exaggerating what queermasculine people will ever look like in order to scare us from ever transitioning or being social. When queermasculine people exist, they are said to be “gender traitors” and are “failing the WOMEN” in the queer community because lesbians can “only be women”, and that gayness is a binary between two genders of the same presentation. A label that describes when queermasculine people are accused of being aggressive, of being evil, of being rapists and abusers because of our presentation and gender — when manhood is vilified as if we benefit from ever being tied to it.

What of a label for when people practice malgendering? A tactic used to gender someone correctly for the main purpose of painting their character as entirely representative of aspects of their gender, including blaming the patriarchy on trans men, calling trans women useless for their womanhood, referring to nonbinary as their pronouns only to mock them for it, treating xenics as other than living beings due to their gender or presentation.

When you are a draft animal, you are kept around in order to support the people who do not want you to be who you are. You work for them, you abide by them to satisfy their needs and their wishes. If your body is not entirely theirs, then they are told to give you away or put you down.

Your cargo is the weight of expression, upholding gender, and carrying the words from cis people who want you gone.

I am a draft animal, carrying masculinity on a cart, watching as the streets swirl and I am watched, gawked at, grabbed and pet at like I am from a zoo — like I am not in control. Like a child to be craddled, not as an adult who chose to transition and who chose to be comfortable in my own body. Because I was born mullerian, I am assumed to be weak and womanly and feminine even when I have been surrounded by black women who are feminine in all ways except disrespect. They are then called “ratchet” and “ghetto” and “rude” for asserting themselves as not to be messed with.

I have been protected by black women my entire life, my honor safeguarded by their power. The misogynoir within people’s hearts when they find a woman of color who is powerful… It boils. They begin to feel threatened, uncomfortable by the possibility that a woman like can treat you the same way you treat other women. But I see it from another point as someone who is percieved as a “strong black woman”, and that is realizing that the strength and the masks they put on are based entirely in trauma. Black women want peace, they do not WANT to fight, and yet everytime they are called to fight in place of people who cannot fight for themselves and they notice how tiring it is. I’ve noticed how tired I am of fulfilling that role.

Black men are ten times more likely to be killed and have their masculinity questioned because of racism. Patriarchal black men have decided that instead of putting that rage out against racism — patriarchal men come back to their community and force masculinity upon women they do not like. They traumatize families in the display of their masculinity that they feel never existed because they were never considered human to begin with — they are seen as draft animals. I do not believe black men want to fight, I believe that they have exhausted all of their other options though. And that the people who are supporting them most may be the same people they call “ghetto” the next day.

I was raised and protected by black women my entire life, and I do not doubt that one will be by my side when I am hurt. And so I do not use masculinity as a way to categorize who is capable of being hurt or not, I do not use my manhood as a way to control black women, I do not force my hands upon them and I do not put misogynoir back into my community because I FELT threatened at the moment.

To let that frustration out on people who have done nothing wrong is where the view of all forms of masculinity and the fear of it begins to arise.

Androphobia is the clinical fear of manhood and men. It can include wolffians to people percieved as men. These fears are real, and stem from repeated or second hand experiences of rape by men, sexual assualt, domestic abuse, familial violence, and consistent misogyny. It is a phobia, and many do not and will not heal from trauma that causes it.

Because it is a phobia, it is recognized as irrational even if trauma does cause it. This fear is sometimes used to drive home the phrases “kill all men” and “all men are pigs”. This is confusing men who uphold the patriarchy and men who cannot, will not, and have not benefitted from the patriarchy.

The identites caught in this are trans men, transmascs, queermascs, nonbinary men, genderfluid men, queer men, intersex men, etc. Transandrophobia is the fear of trans men and its subsequent prejudice against them, but even that word is still cooking alongside anti-transmasculinity and isomisogyny.

So what is the word to use?

If transandrophobia is for transmascs and trans men, transmisogyny for transfems and trans women, exorsexism for intersex, altersex, and nonbinary people, and butchphobia refers to those who are butch only.. what word would a masculine person use to describe how their queer masculinity is called “sodomy”, how queermascs are seen as fragile and weaker, how their masculinity is forced into femininity to present in the queer community, how this identity is attacked first compared to the rest of their gender — what do you call it when a woman’s masculinity is targeted? What is the word for when masculinity is deemed evil or oppressive? When you are called ugly for presenting as masculine and queer?

Lets try on some labels.

Cowhide Leather

To me, this problem is the reason why I feel as though my gender is complex and intrapersonal — it is why I do not find it easy to describe beyond existing alongside my body as if I am not of it’s grasp. My masculinity is me, but my femininity is this body, and I exist within the femininity that is this shape, that is these sex traits. When I walk outside, my masculinity and my ability to be like one of the boys is hindered because my masculinity is now acknowledged by passing — but is recognized to be lesser — and is seen as “fragile” or “fake”.

I can pass for a cis man, but everyone clocks that masculinity as being fabricated and from a source that is not “actually manhood”. They respect my pronouns, my gender, my identity — but in a way that subtly is used to figure out if I am a “real man” or not. Malgendering.

I do not believe I am exempt from transmisogyny or transandrophobia or exorsexism — and yet I believe that I am not experiencing any of them.

I am not being clocked and attacked for being “a man cosplaying a woman”, no one is afraid of me being a “confused little girl”, and no one is denying my identity and existence by use of surgery or the binary. I am not experiencing anything like this. But I am being questioned for my masculinity, I am being singled out for performing masculinity in conjuction with femininity, I am told that I am letting transmascs speak over transfems, I am told that I taint my femininity with my masculine self.

Queermasculine struggles are not less common, but they are invisible to both the community and outside society, resulting in people who are feminine and adjacent (transfems and flamboyant gay men) to be highly criticized for their femininity not being inferior. The struggles with transfemininity cross into the hate for queermasculinity.

As mentioned before, masculinity when failed is seen as fragile and effeminate. Trans women who are protowolffian have their masculinity ridiculed from the start and get “inferior femininity” forced upon them as a punishment for failing “superior masculinity”. This means that their reclaiming of femininity is not the same as a trans man claiming masculinity, as that said trans man would never be punished with masculinity but punished for attempting a false version of it. Trans men are not given the benefits of masculinity and trans women are forced into submissiveness. While transfems have that version of femininity that they must reclaim and rebuild so it does not service others and the patriarchy — transmascs have to claim their masculinity repeatedly because they are denied it in the first place for failing and are denied femininity because they are men.

Replace trans men with butches/studs, masculine gays, masculine intersex people, etc and you will see what I mean when I say that this is not just transmisogyny, transandrophobia, or exorsexism. This is a repeated way queermasculinity is seen, addressed, acknowledged, and gained in and out of the community. Masculine nonbinary people suffer from not having housing like butches do, their masculinity is seen as fake because they are nonbinary, and their struggles with representation in queer media is because of their masculinity.

I do not believe that misandry is an accurate term to describe this experience nor is it used outside of counterarguments against feminism. In other words, misandry is not a phenomenon that sprouted as a way to discuss how men belittle each other but as a way to counteract how women are treated by men and how to deflect that responsibility to destroy the patriarchy alongside others. Cis men are not demonized for being cis masculine or upholding the patriarchy in their communities, they are rewarded for doing so by being surrounded by other men who pride themselves on being superior, leading to consistent fighting and disapproval amongst what makes masculinity strong.

Cis masculinity is consistently fighting to prove that the masculinity they already have is able to be used against others, intentionally or not.

Queer masculinity is never being able to obtain masculinity that benefits their queerness and their queerness alone without having to accept femininity or the patriarchy.

We are not the same. And the struggles shown by the use of the word “misandry” obviously only counts for cismasculine people who have their masculininity ready to use.

Ever since I had joined conversations about transandrophobia, I have never once felt a deep connection to persue the term beyond declaring its existence and supporting those who theorize. I am not someone who is entirely sure that I even felt represented by the term, something to use and something to be used. I did not feel as though it could describe my experiences as someone who was not a man and did not have a connection to manhood outside of how I raised myself.

This disconnect had allowed me to find people who were like-minded in what I had been proposing; a term that refers to the invisibility, malgendering, and feminization of queer masculinity.

It is not the fear and subsequent discrimination of trans men, so it cannot be transandrophobia. It is not the sexism and hatred of trans women, so it cannot be transmisogyny. It is not the prejudice and erasure of nonbinary, intersex, and altersex people, so it is not exorsexism.

I have read work from different places to further aid me in this process of desconstructing what me and a wolfemic transfem have coined — Misabviriy.

Misabviriy, as it is disected, is the hate (mis-) for queer masculinity (ab- for “off” or “away”, viriy for “manhood, masculinity”).

Misabviriy and Superiority

The first point is that masculine individuals are being depicted as superior to women and above in any way as long as one performs the masculinity correctly, which gives incentive for said masculine individuals who are correctly masculine to use said performance in order to get rewarded. Then, because they are doing it correctly, there is the expectation that they must have a prize. If they do not get one, they feel as though they have been lied to and their masculinity is being threatened. Because queermascs are masculine and/or transition to masculinity, there is the assumption that they want said patriarchal power and are able to get it naturally without recoil or a fight.

Misabviriy and Invisibility

Due to the hypervisibility of queerfem individuals by queer media, transphobic outlets, and crude imagery, there is hyperinvisibility in queermascs. The interest in transfem bodies due to their sex traits, and the disinterest in transmasc bodies specifically come from the narrative that because queermascs and transmascs are either confused “little girls” or holding fragile masculinity, transfems and queerfems must be the predatory “grown men” and ugly women type who can’t date fragile mascs. To those following TERFism, queermasc people are hiding their real selves behind masculinity as a way to compensate for failing the patriarchy horribly, and are not the real culprit because they are being “groomed” and tricked into masculinity by being a tomboy or a butch. Said queermasc identity is then questioned until they are either shoved back into the closet, or they stop being masculine.

Misabviriy and Sex

Displays of misabviriy that revolve around sexualizing the sex traits of queermascs have been widely ignored in the community. Masculine intersex people have been told that they were not intersex, and that their masculinity could be changed with corrective rape. Butches get this treatment as well and often due to being lesbians and not being a woman “correctly”. Notable displays of it are with the “cuntboy” depiction where transmascs are reduced to their reproductive system, the “silent protector” type in butchphobia where a butch is deemed useful only in sex and when protectinf femmes, and the mystification of masculine nonbinary bodies when they are not visibly feminine. Queermascs who have vulvas are also expected to bottom in pornography and in relationships, leaving a hole of content and resources when it comes to topping after phalloplasty or with a tdick. In this area, queermascs have higher rates of suicide and the possibility to be sexually assaulted, and yet the only aid a queermasc will get is if they are feminine enough on the outside to hide it. Queermascs are also more likely to detransition or become feminine at the wishes of a cis or trans sexual partner, prioritizing the sexual partner’s pleasure with a sexual “tool” instead of a preference. Testosterone is a common transmasc form of HRT, and yet it is hard to be transsexual as a masc. Testosterone is a controlled substance, and no amount of market work around will help get it any easier for DIY HRT. The lack of queermascs and transmascs on T when they want to makes others believe we are still “women”, that we want to be feminine, and that once we get it we’ll be ugly. Some people, like intersex people with low T, could die without it. And yet, we still do not have it. I am not on T, but have been taking DIY DHEA, and it is because I know that I can only afford and find resources on DHEA.

Misabviriy and Malgendering

As mentioned before, malgendering is when validation of an identity is used only to be against said identity, usually for excusing violence or discrimination. Queermascs, especially transmascs, are positioned between being denied womanhood based on identity and being denied manhood for “choosing” it and doing it wrong. Malgendering is used to scare, to put fear into one for what they may face as the gender they transition to. While not exclusive to transmascs, malgendering is used against transmascs by wishes of harm, calling trans men the “men of the trans community”, and using correct pronouns and terminology to make a joke from said trans person. GNC women who embrace masculinity are targeted the same way, starting with many people using their masculinity as a way to validate their strength, only to use that affirmation to challenge them to a fight since they are “so strong”. It paints their targets as weak fragile women. The idea that queermascs are fragile and tainting their body with masculinity is used by Baeddels, Radfems, and TERFs who target trans men and call anyone else “collateral damage" for being in the way. In queer spaces, wolffian mascs and anyone who is remotely masculine regardless of gender are seen as dangerous because their ties to masculinity means that they apparently operate under the patriarchy and work for it. Queermascs, especially those who are trans men and intersex people, are more likely to be denied life saving treatments and gynaecologists due to their identity, and this denial can lead to death.

Misabviriy and Feminization

Queermascs such as masculine nonbinary people and butches have always been feminized by the outside world as a way to quell the disgust or discomfort with them being masculine. Separation of masculinity from their queer identity is a common occurrence in communities that are supposed to aid them in being who they are. As said before, queermasculinity and those who are of it are seen as confused little girls (the basis for ROGD) and predatory men due to their connection to masculinity that is “wrong”. Because of this, not only are queermascs the victim when first transitioning but are predators lurking to lure transness into innocent girls when they are post-transition and confident. From inside the community, many butches have faced being left out of media and out of the narrative when it came to lesbianism as they were slowly turned into guard dogs and sexual pleasure — focusing heavily on how a butch is “still a woman”, and the joke of “forgetting the bookbag” that is overused. Depictions of masculine women and queermascs are always in a way where their physical features “prove” them to be not actually masculine and that they are pretending to be masculine. Queermascs have also reported feeling extremely left out and lost in inclusive spaces that actively call out queer masculinity alongside patriarchal masculinity while uplifting patriarchal femininity that wishes to benefit from the patriarchy by pulling women and queer men down into terms like TIF, female brained, “woman bits”, and fake feminism that relies on bioessentialism (TME, TMA..) and gender wars (they ultimately do not earn benefits due to misogyny).

This isn’t to say that queer men and mascs cannot and can never uphold, take part in, or indulge ideas that agree with patriarchal masculinity. Misabviriy isn’t an excuse to be patriarchal. Queermascs can partake in it all they want, usually for protection under the guise that their manhood is cis passing, but there are no benefits for doing masculinity wrong and being perceived as the wrong version of masculinity when their hyperinvisibility wears off. Repowering is what I would call this — when queer people veil or mask their maginalized status to identify as cishet perisex people, regaining the power they lost over their identity when they transitioned or came out of the closet. Repowering is not when a trans person hides in the closet and pretends, or when they do not transition at all, because you do not gain power in the closet and only do so when using your former cishet identity as a mask for your true self to feed into horrible narratives and cycle queerphobic language/notions — intentionally or not.

I believe that anyone can practice repowering, including trans women who veil as men in order to gain the little bit of lost power that the patriarchy would give them by feeding into harmful sterotypes, tropes, and reuse intersexist, homophobic, or transphobic language to fit in. Privliege is a conditional concept that exists only when the perception of a queer person is not queer but cishet perisex. When a trans woman partakes in repowering, then is actually found out to be trans, they are no longer holding that privlege not because of their gender but because of their transness. Same with trans men, nonbinary people, intersex, butch, and other queer people.

Queer Masculinity Future

I have wishes for the future too. I have a life too, I have a world that I wish to see.

I don’t want to see infighting, I do not want the binary to persist, I do not want to bring forth a world where gender is valued through power and oppression — I wish for a world where gender is expanded beyond all limits until it no longer means anything. I wish for gender to no longer be biological, no longer social, not longer binary — I wish for gender to be intrapersonal. Something only you can affirm, something no one can take away from you even when you die, something that you work to prove for your pleasure, not anyone elses. I am a radical gender expansionist, and that means that these wishes will become my reality by any means necessary.

Labels will mean what they mean, but they will not be used to create or single out a group of people unless they have no experience. There should be no “oppression olympics” of trans communities, there should be no one speaking over lived experiences, there should be no one forcing each other to identify or creating terms used against groups of people who do not agree with your view. There should be nothing like that. And all of it seems to point directly at gender essentialism and gender wars. In order to punish the fires of them, we must quell it by personalizing gender instead of grouping gendered people into neat boxes.

I have fears that queer masculinity may not be present in the future.

I fear that our expression will be centered in the battle against cis masculinity, and if we do not speak about our struggles, then we are the object crushed under the heel of the foot. If feminism does not include men and the liberation of queer manhood, then it will not succeed in destroying the patriarchy for queer manhood is the number one enemy to the patriarchy. The patriarchy is afraid of us, afraid of what we are doing to their “daughters”, afraid of what our bodies would look like after transitioning, afraid of it all. They are scared, and we make them scared of our masculinity.

Feminism should include the liberation of queer manhood alongside womanhood, feminism should give us the right to speak alongside everyone, feminism should allow queermascs space to talk about how they are affected by the patriarchy. Feminism, I fear, should not exclude us.

I smile with joy at the displays of masculinity.

For that masculinity is what I would call queer masculinity, where the patriarchy dies at its teeth, at its claws. For queer masculinity will be at the forefront to the death of the patriarchy. I smile in joy when I see trans men binding and cutting their hair, grooming their beards, with free top surgery, with feminine figures, with masculine features, with long hair, with free breasts, with phallo or without, with manhood running in their blood, with their sex altered, with their sex unaltered.

I smile in joy when I see intersex men prancing for joy at their intersexness, when they are proud, when they love themselves, when they don’t need to bind, when they don’t need to be masculine, when they aren’t androgynous, when they are happy, when they fight IGM, when they are men and embrace manhood.

I smile when nonbinary mascs are fully masculine and do not back down for the pleasure of others.

I smile when multigender mascs are queer in every way, who embody all forms of presentations.

I smile in joy.

I have wishes for the future too. And those wishes should become reality, as we unshackle cattle boys from their prisons. Where the farms are dismantled, where the industry is brought down with their hooves, where the young are not slaughtered back into femininity, where we are not kicked when we are torn down, when we are not brutally pushed around for existing, where cattle boys are not starved, where cattle boys are not fattened for their meat.

Where the patriarchy and queer community stops claiming we are appropriating queerness and are dangerous.

Open Range Still Means Shackles

Between all of this, I do believe that my experiences and my troubles are painted here to be of priority to be solved in the future, where queer masculinity is not inherently dismissed as cishetnormative or oppressive.

Queermascs still live in a world where our oppression is seen as our fault, and that as cattle boys, we must suffer for the choice of being the oppressor.

I suffer independently to the patriarchy, whether or not it exists, other facts such as behavior in and out of communities, bio essentialism, and racism will still persist. But the centerpoint for all those thing happens to be the pleasure of the patriarchy. Destroying it, not just because it stands for oppression, but because it still keeps cattle boys in a roundup open range or not.

Further reading is linked in the Medium post, consider supporting Lunabelle and I on our queer journey.