#but it happens to cis queer men too

[cupcake-bee-boy]

Someone told me today that masculinity is a prison. Like, just straight to my face. I’m so fucking tired of this. Just be normal about masculine people. It’s not hard.

Do you know why the term is “toxic masculinity”? Because normal masculinity isn’t fucking toxic!! It’s wonderful and amazing and freeing. It’s so fucking freeing. I feel like myself, something teenage and child me never got to have. I finally feel like myself. I finally feel HAPPY!! I feel ALIVE!!!

And it’s not like toxic femininity is fake. It’s real, and it’s out there. It’s trad wives. It’s terfs to an extent. It’s white women and their fucking tears. And I’m sure toxic androgyny and stuff like that exists too, even if it’s not widely known or talked about.

Just be normal. Treat people like normal human beings. Stop being so weird about masculine people. It doesn’t make you an ally or a good queer or a feminist or whatever. It just lets people know that you’re probably a dangerous person to be around, or at the very least have been brainwashed by dangerous people.

[dragoninahumancostume]

My favorite part of being alive is that I've never felt welcome in any space except for that one year when I thought I was a non-binary bisexual asexual girl when I was 13 :)

[non-un-topo]

"It's not dysphoria" I say as I write an entire assignment on my own invisible queerness and gender identity, and as I feel like tearing my skin off and crawling into a cave forever

[despemania]

oh my stars im surprised it actually reached dsp and he had to say something but watching the homophobe allegations spread the way it did was fucking crazy

[whimsycore]

I got asked by my big bosses TWICE about a project I was assigned to that my coworkers purposefully did not include me in. Then today they tried the “roast passive aggressively” and not expect me to ask questions back but it’s like. I was doing my fucking job I didn’t snitch on them I was just saying I don’t know what’s going on or what’s expected of me. I ask questions and they treat me like I’m stupid. I don’t and I’m not doing enough. I fully believe the majority of this staff wanted another person full time and that’s why they’ve been degrading me.

[wild-at-mind]

If you ever see me becoming one of those transmisandry people, please fucking call me out immediately.

[lastoneout]

*grabbing young queer people by the shoulders* listen to me. radical feminism is inherently transphobic. you cannot rehabilitate it or reclaim it or make it trans inclusive, I don't care what the people on twitter who claim to be authorities on queerness say. the foundation of radical feminism is nothing but bio and gender essentialism and biphobia and aphobia and anti-kink rhetoric and intersexism and yes, misogyny. it does not offer a future, not for bi people, aroace people, sex workers, not for kinksters, or intersex people, cis women, or trans people regardless of gender and you should care about those people. it will never result in queer liberation because it is an ideology of exclusion and hatred. you gain nothing by buying into the idea that half the population is evil by birth or by transition. you gain nothing by acting like women are perpetual victims who can't think for themselves and are tainted by their association with men. being a man or being attracted to them is not a sin. if we truly want to stand a chance of dismantling the patriarchy we actually NEED men on our side especially marginalized men. they are our allies.

the problem with terfs is not just transphobia, it never was, the radical feminism is also so unbelievably harmful. you cannot save it and it will not save you, stop drawing lines between queer people and join hands with them instead. remove people who are actually harmful, not innocent people who happen to have the wrong sexuality or gender or job. we get there together or we don't get there at all. we need each other now more than ever. do not listen to those who seek to divide us even if they are queer. we all deserve so much better than the hell radical feminism pretends is a liberated future.

I do not blame anyone who fell prey to this rhetoric, I know it feels good to have a common enemy and lash out at those you think are siding with them however they do it, but men, especially marginalized men, are not your enemies. and it's never too late to realize that and change for the better.

[spacelazarwolf]

doing the thing where i copy paste and put in bold for emphasis:

The problem is not that trans women are uniquely more oppressive towards trans men than other women. The problem is that female abusers in general, be they cis or trans, lesbian or straight, see trans men as an acceptable target for sexual violence, and couch it in terms of whatever social justice language allows them to claim that trans men have systemic power over them merely for being men

One evening, I was at the LGBTQIA center for a trans committee and I was the only trans man in attendance. One trans woman told me she never understood how I could want to be a "disgusting man".

Later that evening, she told me she'd love to swap bodies with me (I was pre T, pre op and didn't bind). I told her I didn't understand why she'd want to have the body of a "disgusting man".

She called me transmisogynistic.

Oh, the irony.

[genderqueerdykes]

now more than ever it's blatantly obvious that people go out of their way to erase trans men from communities and queer history. it's always been happening, but it's way easier to watch it in real time now thanks to the internet and social media. we are watching people basically gloating that they misgender trans men and don't see them as men. we are now watching people kick trans men out of queer spaces because they are often "femme and them" or "nonbinary and woman" support groups, conflating nonbinary identities with womanhood, and denying trans men or transmasc nonbinary people places to go. many of them get told that their presence would "scare" the lesbians, women and enbies because they have trauma.

where do the trans men with trauma go, though? we can't go anywhere. when i was struggling with domestic violence that ended up destroying my right leg, i was denied shelter in queer spaces and even women's spaces even though i have F on license. domestic violence shelters especially will turn trans men away if we pass. even if we partially identify as women, we can't go in because 'our voices are deep and scary and we're loud and aggressive and threatening and might prey on the defenseless scared women'

finding transmasc support groups is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. i've seen numerous organizations across the US have transfemme support groups, nonbinary/genderqueer support groups, and then nothing for transmascs. where the hell do we go when they won't let us go anywhere?

we try to exist online and they try to erase us from here, too. bickering and arguing about how we're not real men, sending trans men death and sexual assault threats, acting like they're saviors for kicking out the "dangerous ugly men" from the queer community, as if we don't belong to it at all.

i refuse to be erased. i refuse to sit in silence while people tell me my problems don't matter because now i "have male privilege". I don't. once people find out what my legal name is they view me as a woman. strangers however view me as a cis man and will deny me help, either through programs, or because i'm a "strong young man, i should be able to pick myself up by my boot straps." i'm not white. i'm not abled.

i'm proud to be a trans man and i will be here to fight for other trans men's rights to have a platform to speak, and spaces to occupy. i will not rest until trans men & mascs have safe places to be and meet other trans men.

trans men are queer. we belong here. we are taking up the space we rightfully deserve and we are not leaving.

[stigmatacunnilingus]

I keep seeing fucking tiktoks with people talking about how they disagree with people saying that “calling it breastfeeding is transphobic” and yet I’ve never seen anybody say that

[endykelopaedia]

I think I still don't understand your point. If a trans woman is in the closet, that means people will asume she is a cis man. Maybe a man who fails at masculinity, but there are a lot of cis men who fail at masculinity, too. So if she then gets mistreated, then yes she does get treated as a cis man would. This is transmisogyny, of course, but it also clearly stems from the way people treat cis men, because again, they assume that she is a cis man. What specific part of that reasoning do you disagree with?

my disagreement lies with the sentiment at its face. the transmisogyny trans women face is not and has never been rooted in vitriol directed at cis men. in fact i'd argue the opposite, people try to couch their transmisogyny with a more "justifiable" preformative distrust of cis men.

but this is a lie, it doesnt reflect reality. transmisogynists do not actually hold and express supposed anti-man sentiment in any meaningful way that isnt transmisogyny and the things trans women go through simply are not for seeming "like cis men" on the surface. queer people of all backgrounds are forced into the closet. it is not a passive state. a trans woman closeted is a woman who has been burned. she has faced a unique type of physical and psychological violence that began the moment she did something decidedly un-cis. this violence is transmisogyny, and it doesnt happen to actually cis men. simple as. at best "being nicer to cis men will make us nicer to trans women" completely misses why and how transmisogyny happens and at worst it actively misgenders trans women who are closeted or dont pass.

so No. being nicer to cis men will NOT make the lives of trans women any easier, at any stage. people are in fact far nicer to trans people who bury themselves deep and never mark the spot, so that their queerness is never suspected, even to themselves.

[jellyfemmedyke]

sorry to ramble in your inbox but its kinda fucking me up how "trans man with a cishet boyfriend who misgenders him behind his back" is like seen to be a person to make fun of in the general queer tumblr space instead of a person who is in a vulnerable situation. i know that there is trans men who are also women and there are trans men who are genuinely okay with dating a cis man who considers himself straight but people talking about these hypothetical couples arent talking about these situations but rather about "haha stupid trans man doesnt realize hes dating a bigot"

theres this attitude that the hypothetical cishet boyfriend is actually a conservative so it should be obvious to trans man that he doesnt respect his identity but i feel like its less "oh its obvious that this specific man is a bigot" and more "obviously cishet white men are bigots" and its weird how people laugh at this person instead of acknowledging that even if you are dating a bigot its usually not a big win for you personally. like the bigot cishet boyfriend isnt going to be okay with his trans man boyfriend starting testosterone. like we can sympathize with emotional abuse happening towards other groups but when its gay and mspec trans men its like "oh he should have known that would happen" or "its his fault for dating a bigot"?

of course people have the same making fun of the victim narrative with afab nonbinary people who date cishet men who misgender them [and im sure this bleeds over to affecting all nonbinary people if people arbitrarily decide theyre afab if the nonbinary person refuses to tell them personal information about themselves but the larger narrative always specifies that this is an afab person] and its almost like a "this is what you get for being attracted to men" sort of thing.

and also i theres something to be said about warning people for signs their partner or potential partner doesnt respect their identity but considering i imagine its a common anxiety among trans and nonbinary people who are into that sorta thing to wonder "am i ever going to find someone who loves me and is also accepting of me for being [insert gender here]?" its sort of fucked up for it to be common to basically claim "yea if youre dating a cis man who said he was straight before he started dating you but says he respects your identity hes probably just straight up lying to your face" and then laugh at the person getting misgendered for not knowing they were being misgendered.

anyway sorry for this big ramble i cant even remember specific instances of this to reference so i might seem like im making up a guy to be mad at but i swear this is like a general attitude and almost running joke i see around. anyway. have a good day.

I absolutely see that too, and I think it's a mixture of straight up victim blaming, because oh noo how dare you WANT to date *gasp* cis men

but it come with an intense transandrophobia and exorsexism because there's a lot more sympathy when it comes to cis women dating cishet men "poor things uwu" but when it's trans men or in this case non binary people assumed to be women, it's always "see I told you so" smug superiority. (cis women get this too, because of misogyny obviously, but it's different and worse for trans men) People are just waiting for a chance to be misogynistic and trans men are an acceptable target. This is honestly extra fucked up when we remember that trans men experience some of the highest rates of domestic violence and rape in the community though.

being trans is such a vulnerable place to be in, and a lot of people, trans or not are insecure or just want to be loved, that's normal. A lot of people are willing to accept certain behaviors from their partners that are bad, because of those reasons as well, victim blaming, and ESPECIALLy telling trans men to toughen up or "what did you expect" is apart of the toxic expectations that get placed of trans men as well. I could honestly go on for hours about this. good ask,anon

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

would you like to tell us about your research on virginity?

but also...wdym STIs aren't as scary as we think??? I was told most of them are incurable? I know you can make aids untrasmittable and that they've even succeded in curing it a couple times but that's about it. I would love to be educated about this

yeah, the basic idea with the virginity project was that the whole concept of virginity is pretty bullshit in the context in which it was initially significant, namely cisgender women being penetrated by cisgender men, so as soon as you take it outside of that context by introducing gay and trans sexuality it totally falls apart. I mean, hell, it stops working if you even look at two cishet people doing literally anything OTHER than penis-in-vagina sex. I tripped up so many people initially when I started asking questions like "okay, so you don't think a woman loses her virginity from a man going down on her. so what if it's two women? what's the difference?" and just really getting people to face down their very penis-centered view of the sex, to the result of several people telling me that it kind of made them reevaluate what they actually think of as the first time they had sex. it's also fascinating to either read other people's accounts or discuss firsthand how queer people have either tried to make themselves fit into the binary of virginity - queer man disagreeing over whether or not you have to have penetrative anal sex to lose your virginity or oral sex is sufficient, a fascinating case of a lesbian who felt that have sex with other cis women didn't "count" and asked a cis male friend to have sex with her just so she could feel satisfied that she'd lost her virginity - or abandon it entirely. Hanne Blank's book Virgin was a formative starting point, and it really exploded for me from there.

as for the STIs - hey, bad news! you fell victim to the scare tactics used to make people afraid of sex! almost all sexually transmitted infections are very easy to treat and cure with the right medicine, which is why it's important to get tested regularly and check in with your healthcare provider at the first sign of something amiss. pubic lice, scabies, trichomoniasis, gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis - all of those are pretty easy to get rid of with some help from your doctor and a run to the pharmacy!

the major exceptions are the 4 H's: herpes, HIV, HPV, and hepatitis B.

herpes is with you forever but is an incredibly mild companion to share your body with, considering most people never experience any notable symptoms and those who do can curb the severity with medicine.

it's also worth noting that herpes is so common as to be virtually ubiquitous; the World Health Organization consistently estimates that somewhere around 80% of the world's adult population is carrying herpes simplex virus 1 or herpes simplex virus 2. a great deal of those people don't even get it from having sex, but rather by catching HSV-1 from a parent or other people they come is close contact with as a child.

you're actually thinking of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) when you mention AIDS becoming untransmittable, but that's still a very good thing! the care available for people with HIV has come incredibly far since AIDS first became known and claimed so many lives, and today it's more than possible for people infected with HIV to live long, healthy lives by taking the proper medication to manage their viral load.

with management, people with HIV will not develop AIDS (which happens when the immune system is sufficiently depleted by HIV) and by consistently taking their medication people with HIV can become undetectable (the viral load in their body is too small to be detected or measured in tests), at which point they are unable to transmit the virus to other people.

HPV (human paillomavirus) comes in many different strains, most of which are absolutely harmless and go away on their own after a couple of months or years of freeloading in your body. I cannot emphasize this enough: HPV is so common that virtually everyone who has sex has, will have, or has had it in their lives, and the vast, VAST majority of those people will never be troubled by it literally at all.

the trouble comes from a few strains of HPV that can cause genital warts, and a few others that can cause cancers in the throat, anus, cervix, vulva, vagina, and penis. while HPV can't be treated, you can reduce your risk of developing cancer by getting the HPV vaccine if you haven't already and, if you have a cervix, getting regular Pap smears to catch early warning signs of cancerous developments.

hepatitis B is a viral infection that targets the liver. in rare cases it can cause chronic health problems that can be very dangerous, but I have to emphasize that's not common. in most adults who get hep B, there will be no symptoms and it will resolve itself in a matter of weeks. the infection is riskiest in children, but at least in America most people have received vaccines against hepatitis B as babies since the 90s.

in conclusion: get your shots, take your medicine, use protection, get tested, and talk to your doctor, but know that if there's one thing humans are good at it's figuring out how to manage STIs. we've been doing it for a long time - most sexually transmitted infections and parasites have been with us since before we we became modern humans - so we're really good at it!

[theabigailthorn]

Have you ever gone on a date and a girl thought you were cis and you had to be like actually I’m trans? Like it seems like a double standard it’s not like cis people start off flirting with “hey I’m cis” but it just seems like it could risk dangerous situations (maybe less so with queer women than with men) if someone was like surprised.

So hilariously enough that did happen to me once and she responded by telling me she was too and had been stealth for seven years and was debating whether or not to tell me - it was a wild coincidence lol, neither of us had any idea about the other

[olderthannetfic]

I was reading a fic and genuinely enjoying myself up until the author decided to make a huge deal, in their AN, about how their protagonist is bi. As in ACTUALLY bi, not that stupid "straight with one exception" trash homophobic fujoshits write. I'm a cis man. I am heterosexual with exactly one exception. I don't know why. I went through years telling myself I was just confused. I heard from my queer friends at the time that only being interested in one other man wasn't a thing, that it was actually me being confused in the other direction, hiding all my crushes and desires from myself.

My family was convinced I was straight. My friends were convinced I was bi for a lot of men, I just wasn't admitting it. My now husband was the only one who told me it was fine. He's gay and he had a crush on one woman, once. Exceptions happen.

So at the risk of siding with the dreaded (presumed cis, presumed het, presumed white) enemy known as women, I... actually like the whole "if it's you, it's okay" thing. I don't assume an evil fetishizer who hates queers is writing it. It never reads that way. It reads as a story, just like any other story. A way to be queer just like any other valid option. Queerness is a spectrum. Not everyone is bi in the same way or gay or lesbian or anything else. The Kinsey Scale exists for a reason.

I spent five years in and out of therapy and church trying to fix myself. Being bi in any way was too much for my family. It was "get rid of the gay or get out" territory of panic. I could have a family or I could have my feelings for him. Choosing him involved giving up everyone I had grown up with. It involved years further of "so you can admit now that you had other male crushes, right?" no matter how many times I said no until I had to cut some queer friends out of my life, too.

And I'm not "ACTUALLY bi", apparently. I'm a trashy homophobic stereotype fujoshi came up with. I'm not actually bi. Real bi men have an equal number of women and men they're into. Bi is code for 50/50 or else you're, you know. Basically fictional. Definitely doing it wrong.

Upon some digging, I found out the writer is a lesbian woman. You would think with all the shit lesbians get she'd know better. I've seen people try to tell lesbians they aren't lesbians because "oh you dated a guy once" or "uh, you had sex with a man, you can't be" and all kind of shit that makes no sense whatsoever. So for her to turn around and go, "there is a single correct way to be a bi man" is just insane. Ma'am. Ma'am. You should know that's not how queerness works! You're queer!

This has annoyed me so much that for the first time in nine years I have pulled up a Microsoft Word document and I am writing fanfic. I am going to write so much It's Okay If It's You, one-exception-only queer fanfic.

Because it's fine to be queer even if it's this way, actually. It's fine to be queer, period! There are not rigid rules to it, that's one of the biggest joys of it!

I feel so old and tired and I'm only 40. Jesus Christ. "ACTUALLY bi". Fuck. The world is broken.

--

[gooobraghhh]

As a hypersexual trans guy, I wanna say thank you on behalf of the entire transmasc community for literally all your posts

It's so easy to feel gross (in a bad way) for being horny and as trans people avoiding being fetishized is impossible, so you taking so much time out of your day to mess around with trans guys while actually seeing them as men and not being a creep is like queer charity work or smth, I just really appreciate what you do and I'm sure alllll the other needy tboys do too /gen

Thank you so much this has to be one of the nicest asks I’ve ever gotten because like this is very important to me.

There’s so little trans porn that’s like validating to the trans persons gender. I could write a whole thing about trans women but it also happens with trans men a lot. I just really don’t like that the only way trans men are considered attractive is through what’s societally attractive about women. Trans men are pushed to be like small, petite, hairless, shy, submissive if they want to be sexy and still are really just perceived as like woman in disguise almost. It’s fine for a trans man to be any of those things just like how it’s fine for a cis man to be any of those things but it makes me upset that that’s the only way trans men are considered attractive especially in porn. I love trans guys that are big or hairy and have masculine hobbies or personality traits. I love to see trans men that express themselves in a masculine way, they are hot and they can be manly while submissive or dominant and I wish I could see more sexual content where trans masculinity is celebrated. I think it would also help a lot of trans men that worry embracing masculine things or going on t will make them unattractive or undesirable.