#erasure seems like privilege to the hypervisible & hypervisibility seems like privilege to the erased

[yepiamthesmileyface]

like is it so very wild of a take to believe that no queer identity has it better than others. we all face different things, and some individuals may have it better/worse than other individuals, but pretending that any given identity has privilege & status on the level of cis-het-perisex people is disingenuous at best.

[boreal-sea]

Tbh as an afab nonbinary butch whose partner is a trans woman, the language some of the people in that post about misogyny in previous decades/modern India are using makes me uncomfortable bc it reads to me like they're implying that transfems had/have it better. The discussion of how "traditional" misogyny affected (and continues to affect) the transmasc community is an important one, but the OP implying that transfems were "allowed" to exist when transmascs weren't ("the reason our history is not seen as extensive or influential as transfem history is because [transmascs] quite literally were not allowed to exist") comes across as transmisogynistic to me. Trans women have never been "allowed" to exist any more than trans men have, and the fact that those words are also in the context of talking about a form of misogyny that's unique to AFAB people makes it seem like the OP is saying that the reason trans women were "allowed" to exist was male privilege

One commenter brought up historical trans men that HAVE existed to refute the implied idea that they didn't bc they weren't allowed to and made a valid point about how the reason it seems that way is bc of erasure, but then people responded as if the post was about erasure all along, even though that commenter was the first one to mention erasure and before that the post had only discussed barriers to trans men existing? Additionally, the reply saying that "[he] *(let's not misgender people)* couldn't actually name the trans men [he] referenced" (aside from Brandon Teena I guess) and that it's a problem that we can't find information about trans men in India with just a quick google search (which Antoniə proved we actually can) seems to further imply that trans women have it better in this respect, even though frankly Brandon Teena—a trans man—is the only historical trans person I can name off the top of my head as well, not any trans women. One response also brushed aside the commenter asking people not to say "women/AFAB persons" by saying that it meant he was implying that all nonbinary people were AFAB (?), but personally *I* am also uncomfortable with the term "women/AFAB persons" because it looks like it implies that the two are the same. (And with this post being about a type of misogyny specific to AFAB people, it also makes it read like it's implied that trans women are not included under the category of "women" in this usage)

Even when it comes to the articles about trans men in India, presenting them in this context (even outright claiming that trans women in India have an easier time building community and exploring their identities when the article ey linked was actually talking about the hypervisibility of hijras—a cultural third gender—and discussed how all binary trans people are being erased under the "third gender" label there) seems to dismiss the struggles that Indian transfems face. The articles discuss how trans men are erased in India, but that's also true of trans women in India. Hijras are hypervisible in India but they ALSO face increased rates of abuse, sexual assault, being forced to run away from home, and inability to find work like the trans men in the article described

It seems like this post just started out with the OP (I would hope unintentionally) implying that trans women in the past were "allowed" to exist more than trans men because they had male privilege, and then when one person tried to refute that idea people changed the topic to the tired argument of whether hypervisibility is better than erasure while continuing to use transmisogynistic language and even misgendering the person who spoke up about it. If I'm missing something and you've got a different interpretation of these parts of the post then feel free to explain your perspective if you're up for it, but that's how it reads to me and I'm not here for what I'm seeing in it. The discussion itself is an important one but I don't think there's a need to use transmisogynistic language or minimize the struggles that transfems face for it

I didn't write that post so I'm not really the right person to send this to.

But since you want MY opinion: calling trans men transmisogynistic for lamenting we have no historical record is transphobic, sexist and misogynistic, whether or not we said it in a way you approve of, and personally there was nothing wrong with how that original post was phrased.

It is FACT that we have more records of ancient societies where people we would now call transfemme/ftm openly existed and were acknowledged and had communities and had a name for themselves (whether they were "allowed" to do it or not) compared to records of transmasc/ftm people.

This is undeniable. It's not transmisogynistic to point this out. It's not transmisogynistic for trans men to be upset we are not acknowledged in history the way trans women are.

Whether or not transfemme people had/have it "easy" in those societies is a completely different discussion and not what the original post was discussing, because at the very least their existence was recorded, unlike transmasc people, who have almost no historical record whatsoever.

That is what the core of that post is about. It is about the lack of records, and then a discussion about why the historical record lacks transmasc representation.

A lack of records could be caused by a few things:

"There's no record because transmasc people just didn't exist back then". This is dumb, and anyone who believes this is dumb.

Transmasc people existed just as openly as transfemme people, but everyone just decided not to write about us for... some reason? Also very unlikely. Why would no one write about us? This makes no sense.

Transmasc people existed but because they were afab they were oppressed. Therefore, most of them were unable to express themselves, and the ones who did had to stay in hiding for their own safety, and thus had no access to community nor a name for who they were. Transmascs were not acknowledged in the record both because they were hiding and also because most societies are sexist and would therefore never record the existence of transmasc people or take us seriously or see us as anything other than "silly girls playing dress up".

#3 is the reason explored in the original post. This is also the reason you seem to have a problem with.

But it's just a fact: afab people start out oppressed from birth in most societies, both modern and historical. Period. We just do. And I'm sorry, but that does tend to make everything difficult.

I really, really resent that when it comes to discussing trans issues, afab people are repeatedly silenced and told we're not allowed to talk about the fact that we're fucking oppressed from birth, and that it makes our transition journeys hard.

And we get abuse from all sides for being afab! Which is just sexism and misogyny, plain and simple. It's "justified" for all kinds of bullshit reasons, but make no mistake: it's sexism and misogyny.

We get told by other trans people we have "afab privilege" which is fucking laughable and pisses me off so, so much. Thanks, I'm "privileged" to have been born as a marginalized and oppressed sex. Fuck off. We get told that bringing up our birth sex and the fact that we are oppressed for it is "transmisogyny", like you've done here. Fuck off. No it's not. Stop being a sexist asshole for two fucking seconds.

Then we get cis women assholes (like radfems and terfs) shouting at us that we're just "self-hating women" and we're "betraying the female sisterhood" and we're "misogynistic" for transitioning and "joining the enemy".

And THEN, we have to overcome sexism and misogyny before we're even taken seriously in a medical context, before we're allowed to transition! We have to fight for testosterone (which is a controlled substance), meaning we can't legally "DIY" our HRT. We have to beg for hysterectomies and top surgery, all while people try to control our bodies and tell us we're destroying our "beautiful fertile temples". Medical sexism is powerful and dangerous.

It's no fucking wonder to me there's not many records of transmascs in history. "Troublesome young girls" we were kept home under lock and key; we were married off to husbands at a young age who would control us and keep us in our place and make us pop out babies so we'd remember we were really destined to be women and mothers all along. And the trans men who managed to make it? I'm not surprised they kept as quiet as fucking possible about it, because they probably would've been dragged off and treated just as awfully.

The few historical trans men we know about were "oddities" - discovered after death, or part of small communities who accepted them for who they were, or were one-offs mentioned in a newspaper or an ancient text here or there. There was not a society-wide acknowledgement of our existence in historical cultures from around the world. We didn't have a name for ourselves, or community, or anything.

None of this erases the struggles transfemmes go through. None of this is claiming "trans men have it worse". We're literally just saying "no one talked about us and that sucks".

Trans men are just literally begging for the right to discuss our struggles without being told we're trying to oppress trans women in the fucking process. We're begging for the right to lament our lack of representation without being called fucking transmisogynistic for pointing it out.

[transgenderteensurvivalguide]

Why is it that people seem to always support trans women more than trans men?

 Lee says:

If you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transfeminine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transfeminine people.

But if you’re part of an online forum community that is primarily transmasculine, for example, then there’s going to be a lot of resources for transmasculine people. 

And just as there are particular online spaces and communities that tend to be predominated by a certain group, there are also IRL ones that are primarily transmasculine or primarily transfeminine even if they are not explicitly defined as such. 

If you feel like you aren’t being supported enough in the space you’re currently in, see if you can find a community that does focus around the resources you’re looking for! 

As an example- you may have noticed that the transmasculine post-op community on Tumblr is pretty small. There definitely are multiple bloggers out there, and I think I actually follow all of them, but this isn’t really a thriving hub of phalloplasty information or support, or a large community of transmasculine folks who are post-op and post-transition (Thanks, Tumblr NSFW ban!).

So instead, I seek out the spaces where the community I want to be a part of actually is gathering. Now I’m part of many different transmasculine lower surgery groups on Facebook (over 20 of em lol), I’ve attended IRL transmasculine lower surgery support group meetings in person, and now I’m in two different Zoom-based transmasculine bottom surgery support groups. 

I also believe that if you want to see more of a particular thing, you should be a part of putting that thing out there! So I still maintain my transition sideblog here on Tumblr, where I will eventually document my phallo when I get stage 1 in May. And that’s how I support the transmasculine community, in my own way. So if you want to see more supportive posts for transmasculine folks, start typing!

We also have to remember that uplifting transfeminine doesn’t automatically occur at the expense of support for transmasculine people. We aren’t trying to tear each other down, so being resentful of the transfeminine community for the people who support them isn’t a good look. Transfeminine people can never have “too much” support!

I do think that there are certain spaces online that tend to focus on positivity and support for transfeminine folks, and there’s nothing wrong with that- again, yes, transfeminine people do deserve support! Transfeminine people often face the brunt of society’s violent transphobia, and it’s important that we recognize the way that trans women specifically are targeted more than other groups are. 

Trans women are often hypervisible and a lot of transphobic movements are aimed at them as a result; bathroom bills because transphobes don’t want “men” in women’s bathrooms, banning trans athletes because transphobes don’t want “men” to take over women’s teams, trans people being banned from gendered homeless shelters because transphobes don’t want “men” to sleep in the same room as women, and so on. When you listen to any of these politicians who support these gross things, you’ll hear them constantly talk about the “danger” that trans women pose (while insisting on gendering them as “men” and refusing to recognize that they’re even women). Trans men aren’t even an afterthought.

Being culturally hypervisible in the media means you’re the target of a lot of hate and the recipient of a lot of support, which is all happening at the same time. On the other hand, the transmasculine community at large is less visible in the media which means we often slip under the radar as a community which of course does tie into the erasure of the community. Transmasculine people more often slip under the radar on a personal level too, because many transmasculine people are able to pass by at least 5 years on testosterone and many choose to go stealth as soon as they’re able to.

That doesn’t mean that all transmasculine people can pass or want to pass, or that transmasculine people don’t face transphobia and violence either, or that the vitriol targeting trans women doesn’t invalidate us as well or affect our rights too, or that we shouldn’t get to share our experiences or ask for support. 

We can and should talk about transmasculine people’s experiences as well, and transmasculine voices shouldn’t be erased. Studies have shown that suicide attempt rate for trans boys is approximately 20.9% higher than it is for trans girls, for example, and there are many similar statistics showing that trans men struggle in many ways and face a lot of discrimination, which of course deserves acknowledgement.

Experiencing discrimination and subsequent mental health struggles isn’t something that should be glossed over, yet there are many pseduo-progressive folks in the LGBTQ/feminist communities whose posts can sometimes come across as “men are bad and trans men are men so they’re bad!” When you point out that there are plenty of marginalized men out there who need support, people are quick to say “Well, I’ll support you for being trans but I don’t need to support you because you’re a man since men have privilege and therefore perpetuate oppression!” But in the case of trans men, supporting someone for being trans is the same thing as supporting them in being a man, you can’t separate the two.

And you can spend all day talking about in what situations transmasculine people have access to male privilege and in what conditions the privilege applies and so on, but that is a separate conversation from the point here, which is everyone deserves support and that includes trans men (and gay men, and disabled men, and Black men, and Indigenous men, and Asian men, and so on). 

Things like body-shaming men for having neckbeards or small penises is seen as okay even though body-shaming women for having body hair or having small breasts is recognized as misogynistic. Sometimes folks respond by saying something like “you can’t oppress your oppressor” which... makes no sense in this context. Making people feel that their bodies are bad goes against the whole body-positive feminist movement, and that’s true no matter which people you think you’re targeting. 

It’s also pretty obvious that being a man doesn’t inherently make you a bad person, but a lot of the hate and anger directed at men (whether it’s posted as a joke or said seriously by someone who went through trauma) can make it difficult for trans men to recognize that they’re men because they don’t want to become the thing everyone hates. 

So how do we navigate allowing marginalized people to vent about groups who have privilege without causing collateral damage to other oppressed people? 

Some people have tried to solve it by saying “I hate only cis men, not trans men!” but then of course you’ve created a new issue which is the arbitrary distinguishment between a cis man and a trans man. A trans man can be just as misogynistic as a cis man, and being trans doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person, all it says is something about the gender you were assigned when you were born.

When you say that you only hate cis men, you’re implying that you don’t hate trans men because you think they’re different than cis men in some way in their thoughts/behavior/actions which is a transphobic assumption. 

Or you’re saying you know that trans men and cis men can be identical in their thoughts/behavior/actions because they’re all men, so the reason you don’t hate trans men is ... ?? because they had certain genitals at birth (which they may not have anymore) ?? And that’s also transphobic because it’s saying you hate people solely because of their bodies which they can’t always control or change and implies having a particular type of body is morally wrong somehow or that your body makes you a bad person.

When someone makes a point of telling a trans man that they hate men, it’s sometimes a deliberate transphobic tactic used to make the person feel like having a male gender identity is inherently bad and makes you bad because it’s who you are, so the only way to become a good person is to not be a man which means not being transgender. And this is some how TERFs try and convince trans teens who were AFAB to re-identify as women instead of embracing being men. It’s hard to embrace being something that people have told you is problematic so people try to repress their feelings and ignore who they are.

Yet folks who don’t say “I hate all men” and instead say “the patriarchy sucks but it’s okay to be a man and not all men are bad” have found that statement controversial too. 

Even that phrase, “not all men,” is a red flag because it’s primarily used by the “men’s rights” folks who try and defend their misogyny and push their anti-feminist agenda while denying the ways that they personally benefit from the system. All men benefit from the system of patriarchy if they are recognized as men by the system, but that doesn’t mean every individual man is personally responsible for actively perpetuating oppression or that every man is a bad person.

So when someone points out the ways that men are taught to hate themselves by people who are constantly bashing on men in hurtful ways, or the struggles that men face (even if they aren’t struggles unique to men), there are people who just freak out because they think that acknowledging this is in some way trying to say that men can’t be oppressors, or that pointing it out is somehow delegitimizing women’s experiences or part of a pushback against women’s rights because the MRAs have tried to stake a claim over the entire topic.

So any nuanced conversation about ways that we actually can support men and break down oppression and uplift marginalized folks has been silenced because this toxic group has dominated the conversation and nobody wants to accidentally seem like they support those things, so they don’t support anything that focuses on men at all.

Similarly, when someone posts about something that affects trans men people (usually cis people TBH) often will respond with “trans women have it worse with that issue, and everything else too!” which isn’t a helpful response because while it’s important to recognize the way that trans women face multiple axes of oppression, uplifting trans women in a way that makes it impossible for another marginalized group to have a conversation doesn’t help anyone. It’s okay for some posts to not be about or for trans women without starting to play the Oppression Olympics games because transmasculine people also need support and space and allowing transmasculine people to talk about their experiences doesn’t mean that transfeminine people are being ignored.

All that being said, I would argue that people definitely don’t always support trans women more than trans men, and I wouldn’t even say that people usually do so. It very much depends on the space you’re in. While I do believe that there are a lot of positivity/supportive posts about trans women on Tumblr, this is, in many ways, a direct reaction to counter the large volume of hate that’s also actively being directed at trans women on Tumblr. And while there are plenty of “love trans women!” posts, there is also an issue with the lack of practical resources and material support for trans women because most of the content does not go beyond the surface level heart-emoji type post.

So in what I’ve noticed on Tumblr specifically (as this varies depending on the platform you’re using and the space you’re in), there can be more vocal (aka performative) support for trans women but it mostly tends to focus on their identities saying they’re valid women and so on but doesn’t give them much information or material support or anything else that I would deem a useful resource, whereas there might be less support for trans men in terms of “gender identity positivity for being male” but there’s more practical resources and information that they can use to aid in their transition.

Again, whatever you do, don’t complain that transfeminine people have too much support- that’s not the same thing as saying that you’d like more support for trans men struggling with X issue.

And yes, while we do have many things in common, there are some differences in the struggles the community faces and the experiences we have, and it’s okay to want to talk with other folks who are going through the same thing. That doesn’t mean that you don’t care about transfeminine people or that you think they should have a smaller platform or something, it just means you’d like support for your identity and transition (which is wholly unrelated to how much support there is or isn’t available for them).

So if you are looking for more support for trans men and feel like you aren’t getting what you need in the online or IRL spaces you’re currently moving in, you should try finding the spaces that are meant to be supportive communities for trans men and join them, whether they’re specific blogs, Facebook groups, Discord servers, or in-person/on-Zoom support groups, and also do what you can to create the support you want to see for your community!